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+{"text":" \nAlso by Josh Weil\n\n_The New Valley_\n\n_The Great Glass Sea_\n\n# **THE AGE OF  \nPERPETUAL  \nLIGHT**\n\nStories\n\n## JOSH WEIL\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2017 by Josh Weil\n\nCover art and design by Nick Misani\n\nStories in this collection originally appeared in the following publications: \"No Flies, No Folly\" in _One Story_ ; \"Long Bright Line\" in _Virginia Quarterly Review, New Stories from the Midwest 2016_ , and the _Pushcart Prize XXXVIV: Best of the Small Presses_ ; \"The Essential Constituent of Modern Living Standards\" in _Ploughshares_ ; \"Angle of Reflection\" in _Narrative_ (as \"Mirza\"); \"The Point of Roughness\" in _Tin House_ ; \"Beautiful Ground\" in _Agni_ ; \"The First Bad Thing\" in _American Short Fiction_.\n\nAll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or permissions@groveatlantic.com.\n\nFIRST EDITION\n\n_Published simultaneously in Canada_\n\n_Printed in the United States of America_\n\nFirst Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: September 2017\n\nLibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data available for this title.\n\nISBN 978-0-8021-2701-3\n\neISBN 978-0-8021-8877-9\n\nGrove Press\n\nan imprint of Grove Atlantic\n\n154 West 14th Street\n\nNew York, NY 10011\n\nDistributed by Publishers Group West\n\ngroveatlantic.com\n\n17 18 19 20 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1\nNow I am here\n\nwhere street lamps renounce stars\n\nand keys tap like stuttering criers\n\ncalling the faithful to their solitary stations.\n\n\u2014from _From African Dust_ by Rema Boscov,  \nmy mother, to whom this book is dedicated\n\n# **CONTENTS**\n\nCover\n\nAlso by Josh Weil\n\nTitle Page\n\nCopyright\n\nEpigraph\n\nNo Flies, No Folly\n\nLong Bright Line\n\nThe Essential Constituent of Modern Living Standards\n\nAngle of Reflection\n\nThe Point of Roughness\n\nBeautiful Ground\n\nThe First Bad Thing\n\nHello From Here\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nBack Cover\n\n# [**NO FLIES,  \nNO FOLLY**](toc.html#ch1-R)\n\nOne by one the windows come alight. From up the hill, I watch: the Hartzlers' old stone house so dark, so still, it might be the new-turned soil of a garden bed\u2014huge, square, black\u2014and in it the orange lamplight blooming. Bloom, bloom, bloom. Mrs. Hartzler lighting the wicks. There: I can see her shape. It goes window to window, a bee drifting, till it reaches the first floor, again, and goes straight to\u2014where else?\u2014the kitchen. My stomach moans. I suck in my gut, tug the rucksack's belt more tight. On my shoulders I shrug the straps a little higher. Down I start towards the farm.\n\nSuch clanking! I am a houseful of noise, kindes playing tin can train, mamme scrubbing dishes by the well, tatte hammering a bent scythe blade flat. Even the dog with its tail\u2014whap! whap! Even the mice in the walls squeaking. It is all in the rucksack, and the rucksack is always on my back, and wherever I go, I take it.\n\nMy name is Yankel Yushrov, and I was not always a peddler. I was once, too, a lighter of lamps. Street lamps, in the city of Providence. I was once a seller of lemons in Baltimore. I was a greenhorn seeing from the deck of a ship for the first time the lights of New York. I was a beggar. I was a deserter. Once upon a time I absconded from the army of the tsar. Yes, and hidden in a hay cart, too. Once upon a time, I was a soldier. A draftee. The small sound you cannot hear in the dark on this road beneath the clanking of my pack is my spit landing. The other one you cannot hear is my sigh. I was a Russian, a Jew. A brother. A son. I will tell you something: there was a time when I was not even me.\n\nBy the time I reach the gate, the children have come out.\n\n\"Feter Yankel!\" they shout.\n\nAnd when I call them by their names\u2014\"Yonnie! Samuel! Rachael!\"\u2014I feel like a feter. Okay, okay, of course, how would I know how it feels to be an uncle? Sometimes there comes the thought: Probably, I am one. Or my brother is dead. Or both. With my fingers I bush up my mustache. Behind my glasses I make my eyes wide. I come for the kindes with a big stride, booming and clanking, making noises in my nose and throat from when I was a kinde myself\u2014my mamme snoring, my tatte gathering up the phlegm\u2014monster noises that send the children scattering among the panicked geese, the darting dogs. I chase their giggles in the dusk.\n\nUntil, from behind me, a light washes over the yard, paints the geese fiery, lifts from the dark the faces of the kindes. I stop, hands on my knees. The air is gone from me. I can feel her watching from the door. But when I look, I cannot see her face, just her shape broad and solid as the side of a milch cow, her ankles below her dress like the widest part of fence posts before they bury into the ground, breasts so heavy their weight makes them known even in the darkness of her body, shoulders even heavier, sleeves bunched to her elbows. Such forearms! Through the lace of her bonnet there glows the lamplight from inside the house. Behind her, in a chair shoved back from the table, scraping at something on his foot with the blade of a knife: Mr. Hartzler.\n\n\"Feter.\" It is the oldest, Samuel\u2014he must by now be the age of a bar mitzvah\u2014who is the first to ask, \"May I see it?\"\n\nI glance back at the doorway, his mother moving more into it to block his father with her skirts. \"Come,\" I say.\n\nOne by one, into the light thrown by the doorway, they do. Then the light is gone. I know she has shut the door, just as I know she is standing outside it, on the top stone step, in the cold, watching.\n\nI unbutton my coat, the top of my shirt. Into the collar goes my hand. Out it comes with a necklace, a simple copper haldzband that fifteen years ago my mamme gave to me. And attached to it? The flasch. A little glass bottle, no bigger than the poz of a newborn boy. A tin cap screwed on very tight. On the inside of the cap, in Hebrew letters so tiny it is a miracle a hand could make them: C. E. YUSHROV, APOTHECARY. But that nobody sees. The cap never comes off. What they could see, if they could read Hebrew, and had very good eyes, and were leaning so close to make their breath puff on my neck, is what my tatte stamped onto the top: NO FLIES, NO FOLLY.\n\nIt is by now more dark than dusk. Venus, yes. A moon yet, no. From the almost-gone light of the sky the haldzband is a faint thread stitched from my wrist to my neck. In the palm of my hand the glass of the flasch barely shows. With my other hand I take off my fox-hair cap.\n\n\"Here,\" I say, \"rub it on your head.\"\n\nBut Samuel is already doing it, rubbing as if his scalp is on fire, until his fine blond hair sticks out like a dandelion puff. Then he stops, and, holding his breath, leans his head down\u2014slow, slow\u2014towards my palm. The zap, when it comes, makes my shoulders jerk. As if attached to them by fishing lines, the other kindes step closer. Beneath his fuzz of hair: my hand. In my hand: the flasch glowing. A faint green glow like the eyes of night animals in the last of the light. For a moment, before it fades, the green light is on all the kindes' faces. It is in the teeth of their smiles. Watching their wonder, I have a feeling so odd: I hope Mrs. Hartzler sees it, that she will see _me_ giving it to them, that in exchange she might give to me a word, a look, a moment of her praise.\n\nInside, the brightness of the lamplight is a spark in the eye. Up from the table comes Ura Hartzler and\u2014one boot off, one boot on\u2014he clomps over. In one of his hands there is still the knife. With his other, he grasps my fingers.\n\n\"Still?\" he says, motioning with the knife at my mustache.\n\nEvery time I come he asks me, _Why don't you shave this?_ And every time, I ask him back, _Why don't you grow this?_ Three times a year for four years I have been coming.\n\n\"Even,\" he says, bringing the tip of his knife under my nose, \"I could do it for you now, g\u00fct?\"\n\n\"Schwindler,\" I say, pushing the knife away with one finger. \"You only want to steal my wonze from me so you can have it for yourself and put it there.\" He is a tall man and I am not, but with the same finger I reach up and poke the bit of shaved skin above his lip.\n\nHe makes a noise, his mouth jerking downwards into his beard. \"Kalt!\" he says. And I feel, for a second, how warm his skin is against my frozen fingertip.\n\nOver supper, we talk of beards. Not because of Ura's and my joking. Or even because Samuel shows the nick he gave himself below his chin, swears he has stubble on his cheek, wants me to feel.\n\n\"You better find a wife quick,\" I tell him, unable to keep from grinning at the thought of such a young kinde obliged to grow a beard.\n\n\"Or,\" his father says, grinning beneath his own, \"get better at shaving.\"\n\nNo, the reason we talk of beards is Mrs. Hartzler. She wants, she says, to learn of Russia. It used to be when I would mention something of that part of the world, she would sit, her fork held still, her mouth a little open as if through her lips she might taste the words I made, but always silent as the kindes.\n\nBut, maybe a year ago, she began to ask the questions. They started very simple: \"What is this in Yiddish?\" Scooping a ladleful of smashed potatoes onto my plate, or holding up the ladle, or pulling out from her bonnet a strand of hair, or drawing with her fingertip above her upper lip so I could feel it as clear as if it was brushing through the hairs above my own. \"Kartofel,\" I would tell her. \"Eslefl, har, wonze.\" Her face showing nothing with each word until there came one that was nothing like the word she knew. \"Wonze?\" she would ask, something in her eyes more bright, as if the strangeness of the word rubbed her the way her children did my flasch. \"Wonze,\" I would say. And she would tell me, \"In Pennsylvania Deutsch it is schnurbaertli,\" and I would say, a little too loud, a little too hard, so Ura would hear, \"I know.\"\n\nUntil, one visit, she asked, \"And in Russian?\"\n\nIt was after supper, in the sitting room, by the woodstove. We were standing over the rug on which I had spread my wares. In her hand, she held a box of matches.\n\n\"Schwebelen,\" I told her, in Yiddish.\n\nShe frowned. \"Nein,\" she said. \"In Russian.\"\n\nI glanced around the room. Ura was still at the table next door: I could see his stocking feet scratching one of the dogs behind its ears.\n\n\"Surely,\" she said, \"they have matches in Russia.\"\n\nI nodded. She waited, her eyebrows lifted just a little, her lips parted.\n\n\"Speechki,\" I said.\n\nHow strange, after so many years, the word felt in my mouth. How strange, watching her face hear it, to imagine for the first time what she would look like in the act of making love.\n\nShe shut her eyes, opened them. \"And,\" she said, \"in French?\"\n\nI told her I didn't speak French.\n\n\"What else do you speak?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" I said. But I added, \"Well.\"\n\nNothing well: a stopper followed by a corkscrew. She slid open the matchbox, reached in, drew one out. Through the doorway to the dining room, I could see just one stocking foot now. It remained on the dog's head. But it had gone still.\n\n\"A little Polish,\" I whispered.\n\nThe whisper: a wineglass lifted.\n\n\"In Polish?\" she asked.\n\nAnd when I said nothing, she touched the match to the strip at the side of the box and struck it. The flame burst. The dog's head lifted. Did he hear it from so far? Did her husband?\n\nIn my surprise, I said, \"Mecze.\" I watched Ura's foot.\n\nUntil his wife said, \"What else?\"\n\nThen I looked at her. She was holding the match between us, letting the flame burn slowly down.\n\n\"What if he sees?\" I said.\n\n\"What else do you speak?\"\n\n\"What will he think?\"\n\n\"That I'm testing them.\"\n\nThe air just above the flame was wavery with heat. Through it, she looked at me. Mrs. Hartzler has eyes that are like lying on your back in the forest and looking up at all the flecks of green that are the leaves of the trees and in a moment of breeze seeing through them so many slivers of sky. She rattled the box. I could feel inside my chest all five hundred matchsticks knocking together.\n\n\"What else?\" she said.\n\nI watched the flame burn down towards her fingers. \"French,\" I said. She smiled. \"Allumettes,\" I told her.\n\nAnd she shut her eyes, the smile still on her lips, the flame still crawling towards her fingers, until it almost reached them. Then, her eyes opened. And, as I watched, she opened her mouth. And, watching me, she slid the burning match between her lips and shut them so they pressed around her fingers that still held the end, sealing the flame inside. She did not blink. I did not blink. Slowly, she opened her lips. Out of them, around her fingers, there came a curling cloud of smoke.\n\n\"Allumettes,\" she said through it. And, then, in her own tongue, \"Danke.\" She cleared her throat, shook the matches again, slipped them into her apron. \"How much?\" she said.\n\nThrough the thin screen of smoke that remained, I saw Ura in his socks padding towards us.\n\nAfter that, her questions became more difficult. She wanted to know what kinds of pies my mother made, what I ate on my journey by foot across Russia to Riga, on the steamship to New York. What was my favorite thing to eat on Delancey Street? And did I ever sell it from my cart? And how many other carts sold it too? And how many Jews did I think lived there? And Russians? And Irish? And Chinese? And all together, everyone? And what, she would ask, her eyes wide, her lips a little open, what was such a world of people like?\n\nDifficult? Yes. Because with each one, each time I came to show my wares, each time I again sat at their supper table, I could feel Ura's disapproval thickening. I could see on his face that his mind had begun to ask questions of its own.\n\nNow, reaching with the plate of chicken parts across the table to me, she is asking about beards. \"Surely in Russia,\" she says, \"you had one.\"\n\n\"I was a kinde,\" I say, hoping with my grin and shrug and taking of the best piece left\u2014the last breast\u2014to put an end to it.\n\nBut she only sets down the chicken plate and lifts her hands to her cheeks. \"Wasn't your face cold?\"\n\nWhen she takes her hands away they leave a gleam of grease on her skin. I want to take a rag and dip it in the kettle warming on the stove, press it there and rub. And so, I do not look at her. I look at the kindes. \"Kelt?\" I say to them. \"You want to know about kelt?\"\n\nThe youngest boy stops trying to push a chunk of chicken cartilage up his nose. He got it in pretty far; it sticks out while he stares.\n\n\"So kelt,\" I say, \"that at night, in winter, on guard duty outside the barracks, at our post far in the north of Karelia...\" I know what a name like that will do to their mother; I steal a look at her; her eyes are bright as the grease on her cheeks. \"... Near Petroplavilsk,\" I say, just to watch her lips open that little bit, \"it was so cold we were afraid to pischn. One button of our pants we would...\" I pull my fingertips apart and with my mouth make a popping sound. \"Only one. Enough to let out just the very tips of our pozen.\" Over their giggling I say, \"Like the nose of a little mouse sniffing.\" With my palms I cover my face. Through the crack between my hands I poke out the pink tip of my nose as if it is a poz poking through an unbuttoned fly. I wiggle it. My ears wiggle, too; I cannot do one without the other. When I take away my hands there they are, all of them, laughing. Ura is so loud the others, beneath his booming, are just open mouths and happy eyes. I wait until his laugh has died down enough to hear the others again before I go on: \"Through that tiny opening, we would pischn into bags. Ya! Bags! Little bags. Why?\" They are quiet now. The chunk of cartilage falls out of the boy's nose. It goes plink on the plate. \"Because,\" I say, \"our piss was warm. So warm! In the bags it was so steamy! And what do you think we did with these steamy warm bags?\" With my hands I make a bowl. Gently, I press it to my face. I roll my eyes to the ceiling. I let out a sound such as I would make at the first touch of my toches lowering into a hot bath. \"Oh!\" I say. I take off my glasses and press the imaginary steamy bag to my eyes, my lips, the back of my neck, saying, \"Oh!\" over and over, \"Oh!\"\n\nUra, struggling to break apart two leg bones, says through a grunt, \"Until the bag leaks.\"\n\n\"Leaks?\" I lift my brows so high they lift my glasses. And keeping my face like that so everyone will see, I reach to my coat on the back of my chair. In the pocket I fish around. Ura, over his twisting of the bones, watches. And just as I bring the bag out, the bones break with a snap. His elbows jerk.\n\n\"I hope,\" he says, \"that's not what I think it is.\"\n\n\"To remember\"\u2014I pat the pocket\u2014\"I keep one right here.\"\n\n\"Piss?\" Yonnie, the youngest, says.\n\nI look at him as if to say of course, but speak instead to his mother. \"Not one spill in fifteen years.\"\n\nLittle Rachael looks like she is thinking not so much about the spilling as about the length of time the piss has been in the bag. She crinkles up her nose.\n\nI reach across the table and hold the bag before her face. \"What do you smell?\" She refuses to breathe. I hold it in front of her little brother's nose. Then her older brother's. Then, reaching all the way across the table, under her mother's nose. I can feel her breath on my knuckles.\n\n\"Nothing!\" I say, and, over her plate, turn the bag upside down. I shake it. Not a drop comes out.\n\n\"What kind of bags?\" she says.\n\nAs if such a bag is too valuable to be away from my body for long, I pull it back. \"Canvas,\" I tell her. \"Soaked in turpentine and wax.\"\n\nUra chews the end of a bone. \"From Russia?\"\n\n\"Where can you get them?\" his wife says.\n\n\"This,\" Ura says, \"is how they make them in Russia?\"\n\n\"Do you have more?\" she asks.\n\n\"I think...\" I answer, \"I believe... I might... No, I am almost certain I must have, even right now, one or two still in my sack.\"\n\nBut once we are in the sitting room standing beside my rucksack, it is not the bags she wants. It is colder in there, the fire unlit\u2014the Amish, in all my years of knowing them, are never ones to waste wood\u2014and when I bend down to open the straps of my rucksack, she bends down behind me. I feel, in the pocket of my coat, her hand. On the straps, my own hands go still. From the kitchen: the sound of the kindes cleaning up the plates, of Ura talking to them, just on the other side of the wall. But she is right there. So close. Her soft, round face with its sun-hardened skin, dark beneath the white of her bonnet, her mouth a hard line. Is the line shaking? Through the lining of my coat pocket, I feel the back of her fingers against my thigh. I feel them find the bag, close around it. Yes, her mouth is shaking, just a little. I see it when her lips open, hear it on the murmur of disappointment she makes.\n\n\"What is it?\" I whisper.\n\n\"Dry,\" she says. \"But not still warm.\"\n\n\"The piss?\" A small laugh comes from my throat and I try to tamp it out before it gets past her ears. \"After fifteen years?\"\n\nShe smiles. \"Why do you lie, Yankel?\"\n\nIt is the first time she has ever called me by my given name. I slip my hand into the pocket. Her wrists are so big there is hardly room for mine. I can feel my blood beating against the bones at the back of her hand, her knuckles beneath my fingers, and, as I curl mine around hers, the warmth passing through our skin.\n\nI whisper, \"What is it that you want?\"\n\nSuch is the world through which I walk: Heavy stone homes more knolls than houses, their chimneys going through them like veins of rock. Even the barns are made of stone. Their slate roofs dare the wind to try to blow them anywhere. So gray, so solid, and in winter the round, red hexes painted on their walls look like rusty washers bolting them to the sky. Even the dirt roads are hard as pounded metal, beaten by the hooves of plow horses, by the boots of a million soldiers who marched them not even forty years ago. How fertile the fields are with bones! Yet, when the sun breaks through, when it sweeps them in patches, they look alive, rolling gentle as clouds between the ridgelines. The ridgelines are black straps holding them down. In their shadows: the hunkered milking barns, silos like turrets. Defending what? Against whom? The windows of the houses give no answer. Mostly they are dark, still as if sleeping, uninterested in the passing of days, decades, the century. It is 1901. March. I have been walking these roads for almost four years.\n\nThere I am, cresting a hill! First comes my voice, babbling to itself like a whole family at supper. Next, the smoke from my pipe, drifting into the air as if just on the other side of the hill there is, instead of me, the chimney of a small house. But wait. It is moving! Yes, there is its roof! No, that is my rucksack! So large it rises first atop the hill, above my head, as if the road itself is growing a hump. And then? Bit by bit? Comes me: the pale orange fuzz at the top of my fox-hair hat, the hairy earflaps swinging, my glasses foggy, my mustache dark with sweat. The rucksack's straps cut into my shoulders, the rope with which I tie it to my waist bunching my long coat like a bathrobe. If it is sunny, my flasch is out. It swings\u2014tock, tock\u2014against my chest, soaking in the light, so it will be ready for the kindes of the next farm. And there I go: the nails in the soles of my boots clacking against the pebbles on the road, the ash I knock from my pipe leaving behind me a trail, almost invisible, then gone, until as I make my way down towards the last farm for the day, there is left only the sound of my singing:\n\n_A bisl libe un a bisele glik_ ,\n\n_Di zun zol shaynen!_\n\n_Nor oyf eyn oygnblik_\n\n_Ven ikh zol kenen in mayn Hartz_\n\n_arayn brengen zonnenshayn_\n\n_oyf eyn minit!_\n\n_A little love and a little luck_ ,\n\n_The sun shall shine!_\n\n_Just a little bit_\n\n_When I'll know in my heart_\n\n_to bring the sunshine around_\n\n_in a minute!_\n\nDown there they will serve to me my supper. The Klopfenstiens, or Virklers, or Oesches, or Yordys. They will make for me a bed in the barn. Waglers, Beilers, Lapps, Knepps. My hundred families, two hundred, maybe more. Three or four I make it to in a day. Three or four times I return to each within in a year. They like me. I speak their language, or close enough. I like them. They remind me\u2014their plain clothes, their big families, their devotion to God, their faces ready for suffering, yes, even the beards\u2014of home.\n\nNever have I cheated them. Never have I sold a faulty good. Never have I duped or swindled. Never do I come to their doors without a smile. Usually also with a tune. Of their ways I do not make my judgments known. I do not speak against their God. I speak no Hebrew in their homes. Nor do I place in their hands the weight of my heart. Never do I eat a meal without bringing a gift, or sleep in a bed without leaving a nickel on the sheets, or spend a night in the barn only to wake in the morning and steal my breakfast from a milch cow's teat. Never do I tempt their sons, flirt with their daughters. Never have I slept with their wives.\n\nHow many times have I told that story of the kelt and the piss? How many leak-proof bags have I sold? How many children have I made laugh with my nose poking through the crack between my hands like the tip of a poz? How many times have I wiggled my nose for them, my ears wiggling along with it? How many times, then, in the moment before I split my hands apart, have I remembered: we could all twitch our noses and our ears, but it was only my breuder who could do one without the other. I remember the way he would move his face part by part\u2014one ear, one eyebrow, one nostril\u2014and how the rest of us would laugh. Tatte's laugh like low humming from the back of his throat. Mamme's rolling, hiccupping, a bell tossed down the side of a hill. My breuder's squeezed snorts as he tried to keep quiet beneath the twitching of his face. My own, unrecognizable. Then, my hands stay sealed in front of me. My nose: still. My ears: still.\n\n\"Mister Yushrov?\" the farmer, after some time, will say.\n\nHis wife: \"Is something wrong?\"\n\nTheir kindes: silent, watching.\n\nThis is what they do not understand. This is why they do not like my wonze. Not only Ura Hartzler. All of them. They tell me that it makes me look like a soldier.\n\n\"A soldier?\" I say.\n\n\"In the army of Germany,\" they tell me, \"every soldier wears beneath his nose a schnurbaertli.\" They say, \"We are a peaceful people here.\"\n\nI tell them this I know, but I remind them that here is not Germany, anymore. \"We are in America,\" I say. \"A new country. A country far away from our pasts. Here,\" I tell them, \"the soldiers wear beards.\"\n\nThey nod, they shrug. \"Still,\" they say, \"it makes you look like a German soldier.\"\n\nThis is why there is no Amish peddler to take my trade from me. This is why in the first spring of the first year of the new century, I go all the way to the capital of the county, I brave the busy streets, I push through the doors of the Reading Hardware and Dry Goods Company and spread out on the counter all the money I have saved. This is why I tell the clerk, \"I want to buy a cart.\"\n\nBy May I am back at the Hartzlers' farm again. Normally, it would be June, even July, but I have changed my route. I don't want to carry with me too long the thing that Esther Hartzler desired. I have wrapped it in crumpled pages of the Reading paper, and slid it inside one of a pair of mittens I hope to sell. They are lined with the thick, soft fleece of a sheep, but, still, taking extra care, I have rolled them into a blanket and tied it shut and wedged it, snug, into the corner of my cart.\n\nHow before my cart did I make it up these hills? How did I carry enough to keep from starving? It has been barely more than a month since I gave up my rucksack and, yet, I cannot conceive of how I once did it. My shoulders have forgotten the weight of the straps. My belly cannot remember the belt. I tell my buttocks, Forget the weight pressed down on you! Back, I say, forget the sweat of the pack! I brush my hands of it. Is it possible that for three years I trudged all these miles beneath that rucksack? That I thought us inseparable as a tortoise and its shell? That once I loved it as if it was, all wrapped in one, my companion and work and home? Such is the cuckolding delivered at the hands of progress.\n\nMy new cart has three wheels. On either side, attached to the axle, there are two large ones rimmed with iron and spoked with wood, set close enough to the back that if I wished I could reach out with a hand and feel, brushing against my palm, their rough-pocked hoops. With each step I take they grunt alongside my grunting. Sometimes I speak to them. Just a little farther, I say. I tell them, We can rest at the top. The third wheel speaks back. It is a little thing, hiding under the front of the cart like a kitten beneath a couch. Thin iron hoop, thin iron spokes, it squeaks. I have, attached to it, a rod: it runs beneath the cart and up through the back to the handlebars from which I can turn it. This way or that. Coming down a hill, running with the pull of the weight, I like to play with the little wheel, making it swoop back and forth across the road, back and forth, until the cart almost topples and, laughing, we have to rein ourselves in.\n\nAfter all, the cart is not truly a new one. The money I had was only enough to pick through the hardware store's back lot. So? Neither am I such a new one, anymore. Besides, I like the layers of old paint, the black scraped down to the red scraped down to the yellow scraped down to the wood. It is as if I can see on its sides the passage of time, the world rolling forwards. How long ago was the first coat painted? Who brushed it on? What did he carry? Who did he carry it to?\n\nBy the time that I begin the long, rattling trundle down the hill towards the Hartzler farm, it is approaching the hour for supper. The smoke wisping out of the kitchen chimney does to my stomach the same as the clanging of a bell. But my stomach's rumble is buried beneath the cart. And I know that the Hartzlers are not yet inside at the table. Below, the rich light of the end of the day spreads thick as butter over pastures still giddy with spring. Such green! Such plushness! It makes me want to reach down\u2014Yankel the Giant! Yankel the Golem!\u2014and plunge my fingers in.\n\nDown there, in the milking parlor, there is, I know, the whole family. Though the only one I can see is the girl. She is outside, in the small corral, moving among the cows that have already been milked, dumping grain into the troughs, the bucket flashing in the light, the feed a little explosion of gold, the cows shoving to smother it. On the other side of the barn, the ones still waiting to be relieved of their milk crowd the shut door, knocking, wanting in.\n\nInside the parlor I can still hear their dull thudding, but it is walled off and distant as my own heartbeat, buried beneath the sounds in the room: hoof clomps, shit spatter, the muzzles of four cows battering the wood bins to shlingn every last grain of feed, the slap of a wet cloth, the high, thin, shushing of the milk streaming into the pails: shush, shush, shush.\n\nI stand in the entryway reserved for humans, listening, watching. The only light is what streams in through the small, square windows that line the walls. It looks more red than it did even just outside. Maybe it is only my eyes adjusting to the dimness of the barn, or maybe it is only how this time of day the light changes with each breath, fast as butter browning in a pan, but it seems to me more than that: strange, wondrous, even frightening, as if the light is not what is changing but the change is in the world on which it falls, as if the two have come untethered, out of alignment, the barn not the barn, the cows not the cows, the man not the man, the woman not the woman, the boys not the boys. In and out of the beams of red light, pieces of them\u2014hands, arms, faces\u2014flicker like moths. I can feel them swirling and I stare hard at them, at the rest of their shapes in the shadows, to make them people again, four people: tatte, mamme, sohn, sohn.\n\nSlowly, I become aware that the mamme is talking to me. They'll be done soon she says. Into the light she raises an arm\u2014Esther Hartzler's forearm, her thick wrist, her fingers spattered white with milk\u2014and gestures for me to wait outside. Instead, I unbutton the cuffs of my sleeves. I crouch down. At the basin, I soap my hands, I wash my forearms. And, fingers dripping, I enter the parlor to join them.\n\nOver supper there is the good freundschaft of having worked together. Do they feel it, this family that every evening eats like this after milking? How can I know? I only know that the green onion shoots taste like the wild ones I would pick beside the wagon ruts in the dirt road I used to walk to school; that the slices of warm mutton are slathered in a sauce that smells like my mother's hands after she had stood on the stool in the sun of the window hanging to dry the sheaves of mint; that little Yonnie is not too shy to, in the middle of my chewing, reach over and, with his napkin, wipe at my mustache: green jelly on the cloth, the boy's green teeth grinning. Is it true that Ura talks more, and more easily, that he tells a little slower the story of a shunned man, an excommunicated woman, with a little more detail of a sickness among the hens and trouble with two bull calves, unfolding tales without rush, without worry, the way he would to a friend?\n\nEven Esther Hartzler doesn't make any tension. All supper, she asks not one question. Is she tired from the work? No. Her eyes are alive as ever. Even\u2014is it possible?\u2014more. Is her face flushed simply from the heat of the stove, of the steam coming off her plate? Are her cheeks more full, the creases around her eyes less deep, her lips a younger woman's? All supper I try not to look at her, and fail. There is something new in her that makes me grip my fork and knife to keep the tines and tip from rattling against my plate.\n\nI want to ask her, but even after supper, when Ura tells her that he and the children will clear the table while she goes out to my cart to see my wares, she says only that it is too dark. In the morning, she says. Even when I try with a look to tell her that I have brought for her her wish. Even when, following her into the kitchen, I whisper that I have already brought it in, that it is wrapped up in my bedroll _right here beneath my arm_ , she does not even glance behind her to see.\n\nFor an hour before bedtime we all sit in the kitchen, on the dining room chairs drawn into a circle, the whole family and me shelling peas\u2014plink, plink\u2014into a bucket in the middle, my eyes taking the whole of her in. Are her breasts even heavier? Is her belly more round? My heart rises like dough in the moist heat of my chest. But when we're done and Ura announces his departure for the outhouse and there is just her and me in the kitchen with overhead the footsteps of the children drumming to their beds, before I can ask her anything, she tells me, \"Bring it to your room tonight.\"\n\nLater\u2014so late it is maybe already morning\u2014she comes to me. She brings no lamp, no candle. There is just the creaking of her walking the upstairs hall\u2014I can feel each footstep on the bridge of bone in the center of my chest\u2014and the door opens, a blackness in the wall peeled away to show the pale light of the moon coming through the hallway window and in it her black shape. She is listening. I listen, too. From the bed against the other wall comes no rustle of sheets, no creak of slats beneath the mattress, only the same steady breathing that I have listened to for hours: Samuel, her older boy. Yonnie is next door in his sister's room, the two smallest of the family sharing a bed, her younger son's narrow cot left for me.\n\nSlowly, the moonlit doorway disappears, her dark shape disappearing with it into the darkness of the wall. For a moment, after the click of the door, we both wait, holding our breath. Then she is there. As soon as I feel her weight settle onto the mattress beside me, I know, somehow, that she is with child. And I want\u2014suddenly, overwhelmingly\u2014to touch her like I never have before, slide my palm over her belly, up the center of her chest along the same bone so thudded at in mine, rest my hand there between her breasts. But instead I reach down. Beneath the bed, my hand finds the bag, the cinch, begins to open it.\n\n\"No,\" she whispers.\n\nShe has bent close and the feeling of her breath on the skin of my ear mutes for a moment the sound.\n\n\"Don't you want to see it?\" I whisper back.\n\n\"We can't,\" she says.\n\n\"Yes,\" I tell her, \"I have it here.\"\n\nI can barely feel through the mattress the faint ripple in her body from her shaking her head. \"The light,\" she whispers.\n\n\"The light?\"\n\n\"It will wake him.\"\n\nI hush a laugh and keep it to a smile that I can feel spread over my whole face. And so that she can know it, I reach out and take her hand and press her palm to my mouth. I have been growing my mustache and her little finger pushes the hairs against my nose. It tickles. I can feel my breath wet her skin and I say into her moist palm, \"There is no light.\"\n\n\"Nein?\" she whispers, and I wish she would take my palm and put it to her mouth.\n\n\"It doesn't work like that,\" I say. \"It can't make light on its own.\" I let go of her hand. In the dark, I think I can just make out that she lifts it, that, perhaps\u2014I stare at the darkness where I know her face must be\u2014she presses her hand to her cheek.\n\nBut no. It must be pressed to her own mouth\u2014in eagerness, in worry?\u2014because her words are muffled when she says, \"Then get it.\"\n\nThrough the opening I have made in my bag, I feel the bottom of the wooden base, rounded and solid as a hoof, the sharp edge of one of its brass knobs, the short neck barely thin enough to let my fingertips meet when they wrap around it, the soft edge of the fleece that still covers the glass. I slip the mitten off. I lift it out.\n\nSitting up in the bed, I hold the Edison lamp in my lap. I can feel her searching for it, her gaze probing the darker part of the dark that is me, my shape that she knows must contain the bulb somewhere in it. I reach towards the vague shape of her, searching with my hand for hers. She is closer than I think; my fingertips touch her: such soft fabric curved over such softness beneath. Her breast. Barely touching, there my fingers hover, waiting for her to jerk away. Instead, touching the back of my hand: her fingertips. The fronts of her fingers lay themselves against the backs of mine. She presses.\n\nFor a long time we stay like that. I can hear, from somewhere outside, a whip-poor-will let loose its call. Above us, in the ceiling, a faint scrabbling: some small night creature's tiny nails. Across the room, her boy breathes on. Then I stop listening. Her other hand is on my knee. Brushing over the blanket, it drifts onto my thigh, up my thigh. I hold my breath. Her fingers find my hip, crawl up the soft rolls of my belly. Until with my free hand I find them and guide them.\n\nBeneath my fingers I feel hers curve around the bulb. She slides them first one way along the glass, then back the other, discovering its smoothness, its roundness, with as much care and awe as the first stroking of a baby's head. My own hand on her breast moves to match hers, my fingers feeling the nipple hard between them, hard as the spike of glass that rises off the top of the bulb. When she touches that, her hand stops. Mine does too.\n\n\"The glass blower,\" I whisper. \"Where they pull the globe off the pipe.\"\n\n\"I wish I could see it,\" she says.\n\n\"It needs another part,\" I tell her.\n\n\"To glow?\"\n\n\"To make the electricity. A generator.\"\n\n\"Electricity?\"\n\n\"A dynamo.\"\n\n\"Like this?\" And her hand that had been cupped over mine leaves my fingers alone on her breast. A touch on my chest. I let her fingers search. When they find the flasch, they stop. Holding it, she says, \"Isn't that what you told the children? That it is the electricity inside them, in their hair when they rub it, that makes it glow?\"\n\nI nod. She must feel it in the necklace. Because the next thing I know her breast has slipped away from my hand and her head is in the blanket at my lap, the hard, round top of her head rubbing back and forth against the wool, and then her face is pressed to me, her hair feathery all over my chest, tickling, tingling. I can see it floaty, wild, in the faint green light that is the phosphorous in the flasch at my neck beginning to glow. In the pale green I watch her turn to look at the lamp on my lap. For a moment it is there, curved and pointed like the domes on the churches back home in Russia, the glass of the globe showing the wires inside like a casement displaying some rare, tiny plant\u2014such delicate branches, such strange straight roots\u2014and I can feel through my nightshirt her cheek pressed against my chest. I can feel her smile. Slowly, the reflection of the flasch\u2014small green sliver curved by the curve of the glass\u2014fades. The lamp disappears back into darkness. There is the scratching of the animal from the ceiling. From across the room the breathing of the boy. I wait for the night bird's call.\n\n\"Where did you get this?\" she whispers.\n\n\"In Reading,\" I say. \"I found one last month\u2014\"\n\n\"No,\" she says. \" _This_.\" A slight tug on my necklace.\n\n\"My tatte,\" I tell her. \"He gave it to me when I left.\"\n\n\"Your home?\"\n\n\"Russia.\" I shut my eyes. Though it was already dark it seems I can feel each tug she makes even better, each movement of her fingers over the flasch.\n\n\"Did he write this?\" she asks.\n\n\"Ja.\"\n\n\"For you?\"\n\n\"He had it engraved on the cap of every bottle.\"\n\n\"What does it say?\"\n\nI tell her.\n\nThere it is: _whip-poor-will, whip-poor-will_.\n\nWhen it is done, she asks, \"He was an apothecary?\"\n\nThe bird lets loose its call again\u2014 _whip-poor-will_ \u2014and I want to say _is_ , I want to tell her he _is_ an apothecary, but I find I cannot make a sound.\n\n\"Ecclesiastes,\" she says.\n\nI nod.\n\n\"Just as a fly in the ointment...\"\n\n\"Dead flies,\" I correct her. \"Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savor.\"\n\n\"So doth...\" she says.\n\n\"A little folly...\" I say.\n\n\"Him,\" she says, \"that is in reputation for honor and wisdom.\"\n\n\"Wisdom,\" I say, \"and honor.\"\n\nHer face leaves my chest and rubs at the blanket again. When it returns her hair is all static, again making the flasch glow. But when I look down she is not looking at the lamp. She is looking up at my face.\n\n\"Why did you leave?\" she whispers.\n\n\"My tatte?\"\n\n\"Your family.\"\n\nAbove, the animal scrabbles. Somewhere outside a cow lows. I let the glow die down.\n\n\"That story,\" I say. \"About the piss in the bags. It wasn't true.\"\n\n\"I know,\" she whispers.\n\nI tell her, \"There was a soldier, a boy, Avrom, who... It was so cold. On the coldest nights it was always us put on guard duty.\"\n\n\"You and Avrom?\"\n\n\"Any of us,\" I say. \"Us Jews. It was so cold the snot in our noses froze into tiny knives. They pricked our nostrils. Our noses were always bleeding. And the blut if it froze on your lips would take the skin away when you peeled it off. This is what happened to this Avrom. And the next night, his mouth was so raw, he asked the ofizir to please not make him go out. The ofizir said to him he would give him something to make him warm.\"\n\n\"Nein,\" she whispers.\n\n\"All over him. Some of the other ofizirim too. Until he was soaked. It was warm. He was steaming. For a moment. Then they made him go out.\"\n\n\"Don't tell me,\" she says.\n\n\"I found him.\"\n\n\"Don't.\"\n\nBeside us, across the room, there is the slow, steady breathing of her boy. I can tell she is listening to it because I feel her breathing slow again to match it. I try to make mine match hers, too.\n\n\"You didn't think you would live,\" she asks, \"till your time was done?\"\n\n\"In the army?\"\n\n\"Till you got out?\"\n\n\"I am a Jew,\" I tell her. \"There is no getting out. We are drafted for life.\" I try a quiet laugh. It comes out a loud breath. Her head shakes with it against my chest. \"That's okay,\" I say. \"We weren't expected to live long.\"\n\n\"So you fled?\"\n\n\"Ja.\"\n\n\"How?\"\n\n\"With the help of my family.\"\n\n\"How?\" she whispers, again.\n\n\"You know,\" I tell her, \"my name is not really Yankel.\" The cow has quit its lowing. The bird must have flown somewhere else. The ceiling above us is silent.\n\n\"What is it?\" she says.\n\nAnd, in the quiet, before I can say anything, we both hear: \"Mamm?\"\n\nAcross the room, against the dark wall, I can just make out his shape. Is he sitting up? Is he still even in his bed?\n\nThen she is off of mine, her weight gone from the mattress, her hand gone from mine, her hair from my chest, the touch of her face, of her breath, gone. Her shape disappears into the blackness at the other side of the room. Listening to her whisper to her son, I try to find her figure as if my eyes are connected to my ears. But I cannot. So I can only listen to her talk to him, until he is quiet again and I can hear the soft rustling of her moving around his bed, tucking his blankets back in.\n\nI say nothing until again there comes in the darkness across the room the strip of moonlit hallway. Then, before she can shut the door, I say her name: \"Esther.\"\n\nShe pauses.\n\nI wait.\n\nFinally: \"Ya, Mr. Yushrov?\"\n\n\"Do you have another?\" I say.\n\nHer silence, her waiting.\n\n\"Another blanket?\" I ask. \"Do you perhaps have a spare one for me?\"\n\nThis is how it was when I found him: He was pissing on his own hands. It was a clear day, windy. I wasn't supposed to relieve him from his shift till night, but as soon as I could gather enough warm clothes I snuck out. It wasn't long before I saw him. A dark figure against the glaring snow. He was standing away from the edge of the pine forest, out in the sun. In cold like that, the sun was useless\u2014a white sore in the hide of the sky\u2014but it showed the steam rising off his knuckles, off the spattered snow. By the time I got to him the steam was gone. The piss had become a thin sheen of ice on his hands. He couldn't move them. He couldn't put his poz back in his pants. He didn't know who I was. Below him, his mittens were two black holes in the snow. _Here_ , I told him, _I have dry mittens for you_. He didn't want them. He said his hands felt much better now. When I tried to make him put them on, he swung at me. The movement toppled him into the snow and the noise was terrible: all his clothes were stiff with ice; they crackled as he crushed them beneath him. He lay there, in the snow, his hands bare, his beard clumped with ice, the skin of his face the bluish gray of overcooked meat left out to chill. It was puffy as if the ofizir had beaten every inch of it with his fists. I tried to lift him. He scrambled away. And, as I watched, he began to take off his clothes. That was the worst thing: watching him, unable to move his fingers, unable to make his arms work, struggle out of his coat, flail and tear at his belt, shake his hat off, attacking his clothes with his teeth like some rabid animal turning on its own flesh. I tried to stop him. I failed. The last I saw of him he was staggering away, naked, a furious dark shape of a man, and then just a dark shape, and then nothing. What was he charging after? What did he think was after him?\n\n_Why did you leave?_ she asked. I could say because my mamme told me to go. That summer, when for the first time in a year she came to the camp to see me, she heard it all. And she wanted me gone from there. I could say because my tatte made me, or simply because my breuder gave his life to me so that I could. But how in return can I answer anything but why? Why would I do such a thing if there was any answer but that I had no choice at all?\n\nSo, yes, there is the story of my tatte and the cart full of hay. Yes, of me buried in it, too. The dogs at the checkpoint, the guards at the gate, the sweat of my tatte, the bayonet stabbed into the piles of grass, into my thigh, of my clenched teeth and no sound, of it not mattering\u2014the blood on the blade gave me away\u2014of blackmail and bribes, and finally, at the border, my breuder's papers, my breuder's name, yes, there is all of that, but why would I tell it? No. Such tales of the past are better left to the places where they happened, where they matter, where people need them, lands where men walk in the light of lanterns held by those behind them, unable to see farther ahead than where their shaking shadows meet the dark. Here, in America, what does it matter if behind all is black? Ahead, there is always at least a crack of light. Here, what matters is to head always towards it.\n\nThese are the long days of summer. The wineberries line the road. The sun lights them up, bright red buttons, and they do taste like wine, like drops of red wine warmed in the sun. Who else is so lucky as to lunch on them every day? Sometimes I even have half a loaf of fresh-baked bread I traded for that morning. Sometimes a jar of milk from the night before. Resting in the shade of a stone wall, or beneath a butternut tree, I can sing to myself if I wish, or slip silent into my thoughts, or simply sleep, and there is no one there to mind. The corn rises on either side of the road so high that sometimes, pushing my cart along, I cannot see above it. Then, it is as if I am an Israelite on a path opened up through a green sea, always opening before me, mile after mile. The steepest hills I'm grateful for: they keep my legs strong. The hottest days only make me look forward to the night. The nights I sleep where I want: on my own beneath the cart if I'm feeling solitary; if I want company, there is always a family happy to give me a bed. A dozen to choose from. A hundred if I plan ahead. A thousand in a year. And they wonder why I whistle and sing. Even, sometimes, I do it while in the act of making love. Yes, I have a lover, too. More than one. They like me. They like the songs I sing, the gifts I bring them. They give me deals: half off, two for one. And when I'm in town to restock, they let me lease a room above their rooms. And when I'm on the road, they even collect my mail.\n\nWhich is how, one day, almost five months since I last saw her, I get the letter I have been waiting for. _Monday the 19th_ , it says. It says: _Ura_ and _overnight in town_ and _dynamo_ and _come after eleven when the children will be asleep_.\n\nSo here I am again, on the hill overlooking the Hartzler farm. It is raining so hard that when the lights begin to go out in the windows of the house they seem doused by the downpour, like campfires, drowned to blackness. But, of course, it is Esther blowing out the lamps. One by one, the windows go dark\u2014puff, puff, puff\u2014until the whole house is gone, the darkness risen around it like the waters of a lake. All around me it sounds as if the waters are rushing in, too: from here to the horizon, the drumming on the leaves of the corn is deafening. Closer, beneath it: the gurgling of the gullies dug from wheel ruts in the road. The water sheeting off the brim of my hat, banging away at my shoulders beneath the slicker, splashed by the stomp of a hoof in the mud. A hoof? A hoof. My mule. I have one now, an old mare with bucked shins and worn-out teeth and large twitchy ears that when, on the most steep hills, I hop off my new wagon to walk beside her and urge her on, talking into them, these ears turn to me and seem to grow larger and sometimes I reach out and stroke them. When I nap too long in the sun it is her soft, old muzzle that wakes me. I have named her Reba. \"Reba,\" I call to her over the noise of the rain, \"let's go down.\"\n\nAdd to the sound of the rain a clanging and a creaking, the splash of the wheels. It is a small wagon, but neatly organized as my discarded cart, as my rucksack before it, small drawers of hardware at its front, and, along its sides, wider ones of neatly folded clothes, shelves to store the iron rods and stew pots too heavy to bring before, slats at the back to pin upright ax handles and shovel heads, feather dusters and brooms. Now, I can stay out on the road for twice as long, take requests, special orders. Beneath the board on which I sit I keep a spot free just for that. Jolting down at Reba's careful clop I can feel, knocking there, the great weight of the generator.\n\nWhat a pity it is dark and everything is under the tarp; how I would have liked for her to see the cart, the mule, and\u2014on the teamster's seat? Become the teamster?\u2014me. With a mustache to fit the part. All the last months I have grown it, from the mustache of a minor man to one of a giant\u2014a Mr. Tesla's small dark patch to the huge walrus wonze of Mr. Westinghouse\u2014until, by the end of the summer, it surpassed even the mustache of the man who next will be the president.\n\nAnd the day before I bought the cart, I took what had become of my face to the barber. I said to him, _Cut just a smidgen_. I told him, _Shape for me the mustache of a millionaire!_\n\n_Mr. Yushrov_ , he said to me, _if there's one man I know made of the stuff to make it come true..._\n\nThe next morning, riding out of Reading on my wagon, behind my mule, I felt it already had. It was so early the new electric lights along the street were still glowing in the dark, and as I passed between them I thought how young I was when I first came to this country. A kinde! I couldn't even grow a mustache! So long ago: from the ship the city glowed, still flickery with all the thousands of flames in all those thousands of lamps, but in the torch of the new lighthouse\u2014huge, metal, shaped like a woman\u2014the glow was so steady. It was the first electric light that I had ever seen. How fast time goes! One day I am a lighter of lamps, the next the lamps light themselves. Now, even the smaller cities\u2014Reading, Allentown, Lancaster, Harrisburg\u2014are electrified. At night, wandering between them on my wagon, I can tell where they are by the lighter patches they make of the sky. Between them it is still dark, all blackness of hills and fields and houses gone to sleep. But soon that will change too. Town by town, house by house, until the whole country will be lit. I have seen the way the light spreads from city to city along the coast, inland road by road, like moonlit foam frothing on top of a rushing flood. It is the places between, the patches of darkness, that will be drowned. It is the people like the ones who buy my goods, who hate my mustache because they cannot see that it no longer means what it once did in a world that no longer even is, it is them\u2014the Virklers and Waglers, the Klopfenstiens and Hartzlers\u2014who will go under with it. But I, I will do the only thing there is to do: I will swim to the top, ride the foam, get out in front of the tide.\n\nFor now, though, the places between are still dark, and this night I am in one of them. Maybe one day we will carry our electric lights with us even on our wagons, but not yet. I lead Reba through the rainy blackness towards the dark hulk of the barn, letting her gauge the route in her mule's way, until we are on the side that is farthest from the house. Luckily, it is leeward, too. The rain slashes at the corn\u2014it sounds like a sea swelling and churning\u2014but leaves us quietly dripping where we've stopped. I get down, feel for the front corner of the tarp, untie it, reach in, heave out the dynamo. Holding it like a baby to my chest, I leave the new cart and old Reba at the edge of the rain, and carry the generator into the barn.\n\nIn there, it is even blacker. I listen to the cows shoving each other to get out of the way of whatever has come through the door. I set the dynamo on the ground, reach to my chest, and pull from my shirt the flasch. Any daylight the phosphorus might have stored has long ago leaked out. I try rubbing it on my head, but my hair is wet. It gives me nothing. In the darkness, I turn, feel for the door, slide it shut. I drop to a crouch. Shuffling, I pat the ground for a place thickest with hay, least churned up by hooves. By the time I have reached it, I have lost all sense of how far I am from the dynamo. I sit. I wait.\n\nNot long. At first, I think it is some lightning bug, flicking on and off, on and off, the only speck of light in the dark. But when it appears again it is right outside the walls\u2014a quick glimpse of fire between the slats, flickering, disappearing, flaring again\u2014and I know it is her coming around to the door.\n\nThere is the moan of wood, the groan of the wheel on its track. There: her lantern held up as if to light me. But it shows her. From the rain her nightdress clings to her body. Beneath it, her breasts hang heavy as if they, too, have soaked up the wet. Her belly is huge: the fabric sticks to it so that the lamplight gleams off the point pushed up by the press of her navel.\n\nI rise to meet her. \"Esther,\" I say.\n\nShe looks as if she is about to say my name, but instead she turns her face to the dynamo on the ground. \"Is that it?\" she says. \"It looks heavy. You didn't rent the wagon just to bring it out to me?\"\n\n\"The wagon,\" I tell her, \"is not rented. I own it.\"\n\n\"Oh?\"\n\nI cannot hide my smile. \"And the mule.\"\n\n\"But only this spring,\" she says, \"you had barely enough to buy a cart.\"\n\n\"That,\" I tell her, \"was before farmers' wives began paying me to bring them dynamos.\" And I walk in my wet boots across the muddied hay to the one I have brought for her. I know she follows because the lantern light comes behind me as if dragged by my shadow. The cows jostle and shove to get out of our way, pushing against the wall until they surround us in a circle. The heavy scent of their wet coats, their warm shit. The sounds of their shifting. From the darkness the lantern draws their large and wondering eyes.\n\nDown I crouch on one side of the dynamo. Standing on the other, she reaches into her stretched-out housecoat, and for a moment I imagine her drawing from it a newborn child, bloody and bawling. But it is only a blanket wrapped around what I know must be the bulb. Lowering herself to squat, she sets her lantern on the barn floor, and hands to me the Edison lamp.\n\n\"Good,\" I tell her, tell her to watch while I connect the generator, so later she can do it on her own. Slowly, I uncoil the cord, I separate the wires, I twist them together, all of it slowly, to let her eyes take in each part of each movement of my hands. But when I look at her, her eyes are on my face. I feel, just below my skin, the blood tingling.\n\n\"Are there so many?\" she asks.\n\n\"Dynamos?\"\n\n\"Farmer's wives,\" she says, \"who want them.\"\n\nBy the time I have finished shaking my head\u2014a silent no\u2014my fingers are touching her lips, though I can't imagine reaching to her like that, or that she would let me. But there they are. And\u2014is it possible?\u2014there is the moist softness of her lips touching the ends of my fingers, untouching them again.\n\n\"I borrowed the money,\" I say.\n\n\"Debt?\" Her lips make the word against my fingertips.\n\n\"To move ahead,\" I tell her. \"Sometimes it is necessary\u2014\"\n\n\"From what?\"\n\nShe draws her lips away. I draw my hand back.\n\n\"Sometimes it is necessary,\" I say again, \"to take such a risk.\"\n\n\"Towards what?\"\n\n\"The future,\" I tell her. \"From the past.\"\n\n\"What about the present?\" she says. \"Isn't it the present that counts?\"\n\n\"Nein,\" I say, but before I can say more, she leans forward, across the generator, putting down both her hands to steady her against the awkward swinging of her belly's weight, and kisses me. Her breath is sour from sleep. I close my lips around it, and hold it in my mouth, letting it roll over my tongue like smoke.\n\nMaybe she thinks I am not kissing her back, because she takes her lips away, moves her face away again. She says, \"Are you sure?\"\n\n\"Ja,\" I say, and her eyebrows rise, her eyes seem to laugh. I go on, \"Because the present is like the dawn, or the dusk\u2014\" But before I can explain, her laughter leaves her eyes and finds its sound and comes out on her breath. The cows startle, mill about. In the quiet after, there is only her smile in the oil lamp's glow as she says, \"Make the light. Go on, you strange man. Show me how the electricity makes it work.\"\n\nAnd so? I place my hands on the handles. I begin to crank.\n\nInside the blown glass globe something stirs to life. Not a movement, not anything we can even see, but a feeling, a life, that just a second ago in the barn did not exist. Now, it is there, and with each crank I give the handles, it is growing. Even when the curled wire inside the bulb begins to glow it feels as if that is not the thing itself, but just the part that we can sense with our eyes. I glance across at her. Her eyes are on it, wide, unblinking. And as it brightens and brightens I watch her pupils dwindle and dwindle until it seems they must entirely disappear and leave her eyes only the blue-green irises filled with the yellow blinding light. She raises them to me. They are gleaming with tears. From the light? It cannot be from sadness: she is smiling. Smiling in such a way so that I see in her face, stronger than ever before, her daughter. She leans forward and lifts the glass of the lantern she had brought and blows the flame out. The brightness of the electric bulb seems to leap another notch. And in it, her smile leaps, too.\n\n\"Faster,\" she says, and even her voice sounds like a little girl.\n\nI speed up my cranking. The bulb glows even brighter.\n\n\"Faster,\" she says again, and, struggling to her feet, she stands above me, above the glowing lamp, her skirts lit and the bulge of her belly lit, and her top in its shadow, and above that her face, lit from below, smiling that strange kinde's smile. Then she begins to clap.\n\nThe sound shakes through the barn, panics the cows, knocks about the rafters, startles the birds that flutter in the far reaches of the light\u2014clap, clap, clap\u2014slow as if it comes from my own cranking hands. Until she begins to speed it up\u2014clap, clap, clap\u2014and I speed up to try to match her.\n\nMy arms are already beginning to burn by the time she starts to dance. I have seen the steps before\u2014at Amish weddings, at celebrations when the boys come home from their year away from the farm\u2014but never like this: her belly thrusting and swinging, her hips jerking with its strange sway, her breasts flung this way then that. She dances with the unguarded joy of a kinde, but with all of her woman's body to make it known, and, watching her, I begin to sing:\n\n_Bay mir bistu sheyn_ ,\n\n_Bay mir hostu heyn_ ,\n\n_Bay mir bistu eyner oyf der velt_.\n\n_To me, you are lovely_ ,\n\n_To me, you are charming_ ,\n\n_To me, you are the only one in the world_.\n\nI do not know where the old words come from: I have not heard them since I was a boy, in the kitchen with my breuder playing the flute he carved, me clacking with spoons, while our mamme, dancing from woodstove to basin to chopping block, kicked out her feet, threw back her head, and sang.\n\n_Bay mir bistu sheyn_ ,\n\n_Bay mir hostu heyn_ ,\n\n_Bay mir bistu tayerer fun gelt_.\n\n_To me, you are lovely_ ,\n\n_To me, you are charming_ ,\n\n_To me, you are more precious than money_.\n\nOnly when my arms are shaking, when my shoulders feel as if they will begin to glow like the wires in the bulb, only when my breath is too shallow to get out the sound, do I stop. The handles roll forward a moment on their own. Her clapping echoes, echoes. Her body slows. In the quickly fading glow of the bulb I stand to go to her, but she is already lowering herself to me and we meet strangely crouched beside the lamp, balanced for a moment, it seems, by our mouths together. Then the light is gone and we are toppling to the ground.\n\nIn the dark, close to my face, she whispers, \"Why like the dusk or dawn?\"\n\n\"Because,\" I say into her mouth, \"the present is always about to change.\" Against her neck, I say, \"Even every second, it is actually already changing.\" Into the soft skin between her breasts, I tell her, \"But the difference, the beauty, the beautiful difference is that we get to choose.\" I whisper into her neck, my hands lifting her skirt. \"Whether it becomes darker\"\u2014her hands unclasping my belt\u2014\"or more light.\"\n\nMaybe it is the word that makes us notice, maybe it is the way her belly blocks my hips from reaching hers, or the fact that when her hand reaches down and holds me, I am not ready, but, whatever it is, her other hand reaches to my flasch and touches it and we both stare: it is glowing. Around us is the quiet of the milling cows, and the last fluttering in the rafters of the birds, and on the roof the drumming of the rain.\n\nWith her free hand, she gives the flasch a little push. From her chest to mine it knocks. In the faint green glow, her lips look like they will say something, they look like they will say my name, and I think even for a moment I hear them say it. But I don't; they don't. Instead, they say, \"What is it?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I tell her. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Nein,\" she says, \"I mean I want to know what is your name.\"\n\nBut I have hidden my face in her breasts. I back my hips away from her hand. Her hand lets me go. I want to think that my breath simply feels excited against her skin. I want to think that what she feels between my face and her breasts is just the wetness of our sweat. But when her hand touches the back of my head, it is not a lover's touch. It is not even a woman's. It is a parent's, the way she might put her fingers in the hair of her young son, and I press my nose into her flesh, press my wet cheeks into her, and I am glad for the loudness of the rain.\n\nHer fingers stroke my hair, the backs of my ears, softly, back and forth. \"Hey, hey,\" she says, cooing. \"Tell me. Tell me what she was like.\"\n\n\"She,\" I say into her chest.\n\n\"Ja,\" she says. \"Tell me.\"\n\n\"She had eyes,\" I tell her, \"that were like lying on your back in the forest. Like lying on your back and looking up at all the leaves. And then, a breeze. And through them, the sky.\"\n\nBy the time I lift my face from her flesh, unstick my cheek from her breast, unpeel myself from her, the flasch has lost the last of its glow. I slide off her into the muddy hay. We lie there, listening to the rain. Only when I sense her moving, that she is about to rise, do I speak. \"My name,\" I tell her, into the dark, \"is Shimel.\"\n\n\"Shimel,\" the dark tells me back.\n\n\"Shimel,\" my mamme said, \"we must.\"\n\nI was seventeen. She was... She was... Can it be, she was not much older than I am now? My tatte, forty? My breuder? Two years younger, always two years younger, as he will always be, until either he or I is dead. Unless he is already.\n\n\"We must, Shimel,\" my tatte said.\n\nMy breuder said nothing. Usually he was the one full of talk so late at night. Midnight, it must have been, because that time of summer the sky over Petroplavilsk stayed lit by the low strange sun almost all the way through the night. And, yet, I remember clear as I remember the heat of the tea glass burning the skin of my fingertips, the feverish clicking of my mamme's needles as she tried to knit from fox-hair yarn a hat to keep me warm, the ceaseless shaking of my breuder's leg, the worse trembling of my tatte's beard, just as clear as that I remember how, outside the windows of our home, it was dark. The panes, though, refused to let it in, refused so long as the lantern on the table between us was lit, so long as the window glass shivered with its flickering, refused just as I refuse to forget the eyes of my mamme, the fierceness of her short-legged waddling walk, the downy dark hint of sideburns I would feel on her cheek when she pressed the side of her face to mine. My tatte's beard grew high on his cheeks, and low on his throat, all the way down into his shirt, where it tangled with the hair of his chest, and he would bush it up with the backs of his hands and huff like a bear to make us laugh. His red lower lip was always cracked. His skin was splotchy, smelled of the chemicals of his trade. He had wanted me to follow him into it. He had wanted my breuder not to have to. My breuder, whose nose was like mine but straighter, whose mouth was as big lipped and chapped as our tatte's, whose eyes were like our mamme's but with the leaves brown like fall and the sky a wet gray, my breuder whose name was Yankel.\n\n\"Yankel,\" our tatte told him, \"go and get your papers.\"\n\nMy breuder who sat there with his fists on his thighs, his leg shaking, shaking. My breuder whose name, whose papers, whose whole being I took.\n\nFifteen years ago. Nine since the last letter I got. Four since the last one I sent. Such a long time now since I have known I will never see any of them again.\n\nOh, but such a beautiful world! Such a beautiful country. When next I return to the Hartzler farm the sun is a red flame on a wick so low that the road is wavery, oiled with its sheen, and to either side the walls of corn make a chimney glass of the sky. The fields are wizening, the ears drying on the stalks, the leaves already papery and brown. All across the land they are lit by that sun, glowing orange like embers blown upon by the day's last breath. Ahead, my mule's ears glow just the same. And down in the farmyard the barn is painted hot. Starlings explode above it, a flurry of sparks.\n\nShe does not know I'm coming. Or didn't. But there is the barking of the dogs; there, a small figure hurrying across the yard, grain bucket flashing among the flashing backs of the scurrying ducks, chicken, geese; there, the flare of the front door opening into the sun, the clap of it shutting. Will she wonder what I have brought? Will she guess? Would she even know what a battery is? Rattling down towards the house in my wagon I think, tonight, after I chase the children, after Ura hounds me about my mustache, after supper and dark, tonight we will go out to my wagon as if to see my wares. And I will show her. _What is it for?_ she'll ask. _For when I'm gone_ , I'll tell her. For when I cannot crank the generator for her. So she does not have to. So she can go out to the barn any midnight that she wants, connect the lamp. _It holds the current_ , I'll say. _In this_ , she'll wonder. _It stores the light?_\n\nBut when I pull up at the gate, no children run out to meet me. Just the dogs, whining, yapping, making Reba shift and snort. I am standing up from the teamster's seat, about to jump down and quiet them with scratches around the ears, when I hear through their noise the sounds from the house. Shouting. Ura's voice breaking through the dog barks, Esther's breaking through the boom and roar of his. Never have I heard such sounds from inside their home, never from him or her. It stops me in midrise. Crouched like that, my thighs begin to shake. Beneath all the shouting another new sound breaks: the wailing of the baby.\n\nThen, sudden as shoving off a hood, everything is twice as loud. The door is open. The shouting, the cries spill out. With them she comes running. Out into the red blast of sunlight, the white of her bonnet flaring like a match head, her white apron a pile of kindling caught fire in the dark pit of her skirt, her shoes flashing as she stumbles down the steps and hits the ground and comes at a rush through the mad flapping birds, the bolting dogs, her hair loosed and her face red in the sun, redder even than her apron or her bonnet, burning up. Behind her, I catch a glimpse inside the house\u2014one of the kindes crouched on the floor, arms covering his head; another pressed flat against a wall, a package held to her chest: the baby?\u2014before the view is blocked by the shape of Ura bursting through.\n\n\"Go!\" she shouts to me. \"Go!\"\n\nBut I see the redness now\u2014it is blood, spread down from her nose, or up from her mouth, or anyway smeared over half her face\u2014and how then can I sit back down and whip the mule away?\n\n\"Go!\" she says, but I am already leaning towards her, my hand reaching for her shoulder. She tries to pull away but I catch the fabric of her sleeve and, clenching it, I feel with my other hand for the whip. \"Go!\" she is shouting, and then I am shouting it, too, and there is the crack of the whip marking the word, and the wagon jerks forward. Behind her, her husband charges across the yard, his beard a bush aflame, his big hands whipping in and out of the red light as he runs. Her hand is on mine, then\u2014trying to unclamp my fingers from her sleeve? Trying to grasp onto them with her own? And I let go the fabric and grip her flesh instead, grip so hard I can feel the bones, and as she's shouting, as he's nearing, I lean back and haul on her arm with all the strength I have.\n\nStill, surely, it would not be enough if she didn't help. I could not with one arm lift her above the wheels onto the seat. But there are her shoes scrambling at the wood side, and her other hand must be clamped somewhere, because she doesn't fall. She hangs, struggling, as I shout for the mule to go, as I struggle to pull her the rest of the way up, as Ura reaches the wagon. I do not know if he has a hold of it with one hand or both, or if he is trying to clamber up, or plant his boots and pit his legs against the mule's, but the wagon jerks, there is a crack, and then the mule pounds forward again. When I look back, Ura is standing in the dirt path that leads down the hill to his farm, a shard of wood in his hand, bellowing at us something I do not hear. Could it be he is shouting \"Go!\", that we are all shouting the same word, and all meaning something different? The only meaning that matters is the one the mule hears. Her hooves hammer the path, her sides beginning to heave as the wagon clatters and shakes its way up the hill.\n\nBy the time we are at the top, Esther has stopped shouting. She has stopped making any sound at all. Behind us, there is the fading barking of the dogs. Beneath us, the shuddering of the wagon, the slowing creak of its wheels. Before us, the drumming of the mule's hooves, drumming and then clopping, and then just the steady tock, tock, tock of Reba's slow walk on the road. The sun is down. The cornfields shiver, crackle. Dusk slowly fills the spaces between the stalks. We ride beside each other until the fields are full with it up almost to the flowers at the tips. There is the evening star. Sometime after it appears, she reaches behind her back and unties her apron. She eases it, gingerly, over her head. She folds it in her hand and presses it to her face. It covers her mouth so that her words when she speaks are muffled and I have to ask her to speak again.\n\n\"Where are you taking me?\" she says.\n\nIn the last light, the cloth at her face is so white it is nearly glowing. It flaps behind her like a strange sail unfurled alongside her cheek.\n\n\"Away from there,\" I tell her.\n\n\"Shimel,\" she says.\n\nI wait for her to go on. But that is all.\n\nThe crickets are relentless in the roadsides. The fireflies are so thick\u2014all across the fields, above the high weeds, filling the open road around the plodding mule\u2014that it seems as if there is a light for every cricket, that their blinks are timed to each throbbing rasp, as if the sound is the cranking of a thousand tiny dynamos and the blips are the electricity leaping to the tiny bulbs. But what then lights the stars? There they come.\n\nThere they are.\n\n\"Shimel,\" she says again, a long time later, \"you know I have to go back.\"\n\n\"I brought you a gift,\" I tell her. I can tell she looks at me by the change in the sound of the cloth flapping at her face.\n\n\"I want to go back,\" she says.\n\n\"A battery,\" I tell her. \"For when I'm not there. To crank the dynamo. So you don't have to. It stores\u2014\"\n\n\"Ura broke it,\" she says.\n\nThe fireflies flash and disappear, flash and disappear.\n\n\"We can get a new bulb,\" I tell her.\n\n\"The generator, too,\" she says. \"He took a splitter shaft to it. The bulb and the lamp and the whole thing.\"\n\nAnd I can hear his voice _\u2014Covetous_ and _greed_ and _blasphemy_ and _modernity_ and _displeasure of God_ \u2014like a lapping in the darkness that appears each time a firefly's blip is snuffed out. I watch the spots where the lights had been and look for the next and watch that spot, and it is only when my eyes hold on a spot that doesn't disappear, a blip that holds, that I realize where I am taking us. There is another, nearby the first, and another and another, as still and permanent and glimmering as water's reflection of stars, the darkness unable to smother them any more than ripples could on the surface of a lake.\n\nI point them out to her as if she has never seen a town. \"Reading,\" I say. She does not say anything, does not even nod. She does not look away from my face to them. I point again. Again, I say the name of the town.\n\n\"Yankel,\" she says.\n\n\"Shimel.\"\n\n\"Take me back.\"\n\n\"Do you see them?\" I say.\n\n\"Yankel,\" she says, \"I want to go back.\"\n\n\"Isn't it beautiful?\"\n\n\"My baby is there. My children.\"\n\n\"They stay just like that,\" I tell her. \"Lit all night.\"\n\n\"My husband is there,\" she says. And then she says, \"Mr. Yushrov\u2014\"\n\nI make a sound in my mouth that quiets her. Or maybe it is the fact that the click of my tongue catches the mule's ear: the clopping quickens, the wagon jerks forward, the wheels speed up their groans.\n\n\"Mr. Yushrov,\" she says again.\n\nAnd this time I use the whip.\n\nOld Reba breaks into a trot. We sit there, jolting on the board, Esther's free hand gripping the seat, her other holding the starlit cloth where it flutters at her cheek, and I try to tell her over the noise what it will be like to gallop out of the dark fields we have ridden through and into the first light of the city's streets, under the first lamps, the sudden brightness that hurts the eyes, that makes them water and ache, and still how you can't help but gaze at the bulbs burning away, steady, unflickering, unwavering, through the night, but she only shouts at me that she wants to go back.\n\nOn her face there is a thing I have never seen before, not from her or any other. It is as if she is afraid of me, or of the answer to her question that she has somehow seen, that I have always known, that has all these years frightened me. What man who takes a chance simply because it is held out to him has ever made it farther than the next gate in the road? Who among us ever has no choice? In her face I see she knows it now, what my breuder must have seen when he gave to me his chance at life, when I took it from him: the wanting, the ruthlessness of wanting that in this world is the only kind of wanting that survives.\n\n\"I want to go home!\" she shouts.\n\nI whip the mule into a gallop.\n\n\"I want to go home!\"\n\nAnd I shout it at the mule, too\u2014\"Home! Home!\"\u2014until the sound of the hooves is like a team of horses gone wild in fright and the night behind us is filled with the crashing of my wares shaken loose and falling to the road and my flasch is smacking against my chest, over and over, so hard that I know either it or my breastbone will break.\n\nBeside me, she is crying.\n\n\"Look!\" I demand. \"Look!\" And I try with my shaking finger, with all that I can put into my eyes, to make her see how it was coming off of the ocean at night, the wind in your face and the waves rolling the ship beneath you and the salt crusting in your eyes and the first glimpse of the lights\u2014there!\u2014the island\u2014there!\u2014rising out of the darkness of the water, breaking the horizon, so many lights, so wondrous, bright, new.\n\n# [**LONG BRIGHT  \nLINE**](toc.html#ch2-R)\n\nThrough the window Clara could see the men: dark still hats huddled together. The only thing moving was their pipe smoke. It curled in lamp-lit clouds. Then\u2014a whoop!\u2014the clouds blew, the huddle burst, the hats were flying.\n\nOut in the street the gaslights seemed to feel her father's cheer; on her mother's face she watched them gutter.\n\n\"Look at him.\" The woman's grip was strong as any man's. \"How happy!\" But the fingers were bonier, worn to hooks. \"Look,\" she commanded. \"And tell me where he sets his heart.\" Then the grip became a shove. Her mother's _fetch your father_ and _that damn club_.\n\nThe Society for Aeronautical Enthusiasm. Sometimes, when she was sad, or scared, or simply felt the overwhelming weight of her own being, she would intone the strange words like an incantation: _Aeronautical enthusiasm, aeronautical enthusiasm, aeronautical..._ She said it now... _enthusiasm_... starting up the station steps... _aeronautical..._ shoe-clacking through the empty lobby... _enthusiasm..._ to the shut door... _aeronautical enthusiasm_. She knocked.\n\nInside it was all smoke and suit backs, elbows at her head level, her father bending down, face flush as drunk, but eyes clear, grin pure, whoop a straight shot of glee. He scooped her up.\n\n\"Fifty-nine seconds!\"\n\nHow long had it been since her father had held her like that?\n\n\"Eight hundred and fifty feet!\"\n\nLifted her so high? With each hoist and drop she felt her years shake off, seven, six, five\u2014her brother's age\u2014Larry in the corner watching, _this is what it's like to be him_.\n\nBefore her face: a piece of paper, some smiling stranger lifting and lowering it for her to read. At the top, the station master's name. At the bottom, that of the man her father called _their father_ : Bishop M. Wright.\n\n\"The _Flyer_!\" Her father raised her high again. Near the ceiling the air made her eyes water. \"The _Flyer_!\" He lifted her into the pipe-smoke clouds.\n\nBut she wasn't, wouldn't be. The balloon ride he'd won\u2014best guess at time and distance of the first flight\u2014was a prize he unwrapped on the cold walk home: how they would scale the sunset, skim beneath the stars, a Christmas present more miracle than gift. Just not for her. _Why?_ The basket size, the limits on weight. _Besides_ , he said, _ascending so high would surely swell that head of yours_. He tugged her braid. _No doubt big as the balloon itself_. Laughed. While around them little Larry ran in circles, whooping.\n\nOn Christmas Eve all she wanted was to stay up late enough to watch them float by above. But if she did, her mother told her, putting her heavy shoulders into the rolling pin, how could Saint Nick bring her her gifts? She spoke in sentences choppy with work: What did Clara think they were doing up there, her father, her brother, in that balloon? Airborne beside the sleigh, pointing out good children's houses, steering the reindeer towards the right roofs. Why else would they have had to do it on Christmas Eve? The last word pressed out by a hard push. Why else leave their women alone this one night a year she liked to share a little brandy with her husband, squeeze beside him on the chair, sing carols, hear _that sweetness in your father's voice_ , let her own loose just a little...\n\n\"But what about Larry? _He_ won't be asleep.\"\n\nHer mother set the pin down, crouched: her face suddenly level with her daughter's, her eyes strangely soft, her brow smooth as the dough she'd rolled, her hand ice-cold on Clara's cheek. From her forearm flour fell like snow. \"You know,\" she said, \"they won't see anything. Going up at night. Sweetie, out there it'll just be cold and dark and not one damn thing to see.\"\n\nThere was the whole world. Edge to edge. Lit by the stark stare of a full Yule moon. And, out in the white-bright yard, at the verge of the snow-glowing fields, a seven-year-old girl illumined, looking up. Behind her: the sleeping house. Above: the starry sky. In it: nothing moving. She watched until her eyes stung. No teardrop silhouette slipped across the luminescent globe. Would the men up there have lit a lantern? Would she see its wink? The stars had fled the moon for the rest of the sky, piled so thick upon each other she had no hope of picking out the one she wanted.... _But there!_ Could it move so fast? Careen across like that? Disappear in a blink before... and she was running, running in the direction the light had shot, running for the place on the horizon where she was sure she'd seen it come to earth.\n\nSometime in the night her father found her. She woke to his hands unclamping her huddled curl, hauling her up. In his arms she shook so much the stars seemed to rattle. The moon was down. His stumbling, his breath: he was drunk.\n\n\"Did you see us?\" His quaking grin. \"We went right over.\"\n\n\"No you didn't.\"\n\n\"Yes!\" His teeth a pale tremulous strip. \"Your brother waved! I showed the house to Saint Nick. His sleigh landed right there!\"\n\n\"No it didn't.\"\n\n\"You missed it? All that commotion? The hooves on the roof? Us caroling while we circled above? You truly missed it, truly?\"\n\n_Had she?_ His breath fluttered against her face, or her face shuddered beneath it. _Had she?_ Inside they waited for her: the presents, lurking beneath the tree, irrefutable.\n\nPapa, what did it look like?\n\nOh, magnificent! The white balloon, the light of the\n\nmoon, the stars so close!\n\nNo, Papa, what did it look like down here?\n\nOh, so vast, so small, so strange to think we all live out\n\nour lives down there!\n\nNo, Papa.\n\nThe world! Astounding!\n\nWhat did _I_ look like? Papa, what was it like to look down\n\nand see me?\n\nLike this, the way it might have looked to him had he been ballooning again the following Christmas Eve: a small girl sneaking out after supper, away from the dwindling singing, the laughter\u2014mother, father, brother, home. His eight-year-old daughter slipping past the last light of the candle-lit windows, beyond the hay barn, the snow-blown fields, disappearing in the blackness beneath the sky. And then: a spark. A golden bloom. Like this, Clara: a little fiery face looking up out of all the darkness of the fields, your little face flickering with the light of the oil lamp you brought, your breath a sunset's clouds, your eyes two glittering stars.\n\n_Aeronautical enthusiasm, aeronautical enthusiasm..._\n\nAll the winter of '05 she chanted it, silently, to herself, a spell to melt the snow, a wish for the rush of spring, and had he looked for her that March, that April, May, on the days when she skipped school, shirked chores, left her brother to play their well-house echo game alone, her mother on her knees wringing out the wash, had he looked, her father would have found her here: in the Scotch broom behind the split rail fence that bordered the cattle paddock they called Huffman Prairie, here, on her belly, behind a scrim of reeds, watching him.\n\nWatching him watch them. Two men in tweed coats and flat caps obsessed with some giant machine. Day after day, they worked on it, trained it like a horse, except\u2014when one at last would mount it, and the other, joined by a helper, would give it a mighty running push\u2014it flew. Its muslin wings stock still, its engine roaring like a mud-stuck truck, its driver clinging to the controls, and yet it flew surely as any bird. A bird aloft with a man on its back. Its shadow swept the stampeding cows, the whooping men. Her father too. ( _Tell me where he sets his heart_.) He seemed to shiver in his clothes. _Here_ , Clara thought. Rose on tiptoe, raised a hand to his eyes. _Here_.\n\nSometimes he would join the others running down the field after the roaring bird. Sometimes he would help push it off the earth. If they were far away, she might not manage to tell him from the rest. She might imagine it was him up there guiding that flying machine. How she wanted to ask him! What did it feel like? What _would_ it: that wind in _her_ hair, that sudden lift below _her_ belly? But all June she lay flat on the ground, behind the weeds, keeping quiet.\n\nUntil, one day in mid-July, she screamed. How he heard her over the crash, she didn't know. But when she peeled her palms from her eyes, there was the wreckage slammed against the ground, and two far figures running: one towards the crumpled machine, the other towards her.\n\n\"No, no, no, no,\" her father said, and, \"can't\" and \"daughter\" and \"not how the world works. Don't you ever think of anyone but yourself? How could you make her do your work, your mother worry, poor sick woman!\"\n\nShe was? How had Clara not noticed it till now? She would have crouched beside the bed and shut her eyes and said the incantation, but learning what the words meant had leeched the magic from them. _Enthusiasm_ : merely eagerness. _Aeronautical_ : only relevant to things that lifted off the earth, took to the air, soared for the heavens.\n\nThis was the last thing her mother said to her, one word: _selfish_ , or _selfless_. She wasn't sure. She only knew her mother had turned in bed, clutched her daughter's face, held her gaze, said the word with such vehemence Clara flinched at the flecks of spit. Her mother's fingers gripped her skull, eyes bore into hers. But did she mean herself or Clara? Was it an apology or reprimand? Warning or wish?\n\nShe was at Huffman Prairie the day her mother died. September, windless. No figures in the field, no _Flyer_ for them to push. She walked out there alone. At the end of the narrow track, a launching dolly lay overturned. Behind it, in the wet green grass, the bleached board looked white as bone. She lay down on it, aligned her spine with the rail. Stared up at the sky. Spread her arms.\n\nThat evening, returning to her father's stricken silence, her brother's sobs, a home whose walls had become more thin, she would wonder if it was something you could see: the soul ascending. If that day she had simply been watching the wrong place in the firmament.\n\nFall had come by the time her father brought her back to the field. He told her it was her mother's dying wish.\n\n\"To see the _Flyer_?\" she asked.\n\n\"For you to see it,\" he said.\n\nHuffman's was crowded. Farmers and friends, the entire Society, even the old man her father called _their father_ , come out to watch the flight. That day, the machine made it above the windbreak and kept on, became a hawk, a kite, a sparrow, a spec, was gone. But she could hear the sound somewhere, coming back around, circling her, homing in.\n\nHer father seemed to have forgotten how to steer. She would hear his foot scuffs wandering the house, floor to floor, gliding room to room, his tail rudder busted, blown by winds only he could feel. Her brother: a brooding boy, so serious\u2014seven years old and up first to fry the bacon, last in from the barns\u2014so careful cleaning the plow horse's hooves, so watchful over the hung tobacco for the slightest sign of rot. He spent his eighth birthday on the back of a cart, alone in the cold, forking fresh hay to the shivering Jerseys, worry frozen on his face.\n\nWhile Clara spent her tenth in her room writing a letter to a woman she'd never met: _Dear Mrs. Miller, Can you please describe your ride in the dirigible? How long before you will go up again? Would you consider taking along a girl? I'm still quite small, and very light_. By the time she was a teen the walls around her were plastered with clippings, posters, photographs: Lieutenant Lahm alighting from his balloon in the field at Flyingdales Moor, the Wright brothers on the racetrack at Le Mans, the note she got back from Hart O. Berg ( _You never know... I'll ask Orville... Maybe one day you'll pilot your own!_ ), the first woman ever lifted off the earth inside an aeroplane signing her name with an _O_ bold as a daredevil's loop. And the daredevils themselves! Glenn Curtiss of that lush mustache, sly-eyed Arch Hoxsey with his wry smile. Her first pack of cigarettes she purchased solely for the Ralph Johnstone card inside: goggles raised, chin strap sharpening his jaw, that slight swerve she so loved in the cock of an eyebrow above his steady gaze. At school, the girls talked of which boys they'd like to date. She smoked her Meccas, kept quiet. The boys discussed their options for careers, mocked her when she mentioned Raymonde de Laroche. ( _Her license!_ she shouted. _That's France!_ they jeered.) _Why do you even bother?_ her few friends asked, when, already fourteen, she fought for a seat in the science class. _You know this is your last year, anyway_.\n\nStill, the day her father sat her down it was a shock. She had tried her best to bring him back, curled beside him on the couch reading aloud the news (Bl\u00e9riot across the English Channel! Latham breaks a thousand meters!). She brought him to her room to show him each poster she put up\u2014the Los Angeles expo, the Grande Faime d'Aviation de la Champagne: skies aswirl with aviators thick as bees\u2014hoping to rekindle the heart her mother had heard in his whoop that long-ago first flight. All spring she'd tutored boys in science class, saved just enough: two tickets to the aero meet in Indianapolis that June!\n\nBut here was her father shaking his head. \"You're a woman now,\" he told her.\n\nHer brother, across the table: \"We need you here.\"\n\n\"And what,\" she demanded, \"if I go anyway?\" To Indianapolis that June, or back to school that fall, or away forever.\n\n\"This isn't New York,\" her brother said.\n\n\"This is your home,\" her father told her.\n\n\"Sis\"\u2014Larry reached over, touched her arm\u2014\"can't you see this is your job?\"\n\nIn the last year, he had become taller than her.\n\nWhen summer came she stole away to Asbury Park. Walked to the train station, bought a seat east, saw the ocean for the first time, the boardwalk, the beach, slept on sand, discovered the effect her shoulders, her smile had on men, snapped up a ride, a ticket, was there on the field when Brookins crashed into the crowd, when Prince plummeted six thousand feet, watched with all the others the failure of his parachute, felt the communal shudder when he hit, would sometimes feel it again, back home, alone in the kitchen cracking the back of a bird she'd serve to her brother or sewing a split in her father's yellowed long johns or stepping off the train onto the platform of her small Ohio town the day that she returned. But for one August night, near the air show's close, standing at the edge of the Atlantic, looking up, she had been struck by a sudden sureness that it would be alright. The moon. The Milky Way. The Stardust Twins swooping through. That was what the papers called them after that first night flight, Johnstone and Hoxsey circling each other in the lunar glow, their pale-winged biplanes soaring smooth as owls. And her, beneath them, swept by the peace of certainty. Neck stretched back, face flat to the sky, she knew it: she was not meant to be up there; she was meant to be down here, here like a cairn seen from above, a landmark, her.\n\nLet Bessica Raiche climb behind the controls that October.\n\nLet Harriet Quimby claim her license from the Aero Club.\n\nHere is Clara Purdy, standing far out in her father's field, surrounded by electric lamps. All these months she has collected them, repaired ones given to her for free, purchased others with earnings made from sewing piecemeal, stolen the rest from her own home. Here is the cord she's spliced, snaking away to the windmill her brother installed just this past September. It is November now, cold and clear and night. No snow on the ground, the fields crisp and brown with a fall drought. She stands in the high grass, waiting for wind. Behind her the turbine is still, the generator asleep. Above, the sky is breathtaking. What is the chance someone flies over tonight? What does it matter? For the first time she understands what she felt in August: it doesn't. The wind will gust, the turbine will whir, the charge will shoot through the cord, the lamps will all light up, and she will know how it would look from high above\u2014the concentric circles, bright bulbs swirling inwards to her here at the center\u2014and that will be enough. The grass heads stir against her shins, dry as tinder. The filaments await the spark. Here it comes.\n\nAfter the fire, they lived in a fourth-floor flat in Dayton, the three of them cramped close, her father and brother away all day in the old bicycle building, assembling engines for the new Model B. The intricacy of understanding, the advanced industry, the demands of such a task: the Wrights wouldn't hire her. Instead, she spent her sixty-hour weeks on the National Cash Register line, setting small round buttons\u2014red number five, red number five, red number five\u2014in their place on the machine. At home, her father ate whatever she cooked in his usual silence. Her brother, chewing, wouldn't even look her way, ever unforgiving of conflagration she had caused. That spring, when flames consumed a shirtwaist factory in New York, he slid the _Daily News_ across to her ( _a hundred and a half dead_ \u2014jabbing his finger at the newsprint\u2014 _most of them women_ ). Beside it, her eyes took in a different headline: in India, a Sommer biplane had delivered the first airmail. _What_ , she thought, flushed with excitement. _What would come next?_ Her father, reading aloud one night, his voice aghast: a ship, an iceberg... He couldn't stand it, handed her the paper. She drew in breath. Was it true? Quimby had piloted across the Channel? Alone, a woman! _Eight thousand suffragists_ , her brother announced, slapping the paper, shaking his head, _marching on the capital like a bunch of Albanians trying to overthrow the Turks_.\n\nNearly a thousand days went by before the flood of 1913 gave her a whole week off. Alone with herself for the first time in years, she climbed the stairs to the roof, thunked down a satchel bulging with buttons. Every shift she'd swiped one round red number five and now, crouched high above streets deep with water, she lay them out with a typesetter's care. Above, surveying aeroplanes circled. She wrote them notes in big red letters: _COME CLOSER! LOWER A ROPE!_\n\nIn Austria-Hungary an airship floated, testing photographic tools. An army aviator tried out his loop-de-loops. Biplane, dirigible: ball of fire erupting in the summer sky. A few days later Archduke Ferdinand took a bullet to the throat. A few weeks after that, half of Europe was at war. In a few years, her brother too.\n\nMid-September, 1918: two thousand planes aswarm over Saint-Mihiel, blasting thick as scattershot across the sky. It was the biggest air battle the world had ever seen, and the next night, while her new husband finalized what that afternoon had wrought, Clara stared up past the strange shoulders (later, she couldn't recall if he'd removed his undershirt, if he'd still worn his glasses), at the ceiling of water-stain clouds and watched the dogfight in her mind: a welkin of dark specs swirling, the opposite of stars. If Abner Lowell noticed (later she would know of course he had) he said nothing (of course he wouldn't), just as the few guests\u2014his family, his friends\u2014had looked at her drained face and silently assumed it must be grief (her fallen brother, her heart-felled dad). A few whispered she must have married out of desperation (her new husband's bony chest, his paltry schoolteacher's wage), but they were wrong. Clara had married the man for his location.\n\n\"Near Toledo,\" he'd told her, shelling a hot peanut, slipping it into her palm. \"A little town you wouldn't know.\"\n\nShe'd chewed, flashed him a look of _try me_.\n\n\"Maumee,\" he'd said.\n\n\"On the Maumee River?\"\n\nLaughing, he'd coughed out, \"You!\" It was what he would later say was their first date. \"You've got to be a bargeman's daughter!\"\n\nSmiling, she'd swallowed, held out her empty hand.\n\n\"A little land,\" she told him, a few months later, after they'd moved up north. \"A little place of our own out in the country.\"\n\n\"But dear\"\u2014he called her _dear_ and _sweets_ and _Mrs. Lowell_ \u2014\"we have a house already. Right here, right around the corner from the school.\"\n\n\"Abner,\" she said, \"I grew up on a farm.\"\n\n\"But why so far?\"\n\n\"I want our children\u2014\"\n\n\"Why pick a place near precisely nothing?\"\n\nIt was true: the plot she'd found sat equally far from even the tiniest of towns. Grand Rapids, Whitehouse, Waterville. It wasn't even on the routes between them. But it was beneath the one she wanted, right below the one up there.\n\nMornings, she made him hot cornmeal muffins, liver and onions the way he loved, helped carry his schoolbooks out to the car, stood in the dirt drive waving. She kept the bills in order, the mousetraps empty, the dust down, herself up, a wife he'd want to come home to, a home he'd be happy to find her in. Except he wouldn't.\n\nAfternoons, after everything else was done, she'd change into her coveralls, head for the tractor shed. Alone in all the horse-worked county, the Allis-Chalmers had cost her every cent of life savings her father had left, and every day before dusk she would crank its engine over, hitch its thresher on, rumble out into her field. Or, as Abner called it, her canvas. The tractor he called her Big Bad Brush. In the summer, she painted with it, mowed her pictures into high grass. In the fall, she ploughed pen lines, the overturned topsoil dark as ink. Winter found her bundled in the aviator's coat and hat her husband gave her, long leather earflaps whipping in the wind while she made her etchings on the earth, her shovel a chisel, snow peeling away like curls of wood. She planted daffodils. Dug up the bulbs each fall, stitched them back into the dirt like needlework, watched her embroidery bloom sun bright each spring.\n\nFrom the sky, the airmail pilots watched it too. Twice a day they flew the route, eastward in morning, westward late afternoon. Perched atop the Allis-Chalmers, or kneeling in the new-turned dirt, or simply standing still in a swirl of snow, she would listen to the hum, scan the sky, smile up, wait for the dip of a wing, the tiny stick arm flung back and forth in a far-off wave. She would watch them dwindle away to Cleveland, morning awhirl in their propeller blades, watch them disappear towards Chicago, sunset on their struts.\n\nAnd home from his day at the Maumee Secondary School, hunched over the kitchen table doing his preparatory work, her husband would catch a flutter in the corner of his eye, look out the window: his wife in that distant field of daffodils, her breeze-swept hair all auburn fire in the late light, her cap lifted into the last of the sun, waving, waving. She always left his supper warming in the oven. He always let it warm till she was done, would come clomping in, shuck her boots, sit down to eat beside him. Sometimes, he'd go out to her. In winter storms, if visibility was bad, the pilots, searching for landmarks along the route, might fly so low their wheels seemed close enough to grab, the silver belly suddenly there tearing through the all-white sky, the aviator's face a flash of goggles, the airplane roaring by. He'd stand behind her, arms around her, feel the gust, the rush, the thrumming of the engine in the air.\n\n\"What's it this time?\" Abner would ask.\n\nShe'd tell him: President Roosevelt on his first flight, von Richthofen shot down over the Somme, the new airmail stamp. \"See there's the biplane, there's the '24', over there the 'CENTS.'\"\n\nAnd Abner would gaze at the indecipherable arcs in the grass, the random squiggles in the snow, the mystifying daffodils, and fill his face with what he hoped conveyed belief in her, faith that from above it would all be clear. Until she began digging portraiture in dirt. Eddie Rickenbacker. Bert Acosta. Jack Knight. Airmail pilots that might _right then_ fly over on the Chicago-Cleveland route. \"Do you think,\" Abner said, his voice very level, his eyes somewhere off in the field, \"that they might... I mean, that they really... That they could actually really recognize themselves?\"\n\nShe meant to nod, but instead found herself starting to shake inside his arms. Against her back, his chest shook too. Their laughter filled the field.\n\nOnce, after a fight:\n\nHim: Weren't kids the entire reason they'd moved out there?\n\nHer: That's just the way people without meaning in their lives try to make some.\n\nHim: And didn't she want that, too?\n\nHer: What did he think she did all afternoon?\n\nShe'd asked him, \"Why did you marry me?\" Because, he said, he loved her. \"What does that mean?\" He'd told her then he'd never seen someone so consumed by what most moved them, never been that close to such a burning need, wanted to assuage it or be burned up in it, to feel even a little of it in the warmth of what he felt for her.\n\nAbner was the one who brought her art books\u2014Klee, Kandinsky, Mondrian\u2014who suggested they drive four hours to Cleveland just to see a room bedeviled by Kazimir Malevich's strange blocks and bars. She didn't understand what stirred behind it, no more than she understood what stirred in her. But dragging the thresher in wild swaths, plowing scattered squares of earth, planting bulbs in shapes that seemed to suggest themselves, she was sure of this: it was a style that far better fit her tools. A tool itself that let her grasp at last at what she had begun to conceive of as a gift. A gift Abner had wrapped for her. The way he wrapped himself around her the night the postal service flew its first transcontinental flight.\n\nThat night in February of '21 the snow spilled down as if to douse their fire. They had lit it in the middle of her field, at dusk, no telling when\u2014or _if_ \u2014the plane would hurtle overhead. All day she'd waited for news, pulled open the Ford's door to retrieve the evening paper from her husband's outstretched hand: the last heard from the airmail pilot, he was headed straight into a storm above Cheyenne. Cheyenne to North Platte to Omaha to Iowa City to Chicago to right overhead: at night the only thing to guide him would be a few post office workers' flares, nothing to mark the path between but what bonfires a few farmers might keep alight. Abner helped her haul out the half-rotted boards, pour on the gasoline. They brought blankets, a bottle of bootleg, sat close to the fire. All around her: Abner's enfolding coat, his enveloping arms, the warmth of his breath on her cheek, of his cheek against her ear, of him waiting all the long night with her. Sometime after midnight, they lay down together between the blankets. Sometime before dawn, he fell asleep. Sometime after first light she woke her husband, straddling him with her heat, tenting him with her body, the bottom blanket rough on her knees, the top blanket blocking his view of the sky, her own eyes focused only on his face. \"I hear it,\" he said. \"Darling, I hear it.\" She shook her head, rocked on his hips, kissed him quiet.\n\nSo why did she still daydream pilots down? That they would see her wave, circle round, land in her field, take her up. In a de Havilland with a scooped-out second seat? Or curled on her knees in the bin behind the engine, the mail hatch sprung? A gloved hand on her cheek (she could smell the leather), the twist of her neck as she turned to see (she could feel her whipping hair) his goggled eyes, his chapped lips, her first kiss at five hundred feet, six, seven, a thousand.... Why, when she first heard of the postal service beacons\u2014fifty-foot towers erected all across the country, a trail of landlocked lighthouses flashing their specific signal (me, me, me) to pilots plying a sea of stars\u2014did she feel betrayed? They built one five miles away. At night she could see its blinking flare (here, here, here). Why when all those women (only one aviatrix shy of a hundred) came together in Curtiss Field to make their mark in the history of flight did Clara turn with even more determination to her own canvas?\n\nNow, she worked at night. She spent all the allowance Abner gave her on a single headlight for her Big Bad Brush, ate her suppers sitting on the tractor's seat, stayed out past the last window gone dark in her house. What sent her to the shed to sharpen thresher blades at the news of Earhart's first Atlantic flight? What about word of the woman's solo crossing kept Clara up till dawn mapping out her next work of art? Each one, each season, outdid the last, pushed her abilities to new feats of skill, scaled the atmosphere of her imagination. She clipped grass by hand, cut staggered banks in sweeping slopes, accomplished tricks of shading by varying stalk heights. She incorporated color in the spring, in winter watered carefully considered ditches to show the sky fleeting paintings made of glinting ice.\n\nAnd when, one summer morning in '37, the kitchen radio reported that the Queen of the Air had gone down over the ocean, was feared drowned, she found she couldn't breathe. She stood up from the table. It was a school day. The house was empty. The news announcer's voice seemed to cinch her throat. And, even before she heard the airplane's purring approach, she was fleeing into the field. Maybe it was her frantic waving, maybe the desperation in her face: this time the pilot swung around, returned, roared down to her.\n\nA Boeing Monomail, army drab, no room to sit anywhere but in his lap. The leather of his jumpsuit creaked. He had to reach between her legs to take hold of the controls. The noise was deafening, the tree line rushing. The earth dropped.\n\nThere was her world: the house, the empty driveway, the field where she did her work. The flesh on the back of her neck urged her _look at the sky_ , the giddy slide of her stomach told her _you're flying_. But she couldn't take her eyes off the small, and smaller, square of landscape that was her canvas below.\n\nAt her cheek, the aviator was saying something. His chapped lips brushed her ear. For a second, she pulled her stare away, glanced at him: his goggles were so smeared with engine grease she couldn't see his eyes, just the rawness of his sunburned nose, the wetness of his grin.\n\n\"Take me back,\" she said.\n\n\"Down?\" he shouted.\n\nShe shook her head. \"Back around, back over, I want to see it again.\"\n\nIt was the first time that she ever had. Till then, it had all existed solely in her mind. There, _there_ , if she concentrated hard enough she could forget the feeling of his hand creeping across her chest, if she fought the wind in her eyes and focused hard enough, she could imagine that there was nothing around her but air, that she was up there, flying, looking down, alone.\n\nMaybe it was the Depression. Early on she'd offered to plow her canvas under, grow vegetables instead, but Abner insisted no: even when parents lost their jobs, students still needed teachers. Though when, that autumn after her first flight, Lucas County consolidated its schools and proved him wrong, her homebound husband spent his days gazing at her field, his nights commenting on her progress, his energy in coming up with ways that he could help _\u2014Observe you from the roof, shout when you'reabout to lose the line. I know: a business in balloon rides! Listen, I'll write a letter to_ Life _magazine, to ARTnews, get you noticed!_ \u2014his whole self seeming to clutch at her work as if it could become in some way his. Maybe it was the fact that all his attempts to garner her attention finally did. Late in '41 rumors began to go around: her flowers sprouted in secret patterns; her tractor furrowed code; Mrs. Lowell was planting messages for Japs. That winter, at Abner's urging, she undertook a radical revision of her aesthetic. He brought home images of Far Eastern art, read her haikus. And in the fresh snow of the new year's first storm, helped her shovel a field full of brushstrokes:\n\nThere it was, black shovel lines in white, giant characters carved beneath the January sky. Two days later an army corporal showed up at their door, watched them while, with the Big Bad Brush, Clara plowed their work away. Afterwards, Abner admitted it was probably time to stop. He looked so sad, sitting there in his coat, his pants wet to the knees, his head hanging forward, his hands hiding his face. His fingers were all knuckles and loose skin. He was going bald. How had her husband become a man of fifty? How had she become a wife of forty-five?\n\nAnd maybe it was simply that: so much time together, so many years gone by.\n\nAt first, she didn't think of the separation as something that might last. Just a few months away from each other, Abner working at his new job in Bowling Green, she in Toledo, working thirty miles from him, doing her part to keep the country stocked in B-17s, apart only until the war was over, maybe a year at most. But it was four. Four years living in her own room in a single-sex boardinghouse, four years in which she found she liked working alongside other women, liked earning enough on her own, liked the feeling of finishing the nose cone of a behemoth bomber, assembling the canopy of something that would one day soar over Hamburg, Dresden, Mainz. She was the oldest woman working at Libbey-Owens-Ford. Gran Gunner the others called her, smoking cigarettes, snapping gum. On their lunch breaks they laughed about messages for airmen slipped into secret cracks, read aloud the _Blade_ 's dispatches from the fronts, passed around pamphlets by the old BCFA, debated its new milquetoast moniker\u2014Planned Parenthood\u2014and whether General Spaatz was right to bomb Jerry's oil before his rails, and if it made sense to join a dying WTUL, shared home-canned pickles, packs of cigarettes, wondered what they would do after all this was done.\n\nOn Fridays, after work, she would wonder the same. Abner would pull into the Libbey-Owens lot, take her back to a home that all weekend they would pretend still felt like theirs. The wall calendar Allis-Chalmers always sent her, now swapped for one his students made. The sink corner that had once held her hand cream, now crowded by his shaving mug. He'd move it over, turn the month. Sometimes by Sunday they could almost feel like them again. Though more and more she worked the weekend shifts\u2014overtime, extra pay, Saturday night out with the girls\u2014Sunday coming every other week, then once a month, then not. On the phone, Abner would speak things he'd never said before\u2014how much he'd wanted children; how he used to lose himself in his guitar; all he'd given up for her, would, still wanted to\u2014as if the distance between them made him brave. But it was just distance.\n\nWeeds, scrub willows, the driveway buried somewhere beneath the grass. She stood in the sun, seed heads scratching at her stockings, looking at the house. He'd written her: moved out, a simple flat nearer the school he worked at now, she could stay in the house, or sell it, _it's up to you_ , he'd transferred the deed to her. But not the car. She'd walked the last two miles. Such flat land: the whole way she'd watched the house grow near, the road to town slip out of sight, its tree line dwindling to distant shakings, far-off Toledo disappearing from her life. The air grew thin. Her stomach dropped. Her juddering heart: she might have been taking off, climbing up, seeing the earth fall away below. Except she wasn't looking down. Instead, on every side it seemed the world was drawing itself away from her. Once, long ago, in a dim Dayton stairwell, her arms beneath her father's arms, dragging him down, flight after flight, fast as she could, she had felt it\u2014in his eyes on her, in the thud, thud, thud of his heels on the steps, in the desperate heartbeats of his departing life\u2014had felt the world withdraw like that. There, on the landing where they'd stopped, he had watched her with such hurt, such hope, so much understanding ( _selfish? selfless?_ ), such loneliness suddenly inside her.\n\nStanding in the hot sun in front of the abandoned house, she set her suitcase down. Hiked up her skirt. Peeled away her stockings. They ringed her shins like thick black shackles. But God the breeze on her legs felt good.\n\nIt gusted all the time. Flat fields like runways for the rushing wind, windbreaks bent by its launch against them, the stolid brick house huddled close to the ground, Clara leaning forward, dress and coat and hair afloat behind her, her whole body seeming about to lift off into the sky. These days no more mail planes flew by. Just clouds and birds and the bellies of DC-4s, their fuselages perforated with passenger windows, their cargo holds carrying the mail alongside luggage now. How high up they flew! How far away they seemed! How fast they grew\u2014Comets and Constellations and Stratocruisers\u2014big as blue whales swimming through the sea above. Sometimes it struck her as strange: the way their shapes\u2014so much larger than the biplanes of before, but so much higher, too\u2014seemed from below to stay the same size to her. She hung tobacco in the barn to dry, stuffed advertisers' envelopes all winter, barely scraped by. Even with the checks Abner still sent her. She knew he couldn't afford to give so much, knew she should tear them up, just as the one time she'd seen him in Maumee she'd known she should leave him alone. But she had crossed the street to the lunch counter window, watched his shape stiffen at sensing her, his face furrow with the effort of staring into his shake. She'd turned away, gone farther down the street, glanced back: there on the sidewalk her still husband stood, his hat pushed up from his eyes as if to keep the brim from blocking even a sliver of her in his sight.\n\nAnd the next time an envelope came from Abner it contained not just the usual check but a story clipped from _Life. Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?_ Photographs of splattered paint, scattered color. To Clara they looked like her field when she'd first come home: a bird's-eye view of what nature could do without her. Sometimes at night lying alone in her bed she could hear the airliners droning overhead. Sometimes, midday, sun-bright rooms would dim for a second, go bright again. Their shadows passed over her there in her field, and she watched them sweep away, disappear, didn't even look up.\n\nBut look down. Out that oval window. There, on the ground\u2014what is that?\n\n\"I'd like to buy it,\" the gentleman said. He stood on her doorstep, pinstriped pants aflutter in the breeze, voice like the news on CBS. News of a collector out in California who'd sent this man to hunt out art.\n\nShe looked past him to the field, the barn, the shadow of the plane. She'd stitched the tar paper together scrap by scrap, covered it with black painted muslin that wavered, rippled, gave the sense of the shape moving. Though it was nailed down, glued, painted midpass atop the barn, the yard, the plowed-under field, its wingspan nine hundred feet long, its fuselage distorted as a real shadow's would have been by the slant of the sun. It had taken her three years.\n\n\"The barn?\" she asked.\n\n\"That too,\" he said, in his Edmund Chester voice.\n\nNow Chester was off the radio and everyone was watching television instead and her barn was gone to some hangar outside LA, and she was in a magazine. Some writer spurred by word of the sale had done some digging, discovered a defense department file, photographs of her early '40s shovelings, revealed the message she and Abner had sent the Japanese:\n\n_Clouds drift back and forth_\n\n_Over my fields\u2014I wonder:_\n\n_Can you see them too?_\n\nClara Lowell. There on the page her name seemed like another person's. She read the story of herself as if from far away, from before she'd taken Abner's name, a Purdy girl again who might tear out a page, pin it to her bedroom wall. She read it all until, halfway, she hit a thing she'd never heard: _soldier, bullet_ , how her brother had died. Facedown in a ditch it said. Shot from the air by a strafing ace. Her eyes kept moving along the page, her mind making out the words, but she was seeing Larry again: running, running, engulfed by the onrushing shadow of the plane.\n\nAnd there went her phone again, ringing, ringing. The Garner Agency, the Fineman Gallery, funding from an arts foundation in San Francisco where she spent the first year of the new decade peering down from the Golden Gate or up from a boat beneath it, devising a way to make the bay look as if the shadow of fuselage and wings had been painted on its waves. Across the ocean, over Pyongyang, jet fighters screamed into the sky. She couldn't hear them. No more than Jackie Cochran, three years later, could have heard the sonic boom she left behind along with all the other aviatrixes still shackled to sound. Clara was in New York City, affixing the faux reflection of an onrushing airliner to the steel and glass of the Empire State\u2014a tragic trompe l'oeil. Haunting, critics called it, heart-stopping. They said her work rang of the grim reaper, contained a sense of the moment made permanent, and yet seemed fleeting, too, as if to offer a possibility of reprieve. And so was also hopeful. And so when, high above the Colorado Plateau a DC-7 struck a Constellation, she was commissioned to commemorate the lost souls, spent the fall of '57 marking the Grand Canyon with two immense shadows facing each other across the chasm, their shapes distended exactly as the sun had stretched them the morning of that last day.\n\nIt would be known as Clara Lowell's final shadow piece. Even in the moment, hovering above in the helicopter the Park Service pilot flew, she knew it: the silhouettes were old shapes cut from the woman she used to be, not who she had become. Down in the station everyone else had moved on, too. They were crowded around a shortwave radio, listening to a faint, steady beep. _That's it_ , one of the rangers said. _It must be passing over us right now_.\n\nBack in Ohio she stood in the spot where her barn had once been and watched the tiny glint arc along its orbit. She had seen pictures of the Soviet's sphere. She wondered what, from that height, it could possibly see down here.\n\nOld ovals found in dusty bureau drawers, age-spotted hand-me-downs, rearviews salvaged from crashed cars, castoff skyscraper panes from construction lots in Cleveland: she collected shards of any size, from all over, carted them back to her small square of earth, slowly, piece by piece, resurfacing her old canvas in glass. Ten entire acres. Half as many years. Hundreds of thousands of seamless fits found from a million broken sides. By the time John Glenn radioed down Oh, that view is tremendous! he might have meant the flash of glinting land she'd covered.\n\nOr the sight of all the others who'd come to help. From the beginning she had watched in wonder\u2014these young seekers fleeing their old lives, stopping by on their way to wherever, stepping out of dusty cars, parking in her driveway for a day, a couple, crashing in her guestroom, on her couch, men on motorcycles with their plaid shirts unbuttoned, wind-wild hair, women wearing jeans, scarves in colors more vibrant than anything for miles\u2014but as they crouched by her side, helping find a fit for a piece, holding a glued edge together, she had begun to think of them as somehow akin to her. These kids who were a third her age! Who drove up blaring bands with names like the Del-Tones, the Animals, the Stones. \"Can't you hear my heartbeat?\" The girls sang it while they worked. Girls who said things like _out there it's trying to bury us alive_ , and _can't let it stifle your voice within_ , who laughed when she insisted she was still married. _Well_ , she said, _it's true I haven't seen him in, let's see, oh jeeze_.... And they told her she couldn't continue like that, it was a new era\u2014 _all that matters now is what will make you happy, what's the point in living if your life isn't true to you_ \u2014an age of self-fulfillment, of our own happiness not just pursued but caught, kept, held perpetually near all our hearts. They could have been her children, her grandchildren, but standing amid a group who'd helped her put the last broken piece of glass in place, she felt as if she had at last found her generation, kindred spirits, a moment in time in which she fit.\n\nOnly the babies gave her pause. The ones brought into her home on the hips of girls younger than Clara had been when she'd first entered the house herself. In their sounds she would hear her long-gone husband's late-night voice, his telephone pleas. And, watching the stare the babies settled on their mothers, she would wonder if Abner\u2014another's husband now?\u2014had felt enlarged by that enamored gaze. She hoped he had. Though whenever an infant was handed to her, she felt the opposite: the child's need tight as its fist around her finger, squeezing her down to fit its purpose, herself made small as the reflection in its unblinking eyes.\n\nInstead, she kept her sights on the work before her. There, in the field of mirrors, the sun shone up out of a sky in the ground. Clouds crept through the grass along the edge, floated into twin squares of blue, followed themselves. Soon, she knew, a contrail would cut across like a line of chalk. A 727 on its way to Chicago, or coming east, a hundred and more passengers peering out their windows. Staring down at the sky beneath herself, she tried to imagine what they would see.\n\nA blinding glare, according to the FAA. Clear the mirror off the ground: the agency's order that at last turned Clara Lowell into a household name. The destruction on the evening news, the documentary about the flood of youth answering the artist's call, the image censored around the world: all that mirror-cleared ground blanketed now by a thousand bodies stripped bare, a ten-acre square of naked flesh flashed upwards in an act of irreverence so communal it seemed to capture the entire decade's mood. By the '60s end she had lit an entire rural county's roads, spidering bright veins across the nighttime dark; she made a color photograph of one square mile of the earth, shot from a mile high, then blew it up to actual size, printed it in pieces, put them back together over the spot, so from the air it almost looked like life, but not.\n\nStill, it was her _Long Bright Line_ that Clara meant to be her masterpiece. She had convinced the postal service to loan her the antiquated airmail beacons for one night. Coast to coast, every twenty miles, they stood rusting, signals extinguished long ago, last remnants of an idea once pioneering, now obsolete. Until, for sixty seconds on the night of July 20, 1969, she would bring it back to life. All her funding had gone into the purchase and installation of a hundred and forty first-order Fresnel lenses, powerful as any lighthouse beam, mounted atop the towers, aimed straight up. The volunteers who manned the stations wanted only to share in what would happen at her signal: starting in New York the first would flare on, followed by a second to its west, and the one that was next, and the one after, a constellation untangled across the country into a single strand of terrestrial stars, a gleaming necklace laid atop the earth's dark breast. Seen only by the moon. And the astronauts on it.\n\nSometime early that afternoon the TV would show the lander touch down. Around sunset it would show Armstrong or Aldrin stepping onto the surface. By dark they were supposed to be done. And she would call the beacon in New York and start her signal to them.\n\nBut in between the landing and the moonwalk, her phone rang instead. She picked it up, heard breathing.\n\n\"Wasn't that incredible?\" the voice on the other end said.\n\nEven after all these years she knew him. While he talked all out of breath about the surface of the moon seen coming close, and closer, the shadow of the lander growing ( _that beep, beep, beep_ , he said, _can you still hear it?_ and, for some reason, laughed), she slid open the deck doors, let the scent of the ocean in. She stood there trying to smell it, trying not let him hear her inhale. Her old nose. Her old mind. Him? He must have been approaching eighty. He must have been becoming senile: how else could he have just now asked her to come see him?\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she told him.\n\n\"Tonight,\" he said.\n\n\"I live in Los Angeles now.\"\n\n\"Clara...\"\n\n\"I'm busy, Abner.\"\n\n\"I'm dying,\" he said.\n\nShe sat on the couch, in the salt-sticky breeze, feeling it on the loose skin of her neck, her scalp beneath her thinned-out hair, remembering the scent of peanuts, engine oil, the soft fleece of the aviator cap, the warmth of the earflaps\u2014on winter days his fingers had brushed her chin, buckling the straps, just so she wouldn't have to shuck her gloves\u2014how he'd gazed up at her astride him that winter night, his face full of bonfire light, the way he'd looked at his new wife in the picture he'd sent so many years ago to share the birth of his first child. A daughter? A son? She sat in the breeze, trying to remember ( _what do you think I do all afternoon?_ ), listening to Armstrong speak from the moon.\n\n_There seems to be no difficulty... Definitely no trouble..._\n\n_Gee_ , Cronkite said, _that's good news_.\n\nAnd she leaned forward, turned the volume down. She sat in silence, staring. A gray, grainy picture. A pale blur she knew was the shape of a man but might have been anything that moved. The longer she watched, the more strange and beautiful and unworldly, unreachable, it seemed. The longer she looked, the more it broke into its parts\u2014stillness, shadow, something stirring\u2014the more she felt her own shape blurring too. If anyone had looked away from their TVs, glanced up at her window, aglow with the light broadcast off the moon... but who on earth would?\n\nShe was still watching the fuzz of the screen when, a long time later, the broadcast done, the window for her beacons passed, the phone rang again.\n\n\"What happened?\" The volunteer's voice came all the way across the country. Some young woman high up in her tower, finger on the switch. \"We're waiting,\" the voice said, crackly with distance, beginning to doubt.\n\nIn the hospital she meant to tell him it hadn't been his fault, but stepping into his room, she found herself unable to utter the words _work_ , or _self_ , or _matter_. Instead, she sat gazing again, this time at her once-husband's face. Someone had turned his sound off, too. When the nurse told her he could no longer speak, Clara asked what his last words had been. The nurse didn't know. She wondered: would they have even been meant for her to hear? She wondered: would she have even been able to? There was just the beeping of the EKG. The blinking of his eyes. Even when they were open, she could tell they didn't see her. But she watched them: blink, blink, blink.\n\nFlying home, she could not stop feeling her own lids opening and closing, even as she leaned towards the window, looked down. The lights of Dayton dwindling. The lights of its outskirts spread as far as she could see. Somewhere down there it struck her was what used to be her father's farm. It was smothered by suburbs now, buried beneath the unrelenting burn of each house's separate star, but once it would have been unlit, all of it, house and barns and trees and field and little girl looking up, all indistinguishable, dark as sleep. When the moon went behind the clouds the balloon must have seemed suspended in pure blackness. They must have held the basket tight, peered over its edge, thought, _How beautiful!_ So strange, she thought now, what we have done to the surface of the world. She shut her eyes\u2014simply paused her lids, stopped them from opening. And, taking in the emptiness before her, wondered how many seconds of each minute she'd spent like that, how many minutes of each day, how many hours, how many years.\n\n# [**THE ESSENTIAL  \nCONSTITUENT OF  \nMODERN LIVING  \nSTANDARDS**](toc.html#ch3-R)\n\nWe woke to a world opened up in holes, a dawn still stained with spots of night. Stoking the stove, we stood, went to the window, blew out the lamp to better see: out there, beneath the barely brightening sky, the snow-smooth pasture somehow gone guttate while we'd slept. Letting out the dog, we lingered in the doorway, the cold cutting through our nightshirts, down our gowns, gazed at what we gradually made out to be a line of fresh-dug pits. Big and black as tractor tires, startling as exit wounds ringed by bursts of dirt. Outside the milking parlor, amid the lowing, we squinted past the path they made through nearer fields, discerned a distant movement: men on the far-off slope, shovel blades flashing first light, pickaxes swinging in glinting arcs. We called for our husbands then, went to our wives, stood side by side in the slam and slam of steel bars driving down. In the corners of our mouths the egg yolk had gone clammy. On the stove, the bacon began to burn.\n\nDid we feel it even then? The spark in our frayed ends? The places where our casings had been chewed through? The air\u2014alive like the second before a flash of lightning\u2014touching our wires where they had been stripped bare?\n\n_Watt, socket, flashover, volt:_ for most of our lives the words had seemed as far from us as the city from our farms. But ever since Penn Power and Light had graced the surrounding counties with places on their grid we'd watched their electric glow creep closer to the horizons of our fields, each evening towns to all points blooming bright as moonflowers, each year\u2014'37, '38, '39\u2014hoping that our time was coming near.\n\nFor three decades we had dreamed of it. Trying to follow a last fly ball falling palely through a dying dusk. Lying beside first sweethearts in a deep barn dark. How we yearned to see his face when he made that sound, to glimpse the sweat slick on her belly. At dances we fled the heat and smoke, quit the lamp-lit grange hall before our legs were ready, our hearts still thumping for another set, wishing for wires that would let us whirl and whirl. In a handsaw's slow rasp we heard a blade buzz through in seconds. In whispered rumors of the hobo who'd slit the throat of so-and-so we saw bulbs brightening our barnyards all night. But even when we left in our mule carts, rode off to war, we lived barely a month beneath the hum of filaments before we shipped for dark-ditched France. And back again, driving our own cars, our headlights showed the unlit roads, our still-dark homes. Still giving birth by firelight. Still fumbling to light the lamp to tell what the hell the baby was bawling about. Sitting in the rocker, we made our kids get up to crank the radio, told them someday wires would arrive, bring all the music we could take, effortless entertainment, a pump in the well, an indoor privy, electric milkers to spare our hands from ever wringing out another heifer's teat.\n\nYet for all our hope, there passed another decade of depression, came another war, our children grown old enough to cross the Atlantic in our stead, and still each evening we sank into a century the cities had long left behind. Still PP&L refused to help us into the decade the rest of our country had begun. 1940. And not a single power line. Profits, they said. People per square mile. Amperes and installation costs and, _We're sorry, we can't_.\n\nBut _we_ could. That was what Bell told us. _You can. Yourselves_. Though he, himself, what did we know of him? That he had showed up in the grange one night? There in the dark rectangle of that open door? Said _union_ , said _come from Harrisburg, Philadelphia before_. And, we sensed, from somewhere even stranger, further back: that trace of Slavic on his tongue, that hint in his eye of unimagined hardships seen. He was a Jew. A Red. A man of must be thirty without a family, a wife. And yet we listened to him. Watched his spindly frame unfold from the creaking folding chair, so rod armed and slack trousered he fooled you into thinking he was tall. He introduced himself _\u2014Abe Bell_ \u2014said he was there to help if we would let him.\n\nBy the bonfire after, passing the bottle around, he spoke of loans and power plants with a heat that seemed to stoke the blaze. That week he showed up at barn doors, chicken coops, helped peel potatoes, stook the corn, talked to us of the Steamburg Association, the Rural Electrification Administration, made us feel like kids again listening to tales: how the REA had fought to pave the way for us, for _this_ , for now, the law passed a mere two years ago so we, county by county, could come together, vote to form our own cooperative, control our own electricity, hold a little power in our hands. Crouched by our woodstoves, bony fingers outstretched, shoulders crowded as if squeezed by a clamp, his booming voice made it all seem something proud, our struggle with PP&L a bold new front in an old war on our own shores.\n\nIn churches, barns, grange halls, we gathered, bickered, shouted down the company hacks sent to dissuade us, lifted up our hands, counted, began. The Tri-County Co-operative's own electric generation: by the winter of '41 we'd gotten all but the final go-ahead for the federal funds, contracted for construction of the plant, routed our lines, could feel in our fingers the hardwood handles of the shovels we'd use to dig the holes for our first poles. Until that January dawn we woke to find PP&L putting in their own.\n\n_Spite line_ , Bell told us, the dog flinching at the anger in his voice, Bell's head shaking away our offer of a chair, no time to stay a second longer than it took to make things clear: That law the government had passed, pushed through by Roosevelt and the REA? Turned out we could cooperatize, could get the grant, only if we weren't already served by someone else. Those diggers out in our fresh-snowed fields: they'd come to undercut us, snatch away the claim we'd staked to our own light. In our milking parlors, Bell paced the concrete floors that we washed down, explained how the poles PP&L were putting in were solely meant to hold us back, a thing he called _cream skimming_ , the bastards running a single line along a road, or through a couple farms, serving just enough of the easiest to reach to claim PP&L had brought a county electricity, while in reality they'd left the rest of it _\u2014the rest of us_ \u2014still in the dark. _Except_ , he said that morning, going farm to farm, _we won't let them_.\n\nHe owned no auto, no animal to ride, but we lent him our mule, our workhorse, watched our school-bound children step aside into the snowbanks as he hoof churned by. Heaving the bucket up the well, we caught his silhouette come shaking into that circle of reflected sky, felt the urgent fury in his eyes. And who didn't pause, mid\u2013pitchfork lift, at the sight of Abe Bell peddling like hell atop a bike? His clothes mud flecked, his fists red, his face raw, his bushy hair matted beneath his dark knit hat. He swept it off, steam rising from his head.\n\n_Listen_ , he said, spoke of a such-and-such _preemption clause_ , the power company legally constrained: we had six months to get our lines up first. _Listen_ , he said, and it was as if his words gave voice to what we'd so long felt. True, he was a different kind\u2014that beakish nose, those accordion-moaned tunes that floated from his rented room\u2014but in the last few months he had become a part of who we had become together. We farmers. We kinfolk and friends. We men who had known each other since we were boys, who had shared bulls, helped slaughter hogs, celebrated births, set legs, lent a hand, a blessing, a buck. We came in trucks, packed three to a cab, on carts, legs dangling off the back, rode in alone from far-off farms to the big stone barn below Berks Hill where, that evening, we all converged.\n\nTwo dozen of us. Maybe more. Slamming truck doors, shaking hands, saying little amid the scraping clangor of all the shovels dragged across the boards. It was sunset. The red light caught the steel spade heads, sparked where stones had sharpened clean the blades. We held them, squinting, while Abe Bell spoke. Then\u2014mad scatter of refracted flashing\u2014raised them to our shoulders, swung them across our necks, and, amid the din of half a hundred boots shoving through snow, followed him into the field.\n\nThrough the sun's last slant the workers watched us come. They were all across the pasture, gathered in teams around each hole. Behind them, the holes already dug dotted the snow; ahead, the unmarred surface spread up the hill towards a chink of sky cut from the windbreak. There, others stood silhouetted against the fulvous clouds, axes gone still. All down the hillside shovels hung at the end of a toss, black bars of rock breakers stuck motionless in earth, the heavy heads of pickaxes eased to a rest in front of frozen boots.\n\nTo them, the spray of snow kicked up by us must have seemed a breaker rolling up the hill. If we could catch their troubled faces as we closed, they must have seen the fire in our own, known how hard this thing could go: the nearest workers\u2014their patched coats and ragged trousers and unkempt beards catching our deepest fears of what could come from being kept in backward blackness while the world sped past\u2014stepped away, drew up their tools, seemed prepared to leave us to the work we would have begun if, from up near the broken windbreak, a different figure hadn't come striding down.\n\nHe wore a quilted coat, its collar up, a wool cap's flaps over his ears and while he walked he lit a smoke, hands cupped before his mustache, eyes focused on the flame all the way until he nearly smacked into the wall of us. He dropped his hands, looked up. _Gentlemen?_ he said. _What is it I can do for you?_\n\nBut he was talking to Abe Bell. If we could spark, he had discovered which of us would flip the switch. Bell stepped out of our ranks. He'd laid his shovel across his shoulders, wrists hooked over handle, arms hanging loose, but as they talked, their words blown to us on the cold wind _\u2014court ordered_ , and _eminent domain_ and _in violation of the law_ \u2014we saw Bell's fingers slip to grip the handle, turn to fists. And gripping our own a little harder, pushing a little closer behind, we wondered what might make someone like Bell come on his own out among the likes of us. What had he left? What had he run from?\n\nWhen he swung\u2014the sudden slash of blade through air\u2014we jerked as one. The mustached man lurched back as if foreseeing the spade connecting with his head. But Bell checked its swing, leveled it instead at the man's chest. _Go on_ , he said, and, with its tip, pressed just enough to dent the padding between the man's coat buttons. _Go on get back to work_. He drew his shovel away again. _While we get on with ours_.\n\nThat night the moon rose gibbous, waxing, a scant few days from full, and in its light we danced an eerie choreography, us and them. All the snow's surface strung with lamp-lit circles, each one illuminating a crew of three or four digging a hole. Beyond the light, we watched. Until the moment when they would pick up their lamps, shoulder their tools, move on. And we would step up, unshoulder ours, fill the hole back in. While ahead they trudged past another cluster of us doing the same, another and another, until at last they reached the last hole dug and set to work digging one more. We followed, gathered again, waited outside their lantern's reach for our next turn to undo another hour of their work. You would have thought we'd come to blows, angry exchanges, but we settled instead into a sort of understanding, stayed out of each other's way, spoke low among ourselves as if to keep a separation of sound as well, hung back when they hit a rock, gave them space while they took turns slamming down the spud bar's iron wedge. And when, each hour on the hour, word came along the digger line\u2014 _take five!_ \u2014we accompanied their thermos-pouring sounds with ours from what our wives had packed us, each finding a spot to sit, a split rail, a pasture rock, until the diggers shook out their coffee grounds, stood, went back to work unearthing what we would come along behind them to replace. A strange sight. The lamp-lit them, the moonlit us, our ceaseless weaving around each other in that long line all through that wide white pasture.\n\nSometimes, we would glimpse our instigator. He flickered in and out of lantern light\u2014Bell's breath a cloud, his teeth a glint\u2014taking our shovels for a spell or speaking to the diggers as we stood our silent watch. He was the only one who broke the pact, braved the broad backs and swinging picks, tried to make them see our side, broke a little of the border we kept between us so that as the night wore on they stayed a little after they were done, long enough to loose a couple words on us as, stepping up to work, we sent back a little laughter, a little later offered them a slice of ham, maybe at the next hole a swig of whiskey, a sympathetic grunt at the grind of shovel hitting rock. Even, sometimes, when one of their spud bars would finally break through, a cheer.\n\nMaybe it was that. Maybe the way we sat close enough on the next break to see them hold their warm tin cups against their tired eyes. Maybe it was how they stretched out the silent minutes, their necks craned back, their throats smokestacks of breath. They spoke of cities, of someone left back home, the way the moon was so much brighter here. The stars. They seemed never to have seen such a sky of them. We tilted our own heads back, tried to imagine what it would be like to not see it every night. And maybe the foreman, observing all his men, looked up too, lost himself for a moment in the firmament. The distant bells of town began to clang. We all stood silent through all twelve knells. Maybe it was the sight of a far-off lantern slowly separating from the flickers in the sky, splitting in two, becoming headlights. A neighbor's cart, a truck from the next county. All night they trickled in, and maybe it was simply that\u2014too many of us, too few of them. Sometime in the early hours the company trucks rumbled to life, rolled down the line collecting their laborers, and left.\n\nAt daybreak, when they came back, they found us waiting: a wall of farmers built across the entrance to the field. We stood wrapped in our coats, holding our shovels. Though those of us newly arrived, not knowing how far the company might go, had brought our timber axes, two-handed saws arced high over a shoulder, even, jutting here and there among the tools, a rifle barrel white with frost.\n\nWatching the trucks emerge out of the distant gray, it came clear: the ones who had brought saws and axes had been right. On the flatbeds, poles were piled, strapped down in hulking stacks: the company would redig the holes, keep us at bay in whatever way they had to until they had planted and set the poles. Ahead of the flatbeds, more trucks hauled workmen huddled beneath canvas flaps, last night's camaraderie stripped from their faces by the knowledge of what they'd been sent back to do. Standing within the headlights' burn, the shuddering of so many engines, the sheer tonnage of all those poles, made the more than a hundred of us seem suddenly small. And in that moment we knew the rifle bearers had been right too: each truck cab held the heat-blurred shape of someone in the passenger seat holding a gun.\n\nThe closest passenger window slid down. A huff of heat fumed out. All along the line of trucks the side windows did the same, a silent cannonade of steam blown around the long black barrels that jutted from each cab. Just as, from each of us, there rose our own wisp of warmth, amidst the breath of all our beasts\u2014mules and horses and dogs come down\u2014mixed with the exhaust plumes of the entire caravan. For a moment the air above us all seemed the only thing that moved.\n\nAnd then Abe Bell shouldered through. He held an ax, its handle gripped hard in his bony fist, the double-bladed head swinging like a clock weight at his side. A few feet from the front of the first truck, he stopped. The sun was still buried behind the eastward ridge and in the shadowed road last vestiges of night remained, and standing in it, lit by the headlights, he seemed almost to glow, as if he alone among us had been plugged in, his switch already flicked. But what could he do but stand there and burn? What was there to say he hadn't already said all night? Instead, he simply stepped to the driver's side, swung the ax. A low soft thud. At first we weren't even sure we'd heard it beneath the engine's mutter. Though somewhere above it, was that the high-pitched hiss of leaking air? The second ax blow boomed so loud it snapped our stares to the shotgun barrel, then back to Bell stumbling away from the truck's slumped front. For a second, watching him stagger, we thought he had been shot, then saw him regain his footing, hitch his grip, and start for the tire at the rear. From us, at that: a roar. Another, louder, as he swung the ax. And when that tire blew the sound that burst from us might have been what knocked him back. And split his face with a grin so wide we could feel it in our own teeth. Around the other side he went, the workers in the truck bed pushing at the canvas flaps to better see, all of us shifting to catch a glimpse of ax head swinging back, jacket flung out, that bush of hair blown wild with each exploding blast.\n\nBy the time he reached the final tire, on the front passenger side, our cheering had grown so loud we couldn't tell what the man with the shotgun might have said. But we could see Bell hear it. He stood with the ax gone still in his hands, his eyes on the tire, his whole self attuned to the barrel aimed at his head. Later, some of us would claim the man said: _assault_ or _self-defense_. Others insisted on: _I guess you've gotten close enough_. Whatever it was, we countered it with our own calls. And when Bell lifted the ax again, squared himself to swing it at the sidewall, our urging swelled until he must have felt plunged into a sea of sound. It must have filled his ears, drowned the voice that surely spoke inside him: _Don't_.\n\nAll our breath from all our shouting. All the lung heat of all the laborers erupting all at once. The sudden nostril steam of all the startled horses' snorts, puffs released from the sprung jaws of all the dogs. The thicker gust poured from each truck's exhaust. From above it would have seemed an aberrant cloud descended from the sky, dropped down upon the place where we had gathered, a strange mist making itself out of the clear cold air. Within it, the separate strand of smoke blown upwards from the fired gun would have barely been discernable. Until the fog shifted, thinned, broke apart to show a momentary picture\u2014the shadow of a figure twisted on his back: Abe Bell burst open, his lifeblood bright as sunrise on the frozen road\u2014before closing shut back over us again.\n\nSo goes our memory. In the years after, we would come to disagree on what we'd seen. Whether the blast had killed him on the spot or he'd expired elsewhere, whether some of us had wrenched the door open, dragged the shooter out, or, to a man, each shrunk back in shock. Whatever happened that morning we all agree on this: that the whole convoy of company trucks shifted into reverse, backed away, wound down the road; the way the commissioner of utilities came to our defense at the hearings that came after; how, after eight days of argument were over, we had won. That spring the director of the REA himself stood among all our families come from all three counties, and, in the seconds before he sent power coursing through the lines we'd built, spoke: _Because you live on farms_ and _denied the essential_ and _modern living standards_. He bemoaned our inability till then to pump water, refrigerate fruit, brood our chicks, save our children's eyes. _When you banded together_ , he said, _your efforts were opposed by..._\n\nWell, that we knew. That was over. By the time a year had passed there would be other co-ops among other long-neglected farms, thousands of miles of power lines, poles planted all across the state. The entire country. In those next decades it was as if the stars we had always seen above showered down upon the darkest swatches of our land, lit our once-black nightscape up. Our towns grew galaxies, subdivisions burning bright, our farms bespecked with the window light of renters' doublewides, new brick homes built for our children, the all-night glow of our security lights.\n\nBut still, generations gone by, we couldn't quite quit thinking about Abe Bell. As those of us who'd known him grew fewer, our minds more feeble, we would tell our children things that seemed each year a little more uncertain, a little less alike. Some of us insisted he had been taken to the hospital, seen at the hearings, was the one who had accused PP&L of contravening law. Some said he'd fled before then, fully recovered, some swore he'd never even chopped a tire, that the whole thing was a fable, there'd never been a man named Bell, it was we, alone\u2014 _your grandpa, your old uncle_ \u2014who'd risen against PP&L. _Wouldn't_ , we their children whispered among ourselves, _there have been an investigation?_ And we spouses: _Wouldn't PP &L have wanted to keep it quiet?_ While we teens, free from reprimand by great-grandparents no longer living, joked of Bell's golden years back in the country from which he'd come, the tales he must have told his comrades of socialism seeded in our very heartland, here.\n\nWhere, with each passing year, a little more of what he'd planted was lost with the land our siblings sold, his story leaked away with friends settled in the suburbs, the cities soon to steal our daughters, sons. Gone were the heavy horses we used to walk behind, rest our cheeks against their steaming sides to whisper things we couldn't tell our husbands, mothers, wives, the plowing now done by a team of one. Gone was the milk cow, dairy now a word meant for farms made for nothing else, except, perhaps, a trip to a neighbor's parlor, a cup of coffee at the kitchen table before the trip back home. Seldom and more seldom and soon replaced by men bringing bottles in trucks, then not even them to wave at us when we creaked open our front doors. Chicken coops collapsed, our last hens cooked back in, oh, when was it: '70, '71, '72? Later for some, though eventually we all wound up at the grocer's, paying our visits from behind passing carts, until\u2014the IGA, the Kroger, the Walmart\u2014even the chance of seeing someone we knew was lost in those enormous warehouses where we bought our plastic gallons now. Only the silence stayed. We tried to fill the holes the rest had left with the whooping of _The Price Is Right_ , wailing from _Days of Our Lives_ , the seconds ticking by on _Jeopardy!_ echoing around our empty living rooms until we replaced that, too, with the bleeps and blats of dial-up, news of one-time neighbors whose voices had once filled our phones, and then simply the silence of high-speed lines strung where we'd long ago fought for a single one to carry a little electricity into our homes.\n\nFrom which we disappeared for hours now, sunk into a screen, filled with the sense that somehow we had failed, that the world still hurtled past, and we were simply clinging to its speeding side. In far-off Africa it seemed everyone spoke on cell phones, on the Mongolian steppe herders lit their yurts with solar panes, in China they churned electricity from dams that did to villages in a few moments what had taken us a century. And some days, seeing the news of oceans climbing, watching the cities flooded on TV, a fear crept on us, touched us where the fingers of long-gone friends no longer did, filled the hollows left by dead husbands and wives, pushed at our chests the winter that a thousand Lithuanians froze in a blackout of their country's grid, pressed a little harder when we heard the Russians had devised a way to reflect the sun off the wings of satellites, solar mirrors they said would send down an unceasing luminescence, light their patch of earth all night. That sent us out into our fields, stilled us beneath the stars. Until the fields were no longer ours, the night sky no longer there.\n\nNow we live surrounded by vast swaths of corn and soybeans, unimaginable acres of apple trees, each county assigned a single crop. From our windows, we watch the mammoth machines, the migrant workers moving through in thousands, out there all night beneath the mirrored satellites that years ago our own country launched into the thermosphere, those moon-sized spots of gleam that crowd the sky, the Milky Way, dimmed all these years by our earthbound lights, having finally disappeared. The way our few remaining homes, standing alone atop the land that we have sold, will one day, too. When we die off and they at last are bulldozed.\n\nSometimes, on sleepless nights, wandering the empty rooms, wondering about some old acquaintance or once-close cousin, we go out into the eerie mirror light, halfway between dusk and day, and search the fields for suggestions of what our great-grandparents had done. The single wire they'd once strung has long since given way to a 400-kilovolt transmission line, a dozen conductors swooping between steel towers hundreds of feet high. But beneath them we can still make out, hidden in the grass like a toppled headstone, the remains of a rotted pole. Shuffling in the weeds we can sometimes even find the dip in the ground, a sunken place where once there must have been a hole. Times like that we feel the pressing worst, as if it is a curse brought on by murdered Bell, or by our own great-grandparents, or by ourselves, this charge in all our hearts, this flash that fires in us even now, this spark that drives us ever forward, still.\n\n# [**ANGLE OF  \nREFLECTION**](toc.html#ch4-R)\n\n_I. The Space Mirror_\n\nThey said it was the end of darkness as we knew it, an age of perpetual light: morning and day and dusk and dusk and dusk, and morning again. Launched into orbit, it would spin, big as a house, moving through the sky at twenty times the speed of sound, its reflective wings unfurling like the petals of some massive morning glory seeking sun. Something like that should have had a better name. It should have been baptized by some blind singer in an ancient Dane's mead hall. Moon Slayer, he would have called it. Star Demolisher. The Mohicans, whose burial mounds we still came upon in the woods, would have made it The One Who Keeps the Light Warm Until the Dawn Awakes. Hell, even NASA would have come up with something passable. But it was the Soviets who dreamed it up and so it was the Soviets\u2014who named their own country the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, for God's sake\u2014who got to name it: Banner. Maybe it sounds better in Russian.\n\nIt was built to crash. By the time they actually got it up there the Soviet Union had eaten itself and was cracking its own bones for the marrow and there was a whiff of death about the whole thing. At a signal from Moscow, it would detach from the space station, find the sun, reflect it earthward, and slip a beam of daylight along the surface of the world, slicing through night, across the continents, the seas, racing towards Russia, hunting for home. It would circle the globe a few times, then\u2014foom!\u2014hit the atmosphere. Self-immolation.\n\nMaybe it just seems murderous now, looking back at it all. Then, there was a thrill to it. Junior high was conquered. High school was begun. We were all fifteen. Except Mirza. Nobody knew how old Mirza was. You'd have guessed maybe a couple years older than us. Unless you'd spent the time, like we had, those fall nights up in the old concrete plant, smoking weed, him as quiet as ever, and you'd look over and get just the bit of moonlight on those creases by his mouth, just the _feel_ of him, and think, _Fuck if he's not thirty_. Mirza Kojic. We called him Kojak, like the TV show. Then just Jack. Jack with his mouth like an old man's. He was obsessed with that space mirror. Never told us why. Never told us much of anything. Never really even talked.\n\nAfterwards, we called him Mirza again. Not to him. We didn't talk to him anymore. But when we talked _about_ him. To each other. Which, mostly, we didn't.\n\n_II. The Concrete Plant_\n\nWe were fifty feet up in the abandoned plant, the usual four of us smoking our usual weed in our usual spot. The funnel was wide enough that if you looked up you'd see a patch of night sky the size of a garage door. If you looked down, you'd see your knees (you're squatting with your back against the rusty wall), your shoes on the slant of metal angling towards the hole in the middle. The hole dropped straight down fifty feet into the mixing tank. It sat there between us, black as a gun barrel, just wide enough to fall through.\n\nIn the distance, a train pushed its warning noise down the tracks.\n\n\"We should jump it,\" Eli said.\n\n\"Goes too fast,\" Greg said. \"Get your leg chopped off.\" He sucked in, looked at us with bulging eyes.\n\n\"You wait till it slows, genius,\" Eli said.\n\nHolding the smoke in, Greg made a death-by-index-finger motion across his throat. He was bigger than the rest of us\u2014small black eyes, pale skin, gelled hair\u2014and he would have been a bully if he wasn't always stoned. He had two fake front teeth from when his hockey-obsessed dad, who dug up their entire backyard to make a training pond, checked him into a tree. \"Get your fucking hands sliced off,\" he croaked on his exhale. \"Slip under the wheels...\"\n\n\"Jockhead,\" Eli said. \"It's curved down.\"\n\nThis was asked: \"What the hell is curved down?\"\n\n\"It's what they call it when the train comes to a bend in the\u2014\"\n\n\"Who's they?\"\n\n\"I'm telling you, Pete. Take your hit and listen, eh?\" Eli had lived stateside since he was four, but ever since junior high he'd started turning \"out\" into \"aoot\" and wearing patches depicting the Canadian flag. He was as Jewish looking as you could get, except for his hair. It was what he called a killer ponytail, which meant it reached to his ass, or would have if he hadn't been forced to wind it in a turban. His parents were Sikhs. Dharamjot (formerly Bernard Riffkin) and Guru Rajni (was Shirley Goldberg) smelled of tea tree oil and did yoga behind the bleachers during soccer games. He hated them perhaps even more than Greg hated his dad. \"You walk the steel till you get to a good sharp bend,\" he said. \"And then dig a grave where the engineer can't see you. Grave digging is when you get down beside the tracks and lie flat and wait for a hotel. A hotel's what they call a boxcar. A cattle car's a barn. The whole thing is called riding the rooster. They have a very sophisticated lexicon.\" He stared at us. \"Hoboes, geniuses. Jesus, you all've gotta lay off the stuff. Except Jack. Jack needs another hit. Give him the thing, Pete. I mean, look at him.\"\n\nWhen you passed a joint to Mirza, he took it with the obeisance of a gentle-mouthed dog easing a biscuit from your fingers. His hands were shrunken and bony as the rest of him; he couldn't have been much over five feet, a hundred pounds. When he wasn't around, the three of us dreamed up horrors about what had happened to him back where he was from. He had a dent in his left brow like someone had cracked him with a pipe. He smiled a lot. You wanted to look away from his teeth.\n\n\"What's hoboes?\" he asked in what we assumed was just the way Serbians sounded.\n\nHe and his mother had showed up in Culver that spring. We saw her at the Stop and Shop or the school parking lot, smoking, returning our parents' greetings with silent nods; none of us had ever heard her speak a word of English, just the strange language she poured over Mirza while she fidgeted with his palm or collar or hair. We had seen him in class, of course, but we'd only started hanging out that summer. We were facing our first year out of the town school, about to start at the regional high, and he was one more Culverite in a world growing thin on Culverites, or we probably wouldn't have hung out at all. The only time we did was at the concrete plant. None of us invited him to our homes. None of us had been to his.\n\nWe explained the concept of hoboes.\n\n\"No,\" Eli corrected us. \"They didn't just _used_ to. They still do. They still _are_. I've been reading this book.\" If you started talking about something, Eli was reading a book on it. \" _We_ could be hoboes. Freighters, in the lingo. There's nothing to it. When the rooster shows, you run alongside, sync up, take a jump, and you're on.\" He took the spliff from Mirza, looked at it. \"You ate it,\" he said. \"You frigging mawed it. Somebody give him like a frigging Tums.\" Through his exhale, he said, \"Picture it. The four of us, eh? Chiggered to a car. Riding north, like off to Canada, kiss Culver good-bye, frigging Vermont, frigging school, 'rents, like fuck off Dad, I mean nothing, nothing but the rooster and us and woods and like, like...\" Holding the smoke in, he made a circling motion with his free hand, as if urging us to finish his sentence, then dropped the dead end in the chute. It drifted down the hole between us, a campfire spark in reverse. \"Peaceful,\" Eli croaked. \"Like totally frigging peaceful.\"\n\nThe train roared by. It rattled the old plant all the way up to our funnel, and we leaned back against the metal, feeling it. The funnel was at the bottom of an old silo, the whole thing way up on stilts, and beside it a second tower stood on its own spindly legs, the mixer gone, the long thin line of the conveyor angling from the distant ground into the sky, and we watched it lit up in a sudden sweep of the train's beam, shaking against the stars. After a while, it was hard to tell which was shivering and which was still.\n\nIn the quiet afterwards, Greg said, \"I'm gonna leave him a note. Dear Dad: Fuck off.\"\n\n\"I'm not even gonna leave a note,\" Eli said.\n\n\"Dear Dad: Shove a puck up your ass.\"\n\n\"You know what I'm going to do?\" Eli said.\n\n\"And pack it in there with your fucking stick.\"\n\n\"Take a dump on his yoga mat.\"\n\nWe all laughed except Mirza. He had shut his eyes. If he had looked even a little relaxed you would have thought he was asleep.\n\nIt was suggested that before meeting at the tracks to grave dig for the rooster we should all make lists of everything we hated about our dads, leave them on our kitchen tables.\n\n\"Like whatever, Pete,\" Eli said. \"Your dad isn't around enough for you to know what to hate. You probably don't even hate him.\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\n\"That's not hate,\" Eli said. \"'Sure' is like, like discontent.\"\n\nHe was assured it was like hate.\n\n\"So say hate. Jack hates his frigging dad.\" Eli switched on his flashlight. \"Frigging look at him. You can see it.\"\n\nHe didn't move, didn't open his eyes. In the beam, you could see his forehead dent pulse where the blood flowed under the skin.\n\n\"Hey,\" Greg said. \"How about this: hand the spliff around and when you get it you have to list all the things you hate about your dad, okay? Give me it.\"\n\nFrom when he started to when we were done was long enough to go through two more joints. Mirza took his tokes in silence. The rest of us moved on to the things we'd do when we came back from our year on the rails: Eli was going to dump gasoline on his dad's head, strike a match to the turban; Greg was going to make his dad swallow his front teeth. We even painted the scene of our escape: we'd tell them all to meet us at the railroad crossing and, as we passed, the signal flashing and chiming its theme, we'd shoot out our parents' windshields with Greg's pellet gun. We were so caught up that we didn't notice Mirza until Eli said, \"Jack?\"\n\nMirza had shoved himself to the edge of the center chute. Dangling his feet down the hole, knocking his heels against its throat, he bent over, peering down.\n\n\"He's looking for spent butts,\" Eli said.\n\nWe laughed.\n\n\"Get away from there,\" Greg said.\n\nMirza flicked on his flashlight, sent its light down the hole.\n\n\"Hey,\" Eli said. \"We're talking about the four of us.\"\n\n\"You can shoot the gun,\" Greg said. \"Take out the windshields.\"\n\n\"You can clip my frigging dad,\" Eli said.\n\n\"Shit,\" Greg said. \"You can blast mine in the fucking face.\"\n\nThe word \"fugitives\" was said like it couldn't help but make everyone grin and \"outlaws\" followed.\n\n\"Think of it, Jack,\" Eli said. \"All badass on the run? It'd be like frigging rape and pillage. It'd be like the frigging Vikings. C'mon, get back from the hole. Help us plan it, man.\"\n\nMirza nodded. But instead of scooting back, he just held out his flashlight and dropped it. A flickering beam shot up out of the chute, hit Mirza's face, flung itself around the funnel rim. There was a distant bang. The hole went black. Still hunched over it, Mirza said, \"In Vi\u00e4egrad I once saw man they catch on train. When they catch, they take his arms and hold off side so his legs hit ground and like this till his feet have no more skin, all his bones break. Then they drop. I saw man like this. Crawl all way from track. He has no pants.\" He looked up from the hole. That terrible smile.\n\n\"Jesus,\" Greg said.\n\nEli said, \"We were just making shit up.\"\n\nSometimes Mirza's smile looked built over his real face like a fence made to block a yard from a stranger's view.\n\nAfter that, we smoked in silence. Then we dropped the last one down the chute and climbed up to the funnel's rim. Bolted to the outside of the tower, a ladder dropped. Greg climbed over the lip of the funnel onto the rungs. Then Eli. Mirza waited at the rear. When you first stepped over the edge and turned your back to the earth it felt as if the ladder was tilting backwards, a sensation less like you were closing in on the ground than it was closing in on you. If you looked down, which you shouldn't, you saw the abandoned shack made miniature by distance, the crane-like conveyor belt that once carried the mix up past our funnel to another that had fallen long ago; it now lay far below, rusting like the wreck of a ship.\n\nWe had just started down from the funnel tower, our footsteps shaking through the ladder's rungs, when Mirza said, \"From Canada, is possible see Banner two point five exact.\"\n\n\"What's he say, Pete?\" Eli called up.\n\n\"He's talking about the space thing again.\" And then, to Mirza's shoes, directly above: \"You said we could see it from here.\"\n\n\"Yes. But in Canada we can be _in_ it. It is to go over Ontario. Aim light beam at Montreal, Toronto. If we chigger to train on day before, we are in this beam when it reflect down. Ten times more bright than moon, Pete. Half so big. Surface area size of sport field.\"\n\n\"It's going to look like half a moon up there?\"\n\n\"From Canada. This is what I'm saying. From here is very minor size only, such as this.\" He held one hand out against the dark sky, as if we could see his fingers.\n\nBelow, Eli was saying to Greg, \"Look, I never claimed it was safe. Safe's for like, like, safe's for our _'rents_. I mean nowadays the cars are full of drug gangs and violent frigging like very violent gangs.\"\n\n\"Like Jack,\" Greg said.\n\n\"No shit,\" Eli said. \"Hey, Jack,\" he shouted, \"what would you do if some drug gang, like, we jumped the rooster and some frigging gang was in the hotel. And they were like, like they had knives, or baseball bats or something? What would you do, eh?\"\n\nOn the rungs above, Mirza flashed a grin through the gap between his arms. Too quiet for the others to hear, he said, \"Is made of Kevlar.\"\n\n\"We're counting on you, Jack,\" Eli called. \"We're just frigging American teenagers. You're, you've _been_ there. What would you do, eh? Like back in Serbia, on one of those trains where they hang the...\"\n\nMirza started a noise that if you hadn't been close enough to see his face you might have thought was laughing.\n\n\"This is serious,\" Eli shouted up. He had just started laughing, too, when the ladder began to shake. \"Whoa fuck,\" Eli said.\n\nWe all joined him in pretty much the same. The tank clanged back at the ladder and the rungs vibrated like they wanted us off.\n\n\"Fuck off,\" someone said and \"Jack, Jack,\" and then, \"Grab his fucking ankles, Pete, or something\" and then, suddenly, he was done. The ladder went still again. Somewhere inside the tank something came loose and dropped all the way down, pinging at the walls: ping, ping, ping.\n\nUp above, we could see the soles of his shoes, pale and floating. He was hanging from a rung, all his weight pulling on thin stretched arms. We listened as much as watched, as if expecting to hear the creaks of his knuckles losing their grip.\n\nIt would have been easier for us if he had fallen. Oh, there still would have been the guilt, but it would have made sense. We had assumed his parents were divorced, but afterwards we began hearing rumors: that his dad was stuck in Canada ironing out immigration; was in Serbia, dead in a mass grave; was in jail awaiting trial for war crimes. Dead dad, us talking, him throwing himself off the tank; it would have been bad, but it would have been understandable and understandable would have eventually become forgivable. But it wasn't.\n\nBecause there was still that time, so late in the year that only a few beech trees clung to their leaves, when Eli christened us the Culver Liberation Front. We agreed to meet in the funnel, bring whatever the CLF might require: a topo map of Franklin County, a set of walkie-talkies, MREs from the Gulf War. Mirza took out a plastic bag full of combs. Each was black\u2014the cheap drugstore counter kind\u2014and he had attached them in pairs, hinged at one end, one half's teeth cut off to make a thin plastic handle, the other half superglued to a line of gleaming razor blades. He showed us how to flick one open. We sat in the new fall cold, practicing, excited not so much by the weapons as by the sense that for the first time Mirza was opening up to us, showing us what we had always known was in him.\n\nAnd there was the time we got in a fight. The truth is it wasn't really a group fight. Eli mostly watched, scared. Greg just shouted like a coach. Mirza wasn't there.\n\nAfterwards, they told Mirza, \"Pete should have used one of your combs on him\" and \"You've got to show Pete how to punch\" but mostly there was just the four of us plotting how to get the ones who'd done it out to our concrete plant, where we could take them on our turf. It was decided that in case anything went wrong, we'd use Mirza as backup.\n\nThis was said: \"He could take Greg's pellet gun and\n\nOne of us said, \"He could take Greg's pellet gun and go up there on the\n\nI said, \"He could take Greg's pellet gun and go up there on the conveyor belt.\" \"Jack,\" I said. I said, \"Jack, you'd see everything from up there. They couldn't touch you. You could just pick them off. You could shoot them all in the fucking face,\" I told him. I said, \"You could shoot them all in the fucking face.\" I said that.\n\n_III. The Railroad Tracks_\n\nI was fifteen, too short to call average, straight brown hair my mother still cut. When I looked in the mirror I thought there was something feminine about my face. Once, I trimmed my eyelashes. I was an only child and my mother was going back to school and I did all the cooking. I read spy novels and historical thrillers and there seemed only two possible careers for me: writer or CIA agent. My father lived abroad in the kinds of countries in which the novels took place and each letter I got I opened with a small prayer that he would have bought a ticket for me. I was as obsessed with the idea as Mirza was with his space mirror. That winter, just before I turned sixteen, I stopped caring. I gave up the idea of becoming an agency man. I quit reading spy novels. What I'm about to tell, here, I never told anyone, not my parents, not the shrink, not even Eli or Greg. And Mirza, well, Mirza already knew.\n\nIt was the second to last time I saw him, and the last time I would see him alone. We had taken to walking back from the plant together, just the two of us\u2014Greg and Eli lived on the other side of Culver\u2014following the railroad tracks until the bridge over Bull Hill Road where I'd leave him to walk the rest of the way alone.\n\nThat night we walked in silence, as usual. Just the whispering of our jackets, occasionally the small clatter of one us slipping off the rail. He was in front, balancing like a gymnast. Every now and then he would waver. His arms would lift like wings. We moved along, quiet and even paced, until he suddenly said, \"I have not thought of snow.\"\n\nNovember had come that weekend and brought the first snow with it. Just a few inches, but enough to change the appearance of the world: the usually black depths of the woods glowed with moonlight on branches; the dark ties between the rails were gone as if pried up and carted away over night; brown fields shone silver.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" I asked.\n\n\"Banner two point five.\"\n\nI groaned. Ever since they launched it, Mirza had talked about nothing else. From what he said, it was up there now, attached to the space station, waiting for the signal.\n\n\"I have not thought how much more bright,\" he said. \"Ten times moonlight, but look here at moonlight on snow. Is _already_ ten times more bright. Ten times plus ten times, Pete.\" He craned his neck to look at me, then walked on.\n\n\"Hey,\" I said to his back. \"What is it about it, anyway? I mean, it's such a crackpot idea. I mean, is there anybody who actually thinks it's going to work?\" He looked over his shoulder again, gave me his smile. The only smile I've ever seen that never made me want to smile back. \"Even if it does,\" I said, \"I mean great, it's just like a big flashlight.\" I sped up until I was on his heels. \"Jack.\" Sometimes he forgot to answer to our nickname for him and I touched his shoulder. \"I'm really asking.\"\n\n\"This is only test flight,\" he said. \"They have plan put one hundred, two hundred, maybe more. Imagine this. Would be possible to make on ground lighting enough for whole city. No more streetlight. No more headlight. In Siberia, even in north part of Canada, in winter is so much dark, yes? No more. Now daylight one hundred percent.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" I said. \"But\u2014\"\n\n\"One hundred percent productivity.\"\n\n\"You're talking efficiency?\"\n\n\"Pete! This is what I'm talking. They target one city, another city. Okay? Whole side of world dark, yes? Whole half of world sleeping. But one city, in all of whole side of world: daylight. So beautiful, Pete. You can't see?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"You have not live there.\"\n\n\"Neither have you,\" I said. He turned away. \"Serbia's not north. Its not even as north as here.\"\n\nWe were almost to the bridge when the train's headlight winked through the trees. I stepped off the track and started down the snow-covered bank. Mirza just stood there.\n\n\"Hey,\" I called. \"Get off.\" I could hear the rumble. The headlight flickered through the trees, then broke around the corner, suddenly steady, coming fast. \"Jack,\" I shouted, \"don't be a dick.\"\n\nThe whistle ripped a hole in the air. The headlight slung his shadow on the tracks. Slowly, he jogged towards me, slid down the snowy gravel. For a moment, I could hear his breathing beside me, and then the engine blasted all nontrain noise out of the night. The cars banged by, wind roaring off their sides, thundering towards the border.\n\n\"You're crazy,\" I mouthed.\n\nI don't know if he understood me, but he smiled like he did\u2014that awful smile\u2014and then was gone, rushing up the bank towards the train. For a moment I just stood there, watching him reach the cars, run, picking up speed. By the time I scrambled after him, he was racing at full sprint. The train was still passing him. It was way too fast. Beside it, I couldn't even hear my own shout, couldn't hear anything but the bdoom-bdoom, bdoom-bdoom.\n\nI was almost to him when he jumped. His legs flailed, thin arms struggling. Then he was on it. Just like Eli said. I ran full out beside him, an arm's reach away. Clinging to the side, he watched me. In the blur of the dark, I saw him start to slide away, felt my legs begin to go, the sharp jab of my breath, and reached for him. I grabbed his ankle. I pulled.\n\nFor a strange weightless moment all of his mass was attached to all of mine, my wrist an extension of his foot, my arm a continuation of his leg. He was guiding me through the air and I was following, easy, as if gravity, for that floating space of time, had freed us from its grip. Then we hit.\n\nMy feet slammed down, still running, stumbled, crashed, and I was on all fours, my only thought to stay clear of the wheels, then rolling away down the embankment to a stop. Above me, the train boomed on. Then was gone. Just its noise draining out of the night. Then that was gone, too.\n\nLimping up the bank, I saw a large dark lump a dozen yards down the track. It wasn't moving. He was on his face. I dropped next to him, shoved my hands under his chest\u2014felt him breathe, felt the warm slick blood\u2014and rolled him over. His jacket was soaked. His hair was pasted to his head, blood smeared over his chin. He was missing teeth. His lower lip was torn and hanging.\n\n\"I'll get you home,\" I told him.\n\nLooking up at me, he mouthed something that might have been in Serbian, or might have just been swallowed in his throat.\n\nI leaned forward. \"I was trying to help,\" I said. \"I didn't want you to...\"\n\nAll these years later, I can still see his face full of blood and moonlight, his eyes on me, his horrible failure to smile.\n\nMirza lived down a long slope of oiled gravel twisting its way through coniferous woods. Most of the snow had gotten stuck in the high boughs and they were matted thick. The moonlight had gotten stuck in them too. It was dark. Limping along, my ankle throbbing, I clung to his jacket, convinced I was helping him stay on his feet. We passed no lights of neighbors' houses, no TV sounds. Occasionally, a mailbox showed itself, hunched on its post, lifeless as its salted drive.\n\nIt must have taken us an hour to get to his home. We didn't talk. I didn't think he was able. Until, just before his house, he stopped, leaned over, drooled a splatter of blood onto the snow. Slowly, painfully, he said something through his ripped mouth. I couldn't make it out. He had to say it again: \"We were just moved to Vi\u00e4egrad.\" He formed the words with torturous deliberation, eased them through his mouth. \"Bosniaks. Moslems. They come to us at home. With knife\u2014\" He drooled into the snow again, made a fist, lifted it to his mouth. As slowly and purposefully as he had talked, he mimed a blade across his face, carving a picture into his forehead, his chin bone, his cheeks. \"Ubica,\" he said. \"In face of my tata.\" Even in the dark I could tell he could see my eyes searching his, could feel him willing me to see in his face what they had done to his father's. Then he reached over and touched my cheek. His fingertip was cold and so gentle that if we hadn't been alone I would have blushed. He traced the same carving on my face. \"Ubica,\" he said. And I realized he was making the shape of a u.\n\nWhen we got to his home it was as dark as all the others, a garage-less, small cape with unfinished dormers and a front door that hovered three feet off the ground. No deck at its foot. Not even any steps.\n\nHe started up the short dirt drive. When I tried to go with him, he made a noise in his throat, unpeeled my fingers from his jacket. Still, I followed him until the light over the side entrance snapped on. He shoved me back then, so hard my heels slid in the snow. I could see his face, now: the blood thickened around his mouth, clumps of his hair frozen in red-stained spikes. His stare was harder than his shove. I backed out of the light, watched him walk around to the unfinished steps, open the storm door. The unlit inside swallowed him.\n\nI would have left then if a window hadn't cut its shape into the black. It was upstairs, a dormer. Another one went on next to it. I caught the figure of a woman, blurred, moving fast. In a third explosion of window light, she stopped. The edge of the glass sliced her down the center, showed only part of an oversized T-shirt, bony shoulders, piled gray-streaked hair; I could tell by her movements that she was upset and, by her tilt, that she was looking down the stairs.\n\nI kept expecting her to go to him. Instead, she took a step back, and he rose into view\u2014hair, face, chest\u2014as if coming up through the floor. He hadn't washed off the blood and he was trying to talk to her through his mangled mouth, to soothe her, but I could see she was furious. When he reached for her she smacked his hand away. Her shouting was loud enough now that I could hear. Her fury seemed unhinged from anything I could understand, unraveled from reason, not just the Serbian words, but the simple fact of it with her son looking how he did. When he tried again to touch her, she raised a hand as if to smack his cheek\u2014my throat shut\u2014but hit him between his shoulder and his neck instead, then slapped at his chest, then was beating him with fists. He tried to get ahold of her. She jerked away, was suddenly gone from the window frame. A door slammed. I could see her in the window\u2014a bedroom\u2014pacing.\n\nThe first-floor windows flung their light onto the snow. Mirza went straight through the kitchen into the living room, picked up the phone. There was the slight movement of his dialing, and then he went perfectly still, motionless as the dried flowers behind him hanging off a nail in the wall. On the floor above, his mother tore in and out the window frame\u2014jerking gestures, she was talking to herself\u2014before she was gone again. For a moment, the entire house was still. Then she burst into the kitchen.\n\nMirza took one look at her and hung up. They stood watching each other, both motionless, him with one hand pressed to his face, one reaching towards her, her with the arm I couldn't see raising a hand I couldn't see to what looked like the side of her head. He took a step. She stepped back. Between the dark lump of her fist and the dark mass of her hair I could just make out the shape of a gun.\n\nI don't know how long they stood like that, only that the forest quiet seemed to reclaim the night and I became aware of a highway nearby. Once in a while a truck would moan through the trees. Mirza was trying to talk to her. She was talking, too. It went on. The house gradually drifted back to sleep, as if grown used to the lights and the chattering and too tired to care. The cold bit my face. My feet were freezing. I thought about going home.\n\nWhen she finally put the gun on the counter, he went to her as if it was a signal they had arranged beforehand, and I had a strange feeling, as I watched him pull her to him, as she let him, that this was something they had done so many times before they had grown good at it.\n\n_IV. The Concrete Plant_\n\nI told myself I'd talk to someone about what I'd seen. My parents, a teacher. But in my head, it always sounded like a confession; I could hear the questions\u2014they were always aimed at me\u2014but never my answers. In my silence, I tried not to let my mind imagine what it was like to live in that house. I told no one. I did nothing.\n\nEven in going to the library there was something that seemed wrong. Not twenty-four hours after it happened, I was on the public bus to UVM. I went in before dark and when I got out again it was still light. That\u2014the easiness of it, the tiny bit of time it took\u2014seemed wrong, too. Ubica. It meant murderer. That night I lay on the floor of my room feeling his fingertip on my face. I told nobody that, either.\n\nA week went by and none of us had seen Mirza since he fell on the tracks. That's what I told Eli and Greg and everyone: he had slipped in the snow, fallen face-first on a rail. He didn't return our calls. He hadn't been in school. But one morning when we heard on the news that they had cut the mirror loose from its station, that one hour before midnight it was to streak across the sky, we knew where we would find him.\n\nIt was a quarter past eleven when we heard him come through the hole in the chain link. From inside the funnel we listened to his footsteps on the frozen gravel, the faint thumps of him climbing. But the longer we listened the more it didn't sound like he was on the ladder. It was as if he was climbing some other part of the plant. The sound drew closer, then seemed almost level with us, then kept going, the clanks and thuds coming from above our heads.\n\n\"Holy fuck,\" Greg said, \"he's on the belt.\"\n\nThrough the funnel's mouth, in the big square of sky above us, we saw him. He'd wedged a flashlight in one underarm and we watched the beam creep along the defunct conveyor belt as it rose past the funnel, his dark shape covering constellations and crawling on and freeing them behind.\n\n\"Jack!\" Eli called.\n\nThe shape stopped.\n\n\"Get the fuck off there!\" Greg shouted.\n\nMirza's flashlight showed down on us. \"Guys,\" he said. His voice sounded like his tongue was swollen.\n\n\"You can see fine from here,\" I called. \"You can see great.\"\n\n\"Pete.\"\n\n\"Hey,\" I said. \"How's your mouth?\"\n\nHe turned his flashlight on his face: a lumpy mess of stitched lip.\n\n\"Looks good,\" Eli said.\n\n\"Looks fucking badass,\" Greg said. \"Get the fuck off that thing and come show us.\"\n\nHe did something unreadable with his mashed face, then put the flashlight back under his arm. We followed him with our own beams as he crawled along the rubber belt, higher and higher on the crane-like arm. By the time he reached the end, he was beyond the range of our flashlights. He stopped, shut his off. A small black lump at the very tip. Each time a gust came, the whole high conveyor belt swayed.\n\nThe three of us talked about how to get him off. We talked about how freezing it was. Every now and then, one of us would call to him to ask if the mirror had flown by. He didn't answer. At midnight, we climbed down. Halfway to the ground, I stopped on the ladder.\n\n\"It's not gonna happen,\" I shouted up to him. \"There must have been a problem. They probably aborted, Jack. They'll probably try again tomorrow night. Come on. Come down. We'll walk home.\" I couldn't even tell if he was looking at me.\n\nDown on the ground, the others wanted to leave him.\n\n\"He'll come down eventually,\" Eli said.\n\n\"Yeah,\" I said. \"When he drops.\"\n\n\"Well we can't just stand here all night,\" Greg said.\n\nEli nodded. \"We'll freeze. We'll get like hypothermia.\"\n\n\" _He'll_ get hypothermia,\" I said.\n\n\"He's Eastern European,\" Eli said. \"Eastern Europeans are genetically capable of withstanding lower temperatures.\"\n\n\"Fuck off,\" I told him. Then: \"Maybe we should call someone.\"\n\n\"I could ride my bike to the nearest house,\" Greg said. \"Call his mom.\"\n\nI wouldn't let him. They argued with me until it was clear there was something they didn't know and then Greg said, \"Well what the fuck then?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said. \"Maybe we should call the cops.\"\n\n\"Are you frigging crazy?\" Eli said.\n\n\"Okay, what about the fire department?\"\n\nBy the time Greg returned on his bike, we could see the flashers coming. Through the trees, the red and yellow lights pulsed nearer until they were out in the open and we could see the truck. It was a pickup. They didn't have the siren on.\n\nTwo of Culver's volunteers came out slamming doors. One wore a lumpy knit hat. The other was bald to the cold. We let them know what was going on. They let us know just how deep in shit we were. The one with the hat walked back to the pickup and got the floodlight blasting. It hit the concrete plant all at once, grabbed it out of the night like it had yanked it by a cord, then crawled up the conveyor belt to the top.\n\nThe bald one shouted to him. Mirza didn't say anything back. There were long minutes of one-sided conversation. After a while, it started to seem like the fireman was a fool, shouting things up at a night sky that didn't seem to care, and he stopped. He and the other volunteer talked too low for me to hear. When the bald one turned back to the conveyor belt, he shouted, \"Alright. I'm going to come get you, then.\" He was watching the ground as he walked, heading for the hole in the fence, so he didn't see Mirza take out the gun.\n\nThe other one shouted.\n\n\"What?\" The bald one said, then looked up. He had reached the fence and his hands were on it and it shook a little. \"Kid,\" he called. \"That better be a toy.\"\n\n\"Where did he get a gun?\" Eli whispered.\n\n\"Is that a toy?\" the other volunteer said. He was talking to Eli.\n\n\"I don't know,\" Eli said.\n\n\"Let it go,\" the bald one shouted up at Mirza. \"Just drop it and we'll forget it ever happened.\"\n\nThe flashers lit the fence yellow then red, yellow then red. The spotlight stayed on Mirza steady as if it was sewn into the sky.\n\n\"I'm coming in,\" the fireman shouted. \"If you shoot me, I'm going to be pissed.\"\n\n\"If you shoot...\" the other one started.\n\nThe bald one held up a hand. \"He's not going to shoot,\" he said. \"Kid? If you're going to shoot, tell me, okay? That only seems fair.\" Puffed in his parka, he was having trouble getting through the hole in the fence. \"I'm not armed,\" he shouted. \"So, how about you give me fair warning. Say, fire off a warning shot. How's that sound?\"\n\nHe was through to the other side and pulling his coat free from a snag when Mirza shouted something. All of us looked at him.\n\nIn the floodlight, he held the pistol pressed to his temple. Eli and Greg both said things they wouldn't normally say within hearing distance of adults. I was silent.\n\n\"Okay,\" the man in the fence called. \"That's not what I meant.\"\n\n\"Don't come close,\" Mirza shouted.\n\n\"You bet,\" the volunteer called. \"See. I'm stopped.\" He stood a few feet inside the fence. \"What do you want?\"\n\n\"Turn off light,\" Mirza shouted.\n\n\"Sure,\" he called back. \"We turn off the light, you drop the gun, we're all happy, right?\"\n\n\"Turn off first,\" Mirza said.\n\n\"Go ahead, Lyle,\" the bald one said. He didn't take his eyes of Mirza. \"Lyle, go ahead.\"\n\nAs soon as it was off, the flashers seemed brighter. They pulsed their colors over the trees, the fence, touched pieces of the concrete plant, reached partway up the conveyor belt. After about fifty feet, though, it was just a black solid strip stabbing into the dark bowl of the sky. The stars shivered and swam. When the light appeared, half the size of the moon and twenty times as bright, I felt my breath leave my body. I watched it, waiting for it to move, to slip uncannily through the web of the stars. It was only when it didn't that I realized it was Mirza's flashlight. He was pointing it straight at us. Then the beam slid off us and landed on the fireman inside the fence. That was when he started shooting.\n\n_V. The Space Mirror_\n\nMoon Slayer. Star Demolisher. We never saw it. That night, we thought it must have swept by too far to the north. Or maybe they just aimed it somewhere else. They were steering it from their control center in Moscow; this is what Mirza told us one of those nights that long-ago fall. He said the mirrors had to be angled just right to throw the reflection where they wanted. Maybe, we decided, of all the moments over all the miles of the earth, the few seconds over an abandoned concrete plant in northern Vermont were just the wrong few seconds. Maybe in those seconds whoever had been at the controls had just decided to give the nighttime a moment to itself, angled the sunlit wings away from the planet, let darkness catch its breath.\n\nI thought he would kill the men that night. They were both shouting\u2014we all were\u2014the bald one tearing at the fence, struggling to loosen his parka from the barbs, his shout suddenly pinched to a scream. But it was the wire that gashed his cheek, ripped a hole in his palm; the bullet just nicked his neck. One inch closer, the paper said. Fortunate, it said. They put Mirza away.\n\nBy the time we were finished with tenth grade, his mother was gone, too. It was assumed she moved down near Rutland to be closer to the juvie prison. But when they let him out, he came back alone. We were all off to college by then\u2014Greg and Eli and me\u2014and when I heard he had returned to Culver I swore I'd stay away. I did, for a few years.\n\nHe's a line repairman now. On call for the electric company. I don't know much more about the work other than it's dangerous. He lives alone in a trailer way up in the pine woods along Rattlesnake Gutter. Our postmistress tells me he has a lot of dogs. She doesn't know much more; nobody does. He doesn't talk with people. Or they don't talk with him. I've seen him twice. The first time was in the co-op. He was buying bulk. I only glimpsed his back\u2014greasy hat-mashed hair, beard bushing at his jaw, shoulders thin and brittle as when we were boys\u2014before I turned and slipped out of the store.\n\nEvery time the first snows come, I watch the slow pileup on the deck chairs, or lose myself in the swirl before my headlights, and decide to hire him to plow my drive. People say he does a good job, shows up before they're awake, sends them a bill. They don't know his phone number. It's not listed. Send him a letter they tell me, a check. Each winter I find myself on the north side of Rattlesnake Gutter, stalled in my car, looking through the passenger side at his house. Black trash bags are duct-taped over two windows. Through a third, I have seen the yellow inside of a microwave and, above it, a sagged line of gray socks hanging. Once the dogs start they keep on until I drive away again.\n\nThe second, and last, time I saw him was almost a year ago. The night before it had snowed big and I was halfway up Rattlesnake Gutter when I met him coming down. The gutter road is one car's width, cliff on one side and gorge on the other. We idled in each other's lights. Then he backed up, lowered his plow blade, and cleared a turnout for me. As he drove by I rolled down my window. He stopped just past. I had to lean out into the cold and crane my neck around. He watched me do it. After a moment, he raised his hand good-bye, began to roll his window back up. His brake lights paled.\n\nI said the first thing that came to me: \"You know it never deployed.\" He didn't look like he knew what I was talking about. \"Banner,\" I said. \"Znamya. The reflector never opened. Something with the controls, I guess. They had to jettison it.\" And then, in his silence, as if it was some kind of excuse: \"It was on the news.\" And then, of all things: \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"For what?\" he said.\n\n\"For everything. What happened here, then, your father, everything Jack.\" I had not thought of him as that in years.\n\nHe looked at me as if he had not known till right then who I was. \"My tata,\" he said, \"used to stand on new bridge over river Drina and throw women off just to show how he can shoot them before they hit water. Women he has raped.\"\n\nSnow was mashed against the curve of his plow blade and I watched a chunk fall off, silently, in the snow beside it.\n\n\"In Rutland,\" he said, \"I live two years uncomplicated life.\" He lifted his hand. \"There is no place for turn up there,\" he said. \"You must back whole way down.\" Then there was just the sound of his window glass squealing upward, his tires creaking away over the snow.\n\nMy wife says I can't know he's unhappy, tells me he would have ended up like that anyway, that long before I knew him things stronger than me shoved him on a trajectory I couldn't have changed. But on nights of bad weather I still can't sleep. Somewhere out there a limb is cracking, a tree is down, a line snaps at the rain. On those nights, awake beside the sleep breathing of my wife, it seems the whole of the natural world is waiting to punish me with what it has in store for him.\n\nI wonder if he thinks about that night I pulled him off the train. If he imagines how it would have been to ride on, to cross the border in a thickness of north woods, to unbuckle from the ladder and leap free of the cars. I wonder if he dreams of that artificial moon rising above the trees, bathing the forest in its beam, chasing the night off him into the depths of the woods. I wonder if that's what he saw each night after lights-out those two years he spent in his cell.\n\nThe first cold snap has already come and gone. We're in the last of a late Indian summer. One night soon I'll go to the concrete plant. The town tore it down long ago, turned it into a gravel pit. Each fall I walk the dirt road in and come out of the woods into the sudden openness of gouged earth. I try to imagine the pit lit with an unearthly glow, alive with the rumble of backhoes and cranes holding the dark at bay until the natural dawn. But there are just a few machines left alone for the night, the railroad tracks waiting atop their ties, the cold expanse of the sky. The air is quiet as only a treeless place can be.\n\n# [**THE POINT  \nOF ROUGHNESS**](toc.html#ch5-R)\n\nI'm behind the barn, splitting burn wood, when I see the bear coming for our daughter. It's December, dusk. At my back: high piles of cut rounds. Out in the field: the bucked trees stacked, their drag marks dark in all the snow, the pines looking almost black beyond. And between their trunks: a patch of true black moving. Everything else is still\u2014the stone wall, the glass greenhouse, the sledding hill behind our home, packed hard by the weight of my wife and daughter gone down run after run\u2014except a spot of orange: Orly in her snowsuit. Rolling snow boulders. Down by the old stone wall at the edge of the woods. Beneath the splitter's rumble, the shaking of the pine boughs is a silent ripple washing steadily towards her.\n\nFor a second I can feel her in my hands\u2014the heft of her when I first pick her up, my arms strained with her struggling\u2014and then it's just the log again and Orly is out there, suddenly standing straight up, staring into the trees. Her hands are bare\u2014she will not suffer gloves, shucks mittens as soon as she thinks she's out of sight\u2014her fingers stained so bright by markers I can see them slowly curling towards her palms. She takes a snowsuit-stiffened step. Another. The first time we zipped her into the hunter's camouflage, I crouched down, winked. _Hey bub_ , I said, _get me a beer, eh?_ Bess laughed. But Orly only asked, _Who's Bub?_ And when I poked her bright orange belly with a wriggly finger, my wife said _Ev_ , the way I knew meant _stop_.\n\nI shout it now\u2014 _Stop!_ \u2014I must\u2014 _Orly!_ \u2014because she goes still at the wall, small hands on the stones, standing on tiptoe, peering over. But in my ears there is no echo of my voice, only the thudding from the hog stall, the chugging of the splitter waiting for me to load another round. _Move_ , I tell myself, _run_ , can feel her grabbed away into my hug, her warmth close as I shush her, Bess glancing up, seeing us through the kitchen window... And I am grateful for the near dark that hides me still standing here. Loading the log. Cranking down the handle. There is something hypnotic about watching hydraulics work, the steel ram pushing the round, the first touch of the wedge, the slow cracking open of such a solid thing, and, anyway, it's only a black bear, probably already gone.\n\nThey show up every spring, shaggy from sleep, coats loose on shoulder bones. Our first year here in these New England hills, one night at the almost end of winter, we stood at the bedroom window, watching them. Two cubs digging at the compost pile, jerking back from pawed puffs of heat, shaking their heads, pouncing on the fleeting steam. I looked at Bess\u2014just that fall we'd faced it: my surety that I didn't want to threaten what we had by having kids; her struggle with what it meant then to stay in love with me\u2014but she was smiling, her laugh its own puff on the window. Wrapped in the comforter, we watched them play and play, as if they'd discovered a game that could keep them happy indefinitely. By summer we'd built a better compost bin but there were the blueberry bushes, the beehives, the scent of Bess and me so fresh from sex the grass was still imprinted on our skin. Once, in the orchard, lying beneath last apples beneath a late October sky, I looked at Bess above me\u2014her cloud of curly hair barely held back, the loosed strands swinging to her rocking hips, the lighter brown of a face impossible to look at without thinking of the sun, those breasts she mostly hid from its brightness, but not from me, paler still, still perfect\u2014and saw, not more than twenty feet behind her, that unmistakable shuffling shape. We leapt up, ready with hand claps, shouts, but it was already wheeling, as if shocked into flight by the sight of our naked selves. Winter would find us naked again, out in the greenhouse, beneath our marriage lights. Nine years ago we'd strung them up, three thousand tiny bulbs glittering above us as our guests watched us exchange our vows. Now, each Yule season, we light them again. Each solstice night we step back in, spread out our sheepskins beneath a galaxy of our own stars. Then, sweaty, steaming, we burst back out, whooping at the wildness of running naked through thigh-high snow, at the nearing woodstove warmth, the feeling that we've escaped the darkness for another year. Of course, by then, the bears are gone, curled up in caves, safely away.\n\nExcept for this one: a large black bear standing in the twilight, hardly ten feet from Orly. They stand so still, staring at each other, that when I move to lift away the log's split halves it seems a breaking of some understanding. The pieces clatter onto the cordwood. The bear doesn't flinch. Orly doesn't look at me. And I can feel it: the fear that she will. If I could see myself I would be shouting at me to do what anyone would do, what, as I reach for another round, I am aware I am not doing, am wondering, instead, what the bear will do, what Orly... For a moment, I think she's singing to it. Which could be true. Kids like her can have a way with animals the rest of us won't ever understand. I listen for her voice, a hum in my ears.\n\nOrly. It was Bess who chose her name\u2014Oralee, Hebrew for \"my light\"\u2014but it was me who shortened it. And Bess? I don't know what her name means. Nor Evan, not more than that it's Welsh. Once, we considered renaming each other, trading in our parents' choices for the language of this land where we'd become ourselves. I chose for her _Wanee-mbee-shkwa_ : Good Water Woman. And she for me: _Nawasnaneekan_. It means \"my light,\" too.\n\nAll the seasons grown together, all the water, the sun, everything taken from the soil over all those years, all starting to rip apart: that is what a piece of wood sounds like when it splits.\n\nSomehow through it I hear the screaming, see the lunge, the blackness blurred, the spot of orange scrambling backwards in a burst of snow exploding with the back door's blast of yellow light, Bess flashing through it, the frantic form of my wife running. And before the hatchet is in my hand I know that hers are empty, know, as I start running, too, that this animal\u2014which should not be here, which should be hibernating beneath the earth somewhere\u2014will turn from its small prey to the larger threat, charge my wife instead.\n\nThen I am there, our daughter screaming somewhere behind me, Bess holding her, and in front of me only the bear. The gleam of its lips, the wetness of its nose, the flecks of snow like spittle stuck in its muzzle hairs. I can see its breath, sense the nostrils flaring behind the steam, feel in its eyes\u2014too dark, too small, too buried in the blackness of too huge a head for me to make them out\u2014its fear. Its confusion. Or maybe that is my own. Because the world is coming back around the bear, the snow and the woods and the nearly nighttime sky, and I realize its shape is receding, though it takes me another second to understand that means it's backing away. Another few steps and it turns\u2014how huge its shoulders, how beautiful the rippling fur like water over a boulder in a creek\u2014and leaps the stone wall, crashes into the pines, disappears.\n\nIt's only then that I can look behind me. Already Bess is halfway up the hill. Orly in her arms. My wife's back, her thin shirt: she hadn't even put on a jacket. Above her shoulder there is the pale spot of our daughter's face. Below, something I think at first must be a flash of snow kicked up by Bess's boots. But it is her flesh, her feet. She's barefoot. Something about that makes me want to cry.\n\nWhat is it about a sick animal? What is it in us that can sense it? That knows when something has come uncoupled from its nature, gone somehow wrong? When I turn back to the woods, night is waiting beneath the trees, too dark to see what might be watching back. But I can feel it. I can feel its stare.\n\nThese are things that I have done: forgotten to buckle her into her car seat, left her alone in the bath, let her get between the hooves of our nanny goat and suckle from the unwashed teat. Last summer solstice I jumped the Kupala fire with our daughter in my arms. Bess used to jump the flames with me, our hands locked to bless the strength of our bond. Where was she then, when, crouching in that crackling light, I urged Orly to attempt the leap herself? Or when, a month ago, I stood at the edge of Howland Pond, watching our girl, her mouth-wet blond hair brittle from cold, her four-year-old face furrowed with focus, go farther and farther onto the ice? It was a cold day, our first true feel of winter, and the pond was singing. That has always been one of Bess's favorite things\u2014the low booms and long echoing cries ice makes when it is freezing\u2014and I stood there listening, wishing she was with me, while Orly wandered out beyond the shoreside ice, towards the crying coming from the ever thinner center.\n\nI can only imagine what it sounded like to her. There is no way for me to know. Our Orly hears things differently. We knew this from the start. I think it was what made Bess want her: four thousand miles from our home, in a Far North orphanage filled with the strange sounds of a language neither of us understood, Bess cooed a note and the six-month-old in her arms gurgled the same note back. Bess sang another; the baby replied, perfectly on pitch. Now they spend whole afternoons, Bess with her flute, Orly singing along. A free-form warbling, a swooping through the house, her small feet thumping time around and around the living room rug, her body a loose-flopping ungainly thing, but her singing beautiful. Magical. No matter what my wife plays, Orly matches it, mates it with a wholly intuited harmony, makes something so spectacular that, even after all this time, I can't help but stop, leave whatever task aside, shut my eyes.\n\nAnd there are times I have walked in on our four-year-old and found her alone humming a single note. One long note, broken only for breath. It was Bess who figured it out: our daughter imitating the refrigerator, or the fan, or the washing machine downstairs, turning their tones into a chord. The way the whistles of a kettle, or a spatula scraping a pan, must, in her ears, become something else. She pounds her little fists against her head, pulls at her hair, runs from me, screeching, leaving me standing with the shopping cart on its offending wheels, or in the blinking lights of some construction vehicle backing up, struggling against my own urge to shout. If I do, it doesn't matter, anyway. She doesn't understand angry. She doesn't recognize relief, or pain, or joy, or me, or Bess, or anyone. How can she without empathy? Oh, she _feels_ things. She _knows_ us. But she won't ever understand us, who we are, beyond the woman she calls _Mom_ , the man she comprehends as _Dad_. Which I am not. That is something _I_ can't feel, hard as I've tried.\n\nWhen we first brought her home I would try to make her smile. I'd make the faces I always did with other kids\u2014the children of couples who always said _you'd be so great_ and _got such a way_ \u2014and she wouldn't even watch. I'd try pointing out things that made me smile; she seemed unaware of what my finger, my eyes, my eager face might mean. _Honey_ , Bess says, _you just have to find your way of connecting to her, her ways of connecting to you_. But how can I when she won't so much as wave good-bye? Or say hello? Or, on some days, even answer to her name?\n\nEven now there are days when Orly hardly says a word. There are days when it seems all she does is scream. And hit. I have seen her beat at another child so hard she dislocated her own wrist. I have seen her bite her mother, witnessed Bess's bleeding neck, ear, lip, scratches on her eyelid that made my fingers shake too badly to unpeel the Band-Aid. Last year, when Bess's mother died, our daughter sat there singing, singing to her heart's content, as if my wife's heart wasn't broken, as if the child's own mother wasn't weeping while she held her.\n\nBut God she's beautiful. Even more than her long blond hair, fine as if spun from sunlight, more than her small face pale and heart shaped as a barn owl's, more than the Bering Sea blue of her eyes, it is her expression, the seeming serenity of her very detachment, the sense of something that can't quite be grasped. True too: she doesn't like to be touched, won't let me hug her. Though Bess has found a way, can stand perfectly still, arms by her sides, and through some connection that they've made communicate to Orly that she's available for hugging, and it is, yes, a beautiful thing to see the girl approach, tentatively extend her arms, wrap them around my barely breathing wife, squeeze ever so softly. _Each day_ , Bess says, _I understand her a little more_. She says Orly understands her, too, in ways she never knew she could be understood. She says one day our daughter could become a brilliant composer, a prodigy on any instrument, one of the many with her condition who find in it a singular unmatchable grace. That may be true. But what I do not tell Bess is that I am not worried about what our daughter might grow to be. She never will grow up, won't ever live away from home, won't, for all her life or all the rest of ours, get through a single day without some help from us. No, I would like to tell my wife, I am not worried about what will happen to her.\n\nThe day after the bear, I find its prints. The sun is splintering through the trees, painting the forest floor in streaks, and they are there, in the snow, sunk deep. Earlier, I'd come in from the goats and found Bess stirring oatmeal on the stove. Usually, I fix Orly's breakfast, but Bess took the fresh milk from me, said she'd pasteurize it herself. And after, when I started to take our daughter to feed the hog\u2014one of the few pleasures Orly and I share\u2014Bess held her back with a strange seriousness, her face stricken as if she'd suddenly seen the sow as some new threat.\n\nBut she was staring at me. Sometimes, stepping into the truck, or triggering the security light outside our home, I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror, the glass pane of the storm door, and see that same stare back. Last time I trimmed my beard, I could not quit thinking how strange: that hair grew from my cheeks, around my mouth, as if my face wanted itself to disappear. And how is that different from any man's? How, enlarged by Bess's makeup mirror, could it look so inhuman: hairs creeping from my pores, skin swallowed by its own pelt. I pressed it with the scissors' tip. Soft buckling, a bead of red. I touched my fingers to the cut, then to my tongue. That metallic tang: same as anybody else's blood. Except mine is in me. I have tried to find it\u2014this thing that must have lurked since long before Orly, since I was small as her\u2014but had I ever harmed a single kid who came through my grandmother's home? Of all the hundreds in all the afternoons of helping with her day care? Had I ever even raised my voice? Let alone a fist against another? Never. Not a fight. Not even one. Not even when, grown far too big for whipping, I'd still be sent out to the yard, forced to fetch a bamboo switch to replace the one my grandfather's beatings had begun to fray. Which I know is no defense for this. Nor is the fact that I had few friends, that before Bess I'd never had anything that felt worth keeping. Now, most days, I keep to myself, spend from dark to dark in silence, working alone on land my wife and I once worked side by side. Most nights I offer her a break from Orly, or do the dishes beneath the sounds of them upstairs, wait for the half hour we might have together if Bess doesn't fall asleep putting Orly to bed. Maybe in the morning I'll wake beside her before our daughter starts calling for her mother; maybe my wife will kiss me when I come in from letting the animals out; maybe for a few moments then we'll talk of something other than Orly before I start the hours of my own sounds amid the silence that has become my life.\n\nThough it is the sense of something else out there that brings me back. The unwatched woods, the emptiness between the trees: I look up from the paw print searching for the bear. Holding the heavy chain saw, I scan the shadows. As if I might sense it, hear a sound other than my own breathing. As if it, watching back, might recall my sound, recognize my scent, know me.\n\nBut once in the woodlot there is so much to do\u2014this year's cords all sold, next fall's still needing cutting, splitting, setting aside to season\u2014that it drives away everything but work. These are the weeks of darkness spreading sudden and fast. The day is there, then done. It's almost night by the time I shut the saw off, make my way out of the woods. The goats bang at the shed door as I pass, the chickens quiet in the coop. Home, I can hear Bess putting Orly in the bath. In the skillet: what's left of a supper they've already eaten, the iron handle still hot.\n\nNormally this is when we're closest, this season of long nights and late mornings, a few more moments managed together beneath warm covers, small celebrations we make together with each last turn of the Wheel of the Year. When we were young, still giddy with our newness, our shared escape from PhDs and years of folklore studies into this place where we could find our own fable, what had grown between us had seemed so wondrous it was almost overwhelming. We'd turned to the ways others had long tried to fathom the mysteries of their lives. Each Wren Day, we would stuff our jackets full of straw, dangle a chicken from a pole, drive door to door handing out plucked feathers to perplexed neighbors, as if to share with them a little of our luck. Home, we'd strip, light candles around the bathtub rim, slip in. Bess would lift a ladle over my head, shut her eyes so I could do the same.\n\nBut the splashing scares our daughter. She tries to touch the candle flames. And, anyway, these days our solstice rites are meant to shine a light on Orly. We dress up in Koliada costumes in lieu of straw-boy suits, drive neighbor to neighbor singing her birth country's songs, the hen exchanged for a plate of cookies cut in reindeer shapes. Orly holds them out the way we once did feathers. The neighbors seem to like this better. Maybe us better, too. Though this year Bess goes without me. Back from the woodlot, a few days before the solstice, I find a note _\u2014safer while it's still light_ \u2014a broken-antlered cookie. And though Bess spends the whole next day making Orly's Rozhanitsa dress, half the night embroidering it with the image of the branch-horned goddess, when I offer to take our daughter to the equipment shed, hunt through the box of buck racks, make an antler crown, I get only a shake of my wife's head.\n\nStill, I remind myself, all of it was always about more than only us. The first time that we heard the singing of the ice, Bess whispered, _This_. We were sitting on the abandoned beaver dam, my not-yet wife leaned back into my chest, the pond spread out before us. _I know_ , I told her. And, together, we listened: a sound as if the earth, conversing with the heavens, had decided to let us hear. I think it was that moment that we decided there must be something. Such safety: to know there is a hand to steer us, to help us shape our lives more caringly than fate. Such sweetness: to have found our faith in that together.\n\nEver since then we have gone to the pond when life seems worst, listened, tried to open our hearts to guidance. The year that Bess, at forty-one, was stricken by unbearable desire for a child. The night that I gave in. The day, after a year of trying, then of searching, that we brought our daughter home. The November, almost exactly one year later, that Orly was diagnosed. The autumn, so long ago, back when we had barely brushed our thirties, when I had tried to tell the woman I loved why I couldn't stand to share her with a baby, couldn't face the thought of losing the world we'd made between us to another life. Weeks of talking had solidified into an ice-hard choice: whether she would hold tight to what we had or leave it\u2014leave me\u2014for the chance to have a child with someone else. Scared, I'd been unable to stop talking, to let us listen to the sounds of the ice, until she pressed her fingers to my lips, said, _Shh_. And half an hour later: _Don't you know?_ I'd risen, then, as if the ice had finished her words for her, because I did.\n\nNow there is this: a week ago I carried the chain saw out to the woodlot and found a tree half-cut, a wedge sawed from its trunk, the felling hinge already made. A dangerous mistake, to leave a tree like that. But, standing there that morning, I couldn't remember having done it. And worse, the end of that day I had the urge to do it again. The chain saw idled. Alone in the empty woods, too close to dark to start another tree, I told myself to shut it off. Then stepped through the snow to a marked trunk, tugged the trigger, revved the blade. I cannot explain the way it felt to rip through to the point of the hinge, cut free the notch, and then shut off the chain saw, turn in the silence, and head home.\n\nThe next morning I couldn't take the tree down. I left it that way, prepared for felling, and worked all day felling others and, when it came time to quit, did it again. Except this time I cut a little deeper. Went an inch beyond where the hinge should be. Removed a little larger wedge. Left that tree standing too. Seeing that notch I knew was too wide, amateurish, edging on dangerous, I felt a surge of relief. Enough\u2014that tang of oil smoke, shiver of sweat freezing on my neck, the sense that I could breathe\u2014to make me need it again the next day. And the next. Over that week, I must have left two dozen trees throughout that section of our woods, each notched a little deeper, weakened a little more, a forest of half-felled deadfall traps waiting for the next wet snow, the first wild wind, to bring them down.\n\nOn solstice eve I make a cut so deep I keep expecting to hear the crack, to see the sudden tearing rush of canopy above, but when I stop almost two-thirds through, there is nothing but the stillness of all the trees and a sense of dread. I look up from the blade, scan the woods: just my breath gusting white through the visor's mesh, my veins squeezing my blood.\n\nAt home, tonight, we will prepare our marriage lights. It is the one remaining ritual we still keep for just the two of us, draping the greenhouse each winter solstice with the same strands, setting the same celestial cocoon aglow. And each year, the night before our anniversary, we sit together on our bedroom floor replacing all the bulbs that have burned out. For every one that we remove we tell each other something too hard to have brought up before, whatever we need to exorcise before the unborn year. And for each new bulb that we set in the old one's place we give each other an assuaging gift, maybe a memory, a touch, anything that commits us to each other for another year, and the year after that, and the one after that, and the one after.\n\nAlways, we start small\u2014last solstice eve, Bess told me how sad she was I'd shaved my beard even though I'd known she loved to feel it when we kissed; I talked of times, reading Orly to sleep, that Bess had drifted off without so much as wishing me good night\u2014and, reaching over, she smoothed my eyebrows; I massaged the soft spot on her palms; we helped each other towards the harder ones. For Bess, that year, it had been what I'd done to our new tradition: her, dressed as a goddess, emerging from the cellar to tell the fortunes of good girls, while, at her side, to keep bad ones in line, there stood the demon Krampus\u2014me in branching-antler headdress, sheepskin mask with carved-out eyes. Bess's hands shook as she recounted how far I'd taken it, how, through her shouts and Orly's screams, over our daughter's cringing shape, I'd kept on roaring, roaring, unable to stop.\n\nBy now, the branches above me have turned black, the sky nearly dark enough to swallow them. I stand, listening to their silence. The way I sat, silent, listening to Bess until she'd finished. Until her shaking hand threw the bad bulb out. And, in its place, she fit a new one. I don't remember what sweet thing she said. But I know she must have. We always do. It's why it works. In the darkness there is the small clatter of a twig knocked loose. Tonight, I think, Bess will sing our girl to sleep. There comes the stick's long falling to the ground. I'll do the dishes. Its faint landing in the accepting snow. We'll meet in our bedroom and begin. This one thing that even Orly has not altered. Yet.\n\nIn the space after the thought I can hear my own fear. I know I should go home, that supper must already be on the table, Orly buckled into her high chair, Bess blowing on her soup, but I do not know what I might do if this last thing goes, too. I set the chain saw down. There are the first pricks of stars.\n\nLong after dark, I come in through the kitchen door to find a tray of fresh-baked oat bars\u2014still warm, smelling of molasses\u2014waiting on the stove and, nestled beneath one corner, a note: _Shhhh. Put her to bed early_. And when, cupping a bit of oat bar in my palm, I pad up the stairs to our bedroom, Bess is there, cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a forest of electric wires, the glow of a thousand bulbs. In the clearing where she sits: just enough space for me.\n\n\"You made it,\" she whispers.\n\nOur room abuts Orly's, the house was built two centuries ago, its walls are thin.\n\n\"I was in the woodlot,\" I whisper back.\n\n\"After dark?\"\n\nTaking a bite of oat bar, I mumble \"afterwards\" and, through my chewing, \"out to the pond.\"\n\nShe always seems to know when I am lying. So when she says, \"I was out there,\" it stops my jaw. But she goes on: \"A week ago. Couldn't hear anything, of course. This time of year. All frozen over. Though I tried to break it\"\u2014her face winces the way it does when she's embarrassed\u2014\"by throwing rocks.\"\n\nMy eyebrows rise, my jaw unsticks, but before I can say anything she tells me how she'd stood there hurling the biggest she could find, the way they'd clattered and skittered and in the end stayed silent on the surface of the still-solid ice.\n\n\"Oh,\" I say, taking another bite, \" _that's_ what those were.\" And, stepping across the lights, I settle on the floor. \"I thought they were some kind of sign.\"\n\nThis time the slight wince is for me.\n\n\"God,\" I say, \"I feel so stupid. I mean, I _prayed_...\"\n\n\"To the rocks?\"\n\nI look down at the lights around us. Our knees are almost touching.\n\n\"For what?\" she says.\n\n\"That we...\" Glancing back up, I find her eyes. \"That you might hear my need.\" I make my face go slack with wonder. \"Might bake us a pan of these.\" My wife has always been unable to keep down a smile. \"And that Orly might leave me one to eat.\"\n\nHer laugh is little more than a wider smile, but I press my finger to my lips, give Orly's door a sideways glance. When I look back, even the smile's gone. She reaches for my hand, whispers, \"Take a dead one.\" And we start.\n\nIt's never easy, but tonight I watch her with a different kind of worry, can't shake the feeling that each small admission of hurt or trouble is simply her preparing me for worse. Still, in between, we replace the bad bulbs with the good: the way that she surprises me at night with herbal teas she's dried herself; the fact that the day after she held my hands like this last year I started growing back my beard.\n\n\"Actually,\" I tell her, \"I started right then, that very night. I could feel it prickling my face.\"\n\n\"Me too,\" she says. And in the softened line of her mouth, the ease that settles over our hands, I can tell she's remembering those early hours of last winter's shortest day, how, after finishing the lights, we'd made love on the floor in the midst of all those bulbs, how it had felt like sneaking something slightly forbidden, how, later that same day, the thought of it had covered our lovemaking inside the greenhouse with a second sweetness, our bodies finding their new moment within the memory of the one before.\n\n\"It's not scratchy anymore,\" I whisper.\n\n\"Let me see,\" she says. And, leaning over, kisses me.\n\nMy beard is a cloud compressed between us, and, for a second, I wonder if it's going to be okay, no worse than last year, no harder than the year before that, but, by the time I've thought it, her mouth has left mine, the pressure gone from my lips, my beard back to my beard, my face, my face. On hers there is what I've been worrying would be there.\n\n\"Ev,\" she says, \"how could you not have seen that bear?\"\n\nMy face, my beard, but it is as if the air has changed. I say, \"What happened to taking a bulb?\"\n\nHer hands twitch. I tighten my fingers around them.\n\nShe says, \"You wouldn't have let it\u2014\"\n\n\"I didn't.\"\n\n\"But you took so long.\"\n\n\"It was just a black bear. We see them all the time. Remember that first spring? Those cubs?\"\n\n\"This wasn't a cub.\"\n\n\"Remember how we watched them? Just the two of us wrapped together in that blanket? We were standing right over there.\"\n\nWhen she turns to look, the skin below her jaw goes taut and I can see it\u2014our home in that first year, Orly's bedroom still a meditation studio, the lights now on the floor still glowing on the greenhouse, and it is becoming spring, the fields beginning to show their soil, and behind us the sheets are stained, and who cares with no one but us to see them, and soon we will return to the bed to stain them more\u2014and part of me doesn't want her to turn back.\n\nBut she does. Her eyes seem wet. \"I remember afterwards,\" she says. \"The way you were so straight with me that night.\" Easing one hand free from mine, she slips a new bulb from the case. \"How you told me you were so worried that you had pushed your own resolve on me, how you would understand if I still wanted to be a mother, give birth. How much that made me love you, your honesty, that I could trust you, that you would face something like that and talk it through and at the end we'd bring what we had come to with us to bed and how amazing it always was, then, like that, like that night.\"\n\nFor a second, the spot where we had stood seems so close, the window we gazed out of so near, that I almost think she's right: we still can, could, one night of talking, of taking it to bed... And then\u2014a rustle of sheets, the sound of a sigh, my eyes adjusting to the dimness beyond the lights\u2014I see the lump in the comforter, the depression at a pillow's edge, the hint of golden hair.\n\n\"Honesty?\" On my face I can feel the new bulb's heat. \"Straight with you?\" Out of the corner of my eye I can see it, suddenly too bright. \"Bess,\" I say, \"I _was_ out in the woodlot. I just didn't want you to know what I was doing. Because\"\u2014I look at the bed, make sure Orly's still sleeping\u2014\"it's been a long time since we've been like that. That way that you remember. Since we were _together_ like that. Part of each other's lives, of each other, _the_ other part, the _only_ other part. The way we were before\u2014\"\n\nHer voice is a whisper: \"Before what?\"\n\nMy voice is not: \"Her.\"\n\nThe word sounds worse after I've said it. I wish it would disappear from the room. But even after it has lost its sound it seems to stay.\n\n\"Evan,\" Bess says, \"can I still trust you?\"\n\nWhen I glance at the bed again Orly's eyes are open. I start to tell Bess.\n\nBut she says, \"Can she?\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I say.\n\n\"I want her to hear you say it.\"\n\n\"Of course you can, Orly,\" I tell the staring face. \"I'm your father.\" It feels strange saying it like that, such a statement, and afterwards I'm relieved I didn't add _practically_.\n\nBut Bess only shuts her eyes, shakes her head. \"Then what,\" she says, \"is wrong with you? What the _fuck_ \"\u2014with the child in the room the word is ten times worse\u2014\"are you doing? Who _are_ you?\"\n\n\"Your husband,\" I tell her. \"Who loves you.\"\n\nHer eyes snap open. And beneath her stare, I shut mine. In the silence between us I can feel Orly waiting. Or maybe she has rolled over, gone back to sleep, left us to do what people like us do.\n\n\"Evan.\" When I open my eyes something in Bess's face has softened. \"Can't you see what that's like for me? For me to know that the man I love, the only one I ever have, loves me so much he'd do anything to have me back?\"\n\n\"Not anything,\" I say, but my throat closes on the words. It is the worst thing I have ever known: the knowledge that she is right.\n\nReaching to her sides, she draws the masses of bulbs into a denser bunch around her. A tinkling hailstorm.\n\nIn the quiet after it stops, I say, \"Us. To have us back.\"\n\nShe mounds the lights over her legs until her lap is buried in them. \"Don't you think,\" she says, \"that I miss that just as much? That there are times I want it all gone too?\" She leans closer. \"Do you think it matters?\" All those bulbs: they flood her face with a light from underneath, make her features almost unknown to me. \"It _is_ ,\" she says. \"This is what it is, Ev. What _I_ am, now. Can you understand that? We _were_ each other's only other part. But now there's her. Now _this_ is me. Is _us_. Us _three_. And we will never be the same as how we were, _never_ , not even if somehow we could go back to the Eden of your memory.\"\n\n\"The one that I remember,\" I say.\n\n\"I know,\" she tells me.\n\n\"There's a difference.\"\n\n\"I remember it too. That's why I can still say I was always straight with you. Back then it _was_ true, you _were_ everything. I needed nothing else. And then I did.\"\n\n\"But we couldn't know\u2014\"\n\n\"That she wouldn't turn out perfect?\" Between us, Bess's fingers search the tangle of bulbs, as if still looking for the burnt-out ones. \"Evan,\" she says, \"that day, last week, I went out to the pond, it was the day after the bear. After you...\" I cannot seem to look at anything but her fingers. \"I _needed_ to hear those sounds. I know it should have been impossible, I thought it was, but, in the quiet after I'd thrown the rocks I _did_. Just not coming from the pond.\" Beneath her stare my fingers search the wires too. \"They were coming from the woods.\" And I want only to find the bad bulb first, hold it up, make her stop. \"Where Orly stood.\" But Bess's lap is too bright, and Orly's breathing too loud, and when I look away my eyes are too mottled from the light to make out our daughter's face.\n\nBess reaches out and turns my face to her. The flaring fades. And she is simply there, the sight of her as right as the feel of her hand on my cheek. \"I _had_ to let her sleep in here,\" she says. \"She was too scared.\"\n\n\"Of what?\"\n\n\"This night last year, last solstice eve...\"\n\n\"Of Krampus?\"\n\nShe takes the bulb out of my fingers. \"Of you.\"\n\nOur woods have always been most beautiful in new snow. The granite ledges distilled to wet black shapes beneath unbroken white, the boulders pared back to their bare forms rising from a forest floor become a sheet of smoothness, even the trees refined into elemental lines of darkness and light. There is a sense, while watching the snow sift through the canopy, drift down its slowly floating fall, that everything else has stopped. Such silence. Except the sound of my own breath.\n\nWe never did finish replenishing our marriage lights. Orly stirred; Bess went to her. After she had put our daughter to sleep again, she led me out to whisper what she wanted us to do. The Festival of Wild Women, the ancient maenads chasing their bull: this solstice day I'd be the beast, Orly would chase me, Bess beside her so she wouldn't be too scared. _She'll strip away the mask_ , Bess said, _see nothing terrible there_. And listening to her hope that it would help me, too, her _it will be all right_ and _pretty good again_ , I had said nothing of what I knew had always been the ending of the hunt.\n\nThis morning we were supposed to wrap up the rest of the lights, replace the last bad bulbs, string them over the greenhouse before the promised chase. But now on this late hour of this fastest-passing day I am here, instead, standing below a half-felled tree, watching as flake by flake its branches gather weight. This is the thing: if it was Eden, it was one we made ourselves. We already knew the world, chose to leave it for our own. Then chose\u2014her sudden need, my acquiescence, no one but ourselves to undermine us\u2014to leave that too. Watching my breath rise into the ceaselessly descending snow, I try to remember that. That it was us, not Orly. That she is simply the result of a decision that we made. That there are no decisions left, nothing to do but live with it.\n\nAbove, the branches seem a little thicker, the twigs at the end to bend a little more. What snow has fallen through has stuck in a long trail down the trunk. Somewhere below my shins I know the notch is a dark crossing cut through it. _This is what it is_. Hiding the hinge. _This is what I am now_. I listen for a creak.\n\nBut when it comes it's from another tree. I see it: a stirring in the canopy, snow dusting down. Stepping into the fall path, I check how deep I sawed the trunk, tilt my neck, let my head fall back, watch the wind pick up. This morning the forecast said it would get worse, the storm dangerous by dark. I'd meant to make it to the pond before it hit, but passing through the grove of groaning trees I'd seen the tracks, fresh paw prints sunk in the fresh snow, wending from trunk to wounded trunk, as if the bear had sniffed each wedge of inner wood and instead of sap, smelled blood. Walking its path, I'd stopped beneath each weakened tree, waiting, waiting, unable to leave. And how long have I been here now? Long enough for Bess to have dressed Orly in her maenad clothes? Begun to wonder if I will show, while with each minute it grows too cold, too close to dark, too late?\n\nIn the growing wind, all the wounded trees sound like a timber frame settling, then, straining with ever greater gusts, like the cracking open all at once of an old house's beams. Listening, I know what it is telling me, and feeling the fibers in each trunk struggling against the swaying weight, I move into the places where I know that each will fall, wait for the hinge to snap.\n\n_It is_ , Bess says, _this is what it is_ , and she is right.\n\nAround me the storm grows strong enough to shake the heavy limbs, send smaller branches clattering through the boughs, fling them into their own dark shapes cut through the snow, but not to bring a single widow maker down. By the time I finally start back, the gusts have given up swirling flakes for slicing streaks of sleet, and when I break into the open field I pull my hood low, lean forwards, stare at the snow spray before my boots, but I can feel our half-buried tractor, the goats milling in their shed, the dark mass of the greenhouse still unlit beneath its thickening shroud.\n\nAhead, the kitchen windows glow. Upstairs there is another window lit, but on the first floor they seem twice as bright. I know before I'm close enough to see inside: our marriage lights, all three thousand glimmering, amassed across the floor. Bess must have finished them herself, dragged them down the stairs, is somewhere in there preparing the strands for us to bring them out, wondering where I am. But when I'm nearly there, I stop. Through the long clear pane of the back door there is just Orly, hunched on the boards, her back almost against the glass, her shape silhouetted by all the lights before her. Still, I can see her wrapped white sheet, her belted waist, the wreath around her head, her hair so golden it seems about to burst into flame. She reaches to her lap, brings out a bulb. Carefully, purposefully, she puts it in an empty socket. Selects another. Does the same. Again, and again, and I know that this is how it will be, that they will glow out on the greenhouse night after night, as if things were no different than before, just another year a little further from the truth, that it would be like this until Orly turned eighteen if she was a child for whom eighteen would matter, if we were a couple who could hope to then reclaim our second lives, but when she is nineteen we will put up the greenhouse lights again, and when she is twenty, and twenty-one, and the next year, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after.\n\nFrom somewhere on the second floor there comes a long, low sound: Bess, blowing a single note on her recorder. When she's done Orly sings the same one back. Standing in the dark behind our house, listening to them pass their music between each other, it seems an entire language I'll never know.\n\nAnd, once inside the equipment shed, I can't hear anything but the thudding of my blood, the rustling as I hunt for last year's Krampus mask. When I lift it from a bag of rotted canvas, its reek is thick as the sifting dust. Something has eaten at the eyeholes, but the curling fleece still hangs from the woolen hat, the horns are still attached, and, outside again\u2014the sleet smaller, the air colder, the light nearly snuffed by the low churning clouds\u2014my face is warm beneath the mask. My breath makes it wet. With each step, the loosened antlers shake, their sawed-off ends a shiver on my skull.\n\nBack at the house the sounds my wife and daughter make seem nothing like the singing of the ice, and the freezing pond is nothing like the trees, and the trees are nothing like a voice, and for a second, standing just outside the windowed door, watching Orly turn and see me, I know we do not matter to the world\u2014which does not care, which will not know\u2014but only to each other, husband, wife, mother, daughter, and I am suddenly terrified that somewhere outside my fleece-blurred circles of sight my wife is watching, that on the other side of the glass door my daughter will be scared by what she sees, and before Orly can scream, I flip the sheepskin up\u2014a slap of cold against my sweating face\u2014and show her it's okay, it's me, _I'm your father_.\n\nFrom upstairs: a long low note again.\n\nBut Orly doesn't answer. She is alone, frozen still, her face caught between fright and... What? Who can tell? Who can ever know what she is feeling? If she is scared or excited? If she remembers the game we've promised her or thinks that this is something just to do with me? I let the mask fall into place, start to back away, motion for her to follow. Still, I'm almost beyond the window's light before she stands.\n\nRunning, I turn back once to see: the bright kitchen, the pale shape bursting out the door, the flapping sheet, her hair blown wild beneath a shaking halo of evergreen, her breath steam that catches for a second in the window's light before she is beyond it, into the night, after me.\n\nAhead there is the sledding hill, its sudden drop, the darker swath of snow down there, the stone wall darker still, the even deeper dark behind it. Beneath the trees it will be nearly black. The night will crowd my eyes. I'll see branches lunge into sight, hear the roaring wind, the clatter of crashing limbs. The crack of a hinge. And they will fall like buildings detonated in the dark, like avalanches crumbling out of the air, like all the logs I've ever loaded into the splitter ripping all at once, and through them I will listen for her footsteps.\n\n# [**BEAUTIFUL  \nGROUND**](toc.html#ch6-R)\n\n_For the first time yesterday we saw shadows_.\n\n\u2014Mike Horn and Borge Ousland, North Pole\n\nExpedition, March 23, 2006\n\nNow they were setting out together, the two greatest adventurers alive trying to reach the North Pole in the dead of winter, in the Arctic's twenty-four-hour dark, on foot, day after day no different from night after night, no motors, no dogs, no nothing but the cold and the ice and them hauling sledges through the ceaseless black.\n\n_Why_ , the interviewer asked, _would you do a thing like that?_\n\nOn the radio: laughter.\n\nIt seemed to Claire to fill the studio apartment, take up what little space there was for her and Todd. Standing in the steam above the stove, she shivered. Behind her, her husband stopped chopping. She knew\u2014the way she knew this dinner they'd made together some hundred times over the years\u2014that in the breath between last laughter and next question he would say something. Still stirring, she reached back with her other hand, touched her fingers to his lips.\n\n_What is it that scares you most?_ the interviewer asked.\n\nMoving around each other in the cramped corner kitchen, they listened to the voices of the explorers\u2014 _our personal limits_ \u2014squeezing close to make room for a swinging fridge door, reaching behind for a saucepan\u2014 _the psychological effects_ \u2014occasionally brushing hips.\n\n_So much time with Borge!_\n\nLaughter.\n\n_With Mike!_\n\nLaughter.\n\nThere was a time, she thought, when he might have kissed her fingertips. When she might have left them there long enough to let him.\n\n_Data Log. Day 55. Latest position: N 88\u00b0 34' 10\" E 83\u00b0 41' 32\". Distance to go: 160 km. Temperature: \u201315\u00b0 C. Days of food left: 13. Average daily distance required: 13 km_.\n\nEvery few days the men sent word by sat phone, someone updated the blog, and each evening she sat staring at the screen while Todd slow walked preparing for sleep, finally said, _Hitting the sack_ , then shut off the lamp. She knew he didn't understand\u2014equipment failure, polar bears, their breathless _Pitch-dark 24 hours a day!! You cannot see a thing!!!_ \u2014but to her it seemed miraculous: a message from that desperate corner of the earth sent into space, caught by a satellite, directed down to her. She would read it over until the screen went dim, then stare into the blackness as if it were a patch of night sky brought back from their life before the city, the stars now replaced by a reflection of the lamp, her desk, the three-paneled divider, the rest of the room that was the rest of their home, her husband unfolding their futon bed, willing her to join him. Once, she knew, a director had forbade him to speak, ordered him to show what he wanted with just his eyes. _Make her feel it_ , the director had said. _Make her do it_.\n\n_Stand up_ , Todd's look said now. _Come to me_.\n\nFor the past quarter hour she had been staring out from her sweatshirt hood at the words: _FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE SUN!_ Fifty-four days walking in darkness, thirty in such relentless lack of light all either of the men had seen was the other's headlamp, all they'd heard was the other's breath, steps, until, far off towards the rest of the world, the blackness had cracked, a red line aglow like a chink in a cast-iron stove, day by day a dim light dawning at noon, for an hour, then two\u2014 _The light is fantastic up here! It's bluish violet with a trace of red_ \u2014the still-hidden sun pushing at the curve of the earth, trying to rise.\n\nYears ago, in a cave in Mexico, Todd had shut off his headlamp. He had reached to her forehead and shut hers off too. It was so black he told her, _I can't see your hand in front of my face_. She breathed out, _That's because it's not_. And felt his fingers, faint as breath, tracing her brow, brushing her eyelid, hovering over her cheek, her mouth. _I can see you_ , he had said. _I can see your face in front of my hand_.\n\nBehind her, the screened divider shook. In a second, he would be there, peering over the blind. She tapped the space bar; the laptop's brightness bloomed: _FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE SUN!_\n\n\"Anything happen today?\" His voice was so close it made her jerk.\n\n_We looked at the temperature gauge at the same time, but there was no change_.\n\n\"No,\" she told him, shutting the browser's window, and then her hood was off\u2014he'd tugged it\u2014and, looking up, she couldn't help but grin. \"What in the world are you wearing?\"\n\n\"Baby,\" he said, in his best Barry White, his arms spreading so the cashmere sweater's neck revealed an even wider V of bushy chest. \"Hugh Hefner\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh no.\"\n\n\"\u2014wears sweaters just like this.\"\n\nLaughing, she stood, stepped around the screen. Below his waist he wore nothing but briefs, skimpy and light, bought for the backpacking trips they used to take. \"Wow,\" she said. He looked at her as if that meant she liked them. \"No,\" she told him. And when he asked, \"Well, what are _you_ wearing?\" she looked down\u2014baggy sweatpants beneath a sweatshirt stained from that morning's co-op shift\u2014reached back, replaced her hood, stood there with a sly smile.\n\n\"Come on,\" he said.\n\n\"You don't know what I'm wearing under this.\"\n\n\"My boxers.\"\n\n\"Maybe not.\"\n\n\"And my T-shirt.\"\n\n\"Maybe I'm not wearing any underwear. Maybe I _won't_ wear\u2014\"\n\n\"Claire, you _have_ to. It buys you time. It gives you something to take off _after_ you've taken off\u2014\"\n\n\"Todd\"\u2014she put her hands on his chest, slid them to his shoulders\u2014\"we aren't really going to do this, are we?\" He had small shoulders, as if made to fit her hands. She used to like that.\n\n\"Baby,\" he said, his voice back to his voice this time, \"we could just stay home, stay in together.\" Open some wine, take it to bed. Even after these fallow weeks, she could feel how his fingers would stroke her spine, his lips would brush her eyelids, the wetness of his mouth switching from breast to breast. When had his touch begun to feel like it was wearing out her vertebrae? When had the rhythm of his breathing begun to bother her? She wanted to keep her eyes open, tell him, _Stay on one nipple_ , wished his thighs weren't so hairy, his shoulders so slim, that the worry would leave his touch, the doubt disappear from his breath. When had his lovemaking become so desperate? When had it begun to make her feel desperate too?\n\n_Data log. Day Some Thousand Some Hundred and Something. Latest position: Brooklyn, Park Slope, btwn 8th and 9th Aves. Distance to go: God knows. The rest of her life? Another year? Another night? And in the morning?_\n\nSometimes, coming back from work, climbing up the subway stairs, she thought she could feel the ice slipping away beneath her. When they first left their families, their homes, flew north for Cape Artichesky, they had felt the wind with them. But by the time they stepped onto the frozen sea, just the two alone, the gusts were blowing against them, the island of ice beneath their feet drifting backwards, pushed so steadily by the sea chop that they would slog a dozen hours northwards only to wind up standing farther south.\n\nFor a year after college she and Todd had traveled, just backpacks and boots and a different place to sleep each night: a hammock-hung porch beneath a quiet volcano, the two of them swinging in their own cocoon; a sheetless hotel where they rolled on the floor, dirt pasted to their sweat; even a mist-thick mountain pasture, him in a saddle, her on his lap, the horse drifting through the fog, the feel of it moving beneath them.\n\nThey'd come to New York for Todd's career\u2014 _I'm not getting any younger_ , he'd said at twenty-four\u2014but she had wanted it, too: the dim sum Sundays and Senegalese in Clinton Hill; mariachis on the subway home; the old Puerto Rican men blasting Juan Tizol from boom boxes in the baskets of their bicycles; the documentary festival that left them feeling they had explored the farthest corners of the world. How had it gone from that to this? Their reliable wine store, neighborhood Thai; the tailor who hemmed all his pants; the stylist who'd done her hair since '98, '97... For six years they'd been members of the massive food co-op in Park Slope, triweekly work shifts wheeling out wet boxes of mysterious greens, smashing the cardboard in the crushing machine, manning the register alongside men in turbans, dreads, tailored suits, making change for women wearing hijabs, or with tattoos on their shaved heads, too many to ever learn more than a smattering of their names. At first it had been almost an adventure. Now it was just what they did some Saturdays if they couldn't find another member willing to swap: a fellow actor who understood Todd's callbacks, a lesbian whose crush on Claire made it easy to ask. He used to tease her about that. She used to ask how his auditions went. But now every time he came back giddy Claire knew it was from some connection, some buzz, something he'd felt with someone else.\n\nSometimes, in the black of night, fissures would open, cracks in the ice. They were called leads, and they struck straight down into the sea\u2014the water dark, the depths unfathomable. Sometimes they would appear in the headlamp beams. Sometimes they would start to split right between your feet. Snow obscured thin patches of ice. Darkness hid the telltale blue. _A potential minefield. We have to test the ice cap with our ski poles, tapping the tips in front before we place our feet_. And, last week, after her last class, after she'd come home to the cracks opening all around her and told her husband it wasn't working, they were breaking apart, she didn't want them to, after he had told her, _I know, I just don't know what to do_ , that night she had not been able to get the words out of her head: _It tests our personal limits_ , Horn had written, _the drive to go beyond, it tests our personal limits, mental, spiritual, physical, it tests our personal limits_... She had fallen asleep to the sound of his voice, the image of the two men held in her mind. They were putting on their survival suits, zipping them shut over their heavy clothes, sealing their faces behind clear plastic, peering through the steam of their breath at the freezing water below, jumping in.\n\n\"You don't touch someone if she doesn't want to be touched. You don't ask again, you don't say please, you leave her alone. And you? You don't have to say yes. You don't have to say anything. You don't have to take your clothes off. But you can. If you go into a playroom, you probably should. Even if you just want to watch. You can do that. But you can't take pictures, you can't shoot video, you keep pulling out your phone we're going to ask you to leave. We catch you doing drugs, we're going to ask you to leave. We see you engaged in intercourse, we're going to ask you to take it to a playroom.\"\n\nClaire was sure she'd seen the woman before: the buzzed hair at her temples, the face red as if her thick throat was squeezed by her turtleneck; over it, she wore one of the stained quilted coats that hung outside the co-op freezer door. In one hand she held a clipboard like shift leaders used. In the other, a Sharpie tied to a string.\n\n\"Say you go into a playroom\"\u2014the woman tapped the pen against the board\u2014\"and you see someone else engaged? Say you want to engage with them? Do you just jump in?\" She looked at Todd. \"No.\" Her jowls shook. \"You wait, you watch, you ask. At an appropriate time. The middle of an orgasm is not an appropriate time.\"\n\nWhen exactly would be? Claire wanted to ask. And what might be an appropriate method of asking? From the way Todd glanced at her, she could tell he was thinking the same thing. _My name's Todd, this is my wife, nice to meet you too, why yes she is_. Watching him fish through his wallet for the suggested contribution, she half expected him to ask, _And what, when your wife wakes you in the middle of the night to suggest something like this, is the appropriate response?_\n\n\"A little advice?\" The woman was looking at them with unsettling concern, as if she had lain there in the sheets between them. \"Before you go up, take a second together.\" Her voice was almost kind. \"Figure out just what's okay, what's not okay.\" She smiled at them.\n\nOn the corner, a Town Car pulled up. The clipboard woman's face swung towards it\u2014another couple stepping out\u2014and Claire heard the vestibule door buzz behind her; she could feel the thrum straight through Todd's hand on her back. It was in his eyes, too: he looked so determined, so intent on going through with what she'd said she wanted. She imagined him looking like that at some woman in there. She imagined having to tell him it was okay.\n\n\"I want you to know,\" he said, \"that no matter how hard this is...\" She had an urge to pull him towards the cab, drag him in, but he went on: \"No matter how hard it would be for me\"\u2014he bit his bottom lip\u2014\"if you want me to 'engage' with some, say, sex-crazed supermodel...\" He stared straight into her eyes, tried for earnest: \"I want you to know it's okay. It's okay with me.\"\n\nShe fought down her smile, furrowed her brow, nodded her head. \"I appreciate that.\"\n\n\"Even if there are two of them.\"\n\n\"Even twins?\"\n\nAnd they were laughing.\n\nInside, the apartment smelled like an attempt to smother old dog scent with candles. A tiny East Indian man with a giant black beard was taking coats. He'd rung her up at the register once or twice\u2014she remembered his difficulty reaching over the counter, the eye-widening odor when he had\u2014and for a moment she wondered if they would all be co-op workers here.\n\n_Parties_ , one of the women at the cheese-wrapping table had called them. _Salons_ , the LISTSERV had said. And, riding the freight elevator up to the main floor, Claire had asked how it worked: _By invitation only_ and _no unaccompanied men_ and _sure you can bring your husband, that's what it's for_.\n\nNow, the East Indian man was handing them a small stack of cards, varicolored as the flyers people thumbtacked to the message board. She turned one over: _Kiss me_ , in cursive. Claire looked at Todd.\n\n\"Okay,\" he said.\n\nShe flipped another: _Touch me where you want to_.\n\n\"Not okay,\" he said.\n\nAnd, together, they went through the next few in the stack: _Got a tattoo?_ Okay. _Tell me a story_. Whatever. _Lick my neck_. Why not.\n\nBut the pump-top bottle of hand sanitizer beside the cut-crystal bowl filled with condoms? A little creepy. The bottle of lube? Claire shook her head. Especially not there, in the hall, on the sideboard with the family photos and Chag Purim! holiday cards.\n\nVotives flickered on the living room windowsills; a few lamps glowed in corners. She could just make out the figures dancing, others come together on couches, the floor. They searched for a place to sit that wouldn't land them on someone else's lap and, having navigated that\u2014the bench by the baby grand was free\u2014discussed, above the din, what to do next.\n\nGoing to the kitchen for a drink seemed fine, despite the man jerking cocktail shakers without a shirt, bells bouncing on his nipple rings. Even over the music, Claire could hear them jangle. The music\u2014some new age mix of sitar and synth\u2014was turned so low it left the partyers dancing in the living room unhinged from any beat. Watching them, they could make out jiggling flesh in the low light, pale flashes flapping in and out of sight. Most of the men had lost their shirts, though some still had ties swinging from their necks. Around them swung the breasts\u2014barely bumps or stretch marked with weight, browned beneath tanning booths or tub-soak pale\u2014and Todd was saying, \"Not okay, not okay, it's going to ruin them for me,\" but, to Claire, it was fine, fascinating, even beautiful. She wondered why the women with implants had done it, what they had been trying to fix, whether it had worked. She heard Todd's \"Gin and tonic?\" his \"Be right back\" but she couldn't seem to answer, couldn't stop trying to picture herself out there.\n\nIt was only once he was gone that she grew aware of those right around her. Over against a window, two men stood, naked but for a single yarmulke pinned to the back of one's head. Arms crossed behind them, hands cupping each other's rears, they peered out through a lifted blind as if pretending they were somewhere people could see stars. For a moment, the image came to her: Horn and Ousland standing on the ice outside their tent like that. She smiled. They never mentioned how they felt about each other, the loneliness, the needs. She couldn't remember them even once mentioning the stars. That seemed so strange it knocked her back into the room: the men, now kissing; the cluster of women laughing together on the couch; the dancing crowd. She wished she had a headlamp; she would look at each person, light up her face, find his eyes, move on to the next.\n\nBehind her, the piano shook: a woman leaning against the lacquered wood, her back to Claire, her arm a piston. The man pressed to her making chimp sounds.\n\nClaire picked up the icebreaker cards, tried to focus on flipping through them: _Love your lips_. The creak of weight lifted onto the piano lid. _Taste me_. A thud.\n\n\"Check it,\" she heard behind her.\n\nThe woman was on the baby grand now, the chimp man's grin sinking out of sight between her legs, his eyes on Claire. Great, she thought. No matter how long it was before Todd went down on her again, she'd wind up seeing that. The next time she unzipped his jeans, there'd be that piston hand. It struck her then: what was taking her husband so long? Standing, she looked out at the milling crowd, tried to find him coming back from the bar. She would catch his eye: _This?_ her look would say. _This is not okay_. And he would send her back his own: _No, no it's not, now let's go home_.\n\nBut her eyes never made it to him. They caught on the woman's stillness: she stood at the edge of the roiling crowd, motionless as the wall behind her, alone but for the men and women who approached to ask her questions, hold out drinks, hands, even a few cards. Some tried to touch her; her body showed no sign of feeling it; they drew their fingers back. And not once did she so much as look at them. She might have been thirty, forty, it didn't matter: swan necked, dusk skinned, black hair done by someone who knew to get out of the way of those cheekbones, she looked like the kind of woman you saw behind the windows of Tribeca wine bars, on billboards, movie screens, but not alone in a swinger's club, letting her glance slip across you.\n\nClaire turned: Todd coming towards her. And maybe it was simply that. That she knew what he was going to say when he reached her _\u2014at least we gave it a_... and _maybe it's just not_...\u2014and tomorrow the adventurers near the top of the earth would add an entry to their blog, and it would say the world had changed, the sun had hovered on the horizon all the past day and all the night, and would for the next, and the next, the darkness become a ceaseless light, and on Monday, home, they would cook another supper same as a hundred others, and say the same things to each other they always said, and not say the same things they never did, and, sometime later, go to bed, to sleep, still themselves. In her hand the cards clicked and clicked at her fingernails. In her ears, the crunch and crunch of crampons on ice. And she was reaching into her purse, taking out a pen, scribbling on the back of a card, already starting to push through the crowd, moving away from her husband before he could stop her.\n\nThey had just finished their drinks and were rising to head for their coats when the woman came up to them, held out a card, and said straight to Claire, \"What does this mean?\"\n\n_We've walked right into a compression zone. Mountains of ice as far as the eye can see_.\n\n\"A compression zone,\" Claire tried to explain, \"is where the shifting of the ice\"\u2014she could feel the woman's stare\u2014\"it causes these huge mounds, like fifty feet.\"\n\n\"What in the world?\" Reaching over, Todd took the card from the woman's hand.\n\nClaire reached out and took the woman's hand in hers. \"I'm Claire,\" she said. Shaking her hand seemed wrong. Just holding it seemed wrong, too.\n\n\"Suvi,\" the woman said. \"We were just leaving.\"\n\n\"Oh.\" Claire let go. She was with a man. He stood a little apart. \"So were we.\"\n\n\"But.\" The woman flicked her eyes at the card.\n\n\"I know,\" Claire said. \"I'm kind of obsessed.\" That sounded as wrong as holding her hand had felt. \"I mean with the Arctic, with... Do you want to sit?\"\n\nUp close, Claire thought she must be part Inuit, maybe forty-five. Her tapering eyes, her wide cheeks: just sitting on the bench with her made Claire feel beautiful. \"So,\" she heard, and out of the corner of her eye saw the man extend a hand towards her staring husband, wiggle his fingers. \"Did you intend to give me this?\" She couldn't place his accent\u2014Russian? Swedish?\u2014but watching Todd turn over the card, there was no mistaking the man's grin. _Taste me_ , Claire thought, but she was already telling the woman about the expedition. \"It's the first time anyone's ever even tried to do it. But that's not _why_. They've both done harder things.\"\n\n\"Really?\" the woman said.\n\nIt didn't mean _tell me more_ , Claire knew that, but the woman's eyes stayed locked on her, and she couldn't help going on. \"You know the Arctic Circle?\"\n\nThe woman smiled. \"I'm from Karelia,\" she said. \"Near Finland.\"\n\n\"One of them circumnavigated\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm from Long Island.\" The man had reappeared with a pouf in his arms. \"One hour and a half from here.\" He set down the ottoman. \"At least that's where we're from now. Belle Terre.\" Squatting next to it, he raised his eyes to Todd, gave the leather top two pats. \"Actually, a little over an hour, this time of night, the way I drive.\" He made a fist, jerked his arm like he was shifting gears. There was so much muscle on him that his smile seemed a pushup for his jaw. \"My name's Oleg,\" he told them, nose flexing. He must have been sixty. At least six feet tall. He said he used to work in astronomy, and Claire pictured him retiring to learn ice climbing, trading days in the office for days at the gym. His head looked waxed, his shoulders huge.\n\nWatching Claire, Suvi smiled too. \"So, if _why_ is not that they're the first...\"\n\n\"It's everything,\" Claire told her. \"The bears, the cracks in the ice, the endless night\u2014\"\n\n\"You have beautiful lips,\" Suvi said.\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\n\"She does,\" Oleg told Todd.\n\n\"I know,\" Todd said.\n\nClaire reached up, took his hand. \"He's been kissing them for almost ten years,\" she said and, gently, led him to sit on the ottoman. It huffed beneath him. Beneath her hand she could feel their rings, the tension in his fingers. \"You must know how it is,\" she said to Suvi. \"Finland, in the middle of winter. But they're so far north there's no sun at all, ever, for months. That was one of the two things that scared them most.\"\n\n\"What was the other?\" Oleg asked. He was still squatting, his legs so big they might as well have been a chair, and before she could answer he sprang a grin. \"So many months without their wives!\"\n\nFrom nearby in the crowd there came the sound of a woman ramping up to shrieking.\n\n\"Or\"\u2014Oleg swung his grin to Todd, shot out a little elbow jab\u2014\"maybe not.\"\n\nWhen Todd spoke, he had to shout over the ecstatic noise. \"The fact that they're together,\" he said. \" _That's_ the other thing.\" Maybe he said it louder than he had to. All three looked at him. \"The Amazon, the Arctic Circle, they've always done it solo. But now they're going together. Just the two of them. For months.\"\n\nClaire squeezed his hand.\n\n\"And you know what?\" Todd said. \"They're doing okay.\" He glanced at Claire. \"What was it they wrote?\"\n\n\"Todd\u2014\"\n\n\"A pretty good team,\" he prompted.\n\nWhat, Claire thought, were they doing to that woman?\n\n\"They wrote: 'We make a pretty good team.'\"\n\nNobody, she thought, needs to make that kind of noise. That kind of noise was never real. Suvi's eyes found hers as if to show she was thinking the same thing.\n\n\"Still seems crazy to me,\" Oleg said.\n\n\"But,\" Suvi said, \"beautiful, too.\"\n\n\"Sometimes,\" Claire told her, \"the ice is like a mosaic. They have to jump from floe to floe.\" She could feel both men looking at her, but she kept her eyes on Suvi's. \"Sometimes in the compression zones they can hear the sound of it under their feet, crushing and grinding.\"\n\n\"Well\"\u2014Oleg stood up\u2014\"I can hardly hear _anything_ in here. But it's quiet at home. And I can get us there in an hour.\" He buttoned his blazer. \"It's a Cayenne,\" he said, talking now to Todd. \"Twin turbocharged. Five hundred horses. Tell you what, in the morning, or the afternoon, or whenever we take you back, I'm going to let you drive.\"\n\nWhen Suvi stood, Claire stood too. On Todd's face, she could see _This, this is not okay_ , and she tried to show him _It will be_ , but he was putting it all in his eyes in a way that would have made that director proud: _Sit down_ and _Don't do this_ and _Please_. That was when Suvi leaned down and kissed him.\n\nAt last they are moving. The wind has died down, the helicopter motors have been heated, they have left their lodgings at Golomiyanniy, the ice at Cape Artichesky has frozen firm enough to land, and, after so much waiting, they are on their way. What a relief to take the first step, put words into action. _There is nothing but possibility ahead!_\n\nTurning left onto Atlantic, they head west towards the ramp, and by the time they are on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway it is midnight. _The light is fantastic from here! It's orangish brown with a trace of ochre near the city's horizon_. The bulbs on the bridge cables could almost be stars; the headlights of oncoming cars, comets; the hand on Claire's thigh so unlike her husband's. Oleg is driving fast: beneath her, the thump, thump, thump of the expansion joints in the road. Her whole body clenches in expectation of the potholes. In the visor mirror, Todd is sitting next to the most beautiful woman Claire has ever seen. Certainly, the most beautiful woman she has ever seen beside her husband in the backseat of a Porsche SUV. Without a doubt, the most beautiful woman she has ever seen snorting coke.\n\n\"Eight point six miles,\" Oleg says as they complete their leg of the BQE and begin the Long Island Expressway. \"Seven minutes, fifty-four seconds.\" He has set the trip odometer on the GPS. \"But,\" he assures them, his hand slipping farther into her lap, \"now we are going to see real road.\"\n\nIn the mirror: Suvi's long fingers handing Todd a tight-rolled bill, an eye shadow case, white stripe across its top. They must be at mile nine by the time Claire hears her husband say, \"Sure.\"\n\nAt 9.7 Oleg snorts his line. Claire knows this because he asks her to hold the wheel. Leaning over, she can see the map of where they are, the blue dot moving away from where they were; then he is bent beneath her arm, his head ducked close to her lap, and she wonders if he can smell her nervousness, feel her heat. When it's her turn, she doesn't look at the miles. She watches the little blue dot sucked along the yellow line and feels it slip straight up between her eyes into her brain.\n\n\"Hey,\" she says to Oleg, \"how fast are we going?\"\n\nAs if in response, he turns on music. Frenetic techno stuff, like road trip music made not for them but for the blue dot, for its adventure on the GPS screen, music so bad she has to look back at Todd to see the expression on his face. But he is staring fiercely out the window at the night blowing by. Suvi stares the same way into Claire's eyes. And Claire thinks, No, the music is for them. It is the soundtrack for the trip they are on. The theme for this. And she likes it. She knows she shouldn't, but her body is bouncing just a little in her seat. That's when she realizes she hasn't felt the potholes at all. \"This _is_ a nice car,\" she says.\n\n\"Wait till you see the house,\" Oleg tells her.\n\nSuvi nods. About the car, the house, or just to the music?\n\n\"We must be making good time,\" Todd says, still staring out the window.\n\nThe look on his face is a picture of the hardening in his voice, and watching her husband Claire tries to soften it. \"Rapid progress,\" she says. \"A new record!\" There, at last, is his smile. \"An impressive distance covered today!\"\n\nTodd puffs a laugh out of his nose like a snort in reverse.\n\n\"Your husband,\" Suvi says, smiling too, \"is afraid to look at me.\"\n\n\"Eighty-five,\" Oleg tells them. \"Ninety. Ninety-five.\"\n\nWhen Claire turns back, the road is coming faster than she has ever seen it come before.\n\n\"Aaand,\" Oleg says, the word like a ramp for the volume of his voice, \"Et hundre!\"\n\nThe blue dot is a pinball struck.\n\n\"Et hundre og ti! Et hundre og tuje! Et hundre og tretti!\"\n\nIs a BB bursting down the barrel of a gun.\n\n\"Et hundre og femti!\"\n\nIs them.\n\nOn the GPS screen something is flashing. A turn approaching, a new route found, a course on the map waiting to be blazed, a signal sent from her into space and back down to her again, and maybe the satellite that catches it is the same that catches the voices of the men\u2014 _Life is short! Each minute is important_!\u2014maybe the wavelengths simply get mixed up, but, for a moment, feeling the night roar at her, rocketing towards that beautiful land\u2014 _Live while you can!_ \u2014she can hear them.\n\nBut which one was inside her? For a moment, she couldn't tell. It was so dark she couldn't even see the wall her palms were pressed against. They had gone down to a room in the basement and sat on a carpet of some animal's fur, around a glass-top table, watched Suvi cut the lines. _But why now?_ Oleg had wondered, aloud, without warning, his pale eyes on Claire. And she had started with _global warming, the world's attention_ \u2014but Oleg shook his head. _No_ , he said, _it's because of the global brightening_. And holding her eyes with his, he had leaned in, told her in a voice low and hushed as the start of a bedtime story how, far to the north, beside the Bering Sea, there glowed a circle of light illumined on the tundra all day, all night. _This_ , he opened his hands, _is only the start_. Which was when Todd had broken in. _Okay_ , her husband had said, _all right already_. They had all looked at him, and Claire could see on his face that he had glimpsed what had been growing on hers. _But we turn off the lights_ , he said. _All of them, understand?_ He held the rolled bill so tight his fingers dented it. _I don't want to see anything_.\n\nBut she could feel it. Either Oleg was the kind of older man whose entire body balded as it aged, or he had waxed, his hairless thighs so unlike her husband's, the muscles stiff with the same strain that in Todd's legs always showed as shaking. In her ear, the astronomer was whispering how good she felt. In the minutes after the coke was gone and the lights were off and she had discovered the softness of a woman's lips brushing her belly, she _had_ felt good, had wanted, then, to believe what Oleg said: that circle of ceaseless glow, that nighttime sun reflected onto that patch of earth. In the darkness, she had wondered if the caromed light would look a little different, if it might feel somehow strange against her skin. And, for a moment, beneath the strangers' touches, in the newness of Suvi's search and find, the woman learning her down there, she _had_ felt it, she _had_ believed in it, for a moment had not wondered where her husband was.\n\nWhere was he now? She tried to hear, but Oleg, behind her, was grunting the way he must at the gym when doing squats, gripping her breasts like climbing-wall holds, and, imagining him\u2014neck bulged, jaw clenched, face red\u2014she saw, for a second, the two men instead, hauling their heavy sledges through true dark, pushing their bodies with real need, and it suddenly seemed so foolish. Staring hard into the blackness, she tried to listen harder: Oleg's wife moaning, Claire's husband breathing. Reaching back, she pushed herself free, heard her name, heard it again, but she was walking away from the sound of it then, hands held out before her sightless eyes.\n\nSoon, the men would reach the Pole, take one last step, and be standing on it. And then? Any step they took from there could only take them back. To the south there would be the sun, slowly circling the horizon. No mere experiment, no mirrored wings, but a natural never-ending light. All day, all night, they would watch its circumnavigation, knowing it wasn't really moving at all, that it was them, the earth beneath them, making another turn. They would stand there until the sun was back where it had started. Then they would do the only thing there was to do: begin walking again.\n\nCrouching down, she felt the cold, hard floor. How many other women had Oleg pressed down on it? How many other men had Suvi let shove her spine against these boards? And how long would they keep doing it? Till his legs could no longer hold him? Till her back grew too weak? The only difference night after night the change that time would have worked in them anyway. And when the men on the Pole came home again, their skin windburned away, their lungs scraped clean by Arctic air, the life in them spent and replaced, would even they be truly different from when they'd left? To a lover? A wife? Crawling through the darkness, Claire felt for the curve of her husband's calf, his forearm's hair, the hand that she would know anywhere.\n\nBut it was a woman's that brushed her. Claire jerked her hip away. In the blackness, she could barely make them out: pale glint of teeth, dark ledge of back. Almost invisible, it rose and fell as if the air itself was undulating. For a moment, she could feel the movement just beneath her reached-out palm. Then she touched him. His shoulder stopped. From the darkness under him, the woman said something in a language Claire couldn't understand. Nearer, Todd's breathing gusted. Through his back she could feel his lungs fill, feel her own empty, hear the _what_ and _we_ and _doing_ in their air.\n\nAnd then he was rising, as if pushed by the darkness beneath him, and in the scuff of skin on floorboards, the space where the woman had been seemed to pull Todd down to it, to draw Claire over him, her hands reading the give of his skin, the bone she could feel beneath her palms when she lowered herself onto him. She pressed with all her weight to keep him still. And, her hands on his face, she traced him with her fingers\u2014the ripples raised above his brow, the blink of a lash, the slightly open mouth\u2014until she felt his fingers, his touch, his hands see her.\n\nWe wake together, the way our bodies after all this time have learned to do, and, silently, side by side, in the dark, we dress: long underwear, soft shell, overlayer, down layer, wind shell, neck gaiter, face mask. The rasping of our nylon mummy bags being stuffed into their sacks. The heavy, sour scent of our bodies. From somewhere deep beneath the tent floor: the groaning ice. Wind batters the sides, cold coming through. We breathe one last warm breath onto our frostbitten fingers, pull on our gloves, turn on our headlamps, reach for the zippered door.\n\nClimbing the stairs, we leave behind the sounds of the others still sleeping, and with each step discern a little more: vague shadows in the hall, faint shapes in unfamiliar rooms, windows like giant frames of scenes unknown. The glass in them is aglow with dawn. By the time we are out in it, the sun is up, a splinter of red.\n\n_How hard to get from here to home?_\n\nA spark.\n\n_How long a walk?_\n\nA coal.\n\n_How far?_\n\nBlown brighter and brighter.\n\n_Data log_.\n\nUntil.\n\n_Latest position_.\n\nIt catches.\n\n_Distance to go_.\n\nAnd we watch it burn up the sky.\n\n_The spring equinox has arrived. We can see now that what we were seeing before was only a reflection. It wasn't the sun at all. Now we are looking at the real sun. And it is something different altogether_.\n\n# [**THE FIRST  \nBAD THING**](toc.html#ch7-R)\n\nThere was one rule: he didn't ask what was in her past to make them hunt her so, and she didn't ask what was in his, period. Lying on the sticky linoleum in what space was left beside the four burner they had overturned, they passed a filterless lips to lips and promised each other that.\n\nSome hours ago she had shown up in the rear lot, announced by the gravel. He'd just begun his shift and was in the spray shed standing before the night's first pane of glass, adjusting the nozzle, when he heard the truck. Through the open garage door he watched it roll to a stop. He didn't like that the pickup had come around the back and his eyes flicked over the garage for what he might use if he had to. Then the engine quit and his eyes flicked back. She popped the door. The cab light flared. In its yellow glow she sat behind the wheel doing her makeup in a way he could tell was meant to show she knew someone was watching.\n\nBetween them the outside lot was aglow with an eerie luminescence barely distinguishable from the cab light glowing within it. Behind her truck, one of the glass carriers had been left stacked and on its back the panes reflected the sky, glimmering like day. But it was full into night. And what dim semblance of dusk hung over Rundgren's lot was just the closest thing to darkness there was left. Most nights it was even brighter\u2014the big sign out front readable from the far curve of the road, the garage's clear ceiling letting in plenty of light to work by for all his night-spanning shift\u2014but that night the garage was bulb lit, the sign turned on and flickering: RUNDGREN'S ILLUMINATION VARIATION. ADJUSTABLE OPACITY GLASS, REFLECTIVE RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY.\n\nHearkening, the locals called it, nights like this when clouds left the air thick with the closeness of rain, the hills swaddled in dimness for a few short hours. People would get wistful. They gathered on porches, talked of how night used to be: _pitch black_ and _couldn't see your hand in front of your face_ and _stars_. They waited for the rain, and watched the sky. Up there, the pale lights of the space mirrors drifted. The coat of clouds was spotted with them: a thousand smothered moons glowing faintly through.\n\nIn their pallid light the entire hillside behind her truck was grayed over and still, as if in wait for the downpour, and the gravel lot was bluely waiting, and while he stood there waiting the sky let loose and the rain came down in one solid sheet.\n\nShe came walking through it. She had pulled on a poncho, yellow plastic down past her knees. Beneath it he could just make out her shape.\n\nHe pried his eyes away\u2014pulled the respirator over his mouth and flicked the pump switch and began laying on a thin coat of spray\u2014and when she came in his eyes were on her again. She shoved off her hood and stood there dripping rain on the rubber mat: low tocking drops that beaded blackly around her black rain-beaded boots.\n\nSliding his mask off, he said a hello. She said something back. But he was looking at her face, a face so pale her skin almost looked blue with the blood beneath her cheeks. Until he looked at her eyes and knew what blue was.\n\n\"You brought the rain,\" he said.\n\n\"Do I look like I like rain?\" she said.\n\n\"No, I guess not.\"\n\n\"Alright then.\"\n\nThe spray pump hummed between them.\n\nHe told her, \"If you're looking for the manager, Mr. Rundgren's\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm looking to stay away from the manager.\"\n\n\"There stands a wise woman,\" he said.\n\nShe smiled at him. She was missing a tooth at the side of her mouth and it did a black thing that was the opposite of wink. After a moment she said, \"You gonna spray the whole van?\"\n\n\"Shit.\" He jerked his look back to the nozzle, already thumbing the spray gun off: it had drifted from the glass and was pointed at the van he'd unloaded earlier that night. A murky slick of In-Solar window coating spread across the open cargo door. \"Fuck,\" he said and wiping at the smear with his coverall sleeve, thinking of how much the spray was worth, how little he made, what a hardass Mr. Rundgren was, said a few things worse.\n\nIn one move, she reached over, lifted the respirator mask from around his neck, and pressed it over his mouth. She stood there grinning. Then let go. The mask dropped. He could feel the cool air hit the sweat around his lips.\n\n\"I take it back,\" he said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"All that about the wisdom bottled up in those blue, blue eyes.\"\n\n\"Don't even try,\" she said.\n\n\"I just did.\"\n\n\"Don't try again.\"\n\n\"About the wisdom bottled up in those blue, blue, _blue_ eyes.\"\n\nShe tried not to laugh and then he could see her think screw it and she laughed.\n\nShe said, \"You can call my eyes purple and I'm still not gonna fuck you.\"\n\nHe leaned back against the van, his shoulder blades pushing the coverall against the wet patch, let the spray do what damage it would. \"Yes ma'am,\" he said. \"I guess that saves me asking.\"\n\nShe laughed again. \"What can I do for you,\" she prompted.\n\n\"What can I do for you?\" he said.\n\n\"That.\" She was pointing at him.\n\nHe stuck his own gloved finger at his chest but she shook her head and he cranked his face to look behind him at the drying smear of spray. \"On what?\"\n\n\"My truck.\"\n\n\"You put that on the windshield and you're not gonna be able to\u2014\"\n\n\"No. My truck.\"\n\n\"The whole truck?\"\n\n\"Think like a paint job,\" she said.\n\n\"You have any idea how much that would cost?\"\n\n\"Why do you think I'm talking to you instead of the manager?\"\n\n\"You could be rich,\" he said.\n\n\"You could be handsome.\"\n\nHe grinned. He had not trimmed his beard in a long time and he could feel the whiskers tickle the corners of his mouth and wished he had. \"I'd lose my job,\" he said.\n\nShe stood looking at him. Between the tops of her lumberjack boots and the bottom of the yellow slicker there was a stretch of shinflesh, white. Beneath the plastic there was a dress whose color he couldn't tell other than that it was dark, cut in a shape he didn't know how to describe except that it came nary lower than her upper thigh and was loose around everywhere and then suddenly tighter just below her breasts and cut low, too, and it didn't matter because she was looking at him in a way that made him unable to keep his eyes from hers.\n\n\"Can I say something?\" he asked her.\n\n\"If you've got a tongue,\" she said.\n\nAnd he leaned against the van, letting the wet glaze soak into his back and wondering if she was working him in a way that he would find out later was just the way she worked men, or if she felt, too, their pulses passing back and forth like jump lightning making its cauterizing leap from vein to vein.\n\nShe drove the Ram into the garage while he stood inside and waved her forwards, his gloved hands motioning her a little more, a little more. He spread his palm for her to stop. She pushed the clutch and revved the gas and waited for him to scurry. But he just stood there, giving her a hard eye, and she felt it again, something in the way he looked at her that made her sure he had survived something worse than anything she'd have to up ahead. It eased her nerves. She thought on how it would feel to have that beside her where she was going. She shut the engine off. He already had a slab of cardboard pressed to the long window of the camper shell that humped the truckbed behind her, and in the sideview she watched a boxcutter appear in his hand, trace the line of her window, something in his quick ease with the blade, its sudden appearance and disappearance when he was done, that cranked her nerves back up again. She watched him through the windows of the cab while one by one he blacked them out. His hair was a tangled self-cut mess as greasy looking as his mechanic suit and his beard was so long it was tangled up with it and when he was done with all but the driver's side, he leaned in.\n\nIn-Solar or refracted glaze, he asked her. She told him whatever would change the color most. He told her he had no clue. On glass In-Solar let the daylight in and kept out the glow sent down from the sky all night. Refracted did the opposite. But neither was meant for metal. She told him _whatever_ and _take a chance_ and rolled her window up.\n\nHe taped it over. \"Get out,\" he told her.\n\nShe pressed the lock down. Sitting in the darkness inside the cab, listening to the thunder of the spray on the metal around her, she could imagine his face rippled with the shadows of the rain, and the wan light seeping through the clear glass roof and above that the clouds with the reflected light leaking through and above them the mirrors. There were a thousand of them, or more. The government kept sending new ones up. They drifted ceaselessly across the sky in their ceaseless drifting orbit, their giant reflectors spread like parachutes meant to catch the sun instead of wind. They took its brightness and refracted it and sent it down upon the land, and for years now they had taken night away from the world and replaced it with their constant gloaming. Even in the first days of her life, even in the moment when she must have opened her eyes for the first time and gazed upwards, that was all she had ever known of night.\n\nHe was still at work when she shoved open the door and burst out, gasping. She grabbed at the cardboard on a window of the camper shell and wrenched it off. He quit spraying. In the sudden quiet beneath the rain there was just the sound of her ripping tape loose and the cardboard skittering across the floor and then she was yanking the airgun from his hands and had let loose all over the shell, plastic and glass and all of it.\n\nWhen she handed him the nozzle back, he took it without looking at it, his eyes never leaving her. \"You know you won't be able to see out the back in the day.\"\n\n\"I'm not driving in the day,\" she said.\n\nThen she tore off the rest of the cardboard, left it scattered around the garage floor like something dropped from a great height and exploded, and got back in the truck. He stood behind it. In the passenger side mirror he could see her hand reach over and unlock the passenger door.\n\nThey drove to the place that was the closest thing he could claim as his, a trailer on Catawba Creek that belonged to a friend who had one day disappeared to no one knew where. On the road, she pulled over and got out and squatted above the mud at the edge of the wet scrub while in the cab he rifled through the dross of her life that she'd left on the seat, his eyes glancing out the window at her eyes staring back. The whole walk around the front of the truck her stare didn't quit. It stilled his searching. She climbed in and before she had even shut the door they started at it. She drove\u2014barely\u2014and told him where and how, and they barely made it across the yard of sogged grass and wetter mud to the pine steps that rose before the door, and they didn't make it past the door. It was a backroad off a backroad but at least two vehicles passed while they were at it on the mud-slick steps and she didn't care and he didn't either. The rain came down on the tin roof. Lower, heavier, in the pooling yard. He ran around naked and tanned except where he was white as a peeled frog, looking behind each cinder block piling for the key while she laughed at him. When he found it and got the door open, she grabbed him by the flesh at his waist and dug in her nails and she was stronger than he would have guessed but should have known.\n\nInside, they lay into each other like mountain cats tied tail to tail. That was how his grandfather used to say the hill people did it and when they were done he told it to her. She laughed.\n\n\"Tails tied nothing,\" she said.\n\nThe ceiling above them was made of laminate strips painted to look like wood. Some had come loose and bowed down. He couldn't remember if they had hung like that before. It wouldn't have surprised him if they'd been tight and flush an hour ago, two, whatever. In the living room a busted couch arm hung by its upholstery. In the bathroom the ceramic toothbrush holder once attached to the wall lay scattered in its many ceramic parts. In the bedroom: the bamboo blinds in a heap below the window, the mattress shucked of sheets, pillows strewn. In the kitchen: pieces of plates littered beneath the table and the ones that had survived lying there dumbfounded and whitefaced as if traumatized at how they had been used. And mud simply everywhere.\n\nThey lay there smoking. The rain drummed on the roof and then quit and there was just the rush of the creek roiling by. A breath of air blew in through the still-open door and drew a shiver across them.\n\nHe said, \"I know it's what you're supposed to say, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Then don't say it.\"\n\n\"But you know what.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Me never either.\"\n\n\"You said it,\" he said.\n\nShe nodded. \"How come we didn't go to your place?\"\n\n\"Look around you,\" he said.\n\nHer smile did something to him, already, that made him want to see it again as if it was something he needed or would get the shakes, and he hadn't known her half a day.\n\n\"You didn't know how it would be,\" she said.\n\n\"I knew. But also there's that I don't so much really have a place.\"\n\n\"Where do you sleep?\"\n\n\"Rundgren's,\" he said. \"In the cargo vans.\"\n\nShe looked at him.\n\n\"Yes ma'am,\" he said. \"I have my pick of the seats.\"\n\n\"They don't pay you enough to get yourself a room?\"\n\nHe took one last drag and blew three smoke rings and rubbed the butt out between his fingers and flicked it against the wall and it bounced back and almost landed on her. One of the things he'd done made her smile again. He wished he knew which it was. He was old enough to have learned there was a kind of woman that did it for him and knew it was the allure of something dark in them they hid or tried to hide, and knew too that learning what it was always made it leave. But watching her so close he could see the dark grains of makeup below her eyes he thought she was not just his kind of woman, but the woman the idea of his kind was based on, and if the feeling was going to leave he wanted it gone.\n\n\"What are you running from?\" he said.\n\n\"I'd like to see you try and shrink my head.\"\n\n\"I meant it literal.\"\n\n\"I'm not,\" she said.\n\n\"You keep a Chief's Special .45 just to the terrorize the squirrels?\"\n\nShe looked at him and she wasn't smiling and in her eyes was what he'd thought he'd glimpsed while they went at it but it was rarified and stripped clean now and in all truth it scared him.\n\nHe said, \"Well, if you didn't want me to find it, you shoulda hid it a better place than the glove box.\"\n\n\"Who says all the other hiding places aren't already full?\"\n\n\"I wouldn't doubt it,\" he said. \"I've never seen hollow tips for anything but a rifle shell before, at least not in a box in the truck of a woman who claimed not to be running from someone.\"\n\n\"What if I'm hunting someone instead.\"\n\n\"Then I'd pity them. But you're not.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" she said, \"I guess you want to tell me why you're living in the back of a van and covered up in that fucking beard and have got right there what I'm guessing was once a tattoo of a butterfly or a little bird or something, which I mean whatever, but why the fuck'd you try to hide it with that nasty hand pricked shit that looks just fucking nasty and, while you're at it, how about touching on why you took the boxcutter with you and how come you have spare blades sewn into pockets on the inside of your belt?\"\n\n\"You don't like the beard?\" he said.\n\n\"I didn't say that. And you wouldn't show me your driver's license picture.\"\n\n\"I told you I don't have one.\"\n\n\"My point,\" she said. \"And won't even tell me your fucking name.\"\n\n\"You didn't tell me yours,\" he said.\n\n\"There you go.\" She said it like he'd won her argument for her.\n\nHe got up and walked to the open door and stood there, naked, leaning against the doorjamb, looking out at the empty dirt road.\n\n\"I'm guessing you're gonna move on soon,\" he said. When she didn't say anything he looked back at her and she was lying there sprawled out still in her boots and nothing else and she rose onto her elbows and looked at him and he saw the way her breasts remade themselves into a new and equally perfect and still unexpected shape and knew that would be in his mind for a long, long time and he looked back at the road and said, \"Shit.\"\n\nHe heard her come up behind him. She didn't bring a towel or a sheet or anything but the pack of smokes, bright green in her hand, just stood there naked beside him naked in the door.\n\n\"You're gonna attract attention to yourself,\" he said.\n\nShe smacked the pack and drew one out and realized she had forgotten to bring the lighter. She stood there holding the long white useless thing. The rain had quit and the clouds had piled onto the horizon and the rest of the sky was clear. The whole valley was lit up like a work site, the pale trunks of the beech trees and the needles of the pines bright in the floodlit forest, the dirt road clear of darkness as a city street, the flat roofs of the trailers in the trailer park around them gleaming, and on them the pooled rainwater and in the water the reflections of the sky: all the mirrors, like a thousand full moons swarming, shining down their reflected shards of day.\n\nAcross the road there was a dog house in the full blast, in front of it a metal bowl turned over and on fire with gleam. There was a dog standing on its roof. There was no owner's house to go with it, or trailer, or anything. Just woods and a dirt patch and the dog house and then more woods. In the woods, he knew, there were still some animals left, but he had not seen a dog since what seemed forever. As a boy he'd had one, but after the mirrors were launched they had to put it down. It had gone mad at the constant light. All the animals did. They seemed to have lost all sense of what was natural to them. Some had stopped mating and died off. Some had migrated south, confused and desperate, and had not been able to outrun the light that always followed and had turned violent in a way that people talked of with a sense of shame. It was as if they no longer knew what they themselves were and they tried to get into the houses and garages and anywhere that was sometimes blessed with a manmade dark, and once there they did things to each other that people didn't want to look at it, so most of them were killed off, too. Others had gone north and it was rumored they had found the line where true night began again. People talked of the possibility of pets up there.\n\n\"I wonder whose dog that is,\" he said.\n\nShe reached over and wedged the unused cigarette behind his ear and left it there. She looked at him. \"Cute,\" she said.\n\n\"It's not even guarding anything,\" he said.\n\n\"Maybe it's guarding this trailer. Maybe it's your friend's.\"\n\n\"It'd be nothing but the bones of a dog.\"\n\n\"You should come with me,\" she said.\n\nA car sent its noise around the bend and came after it and the dog leapt off the roof of its house and hit the ground running and ran for no more than a second before it was jerked into a backflip and landed in the dirt. The car passed through the barking of the dog, its small yellow dusklights glowing and the rainwater spraying from its tires and in the thin spatter of its wake the dog did the same thing again.\n\n\"Would you look at that,\" he said.\n\n\"You heard me,\" she said.\n\nThe road puddles returned to rocking the reflections of the mirrors above and the dog stood there barking at the dwindling sound of the tires and stopped and then slowly climbed back onto its roof again. He knew it was just the end of the chain but he liked to think it was some invisible something that the dog had come up against and could not pass, he liked to think that, and he thought she would like to think it too and he told it to her.\n\nShe reached across to his head exactly as she had done with the cigarette and found with her fingers a grease-and-sweat-bound curl and played with it.\n\n\"Do I get to ask where you're going?\" he said.\n\n\"If you're coming,\" she said. She looked to the east and watched the top of the ridge where the new mirrors slid into view, the whole sky creeping at the speed of their orbit. He watched it too. \"Away from that,\" she said.\n\n\"North or south?\"\n\n\"Is that you asking?\"\n\nHe reached up and caught her hand at his neck and pulled her to him and said, \"You fucking bet.\"\n\nThey wound up in the exact same spot on the same patch of floor staring up at the same ceiling and none of it had been similar at all. The cigarette was still behind his ear. She took it and they both looked at it as if there was no way of accounting for the fact, as if she held between her fingers evidence of God's approval, and he lit it and they smoked it down while the light thrown by the mirrors probed the kitchen around them and they promised their one rule to each other. Then she reached over with the cigarette and ground it out on his chest. He shouted and leapt up and stood there swearing.\n\n\"You know you like it,\" she said.\n\nOutside, the dog stood on its roof, barking at them, or at the mirrors sweeping the sky above, or just at a world it had been pinned to and left in and given no way of understanding what for or even ever learning why.\n\nThey drove during the long dusk, which was what people used to call night but could not be called that now, and they kept to back roads, wending their way northwards along the spine of the Appalachians, up past Winchester and Stroudsburg and into Pennsylvania. The land bellied out and the horizons flattened and the barns changed to stone and the houses, too. The sky stayed the same. The mirrors filled it and moved on and it was filled by more. They were aimed by signal to throw their reflective beams down on cities as they passed, or prison yards, or factories, or forests where men worked cutting timber through all hours, or construction sites where buildings went up without pause for dark, or ballparks with their floodlights defunct, and anywhere where costs could be cut and productivity doubled by the simple continuation of light. Driving, they could see the bright patches of near daylight where the beams landed and they avoided them if they could. Elsewhere it was just the peripheral glow, a cold luminescence like the landscape under a full moon with its brightness cranked up to double. The mirrors floated where the stars used to be, winking as they shifted to meet a need, larger than stars, and smaller than moons, and like nothing the sky had seen before. The moon, when it was out, hung dully in the hidden darkness beyond them, the breathfog of a moonshape, resigned.\n\n\"Alright,\" she said out of nowhere, \"let's talk about the future then.\"\n\n\"Alright,\" he said.\n\n\"What are you gonna do up there?\"\n\n\"Try to get across the border.\"\n\n\"I mean after.\"\n\n\"How are we gonna get across it?\"\n\n\"I want to talk about the future future,\" she said.\n\n\"In the future I'm gonna ask you again how we're gonna get across the border.\"\n\nShe picked up something on the seat next to her and threw it at him. It hit the window like it would have done more than just hurt.\n\n\"Jesus,\" he said. He felt at the chip in the glass and said, \"Jesus you're a bitch.\" She was smiling sweetly at him and he forgave her so fast he forgot if he had ever held it against her. \"What are you gonna do?\" he said.\n\nThat was when she told him she had never seen the night. Not the real night, the way it was when he was a growing up. She had seen a planetarium. She spoke of it as if it was almost the real thing and he decided not to tell her how far from real it was. She drove and daydreamed aloud on how the real night must be and all her ideas were wrong in small ways\u2014he thought on how sounds crystallized in dark and how the moon broke the black horizon in a different place each night and sometimes it was orange and squashed by the sky it was trying to rise through as if the stars had amassed their weight against it and meant to push it back\u2014and in the middle of it he told her that planetariums weren't anything like the real thing at all.\n\n\"You've really never seen it?\" he said, and in her silence tried to count back to the years when the mirrors first began to fill the sky. \"How young are you anyway?\"\n\n\"How old are you?\" she said. And then: \"Old enough to have done something bad.\"\n\n\"You or me?\"\n\n\"Both.\"\n\n\"Why do you think I've done something bad?\" he asked her.\n\n\"Why do you think I have?\"\n\n\"Because you told me. You said I wasn't to ask what you'd done to run from, which implies there was something you did that warranted the running. Besides, a woman like you doesn't get past puberty without doing something to make her parents cry and moan and gnash their teeth.\"\n\n\"That's what you like about me,\" she said.\n\n\"I don't mean sexual.\"\n\n\"I don't either.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said. \"It probably is.\"\n\n\"It's what I like about you,\" she said.\n\n\"You don't know anything about me.\"\n\n\"I know you won't let me ask you about anything, which if you think my one thing is something not to ask about, what does that say about your life full?\"\n\n\"It doesn't say I've done anything bad. Could be something bad was done to me. Could be there was just a general badness in the world and I've lived through it.\"\n\n\"Could be,\" she said. \"But it's not.\"\n\n\"Well you don't know, or will,\" he said.\n\n\"Yeah,\" she said. \"That's what I like in you.\"\n\n\"Not knowing me?\"\n\n\"Knowing there's something to know and not knowing it and knowing you won't let me know it.\"\n\n\"You're how old?\" he said.\n\n\"Twenty,\" she said.\n\nHe sat there listening to the bad music and watching the hotspots in the distance glowing bright where the mirrors were focusing their beams.\n\n\"What?\" she said.\n\n\"That's older than I'd thought.\"\n\nIt was nearly true dawn when they pulled onto an old farm road and by the time it dead-ended in a thickness of woods, the sunrise was slicing between the eastwards trees. Westwards a blinding doppelganger glinted: the last of the mirrors setting. They got out and stood watching the truck change color. It had been red with a white camper shell when she had brought it to him, and under the mirrors the spray had turned it the color of bruised cherries topped by the yellow of coffee-stained teeth and now in the full sun it was all deep brown. They had driven it wet and bugs and grit had stuck in it as it dried. With his fingers he peeled away some insect's wing, held it up into the sunlight, watched it darken to black.\n\nShe climbed into the truck bed and he tossed the wing and climbed in after her. Inside there was a pileup of suitcases in the corner by one of the wheel humps, all of a rolling set, and all unzipped upon wild spillages of female wear, and wedged in beside the other wheel hump was a plastic fishing tackle box unlatched and the plastic trays risen out of it and all the colors of all her makeup strewn and jumbled as if someone had shaken the box like a die, and behind the suitcases and the makeup sat a large plywood trunk, fit flush from bedwall to bedwall along the back of the cab, unpainted and lidded and locked. On it someone had wood burned the word HOWELL. Before it was another word that had been scratched and gouged till it was unreadable now. She was flapping out a wool army blanket and as she let it settle he saw it again, stenciled in black: HOWELL. And again the antecedent word defaced.\n\nShe shut the gate and pulled the rear windshield shut above it. The windows were all black and it would have been true dark if the light hadn't come pouring in behind them from the windshield of the truck cab. She swore at it, wanted to block it out, hang the blanket over the window to the cab, but he told her he was too beat to do anything but sleep and she lay down next to him and they lay there.\n\n\"Aren't you forgetting something?\" he said. Then he put two fingers of his other hand to the back of her head and puffed an explosion with his lips against her ear. He got up and slid open the rear window, reached into the cab and popped the glove box and brought back the .45. She took it from him and he gave her the cartridge box and watched her slip the clip out of the handle, load it full, slap it back in. She checked the chamber and cocked the hammer and locked the safety and the whole time he watched her trigger finger and it didn't once touch the guard. He had seen on the barrel, engraved on its steel, the same word written and before Howell was James.\n\n\"What you did,\" he said. \"Is it bad enough they'll come after you now that we're out of Virginia?\"\n\n\"They'll hunt me till I get across the border,\" she said.\n\n\"I figured.\"\n\nShe turned and looked at his face so close she could feel his breath on her eyes. The orange sun came through the window from the cab and lit his beard like a torch blazing around his cheeks, his cheekbones like hot stones, his eyelashes like sparks escaped. The weight of his head lay on her arm and numbed it and she felt the feeling drain out of it and loved to feel it go. His head, heavy as a boulder. His ear, jutting out from beneath the blanket, dark and folded in such mysterious patterns of flesh. She had spent her life so far in moments a whole lot less peaceful than this.\n\nShe said into the scent of his neck, \"What's it like? The real thing. At night.\"\n\n\"It's limitless,\" he told her. \"That's the difference. They try to re-create it but there's only so much they can create and you feel that, but the real thing you don't, you feel the opposite.\" He was at the edge of sleep and his eyes were closed and she could feel his beard brush her face as he talked. \"And it's always different,\" he said. \"You can't know it. You can't even know all that's in it, and even if you could, you can't know what is going to cover it one day, maybe there's some clouds, or maybe there's just some light nearby, or maybe there's dust in the air, or anything, it all changes it, and you can't ever know exactly how it's going to be, or even what it really is.\"\n\nOutside the birds were sending their birdsounds through the trees.\n\n\"I thought they mapped it,\" she said.\n\n\"Sure,\" he said. \"They mapped what they can know, but there's stuff out there too far for them to even guess at.\"\n\n\"I thought they had theories.\"\n\n\"Theories are just guesses,\" he said. \"And there are some things way beyond what even they have theories for.\"\n\nThey were quiet for a while.\n\n\"It's not like that in a planetarium,\" she said.\n\n\"No,\" he said.\n\nThen he was asleep. She nestled tighter to him and felt his heat warm her almost till she couldn't stand it and she held herself there and tried to sleep, too. A while later she heard him say, \"The mystery of it you feel it's dark you feel so dark you're...\" But that was all he said and when she lifted her head and looked at him his breath was even and heavy and his eyes were tremoring beneath their lids. He had an Adam's apple like a knuckle in his throat. She reached to it, so lightly, and with her fingertip rode his swallow. He slept on. When she let her hands hover over the place his heart would be, palms down, she could feel his chest hair rise to meet her lifelines, draw away again. He had a sunken chest, like someone had taken a hammer and chisel to it and banged along his breastbone. The hair on it was gray as an old man's, and beneath it there were the strange tattoos buried, self-done and lumpy with scars. She tried to make them out. They were as inscrutable as wormwood grown over with moss.\n\nOutside, the birds that had once been night birds and the ones that had once been day birds filled the forest with their confused cacophony. Below it, other animals made noises in the leaves. She knew they were small, probably, but they sounded large. She knew too that there were still some of the larger ones left in places like this, small patches of woods that no one went in anymore. A few last stragglers hanging on. They were the worst. It seemed impossible to drive them out or kill them off. They seemed to already have in them what the change had required, as if it had been hulking there in their genes all along.\n\nWhen she was nine her father stuck his handgun in his belt and took his shotgun in one hand and her hand in his other and led her out into the woods. It was the long dusk and the trees slivered the mirror light around them. Back then the sky was less full of them and in the patches of land between where the light was directed the night was dimmed down to almost dark. He made her stand there with him till the first one came through the underbrush. He gave her the handgun and told her, _Shoot it_. She got it in the gut and it came at them, scrabbling and falling and trying to stay on its feet, a trail of itself left steaming behind it, until it was just a few feet away and her father shot it in the skull. Then he said, _Wait_. It was not five minutes before the others came, slinking through the scrub and scampering over the dry leaves until they lunged upon the dead thing leaking its scent and turned on each other, a rolling churn of them amassed over the carcass, tearing apart anything close enough to tear, eating and fighting and howling in pain and more coming through the brush. See, her father told her. _There's no mystery to it. It's just bad_. He ran his thumbnail down the part of her pigtailed hair. _That's better isn't it? To know?_ He was the kind of man who thought the mirrors beautiful.\n\nThere was a time in the hottest part of the day when he woke to the press and ease of her breasts against his back and lifted her arm and drew himself away from her and crouched quiet and bent under the low ceiling of the camper shell, his spine missing the feel of her breathing. She had pulled the blanket over her eyes and left the rest of her to breathe. He lifted it off and draped it, working slowly and silently, until it covered the rear window of the cab and it was dark but for the places on the side windows where she had missed. Then he opened the tailgate and climbed out. In the full blast of the sun he circled the truck, starting at one long window of the plastic shell and moving to the rear window and to the one on the other side. He was barefoot, in his underwear. In his hand a small stone glinted. Against the glass it made a rough scratching sound.\n\nInside the truckbed again, he shut the tailgate behind him, and on his knees turned to look. She lay still sleeping where he had left her, but the draped blanket had settled darkness over her and the hundreds of holes he'd scratched in the window coating let in the daylight. All around her a small new galaxy floated. He had meant to wake her and show her, but from the west the sun came through the holes\u2014a hundred luminous threads all slanting\u2014and found her skin and turned her naked body into a lake reflecting. He could not bring himself to stir it. And when he finally did crawl back beside her, he lay for a long time looking at a small dot of light that moved across her neck, slow and steady as the turning of the world they were on. When it got to her collarbone he placed his hand over it. There it was on him, now, there between the tendons behind his knuckles, and he could imagine it going right through like a bullet, marking them forever with two halves of the same wound.\n\nShe woke just before mirror-rise. He lay watching her as he had lain the last few hours. She took in what he'd done. Nothing of her moved but her eyes. All around them the camper shell was dark and the stars he'd made were white and they watched them burn down slowly to orange and red and almost gone. The long side windows grew more and more clear, the spray coating losing its opacity as the sunlight drained, and the mirrors came, until through them they could see the dark shapes of the trees and the pale orbs of the mirrors filling the space where the hot stars had been. Out there the sleepless birds sang their ceaseless songs.\n\n\"What's your name, anyway?\" she said.\n\n\"Minor,\" he said. \"Juhle.\"\n\n\"Minor Juhle,\" she said.\n\n\"Mitchel,\" he added. \"Minor Mitchel Juhle.\" He had been calling himself that for such a long time he considered it true.\n\n\"You know what's funny?\" she said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"My name is Pearl. Well my middle name. My first name is Drema.\"\n\n\"Drema Pearl.\"\n\n\"Isn't that funny? Pearl and Juhle?\"\n\n\"Not particu\u2014\"\n\nHer elbow caught him below the rib, hard, and he took a deep breath to ease the pain. \"Drema Pearl Bitch,\" he said.\n\n\"My last name's Howell,\" she said. \"Not that you asked.\"\n\n\"Drema Pearl Howell Bi\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't say it.\"\n\nA little while later they were on the road driving north again with the windows down and the mirror-light blowing through them on a roaring wind.\n\n\"Mmmm Juhle,\" she said.\n\n\"What?\" he said.\n\nShe said it again, slower: \"Mm-Mm Juhle. Can I call you that?\"\n\n\"You can call me baby,\" he said. Then he grinned at her and sang it. She joined him, but after the chorus neither of them knew the words so they just sat there howling into the wind a wordless semblance of the tune.\n\nThey drove on north through long miles of agri-industry, huge fields staggered in their planting, the ceaseless sunshine quickening their rush to yields so in these months farming was a constant race to meet the rolling harvest. They passed wide swaths of new soybeans, their small leaves glinting in the gloam, and stretches of paled plants ready for cutting, and vast strips already being cut, so many white workers' hats flashing in the mirror-light, as if a flock of migratory birds had alighted to feed on swarms of something heavenly and rare, the way they used to before the mirrors changed the migrations. He had seen it long ago and he commented on it. She only knew of it from nature shows she'd seen in school. He was older than she'd thought. He asked if it mattered. She said it sure didn't seem to did it. And it was midnight. They passed wide-built single-story factories with their clear glass roofs letting the light down onto floors full of figures working through the electricless post meridian hours and forklifts scuttling across mirror-lit lots and they passed through the lumberfarms of west New Jersey where forestfuls of lumberjacks worked the quick-grown giant pines and there was no sound but the rumbling of the truck engine and the constant sawing from all directions as if the woods had been infested by some horde of saw-jawed pests. And they saw New York City rising in the distance, the mirror-light glancing off the glass of all the roofs, and all around it the oceanfields of floating solar rafts gleaming with slabs of the reflected sun, and they drove on.\n\nThey didn't eat anything until it was well past midnight and he had taken the wheel. She turned in her seat and slid the rear window open and, reaching behind, unlocked the chest in the truckbed and lifted out a cookie tin. It was old and rusted around the lid. On the lid was an embossed scene of a cabin in winter some long ago night, its chimney smoke lost in the starry sky above the trees and its windows aglow in the blackness between the pines and in each pane a Christmas scene\u2014fire, children; roast bird, dog. She put it in her lap and pried the lid off. It was filled with small pellets of puffed grain so sugared its smell made the air in the cab feel sticky. She offered it to him. He looked at it and asked her what it was. She took a pellet and shoved it between his lips. He didn't want more. She shrugged and sat there eating handful after handful, lifting her palm to her chin and touching her tongue to a puff and snapping it back in. He said it was disgusting. When she was done, she licked her palm. \"Look at me,\" she told him, and slowly sucked the sugar off her fingers.\n\n\"Whatever,\" he said, as if it was too much.\n\n\"Whatever what?\" she said, and, staring him down to let him know she knew him already and how well, made him lick them for her all over again.\n\nThat was it as far as food. By the time they were in Connecticut he was starving, and when they passed the Indian reservation, he turned in without asking.\n\n\"Not with my money,\" she said.\n\n\"You don't have any money.\"\n\n\"I could have shitloads, for all you know. I could be\u2014\"\n\n\"If you had it, you would've paid for the spray job and left me staring.\"\n\n\"You think that's why?\"\n\n\"No. But you don't have it.\"\n\nShe reached over and gripped his wallet where it pressed the jeans atop his thigh. \"Feels pretty skinny to me,\" she said.\n\n\"There's enough in it for a steak and a coffee.\" They pulled into the casino's lot. \"Two steaks if we get them here.\"\n\n\"I don't eat meat,\" she said.\n\n\"Who said one of them's for you?\"\n\nThe main building was shaped like a tepee, a hundred feet high and made of Plexiglas and the mirror-light flooding in to show the gaming going on and all around it like a wagon circle sat the outbuildings\u2014from darkness vaults with their beds and black silence to the bulbous planetarium room grown beside the parking lot like a helium balloon tethered to earth. It was their busy time, near the end of the long dusk, when the sleepless gave up trying and wandered out to twenty-four-hour drugstores, or all-night coffee bars, or gambling joints that could help them pass the time till sunrise.\n\nHe parked and got out and shut the door and waited for her. Then he came around to her side and leaned down to the window and said, \"It's as safe here as anywhere. It's not even under federal jurisdiction.\" She sat. \"These are tribal cops,\" he said. \"What do you think they're gonna do, wander out to the woods and do a bad woman dance and the Great Spirit comes down and slips them a vision of your truck? What? Is this the silent treatment?\" He stood up and looked around and leaned back down again. \"Come on,\" he said, \"I'll buy you a squash.\" Then he shrugged and reached in past her and popped the glove compartment and took out the Chief's Special and unzipped his coverall and slid the pistol in his pantswaist and zipped back up and left her there.\n\nShe watched him through the windshield until he was almost at the door and then she burst out and ran across the lot and caught him in the lobby and jumped on his back and yanked his hair like she meant to scalp him. She was laughing or he couldn't have wrestled her off so easy.\n\n\"That was smart,\" he said when they were seated and most everyone had stopped looking at them.\n\n\"They just think we're in love,\" she said.\n\n\"Is that what this is?\"\n\n\"If you think this is love, you've got a worse past than I thought.\"\n\nHe ordered and she ordered and he told the waiter to bring her three of what she'd asked for. They were silent until it came and then they ate in silence. Halfway through he said, \"Yeah, that's what this is.\"\n\nAfterwards they pooled their cash and tried their luck with the slots. Their luck ran to two buckets of nickels. She thought it might run further. He thought it might run out. And when they went to swap the coins for bills and saw a man in uniform with a gun chatting at the cashier's window, neither one wanted to find out. On the way back to the lot, he left her for the washroom and took the buckets with him.\n\nShe watched him walk off. His figure had become familiar to her already. The way he strode with one sneaker turned in a little, hips swinging, elbows stuck out like lug bolts, his crazy unwashed curled-up wildness of hair. His neck was thick as her own thighs and when she lifted the curls that covered it it was white as them, too, vulnerable like the underbelly of a pet, and she had fallen asleep and risen awake with the smell of it close to her, and it did something to her that she had not known could be done, and she felt it even now. Just before he went inside the door, he turned to her and winked and held up the buckets and she could see where the fabric of his coverall beneath his arm tightened and at his side the bulge of the handle of her gun.\n\nWalking back to the truck, she wondered if what he'd done was as bad as he seemed to think. She decided it probably wasn't. She thought he was a good man deep down at heart and she liked that he was not one on the surface and she thought that his past probably lay somewhere in between, imagined for him a drug-dealing sentence, a stint in jail, a failed attempt to rob something, maybe a fight, a life of fights, and liked the idea of that, liked even the idea of someone shot, hurt bad, killed?\n\nShe was halfway across the lot when the revolving casino door whirred so fast the noise stopped her. She turned in time to see it spit him out. Between the giant plastic buffalo mounted on either side, he came running.\n\n\"Get the fuck!\" He shouted. \"Get the truck in the fuck!\" He was running too fast to keep the buckets still and coins were flying loose around him. They came down clattering all over his feet, a twinkling rain of mirror-glint, and bounced off his thighs and struck his shins and he ran through them. \"Get the fuck in the truck!\" He had almost reached her and she was turning to run with him when she saw a man coming out of the revolving doorway behind him. He was an Indian and he was dressed like a cop and in his hands was a rifle.\n\nThe shot smothered the rattling of the buckets. She had the cab of the truck open and she looked back. Minor had stopped running and he was trying to hold the buckets in one hand. His other was scrabbling at the zipper down his chest. Behind him she saw a flash of something arc in the air. Saw the reservation man thumbing another bullet into the chamber. Minor saw it too. He was running again when the second gunshot boomed. Her scream seemed to come directly out of the jerk his body gave. Then he was on the ground, dropped to half his height. His legs were bent under him. He was looking at his legs like he had just discovered them there. She was still screaming when he struggled up and she didn't stop till she heard him shouting at her.\n\n\"Take it take it take it!\" he was saying.\n\nShe ran back from the truck and reached for the buckets and he said, \"The fucking gun! The gun!\" He'd gotten his chest zipper down and his coverall was flapping at his front and she reached in and drew the .45 from his belt as he stumbled past. The Indian was jerking the bolt back. She raised the handgun and sighted at him and he saw her and froze. He shouted something. She held the gun in both hands. Behind her Minor was banging around. In a second the truck would start. She had never wanted anything more she thought, than to hear the truck start. The Indian stood there with his hand on the bolt and the rifle in his other hand and another brass casing in his teeth. He shook his head at her.\n\n\"Shoot him!\" she heard.\n\nBut she just held the gun and in the moment after Minor's shout it was as if the reservation man and she entered into some secret language neither of them had understood till just then. \"Start the truck!\" she shouted.\n\n\"I can't drive,\" he said. \"Shoot the fucker! Shoot him, shoot the fucker! I can't fucking drive!\"\n\nBut the Indian had stopped shaking his head, and stopped shouting. He reached up and took the bullet from his teeth. She ran. She had just yanked open the truckdoor when the shot banged. She threw herself belly-down onto the seat. Minor was there with her. The sound of the bullet-struck metal all over them. Minor shouted at her, something about keys, and she got herself in and shut the door and tried to start the truck but she couldn't find the ignition slot, and then the keys were out of her hand and Minor was saying \"Push the clutch!\" The truck roared. \"Drive!\" he said.\n\nThe gravel thundered against the parked cars. She pulled the truck around. The Indian had come out into the open lane and was following the path of the truck with his gun and Minor was leaning out the window with the pistol in his hand and there were four or five shots. The truck lurched and Minor's back was slammed against the window and she heard the blast of the air and could feel the rear drop at an angle and she shouted, \"Minor?\"\n\n\"I oughta kill the fucker,\" he said.\n\n\"Kill him,\" she said.\n\nHe fired off the rest of the round\u2014one long rattling blast. In the rearview she could see the ground smoking where the bullets had hit and the reservation cop standing with his gun and the wide space in all its wide quiet between the two.\n\nThey drove with a flapping in the rear and then dragging and then just the rim grinding away at the road and they knew they'd have to stop and they didn't.\n\nHe had been shot in the leg. He was bleeding all over the seat and he got a rag out of the back and tied it around his thigh and tried to bend it so he could get it past the dash and up high where it would not bleed so bad but it was already stiffening. He had to slide around on the seat to get it out the window.\n\nShe said, \"Did it hit the bone?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"You okay?\"\n\n\"Fucking great. Fucking never been better.\"\n\n\"You gonna be okay in an hour?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you in an hour.\"\n\nShe let her eyes leave the road long enough to take him in. He had shut his own against the pain. \"What happened in there?\" she said. He shrugged and she told him \"fuck that\" and said, \"He just started shooting.\"\n\n\"I took a piss.\"\n\n\"What happened to make him\u2014\"\n\n\"I unzipped is what happened.\"\n\n\"And he saw the gun?\"\n\n\"I guess you'd rather I'd have just showed him my ID. I guess you'd rather I'd have brought him out to the truck, out to you\u2014\"\n\n\"You said you didn't have an ID.\"\n\n\"So he could ask you for the license for the gun.\" He had shut his eyes against the pain and he opened them and looked at her and shut them again. \"Of course, I guess you'd have just shot him.\"\n\nThey drove on, too fast for the road and wrecking the wheel until a smaller road punched the side of theirs and she turned onto it skidding. When they had driven far enough, she pulled to the side and got out. He stayed half-prone with his leg out the window while she clanked around in the truckbed for the jack. He could feel all his blood rushing to his leg trying to refill it and could feel it leaking out just as fast and filling his pant leg instead. Back there the heavy spare wheel dragged on the metal and dropped to the ground with a thud. He tried to get his heart as low as possible. He tightened the rag. The truck jerked, began to rise. He couldn't see her where she was crouched but he could feel every crank of the jack.\n\n\"I'm gonna tell you something,\" she said. She waited, then she went on. \"Just because I've never shot somebody doesn't mean shit. You think that means something?\"\n\n\"Just that you haven't shot somebody,\" he said.\n\n\"Listen asshole, either you're the fucking worst shot I've ever seen or\u2014\"\n\n\"No, I meant to miss him.\"\n\n\"So don't fucking say anything.\"\n\n\"I didn't.\"\n\nThe truck stopped its rise and he heard her grunting at the lugs and then her breathing as she hauled the tire off. He listened to the spare go over the bolts and to her wrench the lugs tight again and then he heard her boots on the road. Then he saw her mirror-thrown shadow and then she was in the window looking at him.\n\n\"You didn't do anything, did you?\" she said.\n\n\"I never said I did.\"\n\n\"Huh,\" he said. She shook her head. She took a cigarette and lit it and stood there smoking and when he asked for a drag she said, \"You implied it.\"\n\n\"Give me a drag,\" he said. \"I'm fucking shot.\"\n\n\"It's probably the first time.\"\n\n\"Does it matter?\"\n\n\"Why won't you talk about your past then?\"\n\n\"Because I'm fucking shot. Give me a drag. I haven't lied to you and I won't.\"\n\n\"You haven't lied,\" she said, as if he had.\n\n\"Or ever will,\" he said. \"You can shoot me if I do.\"\n\nWhen she looked at him he felt a grin come up in him and she looked away, grinning, and said, \"Asshole.\"\n\nShe took another drag on the cigarette and turned and handed it to him. Leaning in the window, filling the space left by his leg, she looked at him. \"Does it hurt?\" she said.\n\n\"What do you think?\"\n\n\"What do you want to do?\"\n\n\"Get to the fucking border.\"\n\n\"Do you love me?\"\n\nHe watched her and smoked and watched her. \"I think so.\"\n\nShe took the cigarette from his fingers. \"If you knew what I'd done,\" she said. \"You wouldn't. You would leave me. That's why I won't tell you, okay?\"\n\nThey did up his leg as best as they could with what she had in her first aid box, him grinding his teeth while she poured disinfectant over both holes of the wound and her trying to kiss him quiet afterwards while she wrapped it. He had passed out and rewoke and gone through his hours of faintness by the time they started looking for a place to bed for the day. The old border couldn't be more than a half hour's drive north. He commented on how if they had still been citizens in good standing and the Northeast Kingdom had been what it once was, they would be home free by sunrise. She said \"citizens in good standing\" like the whole idea was funny, and then pointed out how no matter where the mirror-light stopped they would still have to pay the exit tax citizens in good standing were made to pay. They had lived their lives with the benefits of endless light and if they took the resources of themselves away the government would demand its reimbursement, its mirror tax.\n\n\"I've never been worth that much in my life,\" he said.\n\n\"And now you're crippled.\"\n\n\"Or had near to that much on me.\" He looked his question at her.\n\n\"Good thing we're not citizens in good standing,\" she said.\n\nHe told her, \"I said I'd ask it again.\"\n\n\"And I told you I had it covered,\" she said.\n\nThey drove through the dim landscape of inland Maine, glinting rocks and stunted, wind-bent pines and bushy fields striated with dry grasses sheened in the reflected light, and they talked about what it would be like to get out from under the mirrors. They had heard rumors of the life up there\u2014communes and villages and tribes eking out an existence on what they could grow in such barren land and what they could hunt and what life they could make heating peat for warmth and moving by firelight through long seasons of dark.\n\nHe told her he was going to farm. She laughed at him, and then saw he was serious. There was little that would grow there she said, maybe tubers, roots. He said that sounded like farming to him. \"Okay,\" she told him. \"Me too.\"\n\nThere was a strangeness over everything that was the tension of the real dawn coming into a brightness that was the exact brightness the mirrors had held over the world all night and for a moment it was as if the earth had ceased its forwards spin and had paused in the half light, waiting to see if the glow of the mirrors would hold sway or if the aura of the coming sun would outdo them. The aura outdid them. Just before the sun itself rose they hit a small town. All the houses were still sleeping, windows blacked out with their heavy curtains and lightproof shades. They took the first small road that looked like it would lead them away. Instead, it dead-ended at a library. It was all rust and molding bricks, half swallowed by scrub woods, long forsaken by the town.\n\nShe spoke of sinks and couches and the many weeks she'd spent sleeping in the truck. He wasn't sure how well he could walk so he let her figure out how to get in. She went off in the growing light. He watched her go. He listened to her legs brushing through the high grass. When she was gone there was still the sound. It wasn't her legs. From the edge of the woods came the noises of animals moving. Their eyes were lit in the gleam of the mirrors and their pelts shone in the dimness beneath the trees. He watched them, quick glimpses of oil-sleek fur like flashes of fishbacks breaking dark surface, and their eyes like the white buds of water lilies floating. He had heard they had gathered here, near the end of the mirrors' reach, the ones that chose not to go across into the natural night, the ones that chose to stay and hunt the others who came up from the south to try. For a moment he worried about her and he looked to see if there were any others besides the ones that were gathered in the brush surrounding him but all were drawn to him. He didn't know why and then the dizziness came and he shut his eyes against it and felt his leg throbbing and he thought for a moment that he had hallucinated them\u2014them and the eyes of the child, that girl, rolled back in their sockets, shivering white eyes, pupils gone beneath her lids, irises gone, just white and the veins shaking in it, and the pond of blood growing itself across the bright green plastic of the fake lawn her grandparents had tacked to the screen porch floor, and the grandmother in the woodshed like a pile of rags thrown in a corner and the log that had crushed the pile dropped onto her shins with a crack and left there rolling, and the grandfather rolling back and forth on the kitchen floor, holding the spilled insides of his belly inside the bag of his shirt and crying, and as Minor looked up from the trembling whites of the girl's skull-rolled eyes he could see every tiny square of the porch screen lit in the porch light and through them all the mirror-lit tulip trees with their pale blooms hanging\u2014and then he opened his eyes and the eyes of the animals were still there watching him and he knew why. His thigh felt like it was eating itself. It had stopped bleeding so much. His jeans had been so sodden beneath his coveralls that she had stripped them from him and dumped them in their wet mess on the rubber mat beneath his feet. He reached down now and balled them up. He had grown so used to the smell of his blood he could not tell anymore what it did to the air. Out there, they could tell.\n\nHe was glad when she came out through the front door and surprised by how quickly she had managed it. He called to her and warned her of the animals and she held up the gun to show she knew. He swung the door and got out. Standing on his good leg, with his bad one hurting just from touching the ground, he hurled the bloody jeans at the eyes in the woods. They crashed into the brush. The eyes scattered. He stood for a moment, watching them slink back, until he heard them snarling at each other over his offering. Then he limped as fast as he could to her coming through the scrub to meet him.\n\nInside, he found a couch and hauled his leg up onto the arm and lay there and told her he was not moving again until mirror-rise. She explored. He dozed off and woke to the sound of her rummaging in a desk and dozed and woke again to her talking excitedly to him while she held up a brick-sized bottle of white glue. When he woke next it was full morning and she was sitting naked on his chest. She had drawn all the shades and they were glowing green. Slivers of sunlight sliced in and found the books and dust motes and one lay slantwise across her body. She had filled her hair with the glue. It was pasted to the sides of her head and in the middle spiked up in a two-foot mohawk so thick with the stuff it had only dried crusty at he tips; the clammy rest flopped to a side. She reached up and straightened it while she talked, and each time she did her breast rose and tightened against her chest and then relaxed again and he smiled.\n\n\"I've been shot,\" he said.\n\n\"Poor baby,\" she said.\n\n\"I can't move enough.\"\n\n\"For what?\"\n\n\"For anything.\"\n\n\"Then don't.\" She got up off him.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said.\n\n\"For what?\" she said again, and came back holding an old lime green tape dispenser full of yellowed tape in one hand. In the other she held heavy metal-handled scissors with blades like hedge shears. He lay there while she taped his wrists together and then his ankles, wondering the whole time if he was actually going to let her, and a little awed by the fact that he did.\n\nWhen she was done she put the tape aside and opened the scissors and, quick, so fast he couldn't do anything but say her name, she slashed them across the top of her thigh. She did it three times, pressing hard. He lay there, not knowing what to say, watching the blood well up on her in the gashed lines.\n\n\"You don't know what I'm capable of,\" she said.\n\nThey did things with each other then that they had not known existed before they did them and yet once done seemed like things they had been wanting to do since they had first met and when they were finished it was midday and they were both clammy and spent and more tired than they had ever been and neither of them could sleep.\n\nHe lay there and watched her while she browsed the books. Her mohawk had mostly dried and her hair was strangely translucent in the light. She pulled books and looked at them and put them back and between each one she picked at the dried glue on her palms.\n\n\"You're pretty messed up,\" she said.\n\n\"You're one to shrink my head.\"\n\nShe shrugged, pulled a book. \"You ever been to one? A psychiatrist?\" She looked up from it in her hands. \"Oh, I forgot, I can't ask you, um, anything.\"\n\n\"No,\" he said. \"I've never been.\"\n\n\"You should,\" she said.\n\n\"You should.\"\n\n\"I have.\"\n\n\"If you're gonna confess to me,\" he said. \"Don't.\"\n\n\"It's not like you think.\"\n\n\"I stopped thinking I could outthink it a while ago.\"\n\n\"I mean going to a psychiatrist. They don't put you on a couch and ask you about your fucking mother or what. They know everything now. About the mind. They know\u2014\"\n\n\"They don't know everything.\"\n\n\"Sorry, but...\"\n\n\"You mean the brain.\"\n\n\"... they do. I mean the mind. They can tell you what chemical makes you like french fries.\"\n\n\"I don't care to know.\"\n\n\"Or me.\"\n\n\"Good,\" he said. \"Then we're\u2014\"\n\n\"I mean or me. They can tell you what makes you like me. Or me like you.\"\n\n\"No they can't,\" he said.\n\nShe shrugged. \"They know what sadness is.\"\n\n\"Don't we all.\"\n\n\"And happiness, and hope and de-fucking-spair. They know what it _is_. They can point right to the part of your mind.\"\n\n\"You mean\u2014\"\n\n\"I mean the fucking soul,\" she said. \"They can tell you what brain transmitter fires what node to what receptor cell in what lobe, which you know what all of it means?\"\n\n\"That you're crazy about french fries.\" He smiled. \"With a fuckload of ketchup.\"\n\n\"Love. That's what love is. They know it. They can tell you exactly how it happens and why and they can\u2014\"\n\n\"You know what?\" he said. \"Keep that shit to yourself.\"\n\n\"The fucking soul,\" she said.\n\n\"No, that's not the\u2014\"\n\n\"Then what the fuck is?\"\n\nHe could feel the pain throbbing up from his leg, and it seemed to him he could feel the very nerves, each one, and the blood running through him and each vein that carried it and he said, \"You talk like we're fucking machines.\"\n\n\"I'm just telling it how it is.\"\n\nHe watched her reach the end of a row and disappear. He could hear her running the back of her nails across the spines of the books in another row. \"Do you believe that?\" he said.\n\n\"I don't think it's believe or not believe.\" She came into view and gave him a smile that was the first time she had smiled at him that he wished she hadn't. \"They can tell you what belief is too.\"\n\n\"Well, fuck it,\" he said. \"I don't want it.\"\n\n\"Me neither,\" she said.\n\n\"Come here,\" he told her.\n\nShe came and lay down on top of him, careful of his leg, just lay there without him having to say a word.\n\nAfter a while he said, \"I've been thinking about why I couldn't shoot that man.\" He could feel her breath on his chest and he knew she was listening. \"It's this clean slate.\" She shifted on him so she could look at him and he felt her breath on the underside of his neck. \"You don't know shit about me except whatever's been since we got together. And I don't know hardly shit about you. And fuck if I'm gonna fuck that up, you know?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" she said.\n\n\"Fuck that up? No way. If there was a fucking rat over there\"\u2014he swept a hand at the whole place\u2014\"I wouldn't kill it. I wouldn't even fucking bother it. Not with you here. For all you know I'm a sweet, kind, good fucking man.\"\n\n\"Except for what you've done.\"\n\n\"Which you don't know. That's the beauty. That's the beauty, Drema. For you, that's here,\" he touched her temple so gently he wasn't even sure if his finger had actually made contact with her skin. \"That's exactly where it's best.\"\n\n\"What about for you?\" she said.\n\n\"The same.\"\n\n\"I couldn't shoot that man either.\"\n\n\"I know. That doesn't change anything.\"\n\n\"I couldn't leave you,\" she said.\n\n\"That's what I mean. Neither of us could. It'd be the first bad thing.\"\n\nShe kissed the underside of his neck. \"Sounds pretty good.\"\n\n\"Doesn't it?\" After a while he said to himself or to her or just plain said because it wanted saying, \"It does.\" He said it again, \"It does.\" And then they were asleep.\n\nTwo days later they were at the border. Or close enough Minor wanted to stop. They had long ago passed out of the realm of cities and they had driven through forests of dark jack pine and black spruce and white slashes of birch trees with mirror-light on their bark, and the woods had thinned and dropped off and in places rose again, and road by road their options for pathways north had dwindled to just the one.\n\nIt was well into dawn and almost full-out morning and Minor sat there looking at her, waiting for her to stop.\n\n\"It's gonna be light when we get to the checkpoint,\" he told her.\n\nShe shrugged. Her hair had turned to plastic. It had pulled at her scalp and he'd shaved it off as best he could, which was patchy. The mohawk was too solid with the glue to do anything but hack off the top six inches so she could fit in the truck cab. While he was looking at her the first sunlight struck her face and lit it all and she looked beautiful. The sun came up fast. All around them the land was flat and wider than any land either of them had seen and on the stubbled moraine the tiny stunted spruce and twisted tamarack were for a moment aflame and they could see for miles and they knew they could be seen too.\n\n\"Okay,\" he said. \"You can tell me. What your plan is. Go on. Lay it out.\"\n\nThere were no cigarettes left and she took a match and stuck it in her mouth and held it in her teeth and said something.\n\n\"What?\" he said.\n\nShe took out the match and said, \"That's the bay.\"\n\nHe reached down and grabbed the emergency break and would have pulled it if she hadn't taken her foot off the accelerator. They lurched and rolled to a stop. The bay was across the border; he didn't know by how much. There was no river or anything. The only way you could tell, he'd heard, was at night when you could see the last verge of mirror-light, or in the day when you could see the change in growth, beyond the range of the reflected beams, where the land hardened again into tundra formed under long winters of darkness that it was rumored still remained. That, and the guardtower.\n\nThey sat stopped in the middle of the black asphalt strip. No one came from anywhere.\n\n\"You know something I don't know?\" he said.\n\n\"Depends what you know.\"\n\n\"Let's say I know nothing.\"\n\nShe rolled down the window and spat out the match. The air that came in was cold. She rolled it up again.\n\n\"You were gonna just drive right up there,\" he said.\n\n\"Well.\"\n\n\"Well, fuck.\"\n\n\"Well, I've got ID.\" He stared at her. \"I wasn't just gonna leave you. They'd let you through.\"\n\n\"Me?\"\n\n\"They don't care about ID so much for people going out...\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"... just coming in.\"\n\n\"Unless you're wanted.\"\n\nA wind came out of nowhere and hit the truck and shook it and moved on.\n\n\"Just saying,\" he told her. \"Just throwing that out there, thought I'd, you know, just fucking you know just mention it.\"\n\n\"What are you so worried about? You're not the one that has to worry.\"\n\n\"I'm not worried about me,\" he said, and shoved open the door and got out and slammed it.\n\nHe stood slouched off his bad leg beside the truck looking at the sun coming up over the ocean somewhere out there too far to see, his hands wedged into his pockets and his neck drawn into his shoulders and the wind clawing at his hair. For a moment, with him turned away, she let her face do what it needed. She had known this was coming, this moment when he would find out the truth of her, and feared it, and now that it was here she knew it was going to be worse than she had thought. She ducked down so he wouldn't see and unlaced her boot and took it off and reached into her sock and took out the money. Bent down beneath the dash she knew this was the end and her face worked until she got it quiet and she straightened up again. She held the wad of bills into the bright sunlight for him to see. He was still turned away. She meant to throw the boot at the door with a bang that would bring him around but it hit the window and went through. The glass crashed onto the road. He turned, his hair glittering with the chips of glass, and she started laughing. There was nothing funny about his face, but she couldn't quit. She sat there laughing and holding the money up for him to see. Slowly, her laughing died down. He stood there. The wind was in his eyes.\n\n\"It's enough,\" she said. \"For both of us. It doesn't look like much but it's all hundreds.\"\n\nBehind him, the wind shook the tamarack.\n\n\"What?\" she said. \"I couldn't tell you, you know I couldn't tell you. What, Minor, what the fuck? I'm sorry about the window but I mean, what?\"\n\nHe said something in the wind that she couldn't hear and then he came into the truck and shut the door and the wind came in the busted window and he looked at the window, and said, \"There wasn't anyone, was there.\"\n\n\"Any who?\"\n\n\"Coming after you.\"\n\nShe peeled off a sliver of bills. \"Why do you think I have extra then?\" She said. \"You think some fucking kid stuck up here on watch duty won't turn an eye?\"\n\nHe looked at the money, then at her. \"There are some things you can bribe away and those are the small things, the things only laws care about and people don't, the things that don't matter.\"\n\n\"Minor\u2014\"\n\n\"You didn't do anything.\"\n\n\"That's not true.\"\n\nHe reached over and took the bribe money that she'd peeled off and sat there counting it. It didn't take long. \"You didn't do anything,\" he said again. Slowly he fanned the money and held it into the light.\n\n\"Minor,\" she said. \"I wasn't lying to you. You still don't know what\u2014\"\n\n\"I know it's nothing.\" He was looking at the light coming through the bills. He spoke very slowly. \"You said it was strange how that Indian cop just started shooting. Not a word first. Just saw me and started shooting. You said it.\"\n\nShe watched him and said just as slowly. \"It's bad, isn't it.\"\n\nHe didn't move anything, not his jaw, not his eyes.\n\n\"How bad?\" she said.\n\n\"I won't tell you.\"\n\n\"What did you do, Minor?\"\n\nHe gave the bills back to her. \"I thought you had a plan,\" he said. \"I thought we were going to get across.\"\n\n\"Minor\u2014\"\n\n\"You don't want to know.\"\n\n\"I'll tell you. I stole\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't,\" he said.\n\n\"I stole my dad's truck.\"\n\nHe shut his eyes. \"That's nothing.\"\n\n\"It's something.\"\n\n\"No, it's nothing.\" He was sitting there squeezing his eyes shut as if that could keep him from hearing. \"It's what you didn't.\"\n\nShe watched him and she could feel the desperation climbing up her and she said, \"Did you kill someone? Did you murder someone, Minor? What could you have done that was so bad? You have to tell me now. I've told you and you have to tell me or it won't work.\"\n\n\"It won't work,\" he said.\n\nShe grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head to her and he yanked it free and she brought her fist down as hard as she could on his thigh. He threw his head back and gritted his teeth. She hit him again.\n\nHe sat there with his head thrown back and said through his teeth, \"It won't work.\"\n\n\"I'll forgive you,\" she said. \"Whatever it is\u2014\"\n\n\"You'll know me. Like I know you now. Not knowing, Drema. It was always the not knowing that\u2014\"\n\nThat was when she climbed on him and all the pain of her on his leg shot through his entire face and she could see it pulsing in his strained neck and she kissed him. She kissed him hard and for a long time. When she was done, she stayed with her face right on top of his and said with her lips touching his, \"How bad was it, Minor?\"\n\nHe shook his head, his beard, against her face.\n\n\"I'm going to think of the worst thing I can think of,\" she said. \"And I'm going to tell you and you're\u2014\"\n\n\"Double it,\" he said.\n\nShe sat there on him looking at his face so close it almost didn't look like a face. She could see the creases in the landscape of his skin and the dirt and the oil of him and the hairs of his beard came from holes in his face as if his body was trying to rid itself of them, pushing them forever through and them forever coming, black and enduring so long as he endured, and even after, when all other parts of him had gone still, they would be the last thing to move.\n\nShe sat up away from him. His eyes stayed shut. Slowly, she climbed off and picked her way carefully across the road to where her boot lay like something they'd hit. She picked it up and put it on and laced it and came around to the driver's side and got in and he had not opened his eyes.\n\n\"Get out,\" she said.\n\nShe had left his door open and he just swung his good leg out. He put his weight on it and stood up into the sun and the wind and the huge sky stretching over it all.\n\n\"Tell me,\" she said. \"Or I'll leave you here. I'll just drive to the border and give them the money and go across and never see you again and what good is it then? Not knowing? What's the point in it then?\"\n\nHe had opened his eyes and he was looking at her. She thought he was looking at her as if he was trying to figure out who she was now that he knew she was not who he had imagined her to be, as if to see what she would become to him now.\n\nShe could not know that he was thinking of how young she sounded. Younger than she had told him, maybe as young as he had been when he'd slapped out through the screen door into the summer's long dusk and left them all lying in their blood behind him and run beneath the thick-leafed tulip trees and out into the open where the mirrors threw his shadow scrambling ahead as if in chase of his own life, of all the unknown rest of it that what he'd done that night had left for him. Nor could she know this: that through it all the image of her backing her father's truck down a long steep drive kept coming at him. And all that that one thing had led to. And how unfathomable were the hours and days and years to come that would shape her into what he could not even guess. And him too. The past unraveling behind them and the future as unknowable as any dreamed-of dark.\n\nShe could not know all that, but she knew that while she watched him back something came into his eyes that surprised her. It was a kind of realization, a kind of relief even, something that looked to her almost like happiness.\n\n\"I'll hunt you,\" he said. \"If you leave me...\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\n\"... I'll get across and I'll hunt you.\"\n\n\"You would do that?\"\n\n\"I will hunt you down.\"\n\n\"Still?\"\n\nAll day clouds amassed to the west, piling on themselves and fusing together until they were a bank as solid as if the land itself had bent and risen up. In the afternoon they began to move. By dusk they had smothered the entire sky. Through them, the light of the mirrors filtered down, dim, and in them Minor could see the place where the light stopped: low in the sky, a seam, as if the firmament was made of two different bodies that met there. He pointed it out to her. She had already seen it.\n\nThey moved through the tundra in the cloud-dimmed dusk, her wrapped in the army blanket against the cold, and him shivering in his one-piece and limping badly, and between them they carried the plywood box that had been fitted to the truckbed, a dark slab long and narrow and heavy as a corpse. The permafrost had long ago melted and it was bog. They sloshed through it, their pants below their knees wet and heavy, feeling like ice. They talked in whispers that barely made it over the sucking sound of their steps, talked first of night-vision equipment and the guards and then of all that lay ahead, the Inuit tribes, their dogs, of the roving bands of ones like them and what they killed to live on and who they knew who had once said they were going up and how cold it would get and after ten minutes they had exhausted everything they knew about what was to come. Behind them, so far back it was no more than just a glint of glass and metal, they had left the truck. To their east, and not far enough, the light of the guard tower hung in the dim gray gloam. Ahead, so distant it was almost impossible to make out: the periphery seam in the clouds.\n\nThey didn't realize it was growing darker until they could hardly see the bushes in front of them anymore and they went on farther, and then they stopped. They set down the box in a dark so dark that they didn't know the box was near the ground until they felt it hit. They stood in that darkness and breathed it and felt it around them and she waved her hands in it and told him she was waving her hands and he could hear her sloshing about, playing like a child in first snow. From somewhere in the distant dark came the sounds of coyotes. He stood listening to the barks and yips. It was a joyous sound like he had not heard an animal make since he was a very small child. He looked towards the place from where he thought they came, what he hoped was north, and could see nothing but the blackness. After a while, she picked up her side of the box again. They stood there looking for the part that looked most black, and it all seemed as unknowable as the rest, and they began to walk.\n\n# [**HELLO  \nFROM HERE**](toc.html#ch8-R)\n\nOne by one the streetlamps come alight. From on my stoop, I watch: the strip of sky between the buildings, the seagulls swirling, the cobblestones below so wet from the past rain they could be rocks along a coast, on top of them a row of beacons burning. Burn, burn, burn. The lamplighter with his long pole turning back the dark. One hundred nights now I have sat here and, Mamme, each time he lights the flames I see your eyes behind the Sabbath candles. Tatte, when he sets his ladder against the cross rest and climbs up, I watch you reach to the display case in your apothecary's shop. Yankel, my breuder, every time I smell the lamp gas escape I think of you. And start to smile. And want to cry.\n\nHow can a son say good-bye forever? How can a brother?\n\nI sit on this stoop and the lamplighter stops to ask what I am writing and I tell him, \"A letter.\" And he asks to whom. And I say, \"My family.\"\n\n\"All of it?\" he says, as if he thinks I mean feters and tantes, zeydes and bubbes, everybody who is of my blood and from whose blood I came.\n\n\"Yes,\" I say. But I do not tell him I also mean neighbors and friends and everyone I knew in my world up until I left it.\n\n\"You'll be here all night,\" he says.\n\nI shrug. He knows I would be anyway.\n\n\"They live far away?\" he asks.\n\n\"A month's walk,\" I say.\n\nIf he finds that strange, he does not show it. Maybe he walked as long to get here. Maybe he jumped trains and begged farm wives for rides and hopped the carts of gypsies and was chased by thieves, beaten by thugs. Maybe he kept to back roads, too. Walked at night. Maybe he came from a town not so different from ours. Though I do not think he is a Jew.\n\n\"But in Russia?\" he says.\n\nI reassure him.\n\n\"Well,\" he says, \"tell them hello from here.\" And starts away. Only to turn back. \"Tell them,\" he calls, lifting his pole in a salute, \"I wish for them always a light in the dark!\"\n\nDown the rest of the unlit street he does his best to make it true. I watch him till he disappears.\n\nHello from here. Hello from 214 Talevu Street. It has been ninety-eight days since I sent you my first letter letting you know I had found lodging, a way to make a little money, had not just left on the next boat, would not until I had enough to buy at least one other ticket, that I would wait to hear from you, or till one of you\u2014sometimes I dreamed it could be all three\u2014might arrive at Stepashin's Photographic Studio and Supply, peer in past the cameras on display, their brass lenses and mahogany plate holders and black bellows, and ask for me.\n\nA month ago I sent a second letter. That one I addressed to Tatte's shop. Sometimes, sitting here, eating my supper of cold herring and old bread, I cannot help but think on what could have kept my words from reaching you. Then I cannot swallow. And when I think what if they _did_ reach you, and still you have not written back, I stand up from the stoop and go inside, or onto the street, anywhere away from where the thought had found me.\n\nStill, I would wait here a year. Another. If I did not now know that to remain even one more day would be too late.\n\nSo, a little after dawn I will fold up the blankets Stepashin loaned to me for sleeping. I will put on the hat that you, Mamme, knit for me the night I left and which, for each night since, has been my pillow. Inside Tatte's valise I will shut all that I have come to own: a change of clothes, a sailor's sweater, a coachman's gloves, a frayed bowtie, a pocketknife with a broken blade, three pencils, and whatever paper I have left after I have finished writing this. Then I will leave the shop. I will lock the door, slide the key beneath it. I will walk down to the docks wearing the too-large clothes I took from Tatte, Yankel's too-small shoes I used to replace my soldier's boots, the short coat with the pocket Mamme stitched into the inside in which I'll slip my steerage ticket along with the papers to prove to anyone who asks\u2014port police, inspectors from the Baltic-Atlantic Line, whoever Stepashin will have alerted\u2014that I am not an army deserter, not your eldest son, your older brother, not someone who had left his family to face the consequence of what he'd done, not me.\n\nMy name is Yankel. So many times have I said it to myself. Trying to breathe beneath the hay of the cart in which I fled\u2014Your name is Yankel\u2014walking a moonlit road through unmown fields\u2014Your name is Yankel\u2014wandering these winding streets besides the banks of the Daugarva\u2014Your name\u2014over and over, with each step, each puff of dust\u2014is Yankel. And still, inside my ears, my mind hears Shimel, my name for all my years till now. Shimel, my mind tells me, your name is Yankel. But behind my eyes, what can this name show me but you? My breuder's eyes, my breuder's face.\n\nYankel, if you knew how I study you! Like we were boys again, holding candles, standing shirtless before our reflections in the windows at night. We'd lean close, inspecting our upper lips for hints of fuzz, wondering would we be able to grow a wonze thick as our father's, would it be, on both our faces, the same brownish red? How you tried to match my muscles! How you mimicked the poses that I made! How, when you would fail to magically be bigger than your big brother, you would do what you always did to make me laugh. A little wiggle in your ears. Then your nose. Then your whole face while you tried to stop from laughing, too.\n\nLittle breuder, you should be here with me! We would walk streets lined with houses painted all the colors of Tatte's powders, drink kvas on the docks beneath the hulls of steamships so huge they could fit inside them even your farts. There are whole trolley cars pulled by teams of horses, a constant crush of droshkies clattering back and forth from stores to bars to caf\u00e9s to theaters. In summer, when I got here, the city bustled even after midnight. I have seen gentlemen placing bets on hedgehog races, ladies pedaling tricycles along the street. In the square before the National Theater I watched a demonstration of Yablochkov's candles and I have seen their bulbs that burn without a flame, squinted up at their electric light. And shut my eyes. And seen your face. And stood there, in that awestruck crowd, keeping my eyes closed as long as I could. If you could see it through your brother's eyes, you would understand. If I could tell it to our mother, she would show you.\n\nMamme, do you remember the way that we would draw? When I was seven, eight. You would try to teach me to take what my eyes saw, make my hand re-create it on a page. I would try. And fail. And fall into such fits, squeezing my fingers to nearly breaking, beating my fists against my forehead, until at last you uncovered where my talent lay. Go find a picture, you would say. And I would rush around searching for something I thought you'd like. Mittens stuck on fence slats to dry. A birch fallen across the brook. Which, then, I would sit and memorize. Every line, shape, shadow. Until I could bring it in my memory back to my mamme. I would sit on your lap, holding the pad, and you would reach around me with your pencil, bent so I could feel your heart against my back, your cheek against my own, while I described what I had seen in such detail that, as if your fingers contained the same anointment as Elisha's bones, you would bring it back to life on our page. Perfect as if drawn from your own sight.\n\nWhy did we never try a face? I do them now. Not through drawing, but with words: descriptions of strangers' faces scribbled down so that a loved one, somewhere far away, might unfold a page and, with the aid of what I'd written, draw themselves a picture in their own mind.\n\nEach day, I sit on my valise outside Stepashin's studio, waiting for the leavers to pass by. Sailors with sweethearts, soldiers shipping out, friends sentimental from a night of drinking, mothers and fathers spending last hours with a daughter or a son. People who stop at the shop's portrait display, cup their hands around their faces, peer inside: the painted backdrop, the velvet drapes, the chairs where someone else, someone with money, might sit before Stepashin's lens. Sometimes I'll see the magnesium flash caught in the face pressed to the glass. I'll wait until the yearner steps away. Then\u2014\"Excuse me, friend\"\u2014offer him a chance to take his loved one with him for a few coins.\n\nOn the cobblestones before me I place a crate, drape it with my jacket, invite the subject to sit. For a minute or two I simply watch them. Then I begin to write. Not only what I see\u2014bend of a nose, shape of an eye\u2014but what I watch happen before me: the way a lady's nostril flares at something her lover says, a child's eyes brighten at the approach of a horse and dray. Once a sailor leaned forward to whisper he'd prefer that I not mention his bad breath. But I did. Because I glimpsed his sister roll her eyes at the request, a fond exasperation I wanted her to feel again when, in a month or two, she might wish to remember. Another time, I watched an old man comb with careful fingers a part onto his completely hairless head. Saw his wife fight an urge to, with her own fingers, adjust the styling. So I adjusted: the hair that was still there only in the memory they shared became a way that she, over their years, would touch him. Each letter picture I pushed like this. Just a little bit. And for this they paid ten kopeks each. For this they came all day.\n\nAt the end of that first one, Stepashin stepped out of his shop, locked up, walked straight to me. Would I, he asked, do one of him?\n\n\"For who?\" I asked.\n\n\"For you,\" he said. \"So you can remember me tomorrow.\" Reaching over, he put ten kopeks in my pocket. \"When you will be gone from before my store.\"\n\nBut while he sat there in his trim beard and beaver hat, fierce eyes blinking out from the black frame of facial hair and pelt, I wrote, instead, a contract: to him I would pay a ruble each week, only to use the street outside his studio. To me, he would give a place to sleep, inside, just behind the front door. Where anyone trying to break in would have to wake me. I watched him take in, the way men have all of my life, my unimpressive height. \"I was a soldier,\" I told him.\n\n\"Was?\" he said. And I watched him calculate the age in my still-boyish face. I should have seen it then. But, at the time, he only asked my name.\n\nAt least I knew enough not to say Yankel, not to say Shimel. Instead, I told him Shura. A nickname that I knew would not mark me as a Jew.\n\nAleksander Aleksandrevitch Aleksandrei: the full formal version that, in a moment of panicked inspiration, I gave him, that, from that day on, he always used.\n\n\"Aleksander Aleksandrevitch,\" he would say, \"you may keep your things inside the storage closet.\"\n\n\"Aleksander Aleksandrevitch, please do not bring your supper in; I cannot have the studio stinking of fish.\"\n\n\"Aleksander Aleksandrevitch\"\u2014even after I had been opening the door for him, greeting him good morning every day for months\u2014\"if you must light the lamp before retiring to the floor, please take care, upon your waking, to leave the chimney clean.\"\n\nHis father had been an officer in the last tsar's army, an inventor of military machines, and Yefin Eduardovitch Stepashin paid close attention to any manner of device, though none more than his cameras. To me, he hardly ever turned an eye, rarely seemed to notice I was there. Which is, surely, why\u2014despite sometimes a slipup of mumbled Yiddish, despite this snitch of a nose here on my face\u2014it was an arrangement that, for a while, worked. Only during downpours, when he would rap on the window, beckon to me, would what was between us seem something more.\n\nWhile I shook out my hat, stood trying not to drip a puddle, he would speak of things I still struggle to understand. Sometimes, I was not even sure he was talking to me. Fingers fluttering among his cameras, he'd reattach a tiny rubber band, mumbling about a \"rebound shutter\", \"aperture\", \"exposure\", as if explaining concepts to the device itself. Sliding a wood frame into a slot, he spoke of _bromides, emulsion_ , as if to the sheet of glass it held. But for all the unfamiliar words he used, I began to see that he was talking, always, about only one thing: light. Not what his contraptions might do with it, but what it is.\n\nThe Luminiferous Aether. This Stepashin calls it. Light, he says, travels from a source\u2014the gas flame in this lamp above me, the sun that will tomorrow brighten the sky\u2014and hits whatever stands in its path\u2014this page, this pencil, my face\u2014and bounces off of it in waves. Waves that ripple through the aether waiting in the air. And, moving it, make it something we can see. The way water in a glass is clear till stirred. This is what enters our eyes. These luminiferous waves, this aether that is stirred in such a pattern that the things off which the light has bounced appear. Without the waves, the aether is invisible. Which is what we call dark. But even in the darkest blackness, the aether is still there. Waiting to be stirred. So we might see.\n\nI wish my mind was better made for this. I wish, Tatte, you were here to sharpen it. You would ask me your questions, the raised eyebrows and downward-dipping mouth that Yankel and I always feared. Because we knew that what was coming would make us question what we had till then assumed was true. Sometimes, I try to do it for myself\u2014I have attempted to see your silence from some angle I have not yet considered\u2014but it is not the same. You cannot say, the way you always would when we were stymied, \"Let's see if we can't think up an experiment.\" And, with your powders and potions, you would find a way to test even Stepashin's aether. When I was a kinde, I could watch for hours while you worked. Melting, measuring, filling bottles with mixtures for sick strangers, neighbors. Even, sometimes, for your son. Meyn zun, you would say, and invite me over to smell an unknown scent, ignite shavings into a crackling of colors, watch as you mixed into some oil a powder to make it glow. Phosphorus, you said that day before I left. And sealed the tiny vial, the glass flasch that I wear still on the chain you placed around my neck.\n\nSometimes, listening to Stepashin speak of waves and light I place a hand over my chest and feel it\u2014the flasch\u2014and, watching him work, am struck by a sudden sense of peace. An inexplicable closeness. Which is the only reason I can give for my mistake.\n\nIt had been raining. He had been talking. I had been thinking\u2014if only the waves of light could pass through solid things, travel in an uninterrupted line from ricochet to our eyes, you could see me from five hundred miles away, I could see you\u2014when he turned to me and asked, \"Aleksander Aleksandrevitch, do you know anyone by the name of Yushrov?\"\n\nSo strange, after all these months, to hear our name. From him. Still the answer should have been simple had my mouth not refused to make it, had it not, instead, as if needing to feel the word, said the name back: \"Yushrov?\"\n\n\"A Hebrew name,\" he said. He had finished closing up. We were stopped just inside the door, barely a foot apart, my hand on the knob, ready to open it for him, his on the handle of an umbrella still in the stand.\n\nI managed to make my head shake no. Though out of my mouth there came, unbidden, \"Why?\"\n\nOutside, the rain drummed at the door, ran down the windows, made the shadows on that side of his face appear to move. \"I received,\" he started, \"a letter\u2014\"\n\n\"From...?\" I watched him wonder: hadn't he just told me? Or did I think the name had been who it was addressed to?\n\n\"Yankel,\" he said.\n\nI tried to make my face a picture about which, had I been peering at it, I could not have found anything to write.\n\n\"Shimel,\" he said.\n\nAnd I could see on his face that I was failing.\n\n\"Do either of these names\u2014\"\n\n\"Two?\" I said. \"You received two? To each?\" He released the umbrella handle. I released the knob. My hand was shaking. \"Show them to me,\" I pleaded. \"Fima\"\u2014it was the only time I ever used the familiar form of his first name\u2014\"will you?\"\n\n\"That depends,\" he said, \"on who I'm showing them to.\"\n\nAnd so I told him, watching his eyes narrow, as if he was trying to bring something out of focus into sharpness, until, by the time that I was done, his lids had shut almost entirely, and I knew that I had been wrong to.\n\n\"So,\" he said, \"you _are_ a deserter.\"\n\nI should have caught the strange lack of surprise, as if I'd simply confirmed something he'd heard, but I was too intent on trying to paint for him a picture of why: the death sentence that is conscription for a Jew, the friends I'd seen succumb to officers' demands, suicide posts, unsurvivable conditions, the impossibility of staying alive for the mandated twenty-five years.\n\nTo which he said, \"You _are_ a Jew.\"\n\n\"I am,\" I told him, \"the same man who, for a quarter of a year, has greeted you each morning, who guards your shop at night.\"\n\nHe lifted the umbrella out of the stand. \"Who _did_.\"\n\nFrom under his other reaching hand, I grabbed the knob, held the door. \"At least,\" I begged, \"give me the letters.\"\n\nHe set his fingers on top of mine. Such an unexpected touch: my hand, without his on it, would have slipped off the brass. \"The only letter I received,\" he said, \"was from the military police. Telling me they had come across another from your family. Addressed to here.\" Where, he said, his voice soft as his artists' fingers felt, he would, out of respect for the time we had spent in each other's company, allow me to remain till morning, till the usual hour that he would open the store, when he would return with the police.\n\nAlready, it is almost tomorrow. Long ago, the last droshkies passed by Talevu Street, left the avenue that is just visible at its far end empty of all but the gas lamps' glow, gone still but for the shifting of the few remaining leaves.\n\nI know that I should try to sleep. But I cannot stop thinking about the police. Not the ones Stepashin will bring. But the ones who already must have come to you. Mamme, did they wake you at night, break in, destroy your drawings looking for letters from me? Or by then were you already gone?\n\nNo, there will be no sleep for me tonight. This last night beneath the sky we still share. Where I am going, your night will be my day, my day your night. And with each passing one I will become less your brother, less your son. Until I am someone so far from you in a life so different from this that these words will be the last not just to you, but from me. Mamme, you will say I will always be your son. Tatte, you will tell me it is only an ocean, another country, a few more miles. But I have already traveled more than a few from you. And I know that this is different. By this time tomorrow I will be far out on the sea, deep in a shaking hull, surrounded by the sounds of sleeping others, mouthing into the steerage dark a single syllable\u2014'new'\u2014trying to get it right\u2014'new'\u2014the first sound of the name of the place in which I will never again be called meyn breuder or meyn zun.\n\nOutside, the street seems to have already begun to disappear. There are only burning lamps, cobblestones fading away beneath their glow, gaps of blackness between. And my lantern in this window. Lighting me. I will let it burn all night. I will let the chimney blacken. I will wander among the cameras on their stands, touching all the knobs, turning the rings, making their rubber bellows creak. I will set a match to the magnesium, watch the flash explode. And in the darker darkness after, the acrid scent of smoke, I will push open the velvet curtains, step into the backdrop, sit on the chair, stare into the lens.\n\nWell, in fact, other than keeping the flame lit, I have passed these last hours tossing in my blankets, trying to imagine what I could write here at the end. Now, the blankets are folded. My valise is packed. Outside, the night is growing thin. And through the shop windows I can see it: the first faint waves of daylight reaching down into the street, ricocheting off wheel spokes, shutter slats, showing a flutter of wings, first slight stirrings in the aether. I like to think of it, there all night, waiting for a ripple of light to come and give the things of the world shape, abiding, always, everywhere. Even when there is no one to see it.\n\nFor the past hour, watching the window light lift out of the lantern's flicker all the devices that fill this room, I have been thinking about this century's beginning. How back then no one had so much as conceived a camera. How a mere fifty years ago the journey I am about to make would have taken twice as many days. How barely fifteen years before today not one soul had ever seen an electric light. And fifteen years from now? In the new century? Maybe by then we will have cut the ocean crossing in half again. Maybe we will have found a way to send light around the earth, and I will once again be able to see your face. And you mine. But until then, all the time that we are hidden from each other, I will know that you are there, in the dark, as there as the spokes, the shutter, the street outside\u2014its cobblestones, abandoned carts, the tops of hitching posts painted white by perching gulls\u2014that, lost to me all night, has returned.\n\nAnd here he comes again: the lamplighter, crossing from one side of the street to the other, unlatching the panes, reaching up, snuffing the flames. Watching him it seems as if he might have just kept walking. Followed the night around the globe, lighting lanterns until the dark crossed into day and, coming upon the flames already lit, he flipped his pole to its snuffing end, simply kept on. Maybe, some night in another city in another country I will see him coming down another street. I will call him over. I will ask him to bring a message back to you. \"Tell them,\" I will say, \"hello from here.\"\n\nHe nears. A nod. I nod back. Reaching his pole to the lamp above me, he says, \"They'll be up all night reading it, too,\" and I wish I had another hundred pages. I wish I had something more than this to send. If I had learned to use the contraptions that all these nights have kept me company, paid more attention to practical things Stepashin said\u2014how to load the plates, train a lens on where I'd sit, focus it on myself, somehow trigger the shutter\u2014if I knew the way to free the captured light and imprint it on a piece of paper, I would do it for you. But all I know to do is this:\n\nHis skin is puffy from lack of sleep. His hair sticks out from beneath the hat his mother knit, wild, unwashed. The same color as his brother's. But his mustache has grown in a little darker, a little more full. Almost, now, as thick as his tatte's. His tatte whose beard he used to like to squeeze in his small child's fists, just to see his fingers disappear. He wishes now he had such a beard to hide his own face. The puffiness of his lower lip, raw from biting it. The shaking of his upper, delicate\u2014always, he thought, too like a girl's, too like his mother's\u2014its shape as deeply pinched as the pie crusts that she makes. He can feel her fingers on his mouth. Pressing it. He shuts his eyes. With them closed he can see yours better. If he could he would stay like that forever, remembering his father's, his brother's, his mother's. But when he opens his eyes again, there is just him, sitting by a still-burning lamp, watching, in the window glass, his own reflection. Your oldest son, your only sibling, your once was Shimel saying good-bye. Good-bye, Yankel. Good-bye, Tatte. Good-bye, Mamme. I wish for you a light in the dark.\n\n# **ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**\n\nThe eight stories in this collection were written over an entire decade of my life. In them, I see not only earlier iterations of myself, but the mark of so many others who helped me along the way:\n\nMy first readers and longtime friends: Mike Harvkey, Johanna Lane, Elizabeth Kadetsky, Meghan Kenny, Robin Kirman, Suzanne Rivecca, Laura van den Berg, Jennifer Sheffield (now Weil), and my brother, Ben.\n\nThe talented and generous editors who first brought these stories to print: Hannah Tinti at _One Story_ ; Ralph Eubanks at _Virginia Quarterly Review_ ; Ladette Randolph at _Ploughshares_ ; Tom Jenks at _Narrative_ ; Cheston Knapp at _Tin House_ ; Bill Pierce at _Agni_ ; and Stacey Swann at _American Short Fiction_.\n\nThe team at Grove, who, over these years and three books has become so important to me: Elisabeth Schmitz, Morgan Entrekin, Katie Raissian, and all the rest.\n\nPJ Mark: agent, friend, indefatigable guide, and guardian of my work.\n\nOthers, too: Henia Lewen helped me with Yiddish in \"No Flies, No Folly\"; Naomi Williams (and her mother) translated the Japanese in \"Long Bright Line\"; Jeremy Mohawk translated the Mohican in \"The Point of Roughness\"; my sister-in-law, Lisa Rasco, helped me understand autism for the same story; Adam Day, through the Baltic Writing Residency, helped get me to Riga, in which \"Hello from Here\" is set; quotes from Mike Horn's North Pole winter expedition log appear in \"Beautiful Ground\"; and the acts of resistance by residents of four rural counties in Pennsylvania\u2014Adams, York, Franklin, and Cumberland\u2014almost eighty years ago inspired the events in \"The Essential Constituents of Modern Living Standards.\"\n\nTo all of them\u2014and to my always supportive parents, inlaws, and grandmother; to my children, Sadie and Cody, who fill my days with light; to the love of my life, Jen, who carries me through the darkness\u2014thank you.\n\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n\n\nProduced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http:\/\/www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH\n\nVOL. VIII\n\n[Illustration: _William Wordsworth_\n\n_after Thomas Woolner_\n\n_Printed by Ch Wittmann Paris_]\n\n\n\n\n                          THE POETICAL WORKS\n                                  OF\n                          WILLIAM WORDSWORTH\n\n                               EDITED BY\n                            WILLIAM KNIGHT\n\n                               VOL. VIII\n\n                     [Illustration: _Gallow Hill_\n\n                             _Yorkshire_]\n\n                                London\n                        MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.\n                       New York: Macmillan & Co.\n                                 1896\n\n                        _All rights reserved._\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                                    PAGE\n                                 1834\n\n  Lines suggested by a Portrait from the Pencil of F. Stone            1\n\n  The foregoing Subject resumed                                        6\n\n  To a Child                                                           7\n\n  Lines written in the Album of the Countess of Lonsdale,\n      Nov. 5, 1834                                                     8\n\n                                 1835\n\n  \"Why art thou silent? Is thy love a plant\"                          12\n\n  To the Moon                                                         13\n\n  To the Moon                                                         15\n\n  Written after the Death of Charles Lamb                             17\n\n  Extempore Effusion upon the Death of James Hogg                     24\n\n  Upon seeing a  Drawing of the Bird of Paradise\n      in an Album                                                     29\n\n  \"Desponding Father! mark this altered bough\"                        31\n\n  \"Four fiery steeds impatient of the rein\"                           31\n\n  To ----                                                             32\n\n  Roman Antiquities discovered at Bishopstone, Herefordshire          33\n\n  St. Catherine of Ledbury                                            34\n\n  \"By a blest Husband guided, Mary came\"                              35\n\n  \"Oh what a Wreck! how changed in mien and speech!\"                  36\n\n                                 1836\n\n  November 1836                                                       37\n\n  To a Redbreast--(In Sickness)                                       38\n\n                                 1837\n\n  \"Six months to six years added he remained\"                         39\n\n  Memorials of a Tour in Italy, 1837--To Henry Crabb Robinson         41\n\n      I. Musings near Aquapendente, April, 1837                       42\n\n     II. The Pine of Monte Mario at Rome                              58\n\n    III. At Rome                                                      59\n\n     IV. At Rome--Regrets--in Allusion to Niebuhr and other\n             Modern Historians                                        60\n\n      V. Continued                                                    61\n\n     VI. Plea for the Historian                                       61\n\n    VII. At Rome                                                      62\n\n   VIII. Near Rome, in Sight of St. Peter's                           63\n\n     IX. At Albano                                                    64\n\n      X. \"Near Anio's stream, I spied a gentle Dove\"                  65\n\n     XI. From the Alban Hills, looking towards Rome                   65\n\n    XII. Near the Lake of Thrasymene                                  66\n\n   XIII. Near the same Lake                                           67\n\n    XIV. The Cuckoo at Laverna                                        67\n\n     XV. At the Convent of Camaldoli                                  72\n\n    XVI. Continued                                                    73\n\n   XVII. At the Eremite or Upper Convent of Camaldoli                 74\n\n  XVIII. At Vallombrosa                                               75\n\n    XIX. At Florence                                                  78\n\n    XX. Before the Picture of the Baptist, by Raphael,\n            in the Gallery at Florence                                79\n\n    XXI. At Florence--From Michael Angelo                             80\n\n   XXII. At Florence--From Michael Angelo                             81\n\n  XXIII. Among the Ruins of a Convent in the Apennines                82\n\n   XXIV. In Lombardy                                                  83\n\n    XXV. After leaving Italy                                          84\n\n   XXVI. Continued                                                    85\n\n  At Bologna, in Remembrance of the late Insurrections,\n      1837.--I.                                                       86\n\n      II. Continued                                                   86\n\n      III. Concluded                                                  87\n\n  \"What if our numbers barely could defy\"                             87\n\n  A Night Thought                                                     88\n\n  The Widow on Windermere Side                                        89\n\n                                 1838\n\n  To the Planet Venus                                                 92\n\n  \"Hark! 'tis the Thrush, undaunted, undeprest\"                       93\n\n  \"'Tis He whose yester-evening's high disdain\"                       94\n\n  Composed at Rydal on May Morning, 1838                              94\n\n  Composed on a May Morning, 1838                                     97\n\n  A Plea for Authors, May 1838                                        99\n\n  \"Blest Statesman He, whose Mind's unselfish will\"                  101\n\n  Valedictory Sonnet                                                 102\n\n                                 1839\n\n  Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death--\n\n     I. Suggested by the View of Lancaster Castle (on the\n           Road from the South)                                      103\n\n    II. \"Tenderly do we feel by Nature's law\"                        104\n\n   III. \"The Roman Consul doomed his sons to die\"                    105\n\n    IV. \"Is _Death_, when evil against good has fought\"              106\n\n     V. \"Not to the object specially designed\"                       106\n\n    VI. \"Ye brood of conscience--Spectres! that frequent\"            107\n\n   VII. \"Before the world had past her time of youth\"                107\n\n  VIII. \"Fit retribution, by the moral code\"                         108\n\n    IX. \"Though to give timely warning and deter\"                    109\n\n     X. \"Our bodily life, some plead, that life the shrine\"          109\n\n    XI. \"Ah, think how one compelled for life to abide\"              110\n\n   XII. \"See the Condemned alone within his cell\"                    110\n\n  XIII. Conclusion                                                   111\n\n   XIV. Apology                                                      112\n\n  \"Men of the Western World! in Fate's dark book\"                    112\n\n                                 1840\n\n  To a Painter                                                       114\n\n  On the same Subject                                                115\n\n  Poor Robin                                                         116\n\n  On a Portrait of the Duke of Wellington upon the Field\n      of Waterloo, by Haydon                                         118\n\n                                 1841\n\n  Epitaph in the Chapel-Yard of Langdale, Westmoreland               120\n\n                                 1842\n\n  \"Intent on gathering wool from hedge and brake\"                    122\n\n  Prelude, prefixed to the Volume entitled \"Poems chiefly\n      of Early and Late Years\"                                       123\n\n  Floating Island                                                    125\n\n  \"The Crescent-moon, the Star of Love\"                              127\n\n  \"_A Poet!_--He hath put his heart to school\"                       127\n\n  \"The most alluring clouds that mount the sky\"                      128\n\n  \"Feel for the wrongs to universal ken\"                             129\n\n  In Allusion to various Recent Histories and Notices of\n      the French Revolution                                          130\n\n      Continued                                                      131\n\n      Concluded                                                      131\n\n  \"Lo! where she stands fixed in a saint-like trance\"                132\n\n  The Norman Boy                                                     132\n\n  The Poet's Dream                                                   135\n\n  Suggested by a Picture of the Bird of Paradise                     140\n\n  To the Clouds                                                      142\n\n  Airey-Force Valley                                                 146\n\n  \"Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live\"                     147\n\n  Love lies Bleeding                                                 148\n\n  \"They call it Love lies bleeding! rather say\"                      150\n\n  Companion to the Foregoing                                         150\n\n  The Cuckoo-Clock                                                   151\n\n  \"Wansfell! this Household has a favoured lot\"                      153\n\n  \"Though the bold wings of Poesy affect\"                            154\n\n  \"Glad sight wherever new with old\"                                 154\n\n                                 1843\n\n  \"While beams of orient light shoot wide and high\"                  156\n\n  Inscription for a Monument in Crosthwaite Church, in\n      the Vale of Keswick                                            157\n\n  To the Rev. Christopher Wordsworth, D.D., Master of\n      Harrow School                                                  162\n\n                                 1844\n\n  \"So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive\"                           164\n\n  On the projected Kendal and Windermere Railway                     166\n\n  \"Proud were ye, Mountains, when, in times of old\"                  167\n\n  At Furness Abbey                                                   168\n\n                                 1845\n\n  \"Forth from a jutting ridge, around whose base\"                    170\n\n  The Westmoreland Girl                                              172\n\n  At Furness Abbey                                                   176\n\n  \"Yes! thou art fair, yet be not moved\"                             176\n\n  \"What heavenly smiles! O Lady mine\"                                177\n\n  To a Lady                                                          177\n\n  To the Pennsylvanians                                              179\n\n  \"Young England--what is then become of Old\"                        180\n\n                                 1846\n\n  Sonnet                                                             181\n\n  \"Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom's creed\"                 182\n\n  To Lucca Giordano                                                  183\n\n  \"Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high\"                     184\n\n  Illustrated Books and Newspapers                                   184\n\n  Sonnet. To an Octogenarian                                         185\n\n  \"I know an aged Man constrained to dwell\"                          186\n\n  \"The unremitting voice of nightly streams\"                         187\n\n  \"How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high\"                        188\n\n  On the Banks of a Rocky Stream                                     188\n\n  Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of\n      Early Childhood                                                189\n\n                                 POEMS\n                                  BY\n                           WILLIAM WORDSWORTH\n                                AND BY\n                           DOROTHY WORDSWORTH\n                  NOT INCLUDED IN THE EDITION OF 1849-50\n\n                                 1787\n\n  Sonnet, on seeing Miss Helen Maria Williams weep at a\n      Tale of Distress                                               209\n\n  Lines written by William Wordsworth as a School Exercise\n      at Hawkshead, Anno \u00c6tatis 14                                   211\n\n                           1792 (or earlier)\n\n  \"Sweet was the walk along the narrow lane\"                         214\n\n  \"When Love was born of heavenly line\"                              215\n\n  The Convict                                                        217\n\n                                 1798\n\n  \"The snow-tracks of my friends I see\"                              219\n\n  The Old Cumberland Beggar (MS. Variants, not inserted\n      in Vol. I.)                                                    220\n\n                                 1800\n\n  Andrew Jones                                                       221\n\n  \"There is a shapeless crowd of unhewn stones\"                      223\n\n                                 1802\n\n  \"Among all lovely things my Love had been\"                         231\n\n  \"Along the mazes of this song I go\"                                233\n\n  \"The rains at length have ceas'd, the winds are still'd\"           233\n\n  \"Witness thou\"                                                     234\n\n  Wild-Fowl                                                          234\n\n  Written in a Grotto                                                234\n\n  Home at Grasmere                                                   235\n\n  \"Shall he who gives his days to low pursuits\"                      257\n\n                                 1803\n\n  \"I find it written of Simonides\"                                   258\n\n                                 1804\n\n  \"No whimsey of the purse is here\"                                  258\n\n                                 1805\n\n  \"Peaceful our valley, fair and green\"                              259\n\n  \"Ah! if I were a lady gay\"                                         262\n\n                                 1806\n\n  To the Evening Star over Grasmere Water, July 1806                 263\n\n  Michael Angelo in Reply to the Passage upon his Statue\n      of Night sleeping                                              263\n\n  \"Come, gentle Sleep, Death's image tho' thou art\"                  264\n\n  \"Brook, that hast been my solace days and week\"                    265\n\n  Translation from Michael Angelo                                    265\n\n                                 1808\n\n  George and Sarah Green                                             266\n\n                                 1818\n\n  \"The Scottish Broom on Bird-nest brae\"                             270\n\n  Placard for a Poll bearing an old Shirt                            271\n\n  \"Critics, right honourable Bard, decree\"                           271\n\n                                 1819\n\n  \"Through Cumbrian wilds, in many a mountain cove\"                  272\n\n  \"My Son! behold the tide already spent\"                            273\n\n                                 1820\n\n  Author's Voyage down the Rhine                                     273\n\n                                 1822\n\n  \"These vales were saddened with no common gloom\"                   275\n\n  Translation of Part of the First Book of the _\u00c6neid_               276\n\n                                 1823\n\n  \"Arms and the Man I sing, the first who bore\"                      281\n\n                                 1826\n\n  Lines addressed to Joanna H. from Gwerndwffnant in June 1826       282\n\n  Holiday at Gwerndwffnant, May 1826                                 284\n\n  Composed when a Probability existed of our being obliged\n      to quit Rydal Mount as a Residence                             289\n\n  \"I, whose pretty Voice you hear\"                                   295\n\n                                 1827\n\n  To my Niece Dora                                                   297\n\n                                 1829\n\n  \"My Lord and Lady Darlington\"                                      298\n\n                                 1833\n\n  To the Utilitarians                                                299\n\n                                 1835\n\n  \"Throned in the Sun's descending car\"                              300\n\n  \"And oh! dear soother of the pensive breast\"                       301\n\n                                 1836\n\n  \"Said red-ribboned Evans\"                                          301\n\n                                 1837\n\n  On an Event in Col. Evans's Redoubted Performances in Spain        303\n\n                                 1838\n\n  \"Wouldst thou be gathered to Christ's chosen flock\"                303\n\n  Protest against the Ballot, 1838                                   304\n\n  \"Said Secrecy to Cowardice and Fraud\"                              304\n\n  A Poet to his Grandchild                                           305\n\n                                 1840\n\n  On a Portrait of I.F., painted by Margaret Gillies                 306\n\n  To I.F.                                                            307\n\n  \"Oh Bounty without measure, while the Grace\"                       308\n\n                                 1842\n\n  The Eagle and the Dove                                             309\n\n  Grace Darling                                                      310\n\n  \"When Severn's sweeping flood had overthrown\"                      314\n\n  The Pillar of Trajan                                               314\n\n                                 1846\n\n  \"Deign, Sovereign Mistress! to accept a lay\"                       319\n\n                                 1847\n\n  Ode, performed in the Senate-House, Cambridge, on the 6th of\n      July 1847, at the First Commencement after the Installation\n      of His Royal Highness the Prince Albert, Chancellor of the\n      University                                                     320\n\n  To Miss Sellon                                                     325\n\n  \"The worship of this Sabbath morn\"                                 325\n\n  BIBLIOGRAPHIES--\n\n        I. Great Britain                                             329\n\n       II. America                                                   380\n\n      III. France                                                    421\n\n  ERRATA AND ADDENDA LIST                                            431\n\n  INDEX TO THE POEMS                                                 433\n\n  INDEX TO THE FIRST LINES                                           451\n\n\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE\n\n\nThe American Bibliography is almost entirely the work of Mrs. St. John\nof Ithaca, and is the result of laborious and careful critical research\non her part. The French Bibliography is not so full. I have been\nassisted in it mainly by M. Legouis at Lyons, and by workers at the\nBritish Museum. I have also collected a German Bibliography, but it is\nin too incomplete a state for publication in its present form.\n\nThe English Bibliography is fuller than any of its predecessors; but\nthere is no such thing as finality in such work, especially when an\naddition to the literature of the subject is made nearly every week.\nMany kind friends, and coadjutors, have assisted me in it, amongst whom\nI may mention Dr. Garnett of the British Museum, and _very specially_\nMr. Tutin, of Hull, and also Mr. John J. Smith, St. Andrews, and Mr.\nMaclauchlan, Dundee. If I omit, either here or elsewhere, to record the\nassistance which I have received from any one, in my efforts to make\nthis edition of Wordsworth as perfect as is possible at this stage of\nliterary criticism and editorship, I sincerely regret it; but many of\nmy correspondents have specially requested that no mention should be\nmade of their names or their services.\n\nIn the Preface to the first volume of this edition there was an\nunfortunate omission. In returning the final proofs to press, I\naccidentally transmitted an uncorrected one, in which two names did\nnot appear. They were those of Mr. Thomas Hutchinson, Dublin, and\nMr. S. C. Hill, of Hughli College, Bengal. The former kindly revised\nmost of the sheets of Volumes I. and II., and corrected errors,\nbesides making other valuable suggestions and additions. When his own\nClarendon Press edition of Wordsworth was being prepared for press,\nMr. Hutchinson asked permission to incorporate in it materials which\nwere not afterwards inserted. This I granted cordially, as a similar\npermission had been given to Professor Dowden for his Aldine edition.\nThe unfortunate omission of Mr. Hutchinson's name was not discovered\nby me till after the issue of volumes I. and II. (which appeared\nsimultaneously), and it was first brought under my notice by Mr.\nHutchinson's own letters to the newspapers. My debt to Mr. Hutchinson\nis great; and, although I have already thanked him for the services\nwhich he has rendered to the world in connection with Wordsworthian\nliterature, I may perhaps be allowed to repeat the acknowledgment now.\nThe revised sheets of Vols. I. and II. of this edition were, however,\nsubmitted to others at the same time that they were sent to Mr.\nHutchinson; more especially to the late Mr. <DW18>s Campbell, and on his\ndeath to Mr. Belinfante, and then to the late Mr. Kinghorn, all of whom\nwere engaged by my publishers to assist in the work entrusted to me.\nThey \"turned on the microscope\" on my own work, and Mr. Hutchinson's;\nand to them I have been indebted in many ways.\n\nMr. Hill's services, in tracing the sources of numerous quotations from\nother poets which occur in Wordsworth's text, have been great. He sent\nme his discoveries, unsolicited, and I wish to express very cordially\nmy indebtedness to him. To discover some of these quotations--there\nare several hundreds of them--cost me much labour, before I had the\npleasure of hearing from, or knowing, Mr. Hill; and his assistance\nin this matter has been greater than that of any other person. It\nwill be seen that I have failed--after much study and extensive\ncorrespondence--to discover them all.\n\nIn addition to actual quotations--indicated by Wordsworth by inverted\ncommas in his poems--to trace parallel passages from other poets, or\nphrases which may have suggested to him what he recast and glorified,\nhas seemed to me work not unworthy of accomplishment. At the same time,\nand in the same connection, to discover the somewhat similar debts\nof later poets to Wordsworth, and to indicate this here and there in\nfootnotes, may not be wholly useless to posterity.\n\nMy obligations to my friend, Mr. <DW18>s Campbell, are greater than I can\nadequately express. He supplied me with much material, drawn from many\nquarters; and, although he did not always mention his sources, I had\nimplicit confidence in him, both as a literary man and a friend. After\nhis death, through the kindness of Mrs. Campbell, I examined some MS.\nvolumes of _Wordsworthiana_ written by him, which were of much use to\nme.\n\nSome of these were from unknown sources, which I should perhaps have\ntraced out before making use of them, but, in all my Wordsworth work, I\nhave acted from first to last on the legal opinion of a distinguished\nJudge, that the heir of the writer of literary work could alone\nauthorise its subsequent publication; and, since the heirs of the Poet\nhad kindly given me permission to collect and publish his works, I did\nso, with a view to the benefit of posterity.\n\nSome of Mr. Campbell's material was derived from MSS. now in the\npossession of Mr. T. Norton Longman, and I have to express my sincere\nregret that in the earlier volumes I copied from Mr. Campbell's\ntranscripts of these MSS.--which were lent to him on the condition\nthat no public use should be made of them without Mr. Longman's\npermission--some variations of the text, without mentioning the source\nwhence they were derived.\n\nI was unaware that these MSS. were lent to Mr. Campbell with the\ncondition attached, and regret very much that I am unable to trust my\nmemory to indicate now what variations of text I have quoted from them.\nBut I may add that Mr. Longman is about to publish a work which will\nenable Wordsworth students to become practically acquainted with the\ncontents of his MSS.\n\nIn reference to the poems not published by Wordsworth or his sister\nduring their lifetime, I have included in this volume not only fugitive\npieces printed in Magazines and elsewhere, but also those which have\nbeen since recovered from numerous manuscript sources. They are of\nvarying merit. It would be interesting to know, and to record in every\ninstance, where these manuscripts now are; but this is impossible. In\nmany cases the manuscripts have recently changed ownership. I have\nobtained a sight of many of them, and have been granted permission to\ntranscribe them, from the fortunate possessors of large autograph\ncollections, and also from dealers in autographs; but, after the sale\nof manuscripts at public auction-rooms, it is, as a rule, impossible to\ntrace them.\n\nIn many cases the MS. variants which have been published in previous\nvolumes occur in copies of the poems, transcribed by the Wordsworth\nhousehold in private letters to friends. I have occasionally indicated\nthis in footnotes; but, to have done so always would have disfigured\nthe pages, and frequently the notes would have been longer than the\ntext. To trace the present possessors of the MSS. would be well-nigh\nimpossible. It is perhaps worth mentioning that in several cases\nWordsworth entered as \"misprints\" in future editions, what some of his\neditors have considered \"new readings.\" _E.g._ in _The Excursion_, book\nix. l. 679, \"wild\" demeanour, instead of \"mild\" demeanour.\n\nOn Nov. 4, 1893, Mr. Aubrey de Vere wrote to me--\n\n    \"I earnestly hope that, in your 'monumental edition,' you will\n    restore the _Ode, Intimations of Immortality_, to the place\n    which Wordsworth always assigned to it, that of the High Altar\n    of his poetic Cathedral; remitting Quillinan's laureate Ode\n    on an unworthy, because 'occasional,' subject to an Appendix,\n    as a work that at the time of publication was attributed to\n    Wordsworth, but was written by another, though it probably\n    was seen by him, and had a line or two of his in it, and\n    corrections by him.\n\n    \"This is certainly the truth; and I should think that he\n    probably himself told all that truth to the officials, when\n    transmitting the Ode; but that they concealed the circumstance;\n    and that Wordsworth, then profoundly depressed in spirits, gave\n    no more thought to the subject, and soon forgot all about it.\u2026\n\n                        \"Yours very sincerely,\n\n                                                  \"AUBREY DE VERE.\"\n\nIt was in compliance with Mr. Aubrey de Vere's request that, in this\nedition, I departed, in a single instance, from the chronological\narrangement of the poems.\n\nIt may not be too trivial a detail to mention that I gladly gave\npermission to other editors of Wordsworth to make use of any of the\nmaterial which I discovered, and brought together, in former editions;\n_e.g._ to Mr. George, in Boston, for his edition of _The Prelude_ (in\nwhich, if the reader, or critic, compares my original edition with his\nnotes, he will see what Mr. George has done); and to Professor Dowden,\nTrinity College, Dublin, for his most admirable Aldine edition. For the\nlatter--which will always hold a high place in Wordsworth literature--I\nplaced everything asked from me at the disposal of Mr. Dowden.\n\nWhile these sheets are passing through the press, Dr. Garnett, of the\nBritish Museum--one of the kindest and ablest of bibliographers--has\nforwarded to me a contribution, previously sent by him to _The\nAcademy_, and printed in its issue of January 2, 1897.\n\nI have no means of knowing--or of ultimately discovering--whether that\nsonnet, printed as Wordsworth's, is really his. Dr. Garnett says, in\nhis letter to me, \"The verses were undoubtedly in Wordsworth's hand\";\nand, he adds, \"I think they should be preserved, because they are\nWordsworth's, and as an additional proof of his regard for Camoens,\nwhom he enumerates elsewhere among great sonnet-writers. I have added\na version of the quatrains, that the piece may be complete. From the\ncharacter of the handwriting, the lines would seem to have been written\ndown in old age; and I am not quite certain of the word which I have\ntranscribed as 'Austral.'\"\n\n      Vasco, whose bold and happy mainyard spread\n      Sunward thy sails where dawning glory dyed\n      Heaven's Orient gate; whose westering prow the tide\n    Clove, where the day star bows him to his bed:\n    Not sterner toil than thine, or strife more dread,\n      Or nobler laud to nobler lyre allied,\n      His, who did baffled Polypheme deride;\n    Or his, whose scaring shaft the Harpy fled.\n    Camoens, he the accomplished and the good,\n      Gave to thy fame a more illustrious flight\n      Than that brave vessel, though she sailed so far.\n    Through him her course along the Austral flood\n      Is known to all beneath the polar star,\n      Through him the Antipodes in thy name delight.\n\n                                         WILLIAM KNIGHT.\n\n\n\n\nWORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS\n\n\n\n\n1834\n\n\nLINES\n\nSUGGESTED BY A PORTRAIT FROM THE PENCIL OF F. STONE\n\nComposed 1834.--Published 1835\n\n[This Portrait has hung for many years in our principal sitting-room,\nand represents J. Q.[1] as she was when a girl. The picture, though it\nis somewhat thinly painted, has much merit in tone and general effect:\nit is chiefly valuable, however, from the sentiment that pervades\nit. The anecdote of the saying of the monk in sight of Titian's\npicture was told in this house by Mr. Wilkie, and was, I believe,\nfirst communicated to the public in this poem, the former portion of\nwhich I was composing at the time. Southey heard the story from Miss\nHutchinson, and transferred it to the _Doctor_; but it is not easy to\nexplain how my friend Mr. Rogers, in a note subsequently added to his\n_Italy_, was led to speak of the same remarkable words having many\nyears before been spoken in his hearing by a monk or priest in front\nof a picture of the Last Supper, placed over a Refectory-table in a\nconvent at Padua.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.\"--ED.\n\n    Beguiled into forgetfulness of care\n    Due to the day's unfinished task; of pen\n    Or book regardless, and of that fair scene\n    In Nature's prodigality displayed\n    Before my window, oftentimes and long                              5\n    I gaze upon a Portrait whose mild gleam\n    Of beauty never ceases to enrich\n    The common light; whose stillness charms the air,\n    Or seems to charm it, into like repose;\n    Whose silence, for the pleasure of the ear,                       10\n    Surpasses sweetest music. There she sits\n    With emblematic purity attired\n    In a white vest, white as her marble neck\n    Is, and the pillar of the throat would be\n    But for the shadow by the drooping chin                           15\n    Cast into that recess--the tender shade,\n    The shade and light, both there and every where,\n    And through the very atmosphere she breathes,\n    Broad, clear, and toned harmoniously, with skill\n    That might from nature have been learnt in the hour               20\n    When the lone shepherd sees the morning spread\n    Upon the mountains. Look at her, whoe'er\n    Thou be that, kindling with a poet's soul,\n    Hast loved the painter's true Promethean craft\n    Intensely--from Imagination take                                  25\n    The treasure,--what mine eyes behold see thou,\n    Even though the Atlantic ocean roll between.\n\n      A silver line, that runs from brow to crown\n    And in the middle parts the braided hair,\n    Just serves to show how delicate a soil                           30\n    The golden harvest grows in; and those eyes,\n    Soft and capacious as a cloudless sky\n    Whose azure depth their colour emulates,\n    Must needs be conversant with upward looks,\n    Prayer's voiceless service; but now, seeking nought               35\n    And shunning nought, their own peculiar life\n    Of motion they renounce, and with the head\n    Partake its inclination towards earth\n    In humble grace, and quiet pensiveness\n    Caught at the point where it stops short of sadness.              40\n\n      Offspring of soul-bewitching Art, make me\n    Thy confidant! say, whence derived that air\n    Of calm abstraction? Can the ruling thought\n    Be with some lover far away, or one\n    Crossed by misfortune, or of doubted faith?                       45\n    Inapt conjecture! Childhood here, a moon\n    Crescent in simple loveliness serene,\n    Has but approached the gates of womanhood,\n    Not entered them; her heart is yet unpierced\n    By the blind Archer-god; her fancy free:                          50\n    The fount of feeling, if unsought elsewhere,\n    Will not be found.\n\n                        Her right hand, as it lies\n    Across the slender wrist of the left arm\n    Upon her lap reposing, holds--but mark\n    How slackly, for the absent mind permits                          55\n    No firmer grasp--a little wild-flower, joined\n    As in a posy, with a few pale ears\n    Of yellowing corn, the same that overtopped\n    And in their common birthplace sheltered it\n    'Till they were plucked together; a blue flower                   60\n    Called by the thrifty husbandman a weed;\n    But Ceres, in her garland, might have worn\n    That ornament, unblamed. The floweret, held\n    In scarcely conscious fingers, was, she knows,\n    (Her Father told her so) in youth's gay dawn                      65\n    Her Mother's favourite; and the orphan Girl,\n    In her own dawn--a dawn less gay and bright,\n    Loves it, while there in solitary peace\n    She sits, for that departed Mother's sake.\n    --Not from a source less sacred is derived                        70\n    (Surely I do not err) that pensive air\n    Of calm abstraction through the face diffused\n    And the whole person.\n                          Words have something told\n    More than the pencil can, and verily\n    More than is needed, but the precious Art                         75\n    Forgives their interference--Art divine,\n    That both creates and fixes, in despite\n    Of Death and Time, the marvels it hath wrought.\n\n      Strange contrasts have we in this world of ours!\n    That posture, and the look of filial love                         80\n    Thinking of past and gone, with what is left\n    Dearly united, might be swept away\n    From this fair Portrait's fleshly Archetype,\n    Even by an innocent fancy's slightest freak\n    Banished, nor ever, haply, be restored                            85\n    To their lost place, or meet in harmony\n    So exquisite; but _here_ do they abide,\n    Enshrined for ages. Is not then the Art\n    Godlike, a humble branch of the divine,\n    In visible quest of immortality,                                  90\n    Stretched forth with trembling hope?--In every realm,\n    From high Gibraltar to Siberian plains,\n    Thousands, in each variety of tongue\n    That Europe knows, would echo this appeal;\n    One above all, a Monk who waits on God                            95\n    In the magnific Convent built of yore\n    To sanctify the Escurial palace. He--\n    Guiding, from cell to cell and room to room,\n    A British Painter (eminent for truth\n    In character,[2] and depth of feeling, shown                     100\n    By labours that have touched the hearts of kings,\n    And are endeared to simple cottagers)--\n    Came, in that service, to a glorious work,[3]\n    Our Lord's Last Supper, beautiful as when first\n    The appropriate Picture, fresh from Titian's hand,               105\n    Graced the Refectory: and there, while both\n    Stood with eyes fixed upon that masterpiece,\n    The hoary Father in the Stranger's ear\n    Breathed out these words:--\"Here daily do we sit,\n    Thanks given to God for daily bread, and here                    110\n    Pondering the mischiefs of these restless times,\n    And thinking of my Brethren, dead, dispersed,\n    Or changed and changing, I not seldom gaze\n    Upon this solemn Company unmoved\n    By shock of circumstance, or lapse of years,                     115\n    Until I cannot but believe that they--\n    They are in truth the Substance, we\n    the Shadows.\"[4]\n\n      So spake the mild Jeronymite, his griefs\n    Melting away within him like a dream\n    Ere he had ceased to gaze, perhaps to speak:                     120\n    And I, grown old, but in a happier land,\n    Domestic Portrait! have to verse consigned\n    In thy calm presence those heart-moving words:\n    Words that can soothe, more than they agitate;\n    Whose spirit, like the angel that went down                      125\n    Into Bethesda's pool, with healing virtue\n    Informs the fountain in the human breast\n    Which[5] by the visitation was disturbed.\n    ----But why this stealing tear? Companion mute,\n    On thee I look, not sorrowing; fare thee well,                   130\n    My Song's Inspirer, once again farewell![6]\n\n[1] Jemima Quillinan, the eldest daughter of Edward Quillinan,\nWordsworth's future son-in-law. The portrait was taken when she was a\nschool-girl, and while her father resided at Oporto.--ED.\n\n[2] Wilkie. See the Fenwick note.--ED.\n\n[3] 1837.\n\n    Left not unvisited a glorious work,\n\n    1835.\n\n[4] \"When Wilkie was in the Escurial, looking at Titian's famous\npicture of the Last Supper, in the Refectory there, an old Jeronymite\nsaid to him: 'I have sate daily in sight of that picture for now nearly\nthree score years; during that time my companions have dropt off, one\nafter another--all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries,\nand many, or most of those who were younger than myself; more than one\ngeneration has passed away, and there the figures in the picture have\nremained unchanged! I look at them till I sometimes think that they are\nthe realities, and we but shadows!'\n\nI wish I could record the name of the monk by whom that natural feeling\nwas so feelingly and strikingly expressed.\n\n    The shows of things are better than themselves,\n\nsays the author of the tragedy of Nero, whose name also I could wish\nhad been forthcoming; and the classical reader will remember the lines\nof Sophocles:\n\n    \u1f41\u03c1\u1ff6 \u03b3\u1f70\u03c1 \u1f21\u03bc\u1fb6\u03c2 \u03bf\u1f50\u03b4\u1f72\u03bd \u1f44\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1\u03c2 \u1f04\u03bb\u03bb\u03bf, \u03c0\u03bb\u1f74\u03bd\n    \u03b5\u1f34\u03b4\u03c9\u03bb', \u1f45\u03c3\u03bf\u03b9\u03c0\u03b5\u03c1 \u03b6\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b5\u03bd, \u1f74 \u03ba\u03bf\u03cd\u03c6\u03b7\u03bd \u03c3\u03ba\u03b9\u03ac\u03bd.\n\nThese are reflections which should make us think\n\n    Of that same time when no more change shall be\n    But steadfast rest of all things, firmly stayd\n    Upon the pillars of Eternity,\n    That is contrain to mutability;\n    For all that moveth doth in change delight:\n    But henceforth all shall rest eternally\n    With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight,\n    O that great Sabaoth God grant me that Sabbath's sight.\n\n    SPENSER.\"\n\n(Southey, _The Doctor_, vol. iii. p. 235.)--ED.\n\n[5] 1837.\n\n    That \u2026\n\n    1835.\n\n[6] The pile of buildings, composing the palace and convent of San\nLorenzo, has, in common usage, lost its proper name in that of the\n_Escurial_, a village at the foot of the hill upon which the splendid\nedifice, built by Philip the Second, stands. It need scarcely be added,\nthat Wilkie is the painter alluded to.--W.W. 1835.\n\n\nTHE FOREGOING SUBJECT RESUMED\n\nComposed 1834.--Published 1835.\n\nOne of the \"Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.\"--ED.\n\n    Among a grave fraternity of Monks,\n    For One, but surely not for One alone,\n    Triumphs, in that great work, the Painter's skill,\n    Humbling the body, to exalt the soul;\n    Yet representing, amid wreck and wrong                             5\n    And dissolution and decay, the warm\n    And breathing life of flesh, as if already\n    Clothed with impassive majesty, and graced\n    With no mean earnest of a heritage\n    Assigned to it in future worlds. Thou, too,                       10\n    With thy memorial flower, meek Portraiture!\n    From whose serene companionship I passed\n    Pursued by thoughts that haunt me still; thou also--\n    Though but a simple object, into light\n    Called forth by those affections that endear                      15\n    The private hearth; though keeping thy sole seat\n    In singleness, and little tried by time,\n    Creation, as it were, of yesterday--\n    With a congenial function art endued\n    For each and all of us, together joined                           20\n    In course of nature under a low roof\n    By charities and duties that proceed\n    Out of the bosom of a wiser vow.\n    To a like salutary sense of awe\n    Or sacred wonder, growing with the power                          25\n    Of meditation that attempts to weigh,\n    In faithful scales, things and their opposites,\n    Can thy enduring quiet gently raise\n    A household small and sensitive,--whose love,\n    Dependent as in part its blessings are                            30\n    Upon frail ties dissolving or dissolved\n    On earth, will be revived, we trust, in heaven.[7]\n\n[7] In the class entitled \"Musings,\" in Mr. Southey's Minor Poems, is\none upon his own miniature picture, taken in childhood, and another\nupon a landscape painted by Gaspar Poussin. It is possible that every\nword of the above verses, though similar in subject, might have been\nwritten had the author been unacquainted with those beautiful effusions\nof poetic sentiment. But, for his own satisfaction, he must be allowed\nthus publicly to acknowledge the pleasure those two poems of his Friend\nhave given him, and the grateful influence they have upon his mind as\noften as he reads them, or thinks of them.--W.W. 1835.\n\n\nTO A CHILD\n\nWRITTEN IN HER ALBUM[8]\n\nComposed 1834.--Published 1835\n\n[This quatrain was extempore on observing this image, as I had often\ndone, on the lawn of Rydal Mount. It was first written down in the\nAlbum of my God-daughter, Rotha Quillinan.--I.F.]\n\nIn 1837 this was one of the \"Inscriptions.\" In 1845 it was transferred\nto the \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    Small service is true service while it lasts:\n    Of humblest Friends, bright Creature! scorn not one![9]\n    The Daisy, by the shadow that it casts,\n    Protects the lingering dew-drop from the Sun.[10]\n\n[8] The original title (1835) was \"Written in an Album.\" In 1837 it was\n\"Written in the Album of a Child.\" In 1845 the title was reconstructed\nas above.\n\n[9] 1845.\n\n    Of Friends, however humble, scorn not one:\n\n    1835.\n\n[10] Compare the lines, written in 1845, beginning--\n\n        So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive.\n\n    ED.\n\n\nLINES\n\nWRITTEN IN THE ALBUM OF THE COUNTESS OF LONSDALE,[11] NOV. 5, 1834\n\nComposed 1834.--Published 1835\n\n[This is a faithful picture of that amiable Lady, as she then was. The\nyouthfulness of figure and demeanour and habits, which she retained in\nalmost unprecedented degree, departed a very few years after, and she\ndied without violent disease by gradual decay before she reached the\nperiod of old age.--I.F.]\n\nThis was placed, in 1845, among the \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    Lady! a Pen (perhaps with thy regard,\n    Among the Favoured, favoured not the least)\n    Left, 'mid the Records of this Book inscribed,\n    Deliberate traces, registers of thought\n    And feeling, suited to the place and time                          5\n    That gave them birth:--months passed, and still this hand,\n    That had not been too timid to imprint\n    Words which the virtues of thy Lord inspired,\n    Was yet not bold enough to write of Thee.\n    And why that scrupulous reserve? In sooth                         10\n    The blameless cause lay in the Theme itself.\n    Flowers are there many that delight to strive\n    With the sharp wind, and seem to court the shower,\n    Yet are by nature careless of the sun\n    Whether he shine on them or not; and some,                        15\n    Where'er he moves along the unclouded sky,\n    Turn a broad front full on his flattering beams:\n    Others do rather from their notice shrink,\n    Loving the dewy shade,--a humble band,\n    Modest and sweet, a progeny of earth,                             20\n    Congenial with thy mind and character,\n    High-born Augusta!\n                        Witness Towers, and Groves!\n    And Thou, wild Stream, that giv'st the honoured name[12]\n    Of Lowther to this ancient Line, bear witness[13]\n    From thy most secret haunts; and ye Parterres,                    25\n    Which She is pleased and proud to call her own,\n    Witness how oft upon my noble Friend\n    _Mute_ offerings, tribute from an inward sense\n    Of admiration and respectful love,\n    Have waited--till the affections could no more                    30\n    Endure that silence, and broke out in song,\n    Snatches of music taken up and dropt\n    Like those self-solacing, those under, notes\n    Trilled by the redbreast, when autumnal leaves\n    Are thin upon the bough. Mine, only mine,                         35\n    The pleasure was, and no one heard the praise,\n    Checked, in the moment of its issue, checked\n    And reprehended, by a fancied blush\n    From the pure qualities that called it forth.\n\n      Thus Virtue lives debarred from Virtue's meed;                  40\n    Thus, Lady, is retiredness a veil\n    That, while it only spreads a softening charm\n    O'er features looked at by discerning eyes,\n    Hides half their beauty from the common gaze;\n    And thus,[14] even on the exposed and breezy hill                 45\n    Of lofty station, female goodness walks,\n    When side by side with lunar gentleness,\n    As in a cloister. Yet the grateful Poor\n    (Such the immunities of low estate,\n    Plain Nature's enviable privilege,                                50\n    Her sacred recompense for many wants)\n    Open their hearts before Thee, pouring out\n    All that they think and feel, with tears of joy;\n    And benedictions not unheard in heaven:\n    And friend in the ear of friend, where speech is free             55\n    To follow truth, is eloquent as they.\n\n      Then let the Book receive in these prompt lines\n    A just memorial; and thine eyes consent\n    To read that they, who mark thy course, behold\n    A life declining with the golden light                            60\n    Of summer, in the season of sere leaves;[15]\n    See cheerfulness undamped by stealing Time;\n    See studied kindness flow with easy stream,\n    Illustrated with inborn courtesy;\n    And an habitual disregard of self                                 65\n    Balanced by vigilance for others' weal.\n\n      And shall the Verse not tell of lighter gifts\n    With these ennobling attributes conjoined\n    And blended, in peculiar harmony,\n    By Youth's surviving spirit? What agile grace!                    70\n    A nymph-like liberty, in nymph-like form,\n    Beheld with wonder; whether floor or path\n    Thou tread; or sweep--borne on the managed steed--[16]\n    Fleet as the shadows, over down or field,\n    Driven by strong winds at play among the clouds.                  75\n\n      Yet one word more--one farewell word--a wish\n    Which came, but it has passed into a prayer--\n    That, as thy sun in brightness is declining,\n    So--at an hour yet distant for _their_ sakes\n    Whose tender love, here faltering on the way                      80\n    Of a diviner love, will be forgiven--\n    So may it set in peace, to rise again\n    For everlasting glory won by faith.\n\n[11] 1837.\n\n    Countess of ----\n\n    1835.\n\n[12] The Lowther stream passes the Castle, and joins the Eamont below\nBrougham Hall, near Penrith.--ED.\n\n[13] 1837.\n\n                      Towers, and stately Groves,\n    Bear witness for me; thou, too, Mountain-stream!\n\n    1835.\n\n[14]\n\n    When hence \u2026\n\n    C.\n\n[15] Compare _September, 1819_, and _Upon the Same Occasion_, vol. vi.\npp. 201, 202, especially the lines in the latter--\n\n    Me, conscious that my leaf is sere,\n    And yellow on the bough, etc.\n\nED.\n\n[16] 1837.\n\n    Thou tread, or on the managed steed art borne,\n\n    1835.\n\n\n\n\n1835\n\nTwo Evening Voluntaries, two Elegies (on the deaths of Charles Lamb and\nJames Hogg), the lines on the Bird of Paradise, and a few sonnets, make\nup the poems belonging to the year 1835.--ED.\n\n\n\"WHY ART THOU SILENT? IS THY LOVE A PLANT\"\n\nComposed 1835 (or earlier).--Published 1835\n\n[In the month of January,--when Dora and I were walking from Town-end,\nGrasmere, across the Vale, snow being on the ground, she espied, in\nthe thick though leafless hedge, a bird's nest half-filled with snow.\nOut of this comfortless appearance arose this Sonnet, which was, in\nfact, written without the least reference to any individual object,\nbut merely to prove to myself that I could, if I thought fit, write in\na strain that Poets have been fond of. On the 14th of February in the\nsame year, my daughter, in a sportive mood, sent it as a Valentine,\nunder a fictitious name, to her cousin C.W.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Why art thou silent? Is thy love a plant\n    Of such weak fibre that the treacherous air\n    Of absence withers what was once so fair?\n    Is there no debt to pay, no boon to grant?\n    Yet have my thoughts for thee been vigilant--                      5\n    Bound to thy service with unceasing care,[17]\n    The mind's least generous wish a mendicant\n    For nought but what thy happiness could spare.\n    Speak--though this soft warm heart, once free to hold\n    A thousand tender pleasures, thine and mine,                      10\n    Be left more desolate, more dreary cold\n    Than a forsaken bird's-nest filled with snow\n    'Mid its own bush of leafless eglantine--\n    Speak, that my torturing doubts their end may know!\n\n[17] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 with incessant care,\n\n    C.\n\n    (As would my deeds have been) with hourly care,\n\n    1835.\n\n\nTO THE MOON\n\n(COMPOSED BY THE SEA-SIDE,--ON THE COAST OF CUMBERLAND)\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1837\n\nOne of the \"Evening Voluntaries.\"--ED.\n\n    Wanderer! that stoop'st so low, and com'st so near\n    To human life's unsettled atmosphere;\n    Who lov'st with Night and Silence to partake,\n    So might it seem, the cares of them that wake;\n    And, through the cottage-lattice softly peeping,                   5\n    Dost shield from harm the humblest of the sleeping;\n    What pleasure once encompassed those sweet names\n    Which yet in thy behalf the Poet claims,\n    An idolizing dreamer as of yore!--\n    I slight them all; and, on this sea-beat shore                    10\n    Sole-sitting, only can to thoughts attend\n    That bid me hail thee as the SAILOR'S FRIEND;\n    So call thee for heaven's grace through thee made known\n    By confidence supplied and mercy shown,\n    When not a twinkling star or beacon's light                       15\n    Abates the perils of a stormy night;\n    And for less obvious benefits, that find\n    Their way, with thy pure help, to heart and mind;\n    Both for the adventurer starting in life's prime;\n    And veteran ranging round from clime to clime,                    20\n    Long-baffled hope's slow fever in his veins,\n    And wounds and weakness oft his labour's sole remains.\n\n      The aspiring Mountains and the winding Streams,\n    Empress of Night! are gladdened by thy beams;\n    A look of thine the wilderness pervades,                          25\n    And penetrates the forest's inmost shades;\n    Thou, chequering peaceably the minster's gloom,\n    Guid'st the pale Mourner to the lost one's tomb;\n    Canst reach the Prisoner--to his grated cell\n    Welcome, though silent and intangible!--                          30\n    And lives there one, of all that come and go\n    On the great waters toiling to and fro,\n    One, who has watched thee at some quiet hour\n    Enthroned aloft in undisputed power,\n    Or crossed by vapoury streaks and clouds that move                35\n    Catching the lustre they in part reprove--\n    Nor sometimes felt a fitness in thy sway\n    To call up thoughts that shun the glare of day,\n    And make the serious happier than the gay?\n\n      Yes, lovely Moon! if thou so mildly bright                      40\n    Dost rouse, yet surely in thy own despite,\n    To fiercer mood the phrenzy-stricken brain,\n    Let me a compensating faith maintain;\n    That there's a sensitive, a tender, part\n    Which thou canst touch in every human heart,                      45\n    For healing and composure.--But, as least\n    And mightiest billows ever have confessed\n    Thy domination; as the whole vast Sea\n    Feels through her lowest depths thy sovereignty;\n    So shines that countenance with especial grace                    50\n    On them who urge the keel her _plains_ to trace\n    Furrowing its way right onward. The most rude,\n    Cut off from home and country, may have stood--\n    Even till long gazing hath bedimmed his eye,\n    Or the mute rapture ended in a sigh--                             55\n    Touched by accordance of thy placid cheer,\n    With some internal lights to memory dear,\n    Or fancies stealing forth to soothe the breast\n    Tired with its daily share of earth's unrest,--\n    Gentle awakenings, visitations meek;                              60\n    A kindly influence whereof few will speak,\n    Though it can wet with tears the hardiest cheek.\n\n      And when thy beauty in the shadowy cave\n    Is hidden, buried in its monthly grave;[18]\n    Then, while the Sailor, 'mid an open sea                          65\n    Swept by a favouring wind that leaves thought free,\n    Paces the deck--no star perhaps in sight,\n    And nothing save the moving ship's own light\n    To cheer the long dark hours of vacant night--\n    Oft with his musings does thy image blend,                        70\n    In his mind's eye thy crescent horns ascend,\n    And thou art still, O Moon, that SAILOR'S FRIEND!\n\n[18] Compare--\n\n    When thou wert hidden in thy monthly grave,\n\nin the lines _Written in a Grotto_, p. 235.--ED.\n\n\nTO THE MOON\n\n(RYDAL)\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1837\n\nOne of the \"Evening Voluntaries.\"--ED.\n\n    Queen of the stars!--so gentle, so benign,\n    That ancient Fable did to thee assign,\n    When darkness creeping o'er thy silver brow\n    Warned thee these upper regions to forego,\n    Alternate empire in the shades below--                             5\n    A Bard, who, lately near the wide-spread sea\n    Traversed by gleaming ships, looked up to thee\n    With grateful thoughts, doth now thy rising hail\n    From the close confines of a shadowy vale.\n    Glory of night, conspicuous yet serene,                           10\n    Nor less attractive when by glimpses seen\n    Through cloudy umbrage,[19] well might that fair face,\n    And all those attributes of modest grace,\n    In days when Fancy wrought unchecked by fear,\n    Down to the green earth fetch thee from thy sphere,               15\n    To sit in leafy woods by fountains clear!\n\n      O still belov'd (for thine, meek Power, are charms\n    That fascinate the very Babe in arms,\n    While he, uplifted towards thee, laughs outright,\n    Spreading his little palms in his glad Mother's sight)            20\n    O still belov'd, once worshipped! Time, that frowns\n    In his destructive flight on earthly crowns,\n    Spares thy mild splendour; still those far-shot beams\n    Tremble on dancing waves and rippling streams\n    With stainless touch, as chaste as when thy praise                25\n    Was sung by Virgin-choirs in festal lays;\n    And through dark trials still dost thou explore\n    Thy way for increase punctual as of yore,\n    When teeming Matrons--yielding to rude faith\n    In mysteries of birth and life and death                          30\n    And painful struggle and deliverance--prayed\n    Of thee to visit them with lenient aid.\n    What though the rites be swept away, the fanes\n    Extinct that echoed to the votive strains;\n    Yet thy mild aspect does not, cannot, cease                       35\n    Love to promote and purity and peace;\n    And Fancy, unreproved, even yet may trace\n    Faint types of suffering in thy beamless face.\n\n      Then, silent Monitress! let us--not blind\n    To worlds unthought of till the searching mind                    40\n    Of Science laid them open to mankind--\n    Told, also, how the voiceless heavens declare\n    God's glory; and acknowledging thy share\n    In that blest charge; let us--without offence\n    To aught of highest, holiest, influence--                         45\n    Receive whatever good 'tis given thee to dispense.\n    May sage and simple, catching with one eye\n    The moral intimations of the sky,\n    Learn from thy course, where'er their own be taken,\n    \"To look on tempests, and be never shaken\";[20]                   50\n    To keep with faithful step the appointed way\n    Eclipsing or eclipsed, by night or day,\n    And from example of thy monthly range\n    Gently to brook decline and fatal change;\n    Meek, patient, stedfast, and with loftier scope,                  55\n    Than thy revival yields, for gladsome hope![21]\n\n[19] Compare _The Triad_, vol. vii. p. 181.--ED.\n\n[20] Compare l. 6 of Shakespeare's sonnet, beginning--\n\n    Let me not to the marriage of true minds.\n\nED.\n\n[21] See a fragment of ten lines, which was written by Wordsworth in\nMS. after the above, in a copy of his poems. They are printed in the\nAppendix to this volume.--ED.\n\n\nWRITTEN AFTER THE DEATH OF CHARLES LAMB\n\n[Light will be thrown upon the tragic circumstance alluded to in this\npoem when, after the death of Charles Lamb's Sister, his biographer,\nMr. Sergeant Talfourd, shall be at liberty to relate particulars which\ncould not, at the time his Memoir was written, be given to the public.\nMary Lamb was ten years older than her brother, and has survived him as\nlong a time. Were I to give way to my own feelings, I should dwell not\nonly on her genius and intellectual powers, but upon the delicacy and\nrefinement of manner which she maintained inviolable under most trying\ncircumstances. She was loved and honoured by all her brother's friends;\nand others, some of them strange characters, whom his philanthropic\npeculiarities induced him to countenance. The death of C. Lamb himself\nwas doubtless hastened by his sorrow for that of Coleridge, to whom\nhe had been attached from the time of their being school-fellows at\nChrist's Hospital. Lamb was a good Latin scholar, and probably would\nhave gone to college upon one of the school foundations but for the\nimpediment in his speech. Had such been his lot, he would most likely\nhave been preserved from the indulgences of social humours and fancies\nwhich were often injurious to himself, and causes of severe regret to\nhis friends, without really benefiting the object of his misapplied\nkindness.--I.F.]\n\nIn the edition of 1837, these lines had no title. They were printed\nprivately,--before their first appearance in that edition,--as a small\npamphlet of seven pages without title or heading. A copy will be found\nin the fifth volume of the collection of pamphlets, forming part of\nthe library bequeathed by the late Mr. John Forster to the South\nKensington Museum. There are several readings to be found only in this\nprivately-printed edition. The poem was placed among the \"Epitaphs and\nElegiac Pieces.\"--ED.\n\nComposed November 19, 1835.--Published 1837\n\n    To a good Man of most dear memory[22]\n    This Stone is sacred.[23] Here he lies apart\n    From the great city where he first drew breath,\n    Was reared and taught; and humbly earned his bread,\n    To the strict labours of the merchant's desk                       5\n    By duty chained. Not seldom did those tasks\n    Tease, and the thought of time so spent depress,\n    His spirit, but the recompense was high;\n    Firm Independence, Bounty's rightful sire;\n    Affections, warm as sunshine, free as air;                        10\n    And when the precious hours of leisure came,\n    Knowledge and wisdom, gained from converse sweet\n    With books, or while he ranged the crowded streets\n    With a keen eye, and overflowing heart:\n    So genius triumphed over seeming wrong,                           15\n    And poured out truth in works by thoughtful love\n    Inspired--works potent over smiles and tears.\n    And as round mountain-tops the lightning plays,\n    Thus innocently sported, breaking forth\n    As from a cloud of some grave sympathy,                           20\n    Humour and wild instinctive wit, and all\n    The vivid flashes of his spoken words.\n    From the most gentle creature nursed in fields[24]\n    Had been derived the name he bore--a name,\n    Wherever christian altars have been raised,                       25\n    Hallowed to meekness and to innocence;\n    And if in him meekness at times gave way,\n    Provoked out of herself by troubles strange,\n    Many and strange, that hung about his life;[25]\n    Still, at the centre of his being, lodged                         30\n    A soul by resignation sanctified:\n    And if too often, self-reproached, he felt\n    That innocence belongs not to our kind,\n    A power that never ceased to abide in him,\n    Charity, 'mid the multitude of sins[26]                           35\n    That she can cover, left not his exposed\n    To an unforgiving judgment from just Heaven.\n    O, he was good, if e'er a good Man lived!\n\n    From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart\n    Those simple lines flowed with an earnest wish,                   40\n    Though but a doubting hope, that they might serve\n    Fitly to guard the precious dust of him\n    Whose virtues called them forth. That aim is missed;\n    For much that truth most urgently required\n    Had from a faltering pen been asked in vain:                      45\n    Yet, haply, on the printed page received,\n    The imperfect record, there, may stand unblamed\n    As long as verse of mine shall breathe the air\n    Of memory, or see the light of love.[27]\n\n      Thou wert a scorner of the fields, my Friend,                   50\n    But more in show than truth;[28] and from the fields,\n    And from the mountains, to thy rural grave\n    Transported, my soothed spirit hovers o'er\n    Its green untrodden turf, and blowing flowers;\n    And taking up a voice shall speak (tho' still                     55\n    Awed by the theme's peculiar sanctity\n    Which words less free presumed not even to touch)\n    Of that fraternal love, whose heaven-lit lamp\n    From infancy, through manhood, to the last\n    Of threescore years, and to thy latest hour,                      60\n    Burnt on with ever-strengthening light, enshrined[29]\n    Within thy bosom.\n                              \"Wonderful\" hath been\n    The love established between man and man,\n    \"Passing the love of women;\" and between\n    Man and his help-mate in fast wedlock joined                      65\n    Through God,[30] is raised a spirit and soul of love\n    Without whose blissful influence Paradise\n    Had been no Paradise; and earth were now\n    A waste where creatures bearing human form,\n    Direst of savage beasts, would roam in fear,                      70\n    Joyless and comfortless. Our days glide on;[31]\n    And let him grieve who cannot choose but grieve\n    That he hath been an Elm without his Vine,\n    And her bright dower of clustering charities,\n    That, round his trunk and branches, might have clung              75\n    Enriching and adorning. Unto thee,\n    Not so enriched, not so adorned, to thee\n    Was given (say rather thou of later birth\n    Wert given to her) a Sister--'tis a word\n    Timidly uttered, for she _lives_, the meek,                       80\n    The self-restraining, and the ever-kind;\n    In whom thy reason and intelligent heart\n    Found--for all interests, hopes, and tender cares,\n    All softening, humanising, hallowing powers,\n    Whether withheld, or for her sake unsought--                      85\n    More than sufficient recompense!\n                                      Her love\n    (What weakness prompts the voice to tell it here?)\n    Was as the love of mothers; and when years,\n    Lifting the boy to man's estate, had called\n    The long-protected to assume the part                             90\n    Of a protector, the first filial tie\n    Was undissolved; and, in or out of sight,\n    Remained imperishably interwoven\n    With life itself. Thus, 'mid a shifting world,\n    Did they together testify of time[32]                             95\n    And season's difference--a double tree\n    With two collateral stems sprung from one root;\n    Such were they--such thro' life they _might_ have been\n    In union, in partition only such;\n    Otherwise wrought the will of the Most High;                     100\n    Yet, thro' all visitations and all trials,\n    Still they were faithful; like two vessels launched\n    From the same beach one ocean to explore[33]\n    With mutual help, and sailing--to their league\n    True, as inexorable winds, or bars                               105\n    Floating or fixed of polar ice, allow.[34]\n\n      But turn we rather, let my spirit turn\n    With thine, O silent and invisible Friend!\n    To those dear intervals, nor rare nor brief,\n    When reunited, and by choice withdrawn                           110\n    From miscellaneous converse, ye were taught\n    That the remembrance of foregone distress,\n    And the worse fear of future ill (which oft\n    Doth hang around it, as a sickly child\n    Upon its mother) may be both alike                               115\n    Disarmed of power to unsettle present good\n    So prized, and things inward and outward held\n    In such an even balance, that the heart\n    Acknowledges God's grace, his mercy feels,\n    And in its depth of gratitude is still.                          120\n\n      O gift divine of quiet sequestration!\n    The hermit, exercised in prayer and praise,\n    And feeding daily on the hope of heaven,\n    Is happy in his vow, and fondly cleaves\n    To life-long singleness; but happier far                         125\n    Was to your souls, and, to the thoughts of others,\n    A thousand times more beautiful appeared,\n    Your _dual_ loneliness. The sacred tie\n    Is broken; yet why grieve? for Time but holds\n    His moiety in trust, till Joy shall lead                         130\n    To the blest world where parting is unknown.[35]\n\n[22] 1837.\n\n    _To the dear memory of a frail good Man_\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\n[23] Charles Lamb died December 27, 1834, and was buried in Edmonton\nChurchyard, in a spot selected by himself.--ED.\n\n[24] This way of indicating the _name_ of my lamented friend has been\nfound fault with, perhaps rightly so; but I may say in justification of\nthe double sense of the word, that similar allusions are not uncommon\nin epitaphs. One of the best in our language in verse, I ever read,\nwas upon a person who bore the name of Palmer\u2020; and the course of the\nthought, throughout, turned upon the Life of the Departed, considered\nas a pilgrimage. Nor can I think that the objection in the present\ncase will have much force with any one who remembers Charles Lamb's\nbeautiful sonnet addressed to his own name, and ending--\n\n    No deed of mine shall shame thee, gentle name!\n\nW. W. 1837.\n\n    \u2020 1840.\n\n    Pilgrim;\n\n    1837.\n\nProfessor Henry Reed, in his edition of 1837, added the following note\nto Wordsworth's. \"In _Hierologus_, a Church Tour through England and\nWales, I have met with an epitaph which is probably the one alluded to\nabove \u2026 a Kentish epitaph on one Palmer:\n\n    Palmers all our fathers were;\n    I, a Palmer lived here,\n    And traveyled sore, till worn with age,\n    I ended this world's pilgrimage,\n    On the blest Ascension Day\n    In the cheerful month of May.\"\n\nThe above is Professor Reed's note. The following is an exact copy of\nthe epitaph:--\n\n    _Palmers_ all our faders were;\n    I, a _Palmer_ livyd here\n    And travyld still till worne wyth age,\n    I endyd this world's pylgramage,\n    On the blyst assention day\n    In the cherful month of May;\n    A thowsand wyth fowre hundryd seven,\n    And took my jorney hense to heven.\n\n    (Printed by Weever.)\n\nED.\n\n[25] Compare Talfourd's _Final Memorials of Charles Lamb_,\n_passim_.--ED.\n\n[26] 1837.\n\n    _He had a constant friend--in Charity_;\n    HER _who, among_ a multitude of sins,\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\n[27] 1837.\n\n    From a reflecting mind and sorrowing heart\n    This tribute flow'd, with hope that it might guard\n    The dust of him whose virtues call'd it forth;\n    But 'tis a little space of earth that man,\n    Stretch'd out in death, is doom'd to occupy;\n    Still smaller space doth modest custom yield,\n    On sculptured tomb or tablet, to the claims\n    Of the deceased, or rights of the bereft.\n    'Tis well; and tho', the record overstepped\n    Those narrow bounds, yet on the printed page\n    Received, there may it stand, I trust, unblamed\n    As long as verse of mine shall steal from tears\n    Their bitterness, or live to shed a gleam\n    Of solace over one dejected thought.\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\nProfessor Dowden quotes, from \"a slip of MS. in the poet's\nhand-writing,\" the following variation of these lines--\n\n    'Tis well, and if the Record in the strength\n    And earnestness of feeling, overpass'd\n    Those narrow limits and so miss'd its aim,\n    Yet will I trust that on the printed page\n    Received, it there may keep a place unblamed.\n\nED.\n\n[28] Lamb's indifference to the country \"was a sort of 'mock apparel,'\nin which it was his humour at times to invest himself.\" (H. N.\nColeridge, Supplement to the _Biographia Literaria_, p. 333.)--ED.\n\n[29] 1837.\n\n    Burned, and with ever-strengthening light, enshrined\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\n[30] 1837.\n\n    By God, \u2026\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\n[31] 1837.\n\n    \u2026 Our days pass on;\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\n[32] 1837.\n\n    Together stood they witnessing of time\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\n[33] 1837.\n\n    Yet, in all visitations, through all trials\n    Still they were faithful, like two goodly ships\n    Launch'd from the beach, \u2026\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\n[34] Compare the testimony borne to Mary Lamb by Mr. Procter (Barry\nCornwall), and by Henry Crabb Robinson.--ED.\n\n[35] 1837.\n\n                            \u2026 The sacred tie\n    Is broken, to become more sacred still.\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\nWordsworth originally meant to write an epitaph on Charles Lamb,\nbut his verse grew into an elegy of some length. A reference to the\ncircumstance of its \"composition\" will be found in one of his letters,\nin a later volume.--ED.\n\n\nEXTEMPORE EFFUSION UPON THE DEATH OF JAMES HOGG\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1835\n\n[These verses were written extempore, immediately after reading a\nnotice of the Ettrick Shepherd's death, in the Newcastle paper, to the\nEditor of which I sent a copy for publication. The persons lamented\nin these verses were all either of my friends or acquaintance. In\nLockhart's _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, an account is given of my\nfirst meeting with him in 1803. How the Ettrick Shepherd and I became\nknown to each other has already been mentioned in these notes. He was\nundoubtedly a man of original genius, but of coarse manners and low\nand offensive opinions. Of Coleridge and Lamb I need not speak here.\nCrabbe I have met in London at Mr. Rogers's, but more frequently and\nfavourably at Mr. Hoare's upon Hampstead Heath. Every spring he used to\npay that family a visit of some length, and was upon terms of intimate\nfriendship with Mrs. Hoare, and still more with her daughter-in-law,\nwho has a large collection of his letters addressed to herself. After\nthe Poet's decease, application was made to her to give up these\nletters to his biographer, that they, or at least part of them, might\nbe given to the public. She hesitated to comply, and asked my opinion\non the subject. \"By no means,\" was my answer, grounded not upon any\nobjection there might be to publishing a selection from these letters,\nbut from an aversion I have always felt to meet idle curiosity by\ncalling back the recently departed to become the object of trivial\nand familiar gossip. Crabbe obviously for the most part preferred the\ncompany of women to that of men, for this among other reasons, that\nhe did not like to be put upon the stretch in general conversation:\naccordingly in miscellaneous society his _talk_ was so much below what\nmight have been expected from a man so deservedly celebrated, that to\nme it seemed trifling. It must upon other occasions have been of a\ndifferent character, as I found in our rambles together on Hampstead\nHeath, and not so much from a readiness to communicate his knowledge\nof life and manners as of natural history in all its branches. His\nmind was inquisitive, and he seems to have taken refuge from the\nremembrance of the distresses he had gone through, in these studies\nand the employments to which they led. Moreover, such contemplations\nmight tend profitably to counterbalance the painful truths which he had\ncollected from his intercourse with mankind. Had I been more intimate\nwith him, I should have ventured to touch upon his office as a minister\nof the Gospel, and how far his heart and soul were in it so as to make\nhim a zealous and diligent labourer: in poetry, though he wrote much\nas we all know, he assuredly was not so. I happened once to speak of\npains as necessary to produce merit of a certain kind which I highly\nvalued: his observation was--\"It is not worth while.\" You are quite\nright, thought I, if the labour encroaches upon the time due to teach\ntruth as a steward of the mysteries of God: if there be cause to fear\n_that_, write less: but, if poetry is to be produced at all, make\nwhat you do produce as good as you can. Mr. Rogers once told me that\nhe expressed his regret to Crabbe that he wrote in his later works so\nmuch less correctly than in his earlier. \"Yes,\" replied he, \"but then\nI had a reputation to make; now I can afford to relax.\" Whether it\nwas from a modest estimate of his own qualifications, or from causes\nless creditable, his motives for writing verse and his hopes and aims\nwere not so high as is to be desired. After being silent for more than\ntwenty years, he again applied himself to poetry, upon the spur of\napplause he received from the periodical publications of the day, as he\nhimself tells us in one of his prefaces. Is it not to be lamented that\na man who was so conversant with permanent truth, and whose writings\nare so valuable an acquisition to our country's literature, should have\n_required_ an impulse from such a quarter? Mrs. Hemans was unfortunate\nas a poetess in being obliged by circumstances to write for money, and\nthat so frequently and so much, that she was compelled to look out for\nsubjects wherever she could find them, and to write as expeditiously as\npossible. As a woman, she was to a considerable degree a spoilt child\nof the world. She had been early in life distinguished for talent, and\npoems of hers were published while she was a girl. She had also been\nhandsome in her youth, but her education had been most unfortunate.\nShe was totally ignorant of housewifery, and could as easily have\nmanaged the spear of Minerva as her needle. It was from observing these\ndeficiencies, that, one day while she was under my roof, I _purposely_\ndirected her attention to household economy, and told her I had\npurchased _Scales_ which I intended to present to a young lady as a\nwedding present; pointed out their utility (for her especial benefit)\nand said that no m\u00e9nage ought to be without them. Mrs. Hemans, not in\nthe least suspecting my drift, reported this saying, in a letter to a\nfriend at the time, as a proof of my simplicity. Being disposed to make\nlarge allowances for the faults of her education and the circumstances\nin which she was placed, I felt most kindly disposed towards her, and\ntook her part upon all occasions, and I was not a little affected\nby learning that after she withdrew to Ireland, a long and severe\nsickness raised her spirit as it depressed her body. This I heard from\nher most intimate friends, and there is striking evidence of it in a\npoem written and published not long before her death. These notices\nof Mrs. Hemans would be very unsatisfactory to her intimate friends,\nas indeed they are to myself, not so much for what is said, but what\nfor brevity's sake is left unsaid. Let it suffice to add, there was\nmuch sympathy between us, and, if opportunity had been allowed me to\nsee more of her, I should have loved and valued her accordingly; as it\nis, I remember her with true affection for her amiable qualities, and,\nabove all, for her delicate and irreproachable conduct during her long\nseparation from an unfeeling husband, whom she had been led to marry\nfrom the romantic notions of inexperienced youth. Upon this husband I\nnever heard her cast the least reproach, nor did I ever hear her even\nname him, though she did not wholly forbear to touch upon her domestic\nposition; but never so that any fault could be found with her manner of\nadverting to it. --I.F.]\n\nThis first appeared in _The Athen\u00e6um_, December 12, 1835, and in\nthe edition of 1837 it was included among the \"Epitaphs and Elegiac\nPieces.\"--ED.\n\n    When first, descending from the moorlands,\n    I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide\n    Along a bare and open valley,\n    The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.[36]\n\n    When last along its banks I wandered,                              5\n    Through groves that had begun to shed\n    Their golden leaves upon the pathways,\n    My steps the Border-minstrel led.\n\n    The mighty Minstrel breathes no longer,[37]\n    'Mid mouldering ruins low he lies;[38]                            10\n    And death upon the braes of Yarrow,\n    Has closed the Shepherd-poet's eyes:[39]\n\n    Nor has the rolling year twice measured,\n    From sign to sign, its stedfast course,\n    Since every mortal power of Coleridge                             15\n    Was frozen at its marvellous source;[40]\n\n    The rapt One, of the godlike forehead,[41]\n    The heaven-eyed creature sleeps in earth:\n    And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,\n    Has vanished from his lonely hearth.[42]                          20\n\n    Like clouds that rake the mountain-summits,[43]\n    Or waves that own no curbing hand,\n    How fast has brother followed brother,\n    From sunshine to the sunless land!\n\n    Yet I, whose lids from infant slumber[44]                         25\n    Were earlier raised, remain to hear\n    A timid voice, that asks in whispers,\n    \"Who next will drop and disappear?\"\n\n    Our haughty life is crowned with darkness,\n    Like London with its own black wreath,                            30\n    On which with thee, O Crabbe! forth-looking,\n    I gazed from Hampstead's breezy heath.\n\n    As if but yesterday departed,\n    Thou too art gone before;[45] but why,\n    O'er ripe fruit, seasonably gathered,                             35\n    Should frail survivors heave a sigh?\n\n    Mourn rather for that holy Spirit,\n    Sweet as the spring, as ocean deep;\n    For Her who, ere her summer faded,\n    Has sunk into a breathless sleep.[46]                             40\n\n    No more of old romantic sorrows,\n    For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid!\n    With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,\n    And Ettrick mourns with her their Poet dead.[47]\n\n[36] Compare _Yarrow Visited_ (September, 1814), vol. vi. p. 35.--ED.\n\n[37] Compare _Yarrow Revisited_ (1831), vol. vii. p. 278.--ED.\n\n[38] Scott died at Abbotsford, on the 21st September 1832, and was\nburied in Dryburgh Abbey.--ED.\n\n[39] Hogg died at Altrive, on the 21st November 1835.--ED.\n\n[40] Coleridge died at Highgate, on the 25th July 1834.--ED.\n\n[41] Compare the _Stanzas written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson's\n\"Castle of Indolence\"_ (vol. ii. p. 307)--\n\n    Profound his forehead was, though not severe.\n\nED.\n\n[42] Lamb died in London, on the 27th December 1834.--ED.\n\n[43] \"This expression is borrowed from a sonnet by Mr. G. Bell, the\nauthor of a small volume of poems lately printed at Penrith. Speaking\nof Skiddaw he says--\n\n    Yon dark cloud 'rakes,' and shrouds its noble brow.\"\n\n(Henry Reed, 1837.)--ED.\n\n[44] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 slumbers\n\n    1837.\n\n[45] George Crabbe died at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, on the 3rd of\nFebruary 1832.--ED.\n\n[46] Felicia Hemans died 16th May 1835.--ED.\n\n[47]\n\n    Grieve rather for that holy Spirit\n    Pure as the sky, as ocean deep;\n    For her who ere the summer faded\n    Has sunk into a breathless sleep.\n\n    No more of old romantic sorrows\n    For slaughtered Youth or love-lorn Maid!\n    With sharper grief is Yarrow smitten,\n    And Ettrick mourns her Shepherd Poet dead.\n\n    C.\n\n\nUPON SEEING A  DRAWING OF THE BIRD OF PARADISE IN AN ALBUM\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1836\n\n[I cannot forbear to record that the last seven lines of this Poem were\ncomposed in bed during the night of the day on which my sister Sara\nHutchinson died about 6 P.M., and it was the thought of her innocent\nand beautiful life that, through faith, prompted the words----\n\n    On wings that fear no glance of God's pure sight,\n    No tempest from his breath.\n\nThe reader will find two poems on pictures of this bird among my\nPoems. I will here observe that in a far greater number of instances\nthan have been mentioned in these notes one poem has, as in this\ncase, grown out of another, either because I felt the subject had\nbeen inadequately treated, or that the thoughts and images suggested\nin course of composition have been such as I found interfered with\nthe unity indispensable to every work of art, however humble in\ncharacter.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.\"--ED.\n\n    Who rashly strove thy Image to portray?\n    Thou buoyant minion of the tropic air;\n    How could he think of the live creature----gay\n    With a divinity of colours, drest\n    In all her brightness, from the dancing crest                      5\n    Far as the last gleam of the filmy train\n    Extended and extending to sustain\n    The motions that it graces----and forbear\n    To drop his pencil! Flowers of every clime\n    Depicted on these pages smile at time;                            10\n    And gorgeous insects copied with nice care\n    Are here, and likenesses of many a shell\n    Tossed ashore by restless waves,\n    Or in the diver's grasp fetched up from caves\n    Where sea-nymphs might be proud to dwell:                         15\n    But whose rash hand (again I ask) could dare,\n    'Mid casual tokens and promiscuous shows,\n    To circumscribe this Shape in fixed repose;\n    Could imitate for indolent survey,\n    Perhaps for touch profane,                                        20\n    Plumes that might catch, but cannot keep, a stain;\n    And, with cloud-streaks lightest and loftiest, share\n    The sun's first greeting, his last farewell ray!\n\n      Resplendent Wanderer! followed with glad eyes\n    Where'er her course; mysterious Bird!                             25\n    To whom, by wondering Fancy stirred,\n    Eastern Islanders have given\n    A holy name----the Bird of Heaven!\n    And even a title higher still,\n    The Bird of God![48] whose blessed will                           30\n    She seems performing as she flies\n    Over the earth and through the skies\n    In never-wearied search of Paradise----\n    Region that crowns her beauty with the name\n    She bears for _us_----for us how blest,                           35\n    How happy at all seasons, could like aim\n    Uphold our Spirits urged to kindred flight\n    On wings that fear no glance of God's pure sight,\n    No tempest from his breath, their promised rest\n    Seeking with indefatigable quest                                  40\n    Above a world that deems itself most wise\n    When most enslaved by gross realities!\n\n[48] Compare, in Robert Browning's poem on Guercino's picture of _The\nGuardian-Angel at Fano_----\n\n    Thou bird of God.\n\nED.\n\n\n\"DESPONDING FATHER! MARK THIS ALTERED BOUGH\"\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1835\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Desponding Father! mark this altered bough,[49]\n    So beautiful of late, with sunshine warmed,\n    Or moist with dews; what more unsightly now,\n    Its blossoms shrivelled, and its fruit, if formed,\n    Invisible? yet Spring her genial brow                              5\n    Knits not o'er that discolouring and decay\n    As false to expectation. Nor fret thou\n    At like unlovely process in the May\n    Of human life: a Stripling's graces blow,\n    Fade and are shed, that from their timely fall                    10\n    (Misdeem it not a cankerous change) may grow\n    Rich mellow bearings, that for thanks shall call:\n    In all men, sinful is it to be slow\n    To hope----in Parents, sinful above all.\n\n[49] Compare _The Excursion_ (book iii. l. 649), and the sonnet (vol.\nvi. p. 72) beginning----\n\n    Surprised by joy----impatient as the Wind.\n\nED.\n\n\n\"FOUR FIERY STEEDS IMPATIENT OF THE REIN\"\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1835\n\n[Suggested on the road between Preston and Lancaster where it first\ngives a view of the Lake country, and composed on the same day, on the\nroof of the coach.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Four fiery steeds impatient of the rein\n    Whirled us o'er sunless ground beneath a sky\n    As void of sunshine, when, from that wide plain,\n    Clear tops of far-off mountains we descry,\n    Like a Sierra of cerulean Spain,                                   5\n    All light and lustre. Did no heart reply?\n    Yes, there was One;--for One, asunder fly\n    The thousand links of that ethereal chain;\n    And green vales open out, with grove and field,\n    And the fair front of many a happy Home;                          10\n    Such tempting spots as into vision come\n    While Soldiers, weary of the arms they wield\n    And sick at heart[50] of strifeful Christendom,\n    Gaze on the moon by parting clouds revealed.\n\n[50] 1837.\n\n    While Soldiers, of the weapons that they wield\n    Weary, and sick of strifeful \u2026\n\n    1835.\n\n\nTO ----\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1835\n\n[The fate of this poor Dove, as described, was told to me at Brinsop\nCourt, by the young lady to whom I have given the name of Lesbia.--I.F.]\n\n    [Miss not the occasion: by the forelock take\n    That subtle Power, the never-halting Time,\n    Lest a mere moment's putting-off should make\n    Mischance almost as heavy as a crime.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    \"Wait, prithee, wait!\" this answer Lesbia[51] threw\n    Forth to her Dove, and took no further heed.\n    Her eye was busy, while her fingers flew\n    Across the harp, with soul-engrossing speed;\n    But from that bondage when her thoughts were freed                 5\n    She rose, and toward the close-shut casement drew,\n    Whence the poor unregarded Favourite, true\n    To old affections, had been heard to plead\n    With flapping wing for entrance. What a shriek\n    Forced from that voice so lately tuned to a strain                10\n    Of harmony!----a shriek of terror, pain,\n    And self-reproach! for, from aloft, a Kite\n    Pounced,----and the Dove, which from its ruthless beak\n    She could not rescue, perished in her sight!\n\n[51] Miss Loveday Walker, daughter of the Rector of Brinsop. See the\nFenwick note to the next sonnet.--ED.\n\n\nROMAN ANTIQUITIES DISCOVERED AT BISHOPSTONE, HEREFORDSHIRE\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1835\n\n[My attention to these antiquities was directed by Mr. Walker, son\nto the itinerant Eidouranian Philosopher. The beautiful pavement was\ndiscovered within a few yards of the front door of his parsonage, and\nappeared from the site (in full view of several hills upon which there\nhad formerly been Roman encampments) as if it might have been the\nvilla of the commander of the forces, at least such was Mr. Walker's\nconjecture.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    While poring Antiquarians search the ground\n    Upturned with curious pains, the Bard, a Seer,\n    Takes fire:----The men that have been reappear;\n    Romans for travel girt, for business gowned;\n    And some recline on couches, myrtle-crowned,                       5\n    In festal glee: why not? For fresh and clear,\n    As if its hues were of the passing year,\n    Dawns this time-buried pavement. From that mound\n    Hoards may come forth of Trajans, Maximins,\n    Shrunk into coins with all their warlike toil:                    10\n    Or a fierce impress issues with its foil\n    Of tenderness--the Wolf, whose suckling Twins\n    The unlettered ploughboy pities when he wins\n    The casual treasure from the furrowed soil.\n\n\nST. CATHERINE OF LEDBURY\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1835\n\n[Written on a journey from Brinsop Court, Herefordshire.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    When human touch (as monkish books attest)\n    Nor was applied nor could be, Ledbury bells\n    Broke forth in concert flung adown the dells,\n    And upward, high as Malvern's cloudy crest;[52]\n    Sweet tones, and caught by a noble Lady blest                      5\n    To rapture! Mabel listened at the side\n    Of her loved mistress: soon the music died,\n    And Catherine said, Here I set up my rest.\n    Warned in a dream, the Wanderer long had sought\n    A home that by such miracle of sound                              10\n    Must be revealed:--she heard it now, or felt\n    The deep, deep joy of a confiding thought;\n    And there, a saintly Anchoress, she dwelt\n    Till she exchanged for heaven that happy ground.\n\n[52] The Ledbury bells are easily audible on the Malvern hills.--ED.\n\n\n\"BY A BLEST HUSBAND GUIDED, MARY CAME\"[53]\n\nPublished 1835\n\n[This lady was named Carleton; she, along with a sister, was brought\nup in the neighbourhood of Ambleside. The epitaph, a part of it at\nleast, is in the church at Bromsgrove, where she resided after her\nmarriage.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.\"--ED.\n\n    By a blest Husband guided, Mary came\n    From nearest kindred, Vernon[54] her new name;\n    She came, though meek of soul, in seemly pride\n    Of happiness and hope, a youthful Bride.\n    O dread reverse! if aught _be_ so, which proves                    5\n    That God will chasten whom he dearly loves.\n    Faith bore her up through pains in mercy given,\n    And troubles that were each a step to Heaven:\n    Two Babes were laid in earth before she died;\n    A third now slumbers at the Mother's side;                        10\n    Its Sister-twin survives, whose smiles afford\n    A trembling solace to her widowed Lord.\n\n      Reader! if to thy bosom cling the pain\n    Of recent sorrow combated in vain;\n    Or if thy cherished grief have failed to thwart                   15\n    Time still intent on his insidious part,\n    Lulling the mourner's best good thoughts asleep,\n    Pilfering regrets we would, but cannot, keep;\n    Bear with Him--judge _Him_ gently who makes known\n    His bitter loss by this memorial Stone;                           20\n    And pray that in his faithful breast the grace\n    Of resignation find a hallowed place.\n\n[53] 1837.\n\nIn the edition of 1835 the title was \"Epitaph.\"\n\n[54] 1837.\n\n    From nearest kindred, \u2026\n\n    1835.\n\n\n\"OH WHAT A WRECK! HOW CHANGED IN MIEN AND SPEECH!\"\n\nComposed 1835.--Published 1838\n\n[The sad condition of poor Mrs. Southey[55] put me upon writing this.\nIt has afforded comfort to many persons whose friends have been\nsimilarly affected.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Oh what a Wreck! how changed in mien and speech!\n    Yet--though dread Powers, that work in mystery, spin\n    Entanglings of[56] the brain; though shadows stretch\n    O'er the chilled heart--reflect; far, far within\n    Hers is a holy Being, freed from Sin.                              5\n    She is not what she seems, a forlorn wretch,\n    But delegated Spirits comfort fetch\n    To Her from heights that Reason may not win.\n    Like Children, She is privileged to hold\n    Divine communion;[57] both do live and move,                      10\n    Whate'er to shallow Faith their ways unfold,\n    Inly illumined by Heaven's pitying love;\n    Love pitying innocence not long to last,\n    In them--in Her our sins and sorrows past.\n\n[55] Mrs. Southey died 16th November 1837. She had long been an\ninvalid. See Southey's _Life and Correspondence_, vol. vi. p. 347.--ED.\n\n[56] 1842.\n\n    \u2026 for \u2026\n\n    1838.\n\n[57] Compare a remark of Wordsworth's that he never saw those with\nmind unhinged, but he thought of the words, \"Life hid in God.\" It is a\ncurious oriental belief that idiots are in closer communion with the\nInfinite than the sane are.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1836\n\nSo far as can be ascertained, only one sonnet was written by Wordsworth\nin 1836. The verses _To a Redbreast_, by his sister-in-law, Sarah\nHutchinson, may however be placed alongside of the sonnet addressed to\nher.--ED.\n\n\nNOVEMBER 1836\n\nComposed 1836.--Published 1837.\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Even so for me a Vision sanctified\n    The sway of Death; long ere mine eyes had seen\n    Thy countenance--the still rapture of thy mien--\n    When thou, dear Sister![58] wert become Death's Bride:\n    No trace of pain or languor could abide                            5\n    That change:--age on thy brow was smoothed--thy cold\n    Wan cheek at once was privileged to unfold\n    A loveliness to living youth denied.\n    Oh! if within me hope should e'er decline,\n    The lamp of faith, lost Friend! too faintly burn;                 10\n    Then may that heaven-revealing smile of thine,\n    The bright assurance, visibly return:\n    And let my spirit in that power divine\n    Rejoice, as, through that power, it ceased to mourn.\n\n[58] Sarah Hutchinson--Mrs. Wordsworth's sister--died at Rydal on the\n23rd June 1836. It was after her that the poet named one of the two\n\"heath-clad rocks\" referred to in the \"Poems on the naming of Places,\"\nand which he called respectively \"Mary-Point\" and \"Sarah-Point.\" In\n1827 he inscribed to her the sonnet beginning--\n\n    Excuse is needless when with love sincere,\n\nand the lines she wrote _To a Redbreast_, beginning--\n\n    Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay,\n\nwere published among Wordsworth's own poems.\n\nThe sonnet written in 1806, beginning--\n\n    Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne,\n\nwas, Wordsworth tells us, a great favourite with S. H. He adds, \"When\nI saw her lying in death I could not resist the impulse to compose the\nsonnet that follows it.\" (See vol. iv. p. 46.)\n\nIn a letter to Southey (unpublished), Wordsworth refers to her death,\nand adds: \"I saw her within an hour after her decease, in the silence\nand peace of death, with as heavenly an expression on her countenance\nas ever human creature had. Surely there is food for faith in these\nappearances: for myself, I can say that I have passed a wakeful night,\nmore in joy than in sorrow, with that blessed face before my eyes\nperpetually as I lay in bed.\"\n\n\nTO A REDBREAST--(IN SICKNESS)\n\nPublished 1842\n\n[Almost the only verses by our lamented sister Sara Hutchinson.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay,\n      And at my casement sing,\n    Though it should prove a farewell lay\n      And this our parting spring.\n\n    Though I, alas! may ne'er enjoy                                    5\n      The promise in thy song;\n    A charm, _that_ thought can not destroy,\n      Doth to thy strain belong.\n\n    Methinks that in my dying hour\n      Thy song would still be dear,                                   10\n    And with a more than earthly power\n      My passing Spirit cheer.\n\n    Then, little Bird, this boon confer,\n      Come, and my requiem sing,\n    Nor fail to be the harbinger                                      15\n      Of everlasting Spring.\n\n                                     S.H.\n\n\n\n\n1837\n\nThe poems belonging to the year 1837 include the \"Memorials of a Tour\nin Italy\" with Henry Crabb Robinson in that year, and one or two\nadditional sonnets.--ED.\n\n\n\"SIX MONTHS TO SIX YEARS ADDED HE REMAINED\"\n\nPublished 1837\n\nOne of the \"Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.\"--ED.\n\n    Six months to six years added he remained\n    Upon this sinful earth, by sin unstained:\n    O blessed Lord! whose mercy then removed\n    A Child whom every eye that looked on loved;\n    Support us, teach us calmly to resign                              5\n    What we possessed, and now is wholly thine![59]\n\n[59] This refers to the poet's son Thomas, who died December 1, 1812.\nHe was buried in Grasmere churchyard, beside his sister Catherine; and\nWordsworth placed these lines upon his tombstone. They may have been\nwritten much earlier than 1836, probably in 1813, but it is impossible\nto ascertain the date, and they were not published till 1837.--ED.\n\n\nMEMORIALS OF A TOUR IN ITALY 1837\n\nComposed 1837.--Published 1842\n\n[During my whole life I had felt a strong desire to visit Rome and the\nother celebrated cities and regions of Italy, but did not think myself\njustified in incurring the necessary expense till I received from Mr.\nMoxon, the publisher of a large edition of my poems, a sum sufficient\nto enable me to gratify my wish without encroaching upon what I\nconsidered due to my family. My excellent friend H.C. Robinson readily\nconsented to accompany me, and in March 1837, we set off from London,\nto which we returned in August, earlier than my companion wished or\nI should myself have desired had I been, like him, a bachelor. These\nMemorials of that tour touch upon but a very few of the places and\nobjects that interested me, and, in what they do advert to, are for\nthe most part much slighter than I could wish. More particularly do I\nregret that there is no notice in them of the South of France, nor of\nthe Roman antiquities abounding in that district, especially of the\nPont de Degard, which, together with its situation, impressed me full\nas much as any remains of Roman architecture to be found in Italy.\nThen there was Vaucluse, with its Fountain, its Petrarch, its rocks of\nall seasons, its small plots of lawn in their first vernal freshness,\nand the blossoms of the peach and other trees embellishing the scene\non every side. The beauty of the stream also called forcibly for the\nexpression of sympathy from one who, from his childhood, had studied\nthe brooks and torrents of his native mountains. Between two and three\nhours did I run about climbing the steep and rugged crags from whose\nbase the water of Vaucluse breaks forth. \"Has Laura's Lover,\" often\nsaid I to myself, \"ever sat down upon this stone? or has his foot ever\npressed that turf?\" Some, especially of the female sex, would have felt\nsure of it: my answer was (impute it to my years) \"I fear, not.\" Is it\nnot in fact obvious that many of his love verses must have flowed, I\ndo not say from a wish to display his own talent, but from a habit of\nexercising his intellect in that way rather than from an impulse of his\nheart? It is otherwise with his Lyrical poems, and particularly with\nthe one upon the degradation of his country: there he pours out his\nreproaches, lamentations, and aspirations like an ardent and sincere\npatriot. But enough: it is time to turn to my own effusions such as\nthey are.--I.F.]\n\n\nTO HENRY CRABB ROBINSON[60]\n\n    Companion! by whose buoyant Spirit cheered,\n    In[61] whose experience trusting, day by day\n    Treasures I gained with zeal that neither feared\n    The toils nor felt the crosses of the way,\n    These records take, and happy should I be                          5\n    Were but the Gift a meet Return to thee\n    For kindnesses that never ceased to flow,\n    And prompt self-sacrifice to which I owe\n    Far more than any heart but mine can know.\n\n                                W. WORDSWORTH.\n\nRYDAL MOUNT, _Feb. 14th, 1842._\n\n[60] The following is the Itinerary of the Italian Tour of 1837,\nsupplied by Mr. Henry Crabb Robinson. (See _Memoirs of Wordsworth_,\nvol. ii. pp. 316, 317.) The spelling of the names of places is\nRobinson's.\n\n    March, 1837.\n\n    19. By steam to Calais.\n    20. Posting to Samer.\n    21. Posting to Granvilliers.\n    22. Through Beauvais to Paris.\n    26. To Fontainbleau.\n    27. Through Nemours to Cosne.\n    28. To Moulins.\n    29. To Tarare.\n    30. To Lyons.\n    31. Through Vienne to Tain.\n\n    April.\n\n    1. Through Valence to Orange.\n    2. To Avignon; to Vaucluse and back.\n    3, 4. By Pont du Gard to Nismes.\n    5, 6. By St. Remi to Marseilles.\n    7. To Toulon.\n    8. To Luc.\n    9. By Frejus to Cannes.\n    10, 11. To Nice.\n    12. Through Mentone to St. Remo.\n    13. Through Finale to Savone.\n    14-16. To Genoa.\n    17. To Chiaveri.\n    18. To Spezia.\n    19. By Carrara to Massa.\n    20. To Lucca.\n    21. To Pisa.\n    22. To Volterra.\n    23. By Castiglonacco and Sienna.\n    24. To Radicofani.\n    25. By Aquapendente to Viterbo.\n    26. To Rome.\n\n    May.\n\n    13. Excursion to Tivoli with Dr. Carlyle.\n    17-21. Excursion to Albano, etc., etc., with Miss Mackenzie.\n    23. To Terni.\n    24. After seeing the Falls, to Spoleto.\n    25. To Cortona and Perugia.\n    26. To Arezzo.\n    27. To Bibiena and Laverna.\n    28. To Camaldoli.\n    29. From Muselea to Ponte Sieve.\n    30. From Ponte Sieve to Val Ombrosa and Florence.\n\n    June.\n\n    6, 7. To Bologna.\n    8. Parma.\n    9. Through Piacenza to Milan.\n    11. To the Certosa and back.\n    12. To the Lake of Como and back.\n    13. To Bergamo.\n    14. To Pallazuola and Isco.\n    15. Excursion to Riveri and back.\n    16. To Brescia and Desinzano.\n    17. On Lake of Garda to Riva.\n    19. To Verona.\n    20. Vicenza.\n    21. Padua.\n    22. Venice.\n    28. To Logerone.\n    29. To Sillian.\n    30. Spittal (in Carinthia).\n\n    July.\n\n    1. Over Kazenberg to Tweng.\n    2. Through Werfen to Hallein.\n    3. Excursion to Konigsee.\n    4, 5. To Saltzburg.\n    6. To Ischl. A week's stay in the Salzkammer Gut, viz.--\n    8. Gmund.\n    9. Travenfalls and back.\n    10. Aussee.\n    11. Excursion to lakes, then to Hallstadt.\n    13. Through Ischl to St. Gilgin.\n    14. Through Salzburg to Trauenstein.\n    15. To Miesbach.\n    16. To Tegernsee and Holzkirken.\n    17. To Munich.\n    21. To Augsburg.\n    22. To Ulm.\n    23. To Stuttgard.\n    24. To Besigham.\n    25. To Heidelberg.\n    28. Through Worms to Mayence.\n    29. To Coblenz.\n    30. To Bonn.\n    31. Through Cologne to Aix-la-Chapelle.\n\n    August.\n\n    1. To Louvain\n    2. To Brussels.\n    3. To Antwerp.\n    4. To Liege.\n    5. Through Lille to Cassell.\n    6. Calais.\n    7. London.\n\n[61] 1845.\n\n    To \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n\nThe Tour of which the following Poems are very inadequate remembrances\nwas shortened by report, too well founded, of the prevalence of Cholera\nat Naples. To make some amends for what was reluctantly left unseen\nin the South of Italy, we visited the Tuscan Sanctuaries among the\nApennines, and the principal Italian Lakes among the Alps. Neither\nof those lakes, nor of Venice, is there any notice in these Poems,\nchiefly because I have touched upon them elsewhere. See, in particular,\n_Descriptive Sketches_, \"Memorials of a Tour on the Continent in 1820,\"\nand a Sonnet upon the extinction of the Venetian Republic.--W.W.\n\n\nI\n\nMUSINGS NEAR AQUAPENDENTE\n\nAPRIL, 1837\n\n                        [Not the less\n    Had his sunk eye kindled at those dear words\n    That spake of bards and minstrels.\n\nHis, Sir Walter Scott's, eye, _did_ in fact kindle at them, for the\nlines, \"Places forsaken now\" and the two that follow, were adopted from\na poem of mine which nearly forty years ago was _in part_ read to him,\nand he never forgot them.\n\n                        Old Helvellyn's brow\n    Where once together, in his day of strength,\n    We stood rejoicing.\n\nSir Humphry Davy was with us at the time. We had ascended from\nPatterdale, and I could not but admire the vigour with which Scott\nscrambled along that horn of the mountain called \"Striding Edge.\" Our\nprogress was necessarily slow, and was beguiled by Scott's telling many\nstories and amusing anecdotes, as was his custom. Sir H. Davy would\nhave probably been better pleased if other topics had occasionally been\ninterspersed, and some discussion entered upon: at all events he did\nnot remain with us long at the top of the mountain, but left us to find\nour way down its steep side together into the Vale of Grasmere, where,\nat my cottage, Mrs. Scott was to meet us at dinner.\n\n                        With faint smile\n    \u2026\n    He said, \"When I am there, although 'tis fair,\n    'Twill be another Yarrow.\"\n\nSee among these notes the one on _Yarrow Revisited_.\n\n    A few short steps (painful they were) apart\n    From Tasso's Convent-haven, and retired grave.\n\nThis, though introduced here, I did not know till it was told me at\nRome by Miss Mackenzie of Seaforth, a lady whose friendly attentions\nduring my residence at Rome I have gratefully acknowledged with\nexpressions of sincere regret that she is no more. Miss M. told me\nthat she accompanied Sir Walter to the Janicular Mount, and, after\nshowing him the grave of Tasso in the church upon the top, and a mural\nmonument, there erected to his memory, they left the church and stood\ntogether on the brow of the hill overlooking the City of Rome: his\ndaughter Anne was with them, and she, naturally desirous, for the sake\nof Miss Mackenzie especially, to have some expression of pleasure from\nher father, half reproached him for showing nothing of that kind either\nby his looks or voice: \"How can I,\" replied he, \"having only one leg\nto stand upon, and that in extreme pain!\" so that the prophecy was more\nthan fulfilled.\n\n    Over waves rough and deep.\n\nWe took boat near the lighthouse at the point of the right horn of\nthe bay which makes a sort of natural port for Genoa; but the wind\nwas high, and the waves long and rough, so that I did not feel quite\nrecompensed by the view of the city, splendid as it was, for the danger\napparently incurred. The boatman (I had only one) encouraged me saying\nwe were quite safe, but I was not a little glad when we gained the\nshore, though Shelley and Byron--one of them at least, who seemed to\nhave courted agitation from any quarter--would have probably rejoiced\nin such a situation: more than once I believe were they both in extreme\ndanger even on the lake of Geneva. Every man, however, has his fears\nof some kind or other; and no doubt they had theirs: of all men whom I\nhave ever known, Coleridge had the most of passive courage in bodily\nperil, but no one was so easily cowed when moral firmness was required\nin miscellaneous conversation or in the daily intercourse of social\nlife.\n\n    How lovely robed in forenoon light and shade,\n    Each ministering to each, didst thou appear,\n    Savona.\n\nThere is not a single bay along this beautiful coast that might not\nraise in a traveller a wish to take up his abode there, each as it\nsucceeds seems more inviting than the other; but the desolated convent\non the cliff in the bay of Savona struck my fancy most; and had I, for\nthe sake of my own health or that of a dear friend, or any other cause,\nbeen desirous of a residence abroad, I should have let my thoughts\nloose upon a scheme of turning some part of this building into a\nhabitation provided as far as might be with English comforts. There is\nclose by it a row or avenue, I forget which, of tall cypresses. I could\nnot forbear saying to myself--\"What a sweet family walk, or one for\nlonely musings, would be found under the shade!\" but there, probably,\nthe trees remained little noticed and seldom enjoyed.\n\n    This flowering broom's dear neighbourhood.\n\nThe broom is a great ornament through the months of March and April to\nthe vales and hills of the Apennines, in the wild parts of which it\nblows in the utmost profusion, and of course successively at different\nelevations as the season advances. It surpasses ours in beauty and\nfragrance,[62] but, speaking from my own limited observations only,\nI cannot affirm the same of several of their wild spring flowers,\nthe primroses in particular, which I saw not unfrequently but thinly\nscattered and languishing compared to ours.\n\nThe note at the end of this poem, upon the Oxford movement, was\nentrusted to my friend, Mr. Frederick Faber.[63] I told him what I\nwished to be said, and begged that, as he was intimately acquainted\nwith several of the Leaders of it, he would express my thought in the\nway least likely to be taken amiss by them. Much of the work they are\nundertaking was grievously wanted, and God grant their endeavours may\ncontinue to prosper as they have done.--I.F.]\n\n    Ye Apennines! with all your fertile vales\n    Deeply embosomed, and your winding shores\n    Of either sea, an Islander by birth,\n    A Mountaineer by habit, would resound\n    Your praise, in meet accordance with your claims                   5\n    Bestowed by Nature, or from man's great deeds\n    Inherited:--presumptuous thought!--it fled\n    Like vapour, like a towering cloud, dissolved.\n    Not, therefore, shall my mind give way to sadness;--\n    Yon snow-white torrent-fall, plumb down it drops                  10\n    Yet ever hangs or seems to hang in air,\n    Lulling the leisure of that high perched town,\n    AQUAPENDENTE, in her lofty site\n    Its neighbour and its namesake--town, and flood\n    Forth flashing out of its own gloomy chasm                        15\n    Bright sunbeams--the fresh verdure of this lawn\n    Strewn with grey rocks, and on the horizon's verge,\n    O'er intervenient waste, through glimmering haze,\n    Unquestionably kenned, that cone-shaped hill\n    With fractured summit,[64] no indifferent sight                   20\n    To travellers, from such comforts as are thine,\n    Bleak Radicofani![65] escaped with joy--\n    These are before me; and the varied scene\n    May well suffice, till noon-tide's sultry heat\n    Relax, to fix and satisfy the mind                                25\n    Passive yet pleased. What! with this Broom in flower\n    Close at my side! She bids me fly to greet\n    Her sisters, soon like her to be attired\n    With golden blossoms opening at the feet\n    Of my own Fairfield.[66] The glad greeting given,                 30\n    Given with a voice and by a look returned\n    Of old companionship, Time counts not minutes\n    Ere, from accustomed paths, familiar fields,\n    The local Genius hurries me aloft,\n    Transported over that cloud-wooing hill,                          35\n    Seat Sandal, a fond suitor of the clouds,[67]\n    With dream-like smoothness, to Helvellyn's top,[68]\n    There to alight upon crisp moss and range,\n    Obtaining ampler boon, at every step,\n    Of visual sovereignty--hills multitudinous,                       40\n    (Not Apennine can boast of fairer) hills\n    Pride of two nations, wood and lake and plains,\n    And prospect right below of deep coves shaped[69]\n    By skeleton arms, that, from the mountain's trunk\n    Extended, clasp the winds, with mutual moan                       45\n    Struggling for liberty, while undismayed\n    The shepherd struggles with them. Onward thence\n    And downward by the skirt of Greenside fell,[70]\n    And by Glenridding-screes,[71] and low Glencoign,[72]\n    Places forsaken now, though[73] loving still                      50\n    The muses, as they loved them in the days\n    Of the old minstrels and the border bards.--\n    But here am I fast bound; and let it pass,\n    The simple rapture;--who that travels far\n    To feed his mind with watchful eyes could share                   55\n    Or wish to share it?--One there surely was,\n    \"The Wizard of the North,\" with anxious hope\n    Brought to this genial climate, when disease\n    Preyed upon body and mind--yet not the less\n    Had his sunk eye kindled at those dear words                      60\n    That spake of bards and minstrels; and his spirit\n    Had flown with mine to old Helvellyn's brow,\n    Where once together, in his day of strength,\n    We stood rejoicing,[74] as if earth were free\n    From sorrow, like the sky above our heads.                        65\n\n      Years followed years, and when, upon the eve\n    Of his last going from Tweed-side, thought turned,\n    Or by another's sympathy was led,\n    To this bright land, Hope was for him no friend,\n    Knowledge no help; Imagination shaped                             70\n    No promise. Still, in more than ear-deep seats,\n    Survives for me, and cannot but survive\n    The tone of voice which wedded borrowed words\n    To sadness not their own, when, with faint smile\n    Forced by intent to take from speech its edge,                    75\n    He said, \"When I am there, although 'tis fair,\n    'Twill be another Yarrow.\"[75] Prophecy\n    More than fulfilled, as gay Campania's shores\n    Soon witnessed, and the city of seven hills,\n    Her sparkling fountains, and her mouldering tombs;                80\n    And more than all, that Eminence[76] which showed\n    Her splendours, seen, not felt, the while he stood\n    A few short steps (painful they were) apart\n    From Tasso's Convent-haven, and retired grave.[77]\n\n      Peace to their Spirits! why should Poesy                        85\n    Yield to the lure of vain regret, and hover\n    In gloom on wings with confidence outspread\n    To move in sunshine?--Utter thanks, my Soul!\n    Tempered with awe, and sweetened by compassion\n    For them who in the shades of sorrow dwell,                       90\n    That I--so near the term to human life\n    Appointed by man's common heritage,[78]\n    Frail as the frailest, one withal (if that\n    Deserve a thought) but little known to fame--\n    Am free to rove where Nature's loveliest looks,                   95\n    Art's noblest relics, history's rich bequests,\n    Failed to reanimate and but feebly cheered\n    The whole world's Darling--free to rove at will\n    O'er high and low, and if requiring rest,\n    Rest from enjoyment only.\n                              Thanks poured forth                    100\n    For what thus far hath blessed my wanderings, thanks\n    Fervent but humble as the lips can breathe\n    Where gladness seems a duty--let me guard\n    Those seeds of expectation which the fruit\n    Already gathered in this favoured Land                           105\n    Enfolds within its core. The faith be mine,\n    That He who guides and governs all, approves\n    When gratitude, though disciplined to look\n    Beyond these transient spheres, doth wear a crown\n    Of earthly hope put on with trembling hand;                      110\n    Nor is least pleased, we trust, when golden beams,\n    Reflected through the mists of age, from hours\n    Of innocent delight, remote or recent,\n    Shoot but a little way--'tis all they can--\n    Into the doubtful future. Who would keep                         115\n    Power must resolve to cleave to it through life,\n    Else it deserts him, surely as he lives.\n    Saints would not grieve nor guardian angels frown\n    If one--while tossed, as was my lot to be,\n    In a frail bark urged by two slender oars                        120\n    Over waves rough and deep,[79] that, when they broke,\n    Dashed their white foam against the palace walls\n    Of Genoa the superb--should there be led\n    To meditate upon his own appointed tasks,\n    However humble in themselves, with thoughts                      125\n    Raised and sustained by memory of Him\n    Who oftentimes within those narrow bounds\n    Rocked on the surge, there tried his spirit's strength\n    And grasp of purpose, long ere sailed his ship\n    To lay a new world open.\n                              Nor less prized                        130\n    Be those impressions which incline the heart\n    To mild, to lowly, and to seeming weak,\n    Bend that way her desires. The dew, the storm--\n    The dew whose moisture fell in gentle drops\n    On the small hyssop destined to become,                          135\n    By Hebrew ordinance devoutly kept,\n    A purifying instrument--the storm\n    That shook on Lebanon the cedar's top,\n    And as it shook, enabling the blind roots\n    Further to force their way, endowed its trunk                    140\n    With magnitude and strength fit to uphold\n    The glorious temple--did alike proceed\n    From the same gracious will, were both an offspring\n    Of bounty infinite.\n                          Between Powers that aim\n    Higher to lift their lofty heads, impelled                       145\n    By no profane ambition, Powers that thrive\n    By conflict, and their opposites, that trust\n    In lowliness--a mid-way tract there lies\n    Of thoughtful sentiment for every mind\n    Pregnant with good. Young, Middle-aged, and Old,                 150\n    From century on to century, must have known\n    The emotion--nay, more fitly were it said--\n    The blest tranquillity that sunk so deep\n    Into my spirit, when I paced, enclosed\n    In Pisa's Campo Santo,[80] the smooth floor                      155\n    Of its Arcades paved with sepulchral slabs,[81]\n    And through each window's open fret-work looked\n    O'er the blank Area of sacred earth\n    Fetched from Mount Calvary,[82] or haply delved\n    In precincts nearer to the Saviour's tomb,                       160\n    By hands of men, humble as brave, who fought\n    For its deliverance--a capacious field\n    That to descendants of the dead it holds\n    And to all living mute memento breathes,\n    More touching far than aught which on the walls                  165\n    Is pictured, or their epitaphs can speak,\n    Of the changed City's long-departed power,\n    Glory, and wealth, which, perilous as they are,\n    Here did not kill, but nourished, Piety.\n    And, high above that length of cloistral roof,                   170\n    Peering in air and backed by azure sky,\n    To kindred contemplations ministers\n    The Baptistery's dome,[83] and that which swells\n    From the Cathedral pile;[84] and with the twain\n    Conjoined in prospect mutable or fixed                           175\n    (As hurry on in eagerness the feet,\n    Or pause) the summit of the Leaning-tower.[85]\n    Nor[86] less remuneration waits on him\n    Who having left the Cemetery stands\n    In the Tower's shadow, of decline and fall                       180\n    Admonished not without some sense of fear,\n    Fear that soon vanishes before the sight\n    Of splendour unextinguished, pomp unscathed,\n    And beauty unimpaired. Grand in itself,\n    And for itself, the assemblage, grand and fair                   185\n    To view, and for the mind's consenting eye\n    A type of age in man, upon its front\n    Bearing the world-acknowledged evidence\n    Of past exploits, nor fondly after more\n    Struggling against the stream of destiny,                        190\n    But with its peaceful majesty content.\n    --Oh what a spectacle at every turn\n    The Place unfolds, from pavement skinned with moss,\n    Or grass-grown spaces, where the heaviest foot\n    Provokes no echoes, but must softly tread;                       195\n    Where Solitude with Silence paired stops short\n    Of Desolation, and to Ruin's scythe\n    Decay submits not.\n                          But where'er my steps\n    Shall wander, chiefly let me cull with care\n    Those images of genial beauty, oft                               200\n    Too lovely to be pensive in themselves\n    But by reflection made so, which do best\n    And fitliest serve to crown with fragrant wreaths\n    Life's cup when almost filled with years, like mine.\n    --How lovely robed in forenoon light and shade,                  205\n    Each ministering to each, didst thou appear\n    Savona,[87] Queen of territory fair\n    As aught that marvellous coast thro' all its length\n    Yields to the Stranger's eye. Remembrance holds\n    As a selected treasure thy one cliff,                            210\n    That, while it wore for melancholy crest\n    A shattered Convent, yet rose proud to have\n    Clinging to its steep sides a thousand herbs\n    And shrubs, whose pleasant looks gave proof how kind\n    The breath of air can be where earth had else                    215\n    Seemed churlish. And behold, both far and near,\n    Garden and field all decked with orange bloom,\n    And peach and citron, in Spring's mildest breeze\n    Expanding; and, along the smooth shore curved\n    Into a natural port, a tideless sea,                             220\n    To that mild breeze with motion and with voice\n    Softly responsive; and, attuned to all\n    Those vernal charms of sight and sound, appeared\n    Smooth space of turf which from the guardian fort\n    Sloped seaward, turf whose tender April green,                   225\n    In coolest climes too fugitive, might even here\n    Plead with the sovereign Sun for longer stay\n    Than his unmitigated beams allow,\n    Nor plead in vain, if beauty could preserve,\n    From mortal change, aught that is born on earth                  230\n    Or doth on time depend.\n                            While on the brink\n    Of that high Convent-crested cliff I stood,\n    Modest Savona! over all did brood\n    A pure poetic Spirit--as the breeze,\n    Mild--as the verdure, fresh--the sunshine, bright--              235\n    Thy gentle Chiabrera![88]--not a stone,\n    Mural or level with the trodden floor,\n    In Church or Chapel, if my curious quest\n    Missed not the truth, retains a single name\n    Of young or old, warrior, or saint, or sage,                     240\n    To whose dear memories his sepulchral verse[89]\n    Paid simple tribute, such as might have flowed\n    From the clear spring of a plain English heart,\n    Say rather, one in native fellowship\n    With all who want not skill to couple grief                      245\n    With praise, as genuine admiration prompts.\n    The grief, the praise, are severed from their dust,\n    Yet in his page the records of that worth\n    Survive, uninjured;--glory then to words,\n    Honour to word-preserving Arts, and hail                         250\n    Ye kindred local influences that still,\n    If Hope's familiar whispers merit faith,\n    Await my steps when they the breezy height\n    Shall range of philosophic Tusculum;[90]\n    Or Sabine vales[91] explored inspire a wish                      255\n    To meet the shade of Horace by the side\n    Of his Bandusian fount;[92]--or I invoke\n    His presence to point out the spot where once\n    He sate, and eulogized with earnest pen\n    Peace, leisure, freedom, moderate desires;                       260\n    And all the immunities of rural life\n    Extolled, behind Vacuna's crumbling fane.[93]\n    Or let me loiter, soothed with what is given\n    Nor asking more, on that delicious Bay,[94]\n    Parthenope's Domain--Virgilian haunt,                            265\n    Illustrated with never-dying verse,[95]\n    And, by the Poet's laurel-shaded tomb,[96]\n    Age after age to Pilgrims from all lands\n    Endeared.\n                And who--if not a man as cold\n    In heart as dull in brain--while pacing ground                   270\n    Chosen by Rome's legendary Bards, high minds\n    Out of her early struggles well inspired\n    To localize heroic acts--could look\n    Upon the spots with undelighted eye,\n    Though even to their last syllable the Lays                      275\n    And very names of those who gave them birth\n    Have perished?--Verily, to her utmost depth,\n    Imagination feels what Reason fears not\n    To recognize, the lasting virtue lodged\n    In those bold fictions that, by deeds assigned                   280\n    To the Valerian, Fabian, Curian Race,\n    And others like in fame, created Powers\n    With attributes from History derived,\n    By Poesy irradiate, and yet graced,\n    Through marvellous felicity of skill,                            285\n    With something more propitious to high aims\n    Than either, pent within her separate sphere,\n    Can oft with justice claim.\n                                And not disdaining\n    Union with those primeval energies\n    To virtue consecrate, stoop ye from your height                  290\n    Christian Traditions! at my Spirit's call\n    Descend, and, on the brow of ancient Rome\n    As she survives in ruin, manifest\n    Your glories mingled with the brightest hues\n    Of her memorial halo, fading, fading,                            295\n    But never to be extinct while Earth endures.\n    O come, if undishonoured by the prayer,\n    From all her Sanctuaries!--Open for my feet\n    Ye Catacombs, give to mine eyes a glimpse\n    Of the Devout, as, 'mid your glooms convened                     300\n    For safety, they of yore enclasped the Cross[97]\n    On knees that ceased from trembling, or intoned\n    Their orisons with voices half-suppressed,\n    But sometimes heard, or fancied to be heard,\n    Even at this hour.\n                      And thou Mamertine prison,[98]                 305\n    Into that vault receive me from whose depth\n    Issues, revealed in no presumptuous vision,\n    Albeit lifting human to divine,\n    A saint, the Church's Rock, the mystic Keys\n    Grasped in his hand;[99] and lo! with upright sword              310\n    Prefiguring his own impendent doom,\n    The Apostle of the Gentiles; both prepared\n    To suffer pains with heathen scorn and hate\n    Inflicted;--blessed Men, for so to Heaven\n    They follow their dear Lord!\n                                  Time flows--nor winds,             315\n    Nor stagnates, nor precipitates his course,\n    But many a benefit borne upon his breast\n    For human-kind sinks out of sight, is gone,\n    No one knows how; nor seldom is put forth\n    An angry arm that snatches good away,                            320\n    Never perhaps to reappear. The Stream\n    Has to our generation brought and brings\n    Innumerable gains; yet we, who now\n    Walk in the light of day, pertain full surely\n    To a chilled age, most pitiably shut out                         325\n    From that which _is_ and actuates, by forms,\n    Abstractions, and by lifeless fact to fact\n    Minutely linked with diligence uninspired,\n    Unrectified, unguided, unsustained,\n    By godlike insight. To this fate is doomed                       330\n    Science, wide-spread and spreading still as be\n    Her conquests, in the world of sense made known.\n    So with the internal mind it fares; and so\n    With morals, trusting, in contempt or fear\n    Of vital principle's controlling law,                            335\n    To her purblind guide Expediency; and so\n    Suffers religious faith. Elate with view\n    Of what is won, we overlook or scorn\n    The best that should keep pace with it, and must,\n    Else more and more the general mind will droop,                  340\n    Even as if bent on perishing. There lives\n    No faculty within us which the Soul\n    Can spare,[100] and humblest earthly Weal demands,\n    For dignity not placed beyond her reach,\n    Zealous co-operation of all means                                345\n    Given or acquired, to raise us from the mire,\n    And liberate our hearts from low pursuits.\n    By gross Utilities enslaved we need\n    More of ennobling impulse from the past,\n    If to the future aught of good must come                         350\n    Sounder and therefore holier than the ends\n    Which, in the giddiness of self-applause,\n    We covet as supreme. O grant the crown\n    That Wisdom wears, or take his treacherous staff\n    From Knowledge!--If the Muse, whom I have served                 355\n    This day, be mistress of a single pearl\n    Fit to be placed in that pure diadem;\n    Then, not in vain, under these chesnut boughs\n    Reclined, shall I have yielded up my soul\n    To transports from the secondary founts                          360\n    Flowing of time and place, and paid to both\n    Due homage; nor shall fruitlessly have striven,\n    By love of beauty moved, to enshrine in verse\n    Accordant meditations, which in times\n    Vexed and disordered, as our own, may shed                       365\n    Influence, at least among a scattered few,\n    To soberness of mind and peace of heart\n    Friendly; as here to my repose hath been\n    This flowering broom's dear neighbourhood,[101] the light\n    And murmur issuing from yon pendent flood,                       370\n    And all the varied landscape. Let us now\n    Rise, and to-morrow greet magnificent Rome.[102]\n\n[62] Wordsworth himself, his nephew tells us, had no sense of smell\n(see the _Memoirs_, by his nephew Christopher, vol. ii. p. 322).--ED.\n\n[63] Afterwards Father Faber, priest of the Oratory of St. Philip\nNeri.--ED.\n\n[64] Monte Amiata,--ED.\n\n[65] On the old high road from Siena to Rome.--ED.\n\n[66] The mountain between Rydal Head and Helvellyn.--ED.\n\n[67] Seat Sandal is the mountain between Tongue Ghyll and Grisedale\nTarn on the south and east, and the Dunmail Raise road on the west.--ED.\n\n[68] Compare _The Eclipse of the Sun_, l. 78, in \"Memorials of a Tour\non the Continent in 1820\" (vol. vi. p. 345).--ED.\n\n[69] Keppelcove, Nethermost cove, and the cove in which Red Tarn lies\nbounded by the \"skeleton arms\" of Striding Edge and Swirrel Edge.\nCompare _Fidelity_, l. 17, vol. iii. p. 45--\n\n    It was a cove, a huge recess,\n    That keeps, till June, December's snow.\n\nED.\n\n[70] Descending to Ullswater from Helvellyn, Greenside Fell and Mines\nare passed.--ED.\n\n[71] The Glenridding Screes are bold rocks on the left as you descend\nHelvellyn to Patterdale.--ED.\n\n[72] Glencoign is an offshoot of the Patterdale valley between\nGlenridding and Goldbarrow.--ED.\n\n[73] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 but \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[74] See the Fenwick note.--ED.\n\n[75] These words were quoted to me from _Yarrow Unvisited_, by Sir\nWalter Scott, when I visited him at Abbotsford, a day or two before his\ndeparture for Italy: and the affecting condition in which he was when\nhe looked upon Rome from the Janicular Mount, was reported to me by a\nlady who had the honour of conducting him thither.--W.W. 1842. See also\nthe Fenwick note to this poem, and compare Lockhart's _Memoirs of the\nLife of Sir Walter Scott_ (chapter lxxx. vol. x. p. 104).--ED.\n\n[76] The Janicular Mount.--ED.\n\n[77] See the Fenwick note prefixed to this poem.--ED.\n\n[78] He was then sixty-seven years of age.--ED.\n\n[79] See the Fenwick note.--ED.\n\n[80] The Campo Santo, or Burial Ground, founded by Archbishop Ubaldo\n(1188-1200).--ED.\n\n[81] \"There are forty-three flat arcades, resting on forty-four\npilasters.\u2026 In the interior there is a spacious hall, the open\nround-arched windows of which, with their beautiful tracery, sixty-two\nin number, look out upon a green quadrangle.\u2026 The walls are covered\nwith frescoes by the Tuscan School of the fourteenth and fifteenth\ncenturies, below which is a collection of Roman, Etruscan, and\nmediaeval sculptures.\u2026 The tombstones of persons interred here form the\npavement.\" (Baedeker's _Northern Italy_, p. 324.)--ED.\n\n[82] Ubaldo conveyed hither fifty-three ship-loads of earth from Mount\nCalvary, in the Holy Land, in order that the dead might repose in holy\nground.--ED.\n\n[83] The Baptistery in Pisa was begun in 1153 by Diotisalvi, and\ncompleted in 1278. It is a circular structure, covered by a conical\ndome, 190 feet high.--ED.\n\n[84] The Cathedral of Pisa is a basilica, built in 1063, in the Tuscan\nstyle, and has an elliptical dome.--ED.\n\n[85] The Campanile, or Clock-Tower, rises in eight stories to the\nheight of 179 feet, and (from its oblique position) is known as the\nLeaning-Tower.--ED.\n\n[86] 1845.\n\n    Not \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[87] See the Fenwick note to this poem. Savona is a town on the Gulf of\nGenoa, capital of the Montenotte Department under Napoleon.--ED.\n\n[88] The theatre in Savona is dedicated to Chiabrera, who was a native\nof the place.--ED.\n\n[89] If any English reader should be desirous of knowing how far I\nam justified in thus describing the epitaphs of Chiabrera, he will\nfind translated specimens of them in this Volume, under the head of\n\"Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.\"--W.W. 1842.\n\n[90] Tusculum was the birthplace of the elder Cato, and the residence\nof Cicero.--ED.\n\n[91] \"Satis beatus unicis Sabinis.\" _Odes_, ii. 18, 14.--ED.\n\n[92] See Horace, _Odes_, iii. 13.--ED.\n\n[93] See Horace, _Epistles_, i. 10, 49--\n\n    Haec tibi dictabam post fanum putre Vacunae.\n\nVacuna was a Sabine divinity. She had a sanctuary near Horace's Villa.\n(Compare Pliny, _Nat. Hist._ iii. 42, 47.) A traveller in Italy writes:\n\"Following a path along the brink of the torrent Digentia, we passed\na towering rock, on which once stood Vacuna's shrine.\" See also Ovid,\n_Fasti_, vi. 307.--ED.\n\n[94] The Bay of Naples. Neapolis (the new city) received its ancient\nname of Parthenope from one of the Sirens, whose body was said to have\nbeen washed ashore in that bay. Sil. 12, 33.--ED.\n\n[95] See _Georgics_, iv. 564.--ED.\n\n[96] Virgil died at Brundusium, but his remains were carried to his\nfavourite residence, Naples, and were buried by the side of the road\nleading to Puteoli--the Via Puteolana. His tomb is still pointed out\nnear Posilipo,--close to the sea, and about half way from Naples to\nPuteoli, the _Scuola di Virgilio_.\n\n\"The monument, now called the tomb of Virgil, is not on the road\nwhich passes through the tunnel of Posilipo; but if the Via Puteolana\nascended the hill of Posilipo, as it may have done, the situation of\nthe monument would agree very well with the description of Donatus.\"\n(George Long, in Smith's _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography_.)\n\nThe inscription said to have been placed on the tomb was as follows:--\n\n    Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc\n      Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces.\n\nED.\n\n[97] The catacombs were subterranean chambers and passages, usually\ncut out of the solid rock, and used as places of burial, or of refuge.\nThe early Christians made use of the catacombs in the Appian Way for\nworship, as well as for sepulture.--ED.\n\n[98] The Carcer Mamertinus,--one of the most ancient Roman\nstructures,--overhung the Forum, as Livy tells us, \"imminens foro,\"\nunderneath the Capitoline hill. It still exists, and is entered from\nthe sacristy of the church of S. Giuseppe de Falagnami, to the left\nof the arch of Severus. It was originally a well (the _Tullianum_ of\nLivy), and afterwards a prison, in which Jugurtha was starved to death,\nand Catiline's accomplices perished. There are two chambers in the\nprison, one beneath the other; the lower-most containing, in its rock\nfloor, a spring, which rises nearly to the surface. For the legend\nconnected with it see the next note.--ED.\n\n[99] According to the legend, St. Peter, who was imprisoned in the\n_Carcer Mamertinus_ under Nero, caused this spring to flow miraculously\nin order to baptize his jailors. Hence the building is called _S.\nPietro in Carcere._--ED.\n\n[100] Compare \"Despondency Corrected,\" _The Excursion_, book iv. l.\n1058--\n\n    Within the soul a faculty abides, etc.\n\nED.\n\n[101] See the Fenwick note.--ED.\n\n[102] It would be ungenerous not to advert to the religious movement\nthat, since the composition of these verses in 1837, has made itself\nfelt, more or less strongly, throughout the English Church;--a movement\nthat takes, for its first principle, a devout deference to the voice of\nChristian antiquity. It is not my office to pass judgment on questions\nof theological detail; but my own repugnance to the spirit and system\nof Romanism has been so repeatedly and, I trust, feelingly expressed,\nthat I shall not be suspected of a leaning that way, if I do not join\nin the grave charge, thrown out, perhaps in the heat of controversy,\nagainst the learned and pious men to whose labours I allude. I speak\napart from controversy; but, with strong faith in the moral temper\nwhich would elevate the present by doing reverence to the past, I would\ndraw cheerful auguries for the English Church from this movement, as\nlikely to restore among us a tone of piety more earnest and real than\nthat produced by the mere formalities of the understanding, refusing,\nin a degree, which I cannot but lament, that its own temper and\njudgment shall be controlled by those of antiquity.--W.W. 1842.\n\n\nII\n\nTHE PINE OF MONTE MARIO[103] AT ROME\n\n[Sir George Beaumont told me that, when he first visited Italy,\npine-trees of this species abounded, but that on his return thither,\nwhich was more than thirty years after, they had disappeared from many\nplaces where he had been accustomed to admire them, and had become\nrare all over the country, especially in and about Rome. Several Roman\nvillas have within these few years passed into the hands of foreigners,\nwho, I observed with pleasure, have taken care to plant this tree,\nwhich in course of years will become a great ornament to the city\nand to the general landscape. May I venture to add here, that having\nascended the Monte Mario, I could not resist embracing the trunk of\nthis interesting monument of my departed friend's feelings for the\nbeauties of nature, and the power of that art which he loved so much,\nand in the practice of which he was so distinguished?--I.F.]\n\n    I saw far off the dark top of a Pine\n    Look like a cloud--a slender stem the tie\n    That bound it to its native earth--poised high\n    'Mid evening hues, along the horizon line,\n    Striving in peace each other to outshine.                          5\n    But when I learned the Tree was living there,\n    Saved from the sordid axe by Beaumont's care,[104]\n    Oh, what a gush of tenderness was mine!\n    The rescued Pine-tree, with its sky so bright\n    And cloud-like beauty, rich in thoughts of home,                  10\n    Death-parted friends, and days too swift in flight,\n    Supplanted the whole majesty of Rome\n    (Then first apparent from the Pincian Height)[105]\n    Crowned with St. Peter's everlasting dome.[106]\n\n[103] The Monte Mario is to the north-west of Rome, beyond the\nJaniculus and the Vatican. The view from the summit embraces Rome, the\nCampagna, and the sea. It is capped by the villa Millini, in which the\n\"magnificent solitary pine-tree\" of this sonnet still stands, amidst\nits cypress plantations.--ED.\n\n[104] \"It was Mr. Theed, the sculptor, who informed us of the pine-tree\nbeing the gift of Sir George Beaumont.\" H.C. Robinson. (See _Memoirs of\nWordsworth_, by his nephew, vol. ii. p. 330.)--ED.\n\n[105] From the _Mons Pincius_, \"collis hortorum,\" where were the\ngardens of Lucullus, there is a remarkable view of modern Rome.--ED.\n\n[106] Within a couple of hours of my arrival at Rome, I saw from\nMonte Pincio, the Pine tree as described in the sonnet; and, while\nexpressing admiration at the beauty of its appearance, I was told by\nan acquaintance of my fellow-traveller, who happened to join us at the\nmoment, that a price had been paid for it by the late Sir G. Beaumont,\nupon condition that the proprietor should not act upon his known\nintention of cutting it down.--W.W. 1842.\n\n\nIII\n\nAT ROME\n\n[Sight is at first sight a sad enemy to imagination and to those\npleasures belonging to old times with which some exertions of that\npower will always mingle: nothing perhaps brings this truth home to\nthe feelings more than the city of Rome; not so much in respect to the\nimpression made at the moment when it is first seen and looked at as\na whole, for then the imagination may be invigorated and the mind's\neye quickened; but when particular spots or objects are sought out,\ndisappointment is I believe invariably felt. Ability to recover from\nthis disappointment will exist in proportion to knowledge, and the\npower of the mind to reconstruct out of fragments and parts, and to\nmake details in the present subservient to more adequate comprehension\nof the past.--I.F.]\n\n    Is this, ye Gods, the Capitolian Hill?\n    Yon petty Steep in truth the fearful Rock,\n    Tarpeian named of yore,[107] and keeping still\n    That name, a local Phantom proud to mock\n    The Traveller's expectation?--Could our Will\n    Destroy the ideal Power within, 'twere done\n    Thro' what men see and touch,--slaves wandering on,\n    Impelled by thirst of all but Heaven-taught skill.\n    Full oft, our wish obtained, deeply we sigh;\n    Yet not unrecompensed are they who learn,                         10\n    From that depression raised, to mount on high\n    With stronger wing, more clearly to discern\n    Eternal things; and, if need be, defy\n    Change, with a brow not insolent, though stern.\n\n[107] The Tarpeian rock, from which those condemned to death were\nhurled, is not now precipitous, as it used to be: the ground having\nbeen much raised by successive heaps of ruin.--ED.\n\n\nIV\n\nAT ROME--REGRETS--IN ALLUSION TO NIEBUHR AND OTHER MODERN HISTORIANS\n\n    Those old credulities, to nature dear,\n    Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock\n    Of History, stript naked as a rock\n    'Mid a dry desert? What is it we hear?\n    The glory of Infant Rome must disappear,[108]                      5\n    Her morning splendours vanish, and their place\n    Know them no more. If Truth, who veiled her face\n    With those bright beams yet hid it not, must steer\n    Henceforth a humbler course perplexed and slow;\n    One solace yet remains for us who came                            10\n    Into this world in days when story lacked\n    Severe research, that in our hearts we know\n    How, for exciting youth's heroic flame,\n    Assent is power, belief the soul of fact.\n\n[108] Niebuhr, in his Lectures on Roman History (1826-29), was one of\nthe first to point out the legendary character of much of the earlier\nhistory, and its \"historical impossibility.\" He explained the way\nin which much of it had originated in family and national vanity,\netc.--ED.\n\n\nV\n\nCONTINUED\n\n    Complacent Fictions were they, yet the same\n    Involved a history of no doubtful sense,\n    History that proves by inward evidence\n    From what a precious source of truth it came.\n    Ne'er could the boldest Eulogist have dared                        5\n    Such deeds to paint, such characters to frame,\n    But for coeval sympathy prepared\n    To greet with instant faith their loftiest claim.\n    None but a noble people could have loved\n    Flattery in Ancient Rome's pure-minded style:                     10\n    Not in like sort the Runic Scald was moved;\n    He, nursed 'mid savage passions that defile\n    Humanity, sang feats that well might call\n    For the blood-thirsty mead of Odin's riotous Hall.\n\n\nVI\n\nPLEA FOR THE HISTORIAN\n\n    Forbear to deem the Chronicler unwise,\n    Ungentle, or untouched by seemly ruth,\n    Who, gathering up all that Time's envious tooth\n    Has spared of sound and grave realities,\n    Firmly rejects those dazzling flatteries,                          5\n    Dear as they are to unsuspecting Youth,\n    That might have drawn down Clio from the skies\n    To vindicate the majesty of truth.\n    Such was her office while she walked with men,[109]\n    A Muse, who,[110] not unmindful of her Sire                       10\n    All-ruling Jove, whate'er the[111] theme might be\n    Revered her Mother, sage Mnemosyne,\n    And taught her faithful servants how the lyre\n    Should[112] animate, but not mislead, the pen.[113]\n\n[109] Clio, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the first-born of the\nMuses, presided over History. It was her office to record the actions\nof illustrious heroes.--ED.\n\n[110] 1845.\n\n    Her rights to claim, and vindicate the truth.\n    Her faithful Servants while she walked with men\n    Were they who, \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[111] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 their \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[112] 1845.\n\n    And, at the Muse's will, invoked the lyre\n    To animate, \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[113]\n\n    Quem virum--lyra--\n    --sumes celebrare Clio?\n\n    W. W. 1842.\n\n\nVII\n\nAT ROME\n\n[I have a private interest in this Sonnet, for I doubt whether it\nwould ever have been written but for the lively picture given me by\nAnna Ricketts of what she had witnessed of the indignation and sorrow\nexpressed by some Italian noblemen of their acquaintance upon the\nsurrender, which circumstances had obliged them to make, of the best\nportion of their family mansions to strangers.--I.F.]\n\n    They--who have seen the noble Roman's scorn\n    Break forth at thought of laying down his head,\n    When the blank day is over, garreted\n    In his ancestral palace, where, from morn\n    To night, the desecrated floors are worn                           5\n    By feet of purse-proud strangers; they--who have read\n    In one meek smile, beneath a peasant's shed,\n    How patiently the weight of wrong is borne;\n    They--who have heard some learned Patriot treat[114]\n    Of freedom, with mind grasping the whole theme                    10\n    From ancient Rome, downwards through that bright dream\n    Of Commonwealths, each city a starlike seat\n    Of rival glory; they--fallen Italy--\n    Nor must, nor will, nor can, despair of Thee!\n\n\nVIII\n\nNEAR ROME, IN SIGHT OF ST. PETER'S\n\n    Long has the dew been dried on tree and lawn;\n    O'er man and beast a not unwelcome boon\n    Is shed, the languor of approaching noon;\n    To shady rest withdrawing or withdrawn\n    Mute are all creatures, as this couchant fawn,                     5\n    Save insect-swarms that hum in air afloat,\n    Save that the Cock is crowing, a shrill note,\n    Startling and shrill as that which roused the dawn.\n    --Heard in that hour, or when, as now, the nerve\n    Shrinks from the note[115] as from a mis-timed thing,             10\n    Oft for a holy warning may it serve,\n    Charged with remembrance of _his_ sudden sting,\n    His bitter tears, whose name the Papal Chair\n    And yon resplendent Church are proud to bear.\n\n[114] 1845.\n\n    They--who have heard thy lettered sages treat\n\n    1842.\n\n[115] 1845.\n\n      \u2026 voice \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n\nIX\n\nAT ALBANO[116]\n\n[This Sonnet is founded on simple fact, and was written to enlarge,\nif possible, the views of those who can see nothing but evil in the\nintercessions countenanced by the Church of Rome. That they are in\nmany respects lamentably pernicious must be acknowledged; but, on the\nother hand, they who reflect, while they see and observe, cannot but\nbe struck with instances which will prove that it is a great error to\ncondemn in all cases such mediation as purely idolatrous. This remark\nbears with especial force upon addresses to the Virgin.--I.F.]\n\n    Days passed--and Monte Calvo would not clear\n    His head from mist; and, as the wind sobbed through\n    Albano's dripping Ilex avenue,[117]\n    My dull forebodings in a Peasant's ear\n    Found casual vent. She said, \"Be of good cheer;                    5\n    Our yesterday's procession did not sue\n    In vain; the sky will change to sunny blue,\n    Thanks to our Lady's grace.\" I smiled to hear,\n    But not in scorn:--the Matron's Faith may lack\n    The heavenly sanction needed to ensure                            10\n    Fulfilment; but, we trust, her upward track[118]\n    Stops not at this low point, nor wants the lure\n    Of flowers the Virgin without fear may own,\n    For by her Son's blest hand the seed was sown.\n\n[116] Albano, 10 miles south-east of Rome, is a small town and\nepiscopal residence, a favourite autumnal resort of Roman citizens. It\nis on the site of the ruins of the villa of Pompey. Monte Carlo (the\nMonte Calvo of this sonnet) is the ancient _Mons Latialis_, 3127 feet\nhigh. At its summit a convent of Passionist Monks occupies the site of\nthe ancient temple of Jupiter.--ED.\n\n[117] The ilex-grove of the Villa Doria is one of the most marked\nfeatures of Albano.--ED.\n\n[118] 1845.\n\n    Its own fulfilment; but her upward track\n\n    1842.\n\n\nX\n\n\"NEAR ANIO'S STREAM, I SPIED A GENTLE DOVE\"\n\n    Near Anio's stream,[119] I spied a gentle Dove\n    Perched on an olive branch, and heard her cooing\n    'Mid new-born blossoms that soft airs were wooing,\n    While all things present told of joy and love.\n    But restless Fancy left that olive grove                           5\n    To hail the exploratory Bird renewing\n    Hope for the few, who, at the world's undoing,\n    On the great flood were spared to live and move.\n    O bounteous Heaven! signs true as dove and bough\n    Brought to the ark are coming evermore,                           10\n    Given though we seek them not, but, while we plough[120]\n    This sea of life without a visible shore,\n    Do neither promise ask nor grace implore\n    In what alone is ours, the living Now.[121]\n\n[119] The Anio joins the Tiber north of Rome, flowing from the\nnorth-east past Tivoli.--ED.\n\n[120] 1845.\n\n    Even though men seek them not, but, while they plough\n\n    1842.\n\n[121] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 the vouchsafed Now.\n\n    1842.\n\n\nXI\n\nFROM THE ALBAN HILLS, LOOKING TOWARDS ROME\n\n    Forgive, illustrious Country! these deep sighs,\n    Heaved less for thy bright plains and hills bestrown\n    With monuments decayed or overthrown,\n    For all that tottering stands or prostrate lies,\n    Than for like scenes in moral vision shown,                        5\n    Ruin perceived for keener sympathies;\n    Faith crushed, yet proud of weeds, her gaudy crown\n    Virtues laid low, and mouldering energies.\n    Yet why prolong this mournful strain?--Fallen Power,\n    Thy fortunes, twice exalted,[122] might provoke                   10\n    Verse to glad notes prophetic of the hour\n    When thou, uprisen, shalt break thy double yoke,\n    And enter, with prompt aid from the Most High,\n    On the third stage of thy great destiny.[123]\n\n[122] The ancient Classic period, and that of the Renaissance.--ED.\n\n[123] This period seems to have been already entered. Compare Mrs.\nBrowning's \"Poems before Congress,\" _passim_.--ED.\n\n\nXII\n\nNEAR THE LAKE OF THRASYMENE\n\n    When here with Carthage Rome to conflict came,[124]\n    An earthquake, mingling with the battle's shock,\n    Checked not its rage;[125] unfelt the ground did rock,\n    Sword dropped not, javelin kept its deadly aim.--\n    Now all is sun-bright peace. Of that day's shame,                  5\n    Or glory, not a vestige seems to endure,\n    Save in this Rill that took from blood the name[126]\n    Which yet it bears, sweet Stream! as crystal pure.\n    So may all trace and sign of deeds aloof\n    From the true guidance of humanity,                               10\n    Thro' Time and Nature's influence, purify\n    Their spirit; or, unless they for reproof\n    Or warning serve, thus let them all, on ground\n    That gave them being, vanish to a sound.\n\n[124] The Carthaginian general Hannibal defeated the Roman Consul C.\nFlaminius, near the lacus Trasimenus, 217 B.C., with a loss of 15,000\nmen. (See Livy, book xxii. 4, etc.)--ED.\n\n[125] Compare _Hannibal, A Historical Drama_, by the late Professor\nJohn Nichol, act II. scene vi. p. 107--\n\n                            Here shall shepherds tell\n    To passing travellers, when we are dust,\n    How, by the shores of reedy Thrasymene,\n    We fought and conquered, while the earthquake shook\n    The walls of Rome.\n\nED.\n\n[126] Sanguinetto.--W.W. 1845.\n\n\nXIII\n\nNEAR THE SAME LAKE\n\n    For action born, existing to be tried,\n    Powers manifold we have that intervene\n    To stir the heart that would too closely screen\n    Her peace from images to pain allied.\n    What wonder if at midnight, by the side                            5\n    Of Sanguinetto or broad Thrasymene,[127]\n    The clang of arms is heard, and phantoms glide,\n    Unhappy ghosts in troops by moonlight seen;\n    And singly thine, O vanquished Chief![128] whose corse,\n    Unburied, lay hid under heaps of slain:                           10\n    But who is He?--the Conqueror. Would he force\n    His way to Rome? Ah, no,--round hill and plain\n    Wandering, he haunts, at fancy's strong command,\n    This spot--his shadowy death-cup in his hand.[129]\n\n[127] Lake Thrasymene is the largest of the Etrurian lakes, being ten\nmiles in length and three in breadth.--ED.\n\n[128] C. Flaminius.--ED.\n\n[129] After the battle of Lake Thrasymene, Hannibal did not push on to\nRome, but turned through the Apennines to Apulia, just as subsequently\nafter the battle of Cannas he remained inactive.--ED.\n\n\nXIV\n\nTHE CUCKOO AT LAVERNA[130]\n\nMAY 25TH 1837\n\n[Among a thousand delightful feelings connected in my mind with\nthe voice of the cuckoo, there is a personal one which is rather\nmelancholy. I was first convinced that age had rather dulled my\nhearing, by not being able to catch the sound at the same distance as\nthe younger companions of my walks; and of this failure I had a proof\nupon the occasion that suggested these verses. I did not hear the sound\ntill Mr. Robinson had twice or thrice directed my attention to it.]\n\n    List--'twas the Cuckoo.--O with what delight\n    Heard I that voice! and catch it now, though faint,[131]\n    Far off and faint, and melting into air,\n    Yet not to be mistaken. Hark again!\n    Those louder cries give notice that the Bird,                      5\n    Although invisible as Echo's self,[132]\n    Is wheeling hitherward. Thanks, happy Creature,\n    For this unthought-of greeting!\n                                      While allured\n    From vale to hill, from hill to vale led on,\n    We have pursued, through various lands, a long                    10\n    And pleasant course; flower after flower has blown,\n    Embellishing the ground that gave them birth\n    With aspects novel to my sight; but still\n    Most fair, most welcome, when they drank the dew\n    In a sweet fellowship with kinds beloved,                         15\n    For old remembrance sake. And oft--where Spring\n    Display'd her richest blossoms among files\n    Of orange-trees bedecked with glowing fruit\n    Ripe for the hand, or under a thick shade\n    Of Ilex, or, if better suited to the hour,                        20\n    The lightsome Olive's twinkling canopy--[133]\n    Oft have I heard the Nightingale and Thrush\n    Blending as in a common English grove\n    Their love-songs; but, where'er my feet might roam,\n    Whate'er assemblages of new and old,                              25\n    Strange and familiar, might beguile the way,\n    A gratulation from that vagrant Voice\n    Was wanting;--and most happily till now.\n\n    For see, Laverna! mark the far-famed Pile,\n    High on the brink of that precipitous rock,[134]                  30\n    Implanted like a Fortress, as in truth\n    It is, a Christian Fortress, garrisoned\n    In faith and hope, and dutiful obedience,\n    By a few Monks, a stern society,\n    Dead to the world and scorning earth-born joys.                   35\n    Nay--though the hopes that drew, the fears that drove,\n    St. Francis, far from Man's resort, to abide\n    Among these sterile heights of Apennine, [135]\n    Bound him, nor, since he raised yon House, have ceased\n    To bind his spiritual Progeny, with rules                         40\n    Stringent as flesh can tolerate and live;[136]\n    His milder Genius (thanks to the good God\n    That made us) over those severe restraints\n    Of mind, that dread heart-freezing discipline,\n    Doth sometimes here predominate, and works                        45\n    By unsought means for gracious purposes;\n    For earth through heaven, for heaven, by changeful earth,\n    Illustrated, and mutually endeared.\n\n      Rapt though He were above the power of sense,\n    Familiarly, yet out of the cleansed heart                         50\n    Of that once sinful Being overflowed\n    On sun, moon, stars, the nether elements,\n    And every shape of creature they sustain,\n    Divine affections; and with beast and bird\n    (Stilled from afar--such marvel story tells--                     55\n    By casual outbreak of his passionate words,\n    And from their own pursuits in field or grove\n    Drawn to his side by look or act of love\n    Humane, and virtue of his innocent life)\n    He wont to hold companionship so free,                            60\n    So pure, so fraught with knowledge and delight,\n    As to be likened in his Followers' minds\n    To that which our first Parents, ere the fall\n    From their high state darkened the Earth with fear,\n    Held with all Kinds in Eden's blissful bowers.                    65\n\n      Then question not that, 'mid the austere Band,\n    Who breathe the air he breathed, tread where he trod,\n    Some true Partakers of his loving spirit\n    Do still survive,[137] and, with those gentle hearts\n    Consorted, Others, in the power, the faith,                       70\n    Of a baptized imagination, prompt\n    To catch from Nature's humblest monitors\n    Whate'er they bring of impulses sublime.\n\n      Thus sensitive must be the Monk, though pale\n    With fasts, with vigils worn, depressed by years,                 75\n    Whom in a sunny glade I chanced to see,\n    Upon a pine-tree's storm-uprooted trunk,\n    Seated alone, with forehead sky-ward raised,\n    Hands clasped above the crucifix he wore\n    Appended to his bosom, and lips closed                            80\n    By the joint pressure of his musing mood\n    And habit of his vow. That ancient Man--\n    Nor haply less the Brother whom I marked,\n    As we approached the Convent gate, aloft\n    Looking far forth from his aerial cell,                           85\n    A young Ascetic--Poet, Hero, Sage,\n    He might have been, Lover belike he was--\n    If they received into a conscious ear\n    The notes whose first faint greeting startled me,\n    Whose sedulous iteration thrilled with joy                        90\n    My heart--may have been moved like me to think,\n    Ah! not like me who walk in the world's ways,\n    On the great Prophet, styled _the Voice of One_\n    _Crying amid the wilderness_, and given,\n    Now that their snows must melt, their herbs and flowers           95\n    Revive, their obstinate winter pass away,\n    That awful name to Thee, thee, simple Cuckoo,\n    Wandering in solitude, and evermore\n    Foretelling and proclaiming, ere thou leave\n    This thy last haunt beneath Italian skies                        100\n    To carry thy glad tidings over heights\n    Still loftier, and to climes more near the Pole.\n\n      Voice of the Desert, fare-thee-well; sweet Bird!\n    If that substantial title please thee more,\n    Farewell!--but go thy way, no need hast thou                     105\n    Of a good wish sent after thee; from bower\n    To bower as green, from sky to sky as clear,\n    Thee gentle breezes waft--or airs that meet\n    Thy course and sport around thee softly fan--\n    Till Night, descending upon hill and vale,                       110\n    Grants to thy mission a brief term of silence,\n    And folds thy pinions up in blest repose.\n\n[130] Laverna is a corruption of _Alverna_ (now called Alverniac). It\nis about five or six hours' walk from Camaldoli, on a height of the\nApennines, not far from the sources of the Anio. To reach it, \"the\nsouthern height of the Monte Valterona is ascended as far as the chapel\nof St. Romaiald; then a descent is made to Moggiona, beyond which the\npath turns to the left, traversing a long and fatiguing succession of\ngorges and <DW72>s; the path at the base of the mountain is therefore\npreferable. The market town of Soci in the valley of the Archiano\nis first reached, then the profound valley of the Corsaline; beyond\nit rises a blunted cone, on which the path ascends in windings to a\nstony plain with marshy meadows. Above this rises the abrupt sandstone\nmass of the _Vernia_, to the height of 850 feet. On its S.W. <DW72>,\none-third of the way up, and 3906 feet above the sea-level, is seen a\nwall with small windows, the oldest part of the monastery, built in\n1218 by St. Francis of Assisi. The church dates from 1284.\u2026 One of the\ngrandest points is the _Penna della Vernia_ (4796 feet), the ridge of\nthe Vernia, also known as _l'Apennino_, the 'rugged rock between the\nsources of the Tiber and Anio,' as it is called by Dante (_Paradiso_,\nii. 106).\u2026 Near the monastery are the _Luoghi Santi_, a number of\ngrottos and rock-hewn chambers in which St. Francis once lived.\" (See\nBaedeker's _Northern Italy_, 1886, p. 463.)\n\n\"The Monte Alverno, or Monte della Verni is situated on the border\nof Tuscany, near the sources of the Tiber and Anio, not far from the\nCastle of Chiusi, where Orlando lived.\" (Mrs. Oliphant's _Francis of\nAssisi_, chap. xvi. p. 248.)\n\nSee also Herzog's _Real-Encyklop\u00e4die f\u00fcr protestantische Theologie und\nKirche_, vol. iv. p. 655.--ED.\n\n[131] Compare _To the Cuckoo_, II. 3, 4 (vol. ii. p. 289)--\n\n                      \u2026 Bird,\n    Or but a wandering Voice?\n\nED.\n\n[132] Compare _To the Cuckoo_, l. 15 (vol. ii. p. 290)--\n\n    No bird, but an invisible thing.\n\nED.\n\n[133] From the difference in the colour of each side of the leaf,\na grove of olives when _wind-tossed_ is pre-eminently a \"twinkling\ncanopy.\"--ED.\n\n[134] See note, p. 67.--ED.\n\n[135] St. Francis of Assisi, founder of the order of Friars Minors,\nafter establishing numerous monasteries in Italy, Spain, and France,\nresigned his office and retired to this, one of the highest of the\nApennine heights. See note, p. 67. He was canonised in 1230. Henry\nCrabb Robinson tells us, \"It was at Laverna that he\" [W.W.] \"led me to\nexpect that he had found a subject on which he could write, and that\nwas the love which birds bore to St. Francis. He repeated to me a short\ntime afterwards a few lines, which I do not recollect amongst those\nhe has written on St. Francis in this poem. On the journey, one night\nonly I heard him in bed composing verses, and on the following day I\noffered to be his amanuensis; but I was not patient enough, I fear, and\nhe did not employ me a second time. He made inquiries for St. Francis's\nbiography, as if he would dub him his Leibheiliger (body-saint), as\nGoethe (saying that every one must have one) declared St. Philip Neri\nto be his.\" (See the _Memoirs of William Wordsworth_, by his nephew,\nvol. ii. p. 331)--ED.\n\n[136] The characteristic feature of the Franciscan order was its vow\nof Poverty, and Francis desired that it should be taken in the most\nrigorous sense, viz. that no individual member of the fraternity,\nnor the fraternity itself, should be allowed to possess any property\nwhatsoever, even in things necessary to human use.--ED.\n\n[137] The members of the Franciscan order were the Stoics of\nChristendom. The order has been powerful, and of great service to\nthe Roman Church--alike in literature, and in practical action and\nenterprise.--ED.\n\n\nXV\n\nAT THE CONVENT OF CAMALDOLI\n\nThis famous sanctuary was the original establishment of Saint Romualdo\n(or Rumwald, as our ancestors saxonised the name) in the 11th century,\nthe ground (campo) being given by a Count Maldo. The Camaldolensi,\nhowever, have spread wide as a branch of Benedictines, and may\ntherefore be classed among the _gentlemen_ of the monastic orders. The\nsociety comprehends two orders, monks and hermits; symbolised by their\narms, two doves drinking out of the same cup. The monastery in which\nthe monks here reside is beautifully situated, but a large unattractive\nedifice, not unlike a factory. The hermitage is placed in a loftier and\nwilder region of the forest. It comprehends between 20 and 30 distinct\nresidences, each including for its single hermit an inclosed piece of\nground and three very small apartments. There are days of indulgence\nwhen the hermit may quit his cell, and when old age arrives, he\ndescends from the mountain and takes his abode among the monks.\n\nMy companion had, in the year 1831, fallen in with the monk, the\nsubject of these two sonnets, who showed him his abode among the\nhermits. It is from him that I received the following[138] particulars.\nHe was then about 40 years of age, but his appearance was that of an\nolder man. He had been a painter by profession, but on taking orders\nchanged his name from Santi to Raffaello, perhaps with an unconscious\nreference as well to the great Sanzio d'Urbino as to the archangel.\nHe assured my friend that he had been 13 years in the hermitage and\nhad never known melancholy or ennui. In the little recess for study\nand prayer, there was a small collection of books. \"I read only,\" said\nhe, \"books of asceticism and mystical theology.\" On being asked the\nnames of the most famous[139] mystics, he enumerated _Scaramelli_, _San\nGiovanni della Croce_, _St. Dionysius the Areopagite_ (supposing the\nwork which bears his name to be really his),[140] and with peculiar\nemphasis _Ricardo di San Vittori_. The works of _Saint Theresa_ are\nalso in high repute among ascetics.[141] These names may interest some\nof my readers.\n\nWe heard that Raffaello was then living in the convent; my friend\nsought in vain to renew his acquaintance with him. It was probably a\nday of seclusion. The reader will perceive that these sonnets were\nsupposed to be written when he was a young man.--W.W. 1842.\n\nThe monastery of Camaldoli is on the highest point of the hills near\nNaples (1476 feet), and commands one of the finest views in Italy.--ED.\n\n    Grieve for the Man who hither came bereft,\n    And seeking consolation from above;\n    Nor grieve the less that skill to him was left\n    To paint this picture of his lady-love:\n    Can she, a blessed saint, the work approve?                        5\n    And O, good Brethren of the cowl, a thing\n    So fair, to which with peril he must cling,\n    Destroy in pity, or with care remove.\n    That bloom--those eyes--can they assist to bind\n    Thoughts that would stray from Heaven? The dream must cease       10\n    To be; by Faith, not sight, his soul must live;\n    Else will the enamoured Monk too surely find\n    How wide a space can part from inward peace\n    The most profound repose his cell can give.\n\n[138] 1845.\n\n    received these particulars.\n\n1842.\n\n[139] 1845.\n\n    famous Italian mystics,\n\n1842.\n\n[140] 1845.\n\n    _San Dionysia_, _Areopagitica_, and with\n\n1842.\n\n[141] 1845.\n\n    are among ascetics in high repute, but she was a Spaniard.\n\n1842.\n\n\nXVI\n\nCONTINUED\n\n    The world forsaken, all its busy cares\n    And stirring interests shunned with desperate flight,\n    All trust abandoned in the healing might\n    Of virtuous action; all that courage dares,\n    Labour accomplishes, or patience bears--                           5\n    Those helps rejected, they, whose minds perceive\n    How subtly works man's weakness, sighs may heave\n    For such a One beset with cloistral snares.\n    Father of Mercy! rectify his view,\n    If with his vows this object ill agree;                           10\n    Shed over it thy grace, and thus subdue[142]\n    Imperious passion in a heart set free:--\n    That earthly love may to herself be true,\n    Give him a soul that cleaveth unto thee.\n\n[142] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 and so subdue\n\n    1842.\n\n\nXVII\n\nAT THE EREMITE OR UPPER CONVENT OF CAMALDOLI\n\n    What aim had they, the Pair of Monks, in size[143]\n    Enormous, dragged, while side by side they sate,\n    By panting steers up to this convent gate?\n    How, with empurpled cheeks and pampered eyes,\n    Dare they confront the lean austerities                            5\n    Of Brethren, who, here fixed, on Jesu wait\n    In sackcloth, and God's anger deprecate\n    Through all that humbles flesh and mortifies?\n    Strange contrast!--verily the world of dreams,\n    Where mingle, as for mockery combined,                            10\n    Things in their very essences at strife,\n    Shows not a sight incongruous as the extremes\n    That everywhere, before the thoughtful mind,\n    Meet on the solid ground of waking life.[144]\n\n[143] In justice to the Benedictines of Camaldoli, by whom strangers\nare so hospitably entertained, I feel obliged to notice, that I saw\namong them no other figures at all resembling, in size and complexion,\nthe two Monks described in this Sonnet. What was their office, or the\nmotive which brought them to this place of mortification, which they\ncould not have approached without being carried in this or some other\nway, a feeling of delicacy prevented me from inquiring. An account has\nbefore been given of the hermitage they were about to enter. It was\nvisited by us towards the end of the month of May; yet snow was lying\nthick under the pine-trees, within a few yards of the gate.--W.W. 1842.\n\n[144] See note, pp. 72, 73.--ED.\n\n\nXVIII\n\nAT VALLOMBROSA[145]\n\n[I must confess, though of course I did not acknowledge it in the few\nlines I wrote in the Strangers' book kept at the convent, that I was\nsomewhat disappointed at Vallombrosa. I had expected, as the name\nimplies, a deep and narrow valley overshadowed by enclosing hills; but\nthe spot where the convent stands is in fact not a valley at all, but\na cove or crescent open to an extensive prospect. In the book before\nmentioned, I read the notice in the English language that if anyone\nwould ascend the steep ground above the convent, and wander over it, he\nwould be abundantly rewarded by magnificent views. I had not time to\nact upon this recommendation, and only went with my young guide to a\npoint, nearly on a level with the site of the convent, that overlooks\nthe Vale of Arno for some leagues. To praise great and good men has\never been deemed one of the worthiest employments of poetry, but the\nobjects of admiration vary so much with time and circumstances, and\nthe noblest of mankind have been found, when intimately known, to be\nof characters so imperfect, that no eulogist can find a subject which\nhe will venture upon with the animation necessary to create sympathy,\nunless he confines himself to a particular part or he takes something\nof a one-sided view of the person he is disposed to celebrate. This\nis a melancholy truth, and affords a strong reason for the poetic\nmind being chiefly exercised in works of fiction: the poet can then\nfollow wherever the spirit of admiration leads him, unchecked by such\nsuggestions as will be too apt to cross his way if all that he is\nprompted to utter is to be tested by fact. Something in this spirit I\nhave written in the note attached to the Sonnet on the King of Sweden;\nand many will think that in this poem and elsewhere I have spoken\nof the author of _Paradise Lost_ in a strain of panegyric scarcely\njustifiable by the tenor of some of his opinions, whether theological\nor political, and by the temper he carried into public affairs, in\nwhich, unfortunately for his genius, he was so much concerned.--I.F.]\n\n    Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks\n    In Vallombrosa, where Etrurian shades\n    High over-arch'd embower.\n\n                                    PARADISE LOST.[146]\n\n    \"Vallombrosa--I longed in thy shadiest wood\n    To slumber, reclined on the moss-covered floor!\"[147]\n    Fond wish that was granted at last, and the Flood,\n    That lulled me asleep, bids me listen once more.\n    Its murmur how soft! as it falls down the steep,                   5\n    Near that Cell--yon sequestered Retreat high in air--[148]\n    Where our Milton was wont lonely vigils to keep\n    For converse with God, sought through study and prayer.\n    The Monks still repeat the tradition with pride,\n    And its truth who shall doubt? for his Spirit is here;[149]       10\n    In the cloud-piercing rocks doth her grandeur abide,\n    In the pines pointing heavenward her beauty austere;\n    In the flower-besprent meadows his genius we trace\n    Turned to humbler delights, in which youth might confide,\n    That would yield him fit help while prefiguring that Place        15\n    Where, if Sin had not entered, Love never had died.\n\n    When with life lengthened out came a desolate time,\n    And darkness and danger had compassed him round,\n    With a thought he would[150] flee to these haunts of his prime,\n    And here once again a kind shelter be found.                      20\n    And let me believe that when nightly the Muse\n    Did[151] waft him to Sion, the glorified hill,[152]\n    Here also, on some favoured height, he[153] would choose\n    To wander, and drink inspiration at will.\n\n    Vallombrosa! of thee I first heard in the page                    25\n    Of that holiest of Bards, and the name for my mind\n    Had a musical charm, which the winter of age\n    And the changes it brings had no power to unbind.\n    And now, ye Miltonian shades! under you\n    I repose, nor am forced from sweet fancy to part,                 30\n    While your leaves I behold and the brooks they will strew,\n    And the realised vision is clasped to my heart.\n\n    Even so, and unblamed, we rejoice as we may\n    In Forms that must perish, frail objects of sense;\n    Unblamed--if the Soul be intent on the day                        35\n    When the Being of Beings shall summon her hence.\n    For he and he only with wisdom is blest\n    Who, gathering true pleasures wherever they grow,\n    Looks up in all places, for joy or for rest,\n    To the Fountain whence Time and Eternity flow.                    40\n\n[145] The name of Milton is pleasingly connected with Vallombrosa in\nmany ways. The pride with which the Monk, without any previous question\nfrom me, pointed out his residence, I shall not readily forget. It may\nbe proper here to defend the Poet from a charge which has been brought\nagainst him, in respect to the passage in _Paradise Lost_, where this\nplace is mentioned. It is said, that he has erred in speaking of the\ntrees there being deciduous, whereas they are, in fact, pines. The\nfault-finders are themselves mistaken; the _natural_ woods of the\nregion of Vallombrosa _are_ deciduous, and spread to a great extent;\nthose near the convent are, indeed, mostly pines; but they are avenues\nof trees _planted_ within a few steps of each other, and thus composing\nlarge tracts of wood; plots of which are periodically cut down. The\nappearance of those narrow avenues, upon steep <DW72>s open to the sky,\non account of the height which the trees attain by being _forced_\nto grow upwards, is often very impressive. My guide, a boy of about\nfourteen years old, pointed this out to me in several places.--W.W.\n1842.\n\n[146] Compare _Paradise Lost_, book i. l. 302. Vallombrosa--the shady\nvalley--is 18 miles distant from Florence. Wordsworth's quotation from\nMilton was from memory. It is not quite accurate.--ED.\n\n[147] See for the two _first lines_, _Stanzas composed in the Simplon\nPass_.--W.W. 1842. (See vol. vi. p. 357.)--ED.\n\n[148] The monastery of Vallombrosa was founded about 1050, by S.\nGiovanni Gnalberto. It was suppressed in 1869, and is now converted\ninto the R. Instituto Forestale, or forest school. The \"cell,\" the\n\"sequestered retreat\" referred to by Wordsworth, is doubtless _Il\nParadisino_, or _Le Celle_, a small hermitage 266 feet above the\nmonastery, which is itself 2980 feet above the sea.--ED.\n\n[149] Compare Milton's letter to Benedetto Bonmattei of Florence,\nwritten during his stay in the city, September 10, 1638.--ED.\n\n[150] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 might \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[151] 1845.\n\n    Would \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[152] Compare _Paradise Lost_, book iii. l. 29--\n\n                                \u2026 but chief\n    Thee, Sion, and the flourie Brooks beneath,\n    That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling flow,\n    Nightly I visit.\n\nED.\n\n[153] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 they \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n\nXIX\n\nAT FLORENCE\n\n[Upon what evidence the belief rests that this stone was a favourite\nseat of Dante, I do not know; but a man would little consult his own\ninterest as a traveller, if he should busy himself with doubts as\nto the fact. The readiness with which traditions of this character\nare received, and the fidelity with which they are preserved from\ngeneration to generation, are an evidence of feelings honourable to\nour nature. I remember how, during one of my rambles in the course\nof a college vacation, I was pleased on being shown a seat near a\nkind of rocky cell at the source of the river, on which it was said\nthat Congreve wrote his _Old Bachelor_. One can scarcely hit on any\nperformance less in harmony with the scene; but it was a local tribute\npaid to intellect by those who had not troubled themselves to estimate\nthe moral worth of that author's comedies; and why should they? He\nwas a man distinguished in his day; and the sequestered neighbourhood\nin which he often resided was perhaps as proud of him as Florence of\nher Dante: it is the same feeling, though proceeding from persons one\ncannot bring together in this way without offering some apology to the\nShade of the great Visionary.--I.F.]\n\n    Under the shadow of a stately Pile,\n    The dome of Florence, pensive and alone,\n    Nor giving heed to aught that passed the while,\n    I stood, and gazed upon a marble stone,\n    The laurelled Dante's favourite seat.[154] A throne,               5\n    In just esteem, it rivals; though no style\n    Be there of decoration to beguile\n    The mind, depressed by thought of greatness flown.\n    As a true man, who long had served the lyre,\n    I gazed with earnestness, and dared no more.                      10\n    But in his breast the mighty Poet bore\n    A Patriot's heart, warm with undying fire.\n    Bold with the thought, in reverence I sate down,\n    And, for a moment, filled that empty Throne.\n\n[154] The _Sasso di Dante_ is built into the wall of the house, No. 29\nCasa dei Canonici, close to the Duomo.--ED.\n\n\nXX\n\nBEFORE THE PICTURE OF THE BAPTIST, BY RAPHAEL, IN THE GALLERY AT\nFLORENCE[155]\n\n[It was very hot weather during the week we stayed at Florence; and,\nnever having been there before, I went through much hard service, and\nam not therefore _ashamed_ to confess I fell asleep before this picture\nand sitting with my back towards the Venus de Medicis. Buonaparte--in\nanswer to one who had spoken of his being in a sound sleep up to the\nmoment when one of his great battles was to be fought, as a proof\nof the calmness of his mind and command over anxious thoughts--said\nfrankly, that he slept because from bodily exhaustion he could not help\nit. In like manner it is noticed that criminals on the night previous\nto their execution seldom awake before they are called, a proof that\nthe body is the master of us far more than we need be willing to allow.\nShould this note by any possible chance be seen by any of my countrymen\nwho might have been in the gallery at the time (and several persons\nwere there) and witnessed such an indecorum, I hope he will give up the\nopinion which he might naturally have formed to my prejudice.--I.F.]\n\n    The Baptist might have been ordain'd to cry\n    Forth from the towers of that huge Pile, wherein\n    His Father served Jehovah; but how win\n    Due audience, how for aught but scorn defy\n    The obstinate pride and wanton revelry                             5\n    Of the Jerusalem below, her sin\n    And folly, if they with united din\n    Drown not at once mandate and prophecy?\n    Therefore the Voice spake from the Desert, thence\n    To Her, as to her opposite in peace,                              10\n    Silence, and holiness, and innocence,\n    To Her and to all Lands its warning sent,\n    Crying with earnestness that might not cease,\n    \"Make straight a highway for the Lord--repent!\"\n\n[155] This sonnet refers to the picture of the young St. John the\nBaptist, now in the Tribuna, Florence, designed about the same time as\nthe Madonna di San Sisto, for Cardinal Colonna, who is said to have\npresented it to his doctor, Jacopo da Carpi. It has been much admired,\nand often copied; but it is inferior, both in drawing and in colouring,\nto the great works of Raphael. How much of it was actually from his\nhand is uncertain; and Baptist is painted rather like a Bacchus than a\nSaint.--ED.\n\n\nXXI\n\nAT FLORENCE--FROM MICHAEL ANGELO\n\n[However at first these two sonnets from Michael Angelo may seem in\ntheir spirit somewhat inconsistent with each other, I have not scrupled\nto place them side by side as characteristic of their great author,\nand others with whom he lived. I feel, nevertheless, a wish to know\nat what periods of his life they were respectively composed.[156] The\nlatter, as it expresses, was written in his advanced years, when it\nwas natural that the Platonism that pervades the one should give way to\nthe Christian feeling that inspired the other: between both there is\nmore than poetic affinity.--I.F.]\n\n    Rapt above earth by power of one fair face,\n    Hers in whose sway alone my heart delights,\n    I mingle with the blest on those pure heights\n    Where Man, yet mortal, rarely finds a place.\n    With Him who made the Work that Work accords                       5\n    So well, that by its help and through his grace\n    I raise my thoughts, inform my deeds and words,\n    Clasping her beauty in my soul's embrace.\n    Thus, if from two fair eyes mine cannot turn,\n    I feel how in their presence doth abide                           10\n    Light which to God is both the way and guide;\n    And, kindling at their lustre, if I burn,\n    My noble fire emits the joyful ray\n    That through the realms of glory shines for aye.\n\n[156] The second of the two sonnets translated by Wordsworth is No.\nlxxiii. in Signor Cesare Guast\u00ee's edition of Michael Angelo (1863).\n\nAT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS.\n\n_Scaro d'un' importuna._\n\nIt was evidently written in old age. The following is Mr. John\nAddington Symond's translation of the same sonnet.\n\n    Freed from a burden sore and grievous band,\n      Dear Lord, and from this wearying world untied,\n      Like a frail bark I turn me to Thy side,\n      As from a fierce storm to a tranquil land.\n    Thy thorns, Thy nails, and either bleeding hand,\n      With Thy mild gentle piteous face, provide\n      Promise of help and mercies multiplied,\n      And hope that yet my soul secure may stand.\n    Let not Thy holy eyes be just to see\n      My evil part, Thy chastened ears to hear,\n      And stretch the arm of judgment to my crime:\n    Let Thy blood only love and succour me,\n      Yielding more perfect pardon, better cheer,\n      As older still I grow with lengthening time.\n\n_The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tomaso Campanella_, by\nJohn Addington Symonds, p. 110.\n\nCompare Wordsworth's translation of other three sonnets by Michael\nAngelo (vol. iii. pp. 380-384).--ED.\n\n\nXXII\n\nAT FLORENCE--FROM M. ANGELO\n\n    Eternal Lord! eased of a cumbrous load,\n    And loosened from the world, I turn to Thee;\n    Shun, like a shattered bark, the storm, and flee\n    To thy protection for a safe abode.\n    The crown of thorns, hands pierced upon the tree,                  5\n    The meek, benign, and lacerated face,\n    To a sincere repentance promise grace,\n    To the sad soul give hope of pardon free.\n    With justice mark not Thou, O Light divine,\n    My fault, nor hear it with thy sacred ear;                        10\n    Neither put forth that way thy arm severe;\n    Wash with thy blood my sins; thereto incline\n    More readily the more my years require\n    Help, and forgiveness speedy and entire.\n\n\nXXIII\n\nAMONG THE RUINS OF A CONVENT IN THE APENNINES\n\n[The political revolutions of our time have multiplied, on the\nContinent, objects that unavoidably call forth reflections such as are\nexpressed in these verses, but the Ruins in those countries are too\nrecent to exhibit, in anything like an equal degree, the beauty with\nwhich time and nature have invested the remains of our Convents and\nAbbeys. These verses, it will be observed, take up the beauty long\nbefore it is matured, as one cannot but wish it may be among some of\nthe desolations of Italy, France, and Germany.--I.F.]\n\n    Ye Trees! whose slender roots entwine\n      Altars that piety neglects;\n    Whose infant arms enclasp the shrine\n      Which no devotion now respects;\n    If not a straggler from the herd                                   5\n    Here ruminate, nor shrouded bird,\n    Chanting her low-voiced hymn, take pride\n    In aught that ye would grace or hide--\n    How sadly is your love misplaced,\n    Fair Trees, your bounty run to waste!                             10\n\n    Ye, too,[157] wild Flowers! that no one heeds,\n    And ye--full often spurned as weeds--\n    In beauty clothed, or breathing sweetness\n    From fractured arch and mouldering wall--\n    Do but more touchingly recal                                      15\n    Man's headstrong violence and Time's fleetness,\n    Making[158] the precincts ye adorn\n    Appear to sight still more forlorn.\n\n[157] 1845.\n\n    And ye, \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[158] 1845.\n\n    And make \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n\nXXIV\n\nIN LOMBARDY\n\n    See, where his difficult way that Old Man wins\n    Bent by a load of Mulberry leaves!--most hard\n    Appears _his_ lot, to the small Worm's compared,\n    For whom his toil with early day begins.\n    Acknowledging no task-master, at will                              5\n    (As if her labour and her ease were twins)\n    _She_ seems to work, at pleasure to lie still;--\n    And softly sleeps within the thread she spins.\n    So fare they--the Man serving as her Slave.\n    Ere long their fates do each to each conform:                     10\n    Both pass into new being,--but the Worm,\n    Transfigured, sinks into a hopeless grave;\n    _His_ volant Spirit will, he trusts, ascend\n    To bliss unbounded, glory without end.\n\n\nXXV\n\nAFTER LEAVING ITALY\n\n[I had proof in several instances that the Carbonari, if I may still\ncall them so, and their favourers, are opening their eyes to the\nnecessity of patience, and are intent upon spreading knowledge actively\nbut quietly as they can. May they have resolution to continue in this\ncourse! for it is the only one by which they can truly benefit their\ncountry. We left Italy by the way which is called the \"Nuova Strada de\nAllmagna,\" to the east of the high passes of the Alps, which take you\nat once from Italy into Switzerland. This road leads across several\nsmaller heights, and winds down different vales in succession, so that\nit was only by the accidental sound of a few German words that I was\naware we had quitted Italy, and hence the unwelcome shock alluded to in\nthe two or three last lines of the latter sonnet.--I.F.]\n\n    Fair Land! Thee all men greet with joy; how few,\n    Whose souls take pride in freedom, virtue, fame,\n    Part from thee without pity dyed in shame:\n    I could not--while from Venice we withdrew,\n    Led on till an Alpine strait confined our view[159]                5\n    Within its depths, and to the shore we came\n    Of Lago Morto, dreary sight and name,\n    Which o'er sad thoughts a sadder colouring threw.\n    Italia! on the surface of thy spirit,\n    (Too aptly emblemed by that torpid lake)                          10\n    Shall a few partial breezes only creep?--\n    Be its depths quickened; what thou dost inherit\n    Of the world's hopes, dare to fulfil; awake,\n    Mother of Heroes, from thy death-like sleep!\n\n[159] They left Venice by the Nuova Strada de Allmagna, resting\nat Logerone, Sillian, Spittal (in Carinthia), and thence on to\nSalzburg.--ED.\n\n\nXXVI\n\nCONTINUED\n\n    As indignation mastered grief, my tongue\n    Spake bitter words; words that did ill agree\n    With those rich stores of Nature's imagery,\n    And divine Art, that fast to memory clung--\n    Thy gifts, magnificent Region, ever young                          5\n    In the sun's eye, and in his sister's sight\n    How beautiful! how worthy to be sung\n    In strains of rapture, or subdued delight!\n    I feign not; witness that unwelcome shock\n    That followed the first sound of German speech,                   10\n    Caught the far-winding barrier Alps among.\n    In that announcement, greeting seemed to mock[160]\n    Parting; the casual word had power to reach\n    My heart, and filled that heart with conflict strong.\n\n[160] See the Fenwick note to the last sonnet.--ED.\n\n\nAT BOLOGNA, IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE LATE INSURRECTIONS, 1837[161][162]\n\nComposed 1837.--Published 1842\n\nThis was originally (1842) included in the \"Memorials of a Tour in\nItaly,\" but, in 1845, it was transferred, along with the two which\nfollow it, to the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n\nI\n\n    Ah why deceive ourselves! by no mere fit\n    Of sudden passion roused shall men attain\n    True freedom where for ages they have lain\n    Bound in a dark abominable pit,\n    With life's best sinews more and more unknit.                      5\n    Here, there, a banded few who loathe the chain\n    May rise to break it: effort worse than vain\n    For thee, O great Italian nation, split\n    Into those jarring fractions.--Let thy scope\n    Be one fixed mind for all; thy rights approve                     10\n    To thy own conscience gradually renewed;\n    Learn to make Time the father of wise Hope;\n    Then trust thy cause to the arm of Fortitude,\n    The light of Knowledge, and the warmth of Love.\n\n\nII\n\nCONTINUED\n\nComposed 1837.--Published 1842\n\n    Hard task! exclaim the undisciplined, to lean\n    On Patience coupled with such slow endeavour,\n    That long-lived servitude must last for ever.\n    Perish the grovelling few, who, prest between\n    Wrongs and the terror of redress, would wean                       5\n    Millions from glorious aims. Our chains to sever\n    Let us break forth in tempest now or never!--\n    What, is there then no space for golden mean\n    And gradual progress?--Twilight leads to day,\n    And, even within the burning zones of earth,                      10\n    The hastiest sunrise yields a temperate ray;\n    The softest breeze to fairest flowers gives birth:\n    Think not that Prudence dwells in dark abodes,\n    She scans the future with the eye of gods.\n\n\nIII\n\nCONCLUDED\n\nComposed 1837.--Published 1842\n\n    As leaves are to the tree whereon they grow\n    And wither, every human generation\n    Is to the Being of a mighty nation,\n    Locked in our world's embrace through weal and woe;\n    Thought that should teach the zealot to forego                     5\n    Rash schemes, to abjure all selfish agitation,\n    And seek through noiseless pains and moderation\n    The unblemished good they only can bestow.\n    Alas! with most, who weigh futurity\n    Against time present, passion holds the scales:                   10\n    Hence equal ignorance of both prevails,\n    And nations sink; or, struggling to be free,\n    Are doomed to flounder on, like wounded whales\n    Tossed on the bosom of a stormy sea.\n\n[161] This date was omitted in the edition of 1842.\n\n[162] The three sonnets, _At Bologna, in remembrance of the late\nInsurrections_, 1837, are printed as a sequel to the Italian Tour of\nthat year.--ED.\n\n\n\"WHAT IF OUR NUMBERS BARELY COULD DEFY\"\n\nComposed 1837.--Published 1837\n\nOne of the \"Poems dedicated to National Independence and Liberty.\"--ED.\n\n    What if our numbers barely could defy\n    The arithmetic of babes, must foreign hordes,\n    Slaves, vile as ever were befooled by words,\n    Striking through English breasts the anarchy\n    Of Terror, bear us to the ground, and tie                          5\n    Our hands behind our backs with felon cords?\n    Yields every thing to discipline of swords?\n    Is man as good as man, none low, none high?--\n    Nor discipline nor valour can withstand\n    The shock, nor quell[163] the inevitable rout,                    10\n    When in some great extremity breaks out\n    A people, on their own beloved Land\n    Risen, like one man, to combat in the sight\n    Of a just God for liberty and right.\n\n[163] 1837.\n\n    \u2026 nor stem \u2026\n\n    C.\n\n\nA NIGHT THOUGHT\n\nComposed 1837.--Published 1837\n\n[These verses were thrown off extempore upon leaving Mrs. Luff's\nhouse at Fox Ghyll one evening. The good woman is not disposed to\nlook at the bright side of things, and there happened to be present\ncertain ladies who had reached the point of life where _youth_ is\nended, and who seemed to contend with each other in expressing their\ndislike of the country and climate. One of them had been heard to say\nshe could not endure a country where there was \"neither sunshine nor\ncavaliers.\"--I.F.]\n\nThis poem was first published in _The Tribute, a Collection of\nMiscellaneous unpublished Poems by various Authors, edited by Lord\nNorthampton_, in 1837, \"for the benefit of the widow and family of the\nRev. Edward Smedley.\" (The same volume contained a poem by Southey on\nBrough Bells.) It next found a place in \"Poems chiefly of Early and\nLate Years\" (1842). A stanza given in _The Tribute_, No. 2 (see below),\nwas omitted afterwards.--ED.\n\n    Lo! where the Moon along the sky\n    Sails with her happy destiny;[164]\n    Oft is she hid from mortal eye\n          Or dimly seen,\n    But when the clouds asunder fly                                    5\n          How bright her mien![165]\n\n    Far different we--a froward race,[166]\n    Thousands though rich in Fortune's grace\n    With cherished sullenness of pace\n          Their way pursue,                                           10\n    Ingrates who wear a smileless face\n          The whole year through.\n\n    If kindred humours e'er would make[167]\n    My spirit droop for drooping's sake,\n    From Fancy following in thy wake,                                 15\n          Bright ship of heaven!\n    A counter impulse let me take\n          And be forgiven.[168]\n\n[164] 1842.\n\n    The moon that sails along the sky\n    Moves with a happy destiny,\n\n    1837.\n\n[165] 1837.\n\n    Not flagging when the winds all sleep,\n    Not hurried onward, when they sweep\n    The bosom of th' ethereal deep,\n        Not turned aside,\n    She knows an even course to keep,\n        Whate'er betide.\n\n    In the text of 1837 only.\n\n[166] 1842.\n\n    Perverse are we--a froward race;\n\n    1837.\n\n[167] 1842.\n\n    If kindred humour e'er should make\n\n    1837.\n\n[168] Compare the poem _To the Daisy_ (1802), beginning--\n\n    Bright Flower! whose home is everywhere.\n\nED.\n\n\nTHE WIDOW ON WINDERMERE SIDE\n\nPublished 1842\n\n[The facts recorded in this Poem were given me, and the character of\nthe person described, by my friend the Rev. R. P. Graves,[169] who\nhas long officiated as curate at Bowness, to the great benefit of the\nparish and neighbourhood. The individual was well known to him. She\ndied before these verses were composed. It is scarcely worth while\nto notice that the stanzas are written in the sonnet form, which was\nadopted when I thought the matter might be included in twenty-eight\nlines.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Poems founded on the Affections.\"--ED.\n\n                         I\n\n    How beautiful when up a lofty height\n    Honour ascends among the humblest poor,\n    And feeling sinks as deep! See there the door\n    Of One, a Widow, left beneath a weight\n    Of blameless debt. On evil Fortune's spite                         5\n    She wasted no complaint, but strove to make\n    A just repayment, both for conscience-sake\n    And that herself and hers should stand upright\n    In the world's eye. Her work when daylight failed\n    Paused not, and through the depth of night she kept               10\n    Such earnest vigils, that belief prevailed\n    With some, the noble Creature never slept;\n    But, one by one, the hand of death assailed\n    Her children from her inmost heart bewept.\n\n                         II\n\n    The Mother mourned, nor ceased her tears to flow,                 15\n    Till a winter's noon-day placed her buried Son\n    Before her eyes, last child of many gone--\n    His raiment of angelic white, and lo!\n    His very feet bright as the dazzling snow\n    Which they are touching; yea far brighter, even                   20\n    As that which comes, or seems to come, from heaven,\n    Surpasses aught these elements can show.\n    Much she rejoiced, trusting that from that hour\n    Whate'er befel she could not grieve or pine;\n    But the Transfigured, in and out of season,                       25\n    Appeared, and spiritual presence gained a power\n    Over material forms that mastered reason.\n    Oh, gracious Heaven, in pity make her thine!\n\n                         III\n\n    But why that prayer? as if to her could come\n    No good but by the way that leads to bliss                        30\n    Through Death,--so judging we should judge amiss.\n    Since reason failed want is her threatened doom,\n    Yet frequent transports mitigate the gloom:\n    Nor of those maniacs is she one that kiss\n    The air or laugh upon a precipice;                                35\n    No, passing through strange sufferings toward the tomb,\n    She smiles as if a martyr's crown were won:\n    Oft, when light breaks through clouds or waving trees,\n    With outspread arms and fallen upon her knees\n    The Mother hails in her descending Son                            40\n    An Angel, and in earthly ecstasies\n    Her own angelic glory seems begun.\n\n[169] The late Archdeacon of Dublin, author of _Life of Sir William\nRowan Hamilton_, etc. He gives the date of the composition of the poem\nas 1837.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1838\n\nIn 1838 Wordsworth wrote ten sonnets. These were published (along with\nthe one suggested by Mrs. Southey) for the first time in the volume of\ncollected Sonnets, several being inserted out of their intended place,\nwhile the book was passing through the press.\n\nThe _Protest against the Ballot_, which appeared in 1838, was never\nrepublished.--ED.\n\n\nTO THE PLANET VENUS\n\nUPON ITS APPROXIMATION (AS AN EVENING STAR) TO THE EARTH, JANUARY 1838\n\nComposed 1838.--Published 1838[170]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    What strong allurement draws, what spirit guides,\n    Thee, Vesper! brightening still, as if the nearer\n    Thou com'st to man's abode the spot grew dearer\n    Night after night? True is it Nature hides\n    Her treasures less and less.--Man now presides                     5\n    In power, where once he trembled in his weakness;\n    Science[171] advances with gigantic strides;\n    But are we aught enriched in love and meekness?[172]\n    Aught dost thou see, bright Star! of pure and wise\n    More than in humbler times graced human story;                    10\n    That makes our hearts more apt to sympathise\n    With heaven, our souls more fit for future glory,\n    When earth shall vanish from our closing eyes,\n    Ere we lie down in our last dormitory?[173]\n\n[170] It was afterwards printed in the _Saturday Magazine_, Oct. 24,\n1840.--ED.\n\n[171] 1845.\n\n    Knowledge\n\n    1838.\n\n[172] Compare Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, stanza cxx.--\n\n    Let Science prove we are, and then\n    What matters Science unto men, etc.\n\nED.\n\n[173] Compare the poem in vol. vii. p. 299, _To the Planet Venus, an\nEvening Star_.--ED.\n\n\n\"HARK! 'TIS THE THRUSH, UNDAUNTED, UNDEPREST\"\n\nComposed 1838.--Published 1838\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Hark! 'tis the Thrush, undaunted, undeprest,\n    By twilight premature of cloud and rain;\n    Nor does that roaring wind deaden his strain[174]\n    Who carols thinking of his Love and nest,\n    And seems, as more incited, still more blest.                      5\n    Thanks; thou hast snapped a fire-side Prisoner's chain,\n    Exulting Warbler! eased a fretted brain,\n    And in a moment charmed my cares to rest.\n    Yes, I will forth, bold Bird! and front the blast,\n    That we may sing together, if thou wilt,                          10\n    So loud, so clear, my Partner through life's day,\n    Mute in her nest love-chosen, if not love-built\n    Like thine, shall gladden, as in seasons past,\n    Thrilled by loose snatches of the social Lay.\n\nRYDAL MOUNT, 1838.\n\n[174] 1838.\n\n                      \u2026 undaunted, unopprest,\n    Struggling with twilight premature and rain.\n    Loud roars the wind, but smothers not his strain\n\n    MS.\n\n\n\"'TIS HE WHOSE YESTER-EVENING'S HIGH DISDAIN\"\n\nComposed 1838.--Published 1838\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    'Tis He whose yester-evening's high disdain\n    Beat back the roaring storm--but how subdued\n    His day-break note, a sad vicissitude!\n    Does the hour's drowsy weight his glee restrain?\n    Or, like the nightingale, her joyous vein                          5\n    Pleased to renounce, does this dear Thrush attune\n    His voice to suit the temper of yon Moon\n    Doubly depressed, setting, and in her wane?\n    Rise, tardy Sun! and let the Songster prove\n    (The balance trembling between night and morn                     10\n    No longer) with what ecstasy upborne\n    He can pour forth his spirit. In heaven above,\n    And earth below, they best can serve true gladness\n    Who meet most feelingly the calls of sadness.\n\n\nCOMPOSED AT RYDAL ON MAY MORNING, 1838[175]\n\nComposed 1st May 1838.--Published 1838\n\n[This and the following sonnet were composed on what we call the \"Far\nTerrace\" at Rydal Mount, where I have murmured out many thousands of\nverses.--I.F.]\n\nThis sonnet was first published in the Volume of Collected Sonnets\nin 1838. In 1842 it was classed among the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets\";\nbut in 1845 it was transferred to the \"Memorials of a Tour in Italy,\n1837.\"--ED.\n\n    If with old love of you, dear Hills! I share\n    New love of many a rival image brought\n    From far, forgive the wanderings of my thought:\n    Nor art thou wronged, sweet May! when I compare[176]\n    Thy present birth-morn with thy last,[177][178] so fair,           5\n    So rich to me in favours. For my lot\n    Then was, within the famed Egerian Grot\n    To sit and muse, fanned by its dewy air\n    Mingling with thy soft breath! That morning too,\n    Warblers I heard their joy unbosoming                             10\n    Amid the sunny, shadowy, Coliseum;[179]\n    Heard them, unchecked by aught of saddening hue,[180]\n    For victories there won by flower-crowned Spring,[181]\n    Chant in full choir their innocent Te Deum.\n\n[175] 1845.\n\nThe title in 1838 was \"COMPOSED ON MAY-MORNING, 1838\"; and \"RYDAL\nMOUNT\" was written at the foot of the sonnet.\n\n[176] 1838.\n\n    May, if from these thy northern haunts I share\n    Fond looks of mind for images remote\n    Fetched out of milder climates, blame me not,\n    Nor that, upris'n thus early, I compare\n\n    MS.\n\n    Let those who will or can, dear May, forbear\n    To rise and hail thy coming, I could not.\n    The vivid images of scenes remote\n    Rushing on memory urge me to compare\n\n    MS.\n\n    Dear native Hills, the love of you I share\n    With \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n    Dear fields and native mountains, if I share\n    My love of youth with love of objects brought\n    {From far, by faithful memory, blame me not. }\n    {Fetched from a milder climate, blame me not.}\n    {From a distant land by memory, blame me not.}\n    {Nor that, upris'n thus early,   }\n    {Nor be displeased, sweet May, if} I compare\n    {May,}\n    {Thy } present \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[177] 1838.\n\n    \u2026 past,\n\n    MS.\n\n[178] On May morning, 1837, Wordsworth was in Rome with Henry Crabb\nRobinson.--ED.\n\n[179] The Flavian Amphitheatre, begun by Vespasian, A.D. 72, and\ncontinued by his son Titus, one of the noblest structures in Rome, now\na ruin. --ED.\n\n[180] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 of sombre hue,\n\n    1838.\n\n    \u2026 by thoughts of sombre hue,\n\n    MS.\n\n[181] 1838.\n\n                                    \u2026 too,\n    How my heart swelled when in the mighty ring,\n    The mouldering, shadowy, sunny Collosseum,\n    I heard with some sad thoughts of local hue\n    Warblers there lodged, for victories won by spring\n\n    MS.\n\n                                    \u2026 too,\n    Here did I a deathless joy embosoming,\n    {Mid   } the shadowy Collosseum,\n    {Within}\n    Hear not without sad thoughts of local hue\n\n    MS.\n\n                                    \u2026 too,\n    Heard I, a deathless joy embosoming,\n    Tho' not without sad thoughts of local hue,\n    Amid the shadowy, sunny, Collosseum,\n    Warblers there lodged, for victories won by Spring\n\n    MS.\n\n\nCOMPOSED ON A MAY MORNING, 1838[182]\n\nComposed 1838.--Published 1838[183]\n\nThis was one of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Life with yon Lambs, like day, is just begun,\n    Yet Nature seems to them a heavenly guide.[184]\n    Does joy approach? they meet the coming tide;\n    And sullenness avoid, as now they shun[185]\n    Pale twilight's lingering glooms,--and in the sun                  5\n    Couch near their dams, with quiet satisfied;[186]\n    Or gambol--each with his shadow at his side,[187]\n    Varying its shape wherever he may run.\n    As they from turf yet hoar with sleepy dew\n    All turn, and court the shining and the green,                    10\n    Where herbs look up, and opening flowers are seen;\n    Why to God's goodness cannot We be true,\n    And so, His[188] gifts and promises between,\n    Feed to the last on pleasures ever new?\n\n[182] 1845.\n\nThe title, in 1838, was \"COMPOSED ON THE SAME MORNING\"; referring to\nthe previous sonnet in that edition, beginning--\n\n    If with old love of you, dear Hills! I share.\n\n[183] There were so many tentative efforts in the construction of this\nsonnet, and the one which follows it, that I feel justified in printing\nthem from MS. sources.--ED.\n\n[184] 1838.\n\n    Life with yon mountain lambs is just begun,\n\n    MS.\n\n    Yon mountain Lambs whose life is just begun\n    Some guidance know to Man's grave years denied.\n\n    MS.\n\n    Your lives, ye mountain lambs, tho' just begun\n    A guidance know to our best years denied.\n\n    MS. sent to Mr. Clarkson.\n\n[185] 1838.\n\n    O that by Nature we were prompt the tide\n    Of joy to meet, as {they} are who {now } shun\n                       {ye  }         {there}\n\n    MS. sent to Mr. Clarkson.\n\n[186] 1838.\n\n    The lingering glooms of twilight, in the sun\n    To couch, with sober quiet satisfied.\n\n    MS. sent to Mr. Clarkson.\n\n                                \u2026 shun\n    Hollows unbrightened by the {rising} sun\n                                {morning}\n    On <DW72>s to couch with quiet satisfied.\n\n    MS.\n\n    To couch on <DW72>s where he his beams has tried,\n    Sporting and running wheresoe'er ye run.\n\n    MS.\n\n[187] 1838.\n\n    Couch near their dams; or frisk in sportive pride\n    Each with his playful shadow at his side,\n\n    MS.\n\n[188] 1838.\n\n    As they from turf hoary with unsunned dew\n    Turn and do one and all prefer the green\n    To chilly nooks, knolls cheered with glistening sheen,\n    Why may not we a kindred course pursue\n    And so, God's \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n                                \u2026 shun\n    Hollows {enlivened   } by the rising sun\n            {unbrightened}\n    On <DW72>s to couch with quiet satisfied,\n    Or gambol each, his shadow at his side,\n    Running in sport wherever he may run.\n    As from dull turf hoary with unsunned dew\n    They turn, and one and all prefer the green\n    To chilly nooks, knolls {warmed} with glistening sheen,\n                            {cheered}\n    Why may not we a kindred course pursue\n    And so, Heaven's \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n                                \u2026 shun\n    The lingering gloom of twilight in the sun,\n    To couch with sober quiet satisfied,\n    Or gambol each, his shadow at his side,\n    Varying its shape wherever he may run.\n\n    MS.\n\n    As they from turf with thick and sleepy dew\n    {{Yet} whitened o'er, turn and}\n    {{All}                       } prefer the green\n    {Turn, and do one and all    }\n    To chilly nooks, {<DW72>s} warm with glistening sheen,\n                     {knolls}\n    Why may not we thro' life such course pursue\n    And so, God's \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n    As they from turf with thick and sleepy dew\n    Yet whitened o'er, turn and prefer the green;\n    To chilly nooks, <DW72>s warm with glistering sheen,\n    Why may not we such course through life pursue,\n    And so, God's gifts and promises between,\n    Feed \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n\nA PLEA FOR AUTHORS, MAY 1838\n\n    Failing impartial measure to dispense\n    To every suitor, Equity is lame;\n    And social Justice, stript of reverence\n    For natural rights, a mockery and a shame;\n    Law but a servile dupe of false pretence,                          5\n    If, guarding grossest things from common claim\n    Now and for ever, She, to works that came[189]\n    From mind and spirit, grudge a short-lived fence.\n    \"What! lengthened privilege, a lineal tie,\n    For _Books_!\" Yes, heartless Ones, or be it proved                10\n    That 'tis a fault in Us to have lived and loved\n    Like others, with like temporal hopes to die;\n    No public harm that Genius from her course\n    Be turned; and streams of truth dried up, even at their source![190]\n\n[189] 1838.\n\n    {If} failing one strict measure to dispense\n    {When}\n    To all her suitors Equity is lame,\n    And social justice by fit reverence\n    Of natural right unswayed is but a name,\n\n    MS.\n\n    {Law but} the servile dupe of false pretence,\n    {And Law}\n\n    MS.\n\n    {When} guarding grossest things from common claim\n    {If}\n    Now, and for ever, She for work that came\n\n    MS.\n\n                                  \u2026 lame,\n    Justice unswayed, unmoved by reverence\n    For natural right {what is she but a name?}\n                      {is but an empty name, }\n\n    MS.\n\n[190] 1838.\n\n                            \u2026 from its course\n    Be turned, and streams of truth dried at their source.\n\n    MS.\n\n    From mind and spirit grudge a short-lived fence.\n    But no--{our} sages join in banded force\n            {the}\n    {That} books by right or wrong {may} glad the isle\n    {With}                         {to}\n    Say, {would} this serve the {future should our} course\n         {can }                {people if the   }\n    {Of pure domestic hopes be checked the while}\n    {Of prejudice be less opposed the while    }\n    {Should} toil-worn Genius want a cheering smile\n    {If   }\n    And streams of truth be dried up at their source?\n\n    MS.\n\n    Out of the mind grudges a short-lived fence.\n    {But no--the Sages join in banded force   }\n    {And how preposterous Sages is your course}\n    Who cry give books free passage thro' the isle.\n    {Say can this serve the people of our isle, }\n    {By right or wrong, for better or for worse,}\n    Friends to the people, what care ye the while\n    Tho' toil-worn genius want a cheering smile\n    And far-fetched truth be dried up at her source?\n\n    MS.\n\n\n\"BLEST STATESMAN HE, WHOSE MIND'S UNSELFISH WILL\"\n\nComposed 1838.--Published 1838\n\nOne of the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n    Blest Statesman He, whose Mind's unselfish will\n    Leaves him[191] at ease among grand thoughts: whose eye\n    Sees that, apart from magnanimity,\n    Wisdom exists not; nor the humbler skill\n    Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill                            5\n    With patient care. What tho'[192] assaults run high,\n    They daunt not him who holds his ministry,\n    Resolute, at all hazards, to fulfil\n    Its[193] duties;--prompt to move, but firm to wait,--\n    Knowing, things rashly sought are rarely found;                   10\n    That, for[194] the functions of an ancient State--\n    Strong by her charters, free because imbound,\n    Servant of Providence, not slave of Fate--\n    Perilous is sweeping change, all chance unsound.[195]\n\n[191] 1842.\n\n    \u2026 her\n\n    C. and 1838.\n\n[192] 1838.\n\n    \u2026 if\n\n    C.\n\n[193] 1838.\n\n    His\n\n    C.\n\n[194] 1838.\n\n    \u2026 in\n\n    C.\n\n[195]\n\n    All change is perilous, and all chance unsound.\n\n    SPENSER.--W.W. 1838.\n\nThe passage will be found in _The Fa\u00ebrie Queene_, book v. canto xii.\nstanza 36.--ED.\n\n\nVALEDICTORY SONNET[196]\n\nComposed 1838.--Published 1838\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Serving no haughty Muse, my hands have here\n    Disposed some cultured Flowerets (drawn from spots\n    Where they bloomed singly, or in scattered knots),\n    Each kind in several beds of one parterre;\n    Both to allure the casual Loiterer,                                5\n    And that, so placed, my Nurslings may requite\n    Studious regard with opportune delight,\n    Nor be unthanked, unless I fondly err.\n    But metaphor dismissed, and thanks apart,\n    Reader, farewell! My last words let them be--                     10\n    If in this book Fancy and Truth agree;\n    If simple Nature trained by careful Art\n    Through It have won a passage to thy heart;\n    Grant me thy love, I crave no other fee!\n\n[196] This closed the volume of sonnets published in 1838.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1839\n\nThe fourteen \"Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death\" were originally\npublished in the _Quarterly Review_ (in December 1841), in an article\non the \"Sonnets of William Wordsworth\" by the late Sir Henry Taylor,\nauthor of _Philip van Artevelde_, and other poems. Towards the close of\nthis article (of 1841), after reviewing the volume of Sonnets published\nin 1838, Sir Henry adds, \"There is a short series _written two years\nago_, which we have been favoured with permission to present to the\npublic for the first time. It was suggested by the recent discussions\nin Parliament, and elsewhere, on the subject of the 'Punishment of\nDeath.'\"\n\nWhen republishing this and other critical Essays on Poetry, in\nthe collected edition of his works in 1878, Sir Henry omitted the\nparagraphs relating to these particular sonnets. Wordsworth published\nthe sonnets in his volume of \"Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years,\"\nin 1842.--ED.\n\n\nSONNETS UPON THE PUNISHMENT OF DEATH\n\nIN SERIES\n\nComposed 1839.--Published 1841\n\n\"In the session of 1836, a report by the Commissioners on Criminal\nLaw--of which the second part was on this subject (the Punishment of\nDeath)--was laid before Parliament. In the ensuing session this was\nfollowed by papers presented to Parliament by her Majesty's command,\nand consisting of a correspondence between the Commissioners, Lord\nJohn Russell, and Lord Denman. Upon the foundation afforded by these\ndocuments, the bills of the 17th July 1837--(7th Gul. IV. and 1st\nVict. cap. 84 to 89 and 91)--were brought in and passed. These acts\nremoved the punishment of death from about 200 offences, and left it\napplicable to high treason,--murder and attempts at murder--rape--arson\nwith danger to life--and to piracies, burglaries, and robberies, when\naggravated by cruelty and violence.\" (Sir Henry Taylor, _Quarterly\nReview_, Dec. 1841, p. 39.) Some members of the House of Commons--Mr.\nFitzroy Kelly, Mr. Ewart, and others--desired a further limitation\nof the punishment of death to the crimes of murder and treason only:\nand the question of the entire abolition of capital punishment being\nvirtually before the country, Wordsworth dealt with it in the following\nseries of sonnets.--ED.\n\n\nI\n\nSUGGESTED BY THE VIEW OF LANCASTER CASTLE (ON THE ROAD FROM THE SOUTH)\n\n    This Spot--at once unfolding sight so fair\n    Of sea and land, with yon grey towers that still\n    Rise up as if to lord it over air--\n    Might soothe in human breasts the sense of ill,\n    Or charm it out of memory; yea, might fill                         5\n    The heart with joy and gratitude to God\n    For all his bounties upon man bestowed:\n    Why bears it then the name of \"Weeping Hill\"?[197]\n    Thousands, as toward yon old Lancastrian Towers,\n    A prison's crown, along this way they past                        10\n    For lingering durance or quick death with shame,\n    From this bare eminence thereon have cast\n    Their first look--blinded as tears fell in showers\n    Shed on their chains; and hence that doleful name.\n\n[197] The name given to the spot from which criminals on their way to\nthe Castle of Lancaster first see it.--ED.\n\n\nII[198]\n\n\"TENDERLY DO WE FEEL BY NATURE'S LAW\"\n\n    Tenderly do we feel by Nature's law\n    For worst offenders: though the heart will heave\n    With indignation, deeply moved we grieve,\n    In after thought, for Him who stood in awe\n    Neither of God nor man, and only saw,                              5\n    Lost wretch, a horrible device enthroned\n    On proud temptations, till the victim groaned\n    Under the steel his hand had dared to draw.\n    But O, restrain compassion, if its course,\n    As oft befalls, prevent or turn aside                             10\n    Judgments and aims and acts whose higher source\n    Is sympathy with the unforewarned, who died[199]\n    Blameless--with them that shuddered o'er his grave,\n    And all who from the law firm safety crave.\n\n[198] \"The first sonnet prepares the reader to sympathise with the\nsufferings of the culprits. The next cautions him as to the limits\nwithin which his sympathies are to be restrained.\" (Sir Henry\nTaylor.)--ED.\n\n[199] 1842.\n\n    \u2026 that died\n\n    1841.\n\n\nIII[200]\n\n\"THE ROMAN CONSUL DOOMED HIS SONS TO DIE\"\n\n    The Roman Consul doomed his sons to die\n    Who had betrayed their country.[201] The stern word\n    Afforded (may it through all time afford)\n    A theme for praise and admiration high.\n    Upon the surface of humanity                                       5\n    He rested not; its depths his mind explored;\n    He felt; but his parental bosom's lord\n    Was Duty,--Duty calmed his agony.\n    And some, we know, when they by wilful act\n    A single human life have wrongly taken,                           10\n    Pass sentence on themselves, confess the fact,\n    And, to atone for it, with soul unshaken\n    Kneel at the feet of Justice, and, for faith\n    Broken with all mankind, solicit death.\n\n[200] \"In the third and fourth sonnets the reader is prepared to\nregard as low and effeminate the views which would estimate life and\ndeath as the most important of all sublunary conditions.\" (Sir Henry\nTaylor.)--ED.\n\n[201] Lucius Junius Brutus, who condemned his sons to die for the part\nthey took in the conspiracy to restore the Tarquins. (See Livy, book\nii.)--ED.\n\n\nIV\n\n\"IS _DEATH_, WHEN EVIL AGAINST GOOD HAS FOUGHT\"\n\n    Is _Death_, when evil against good has fought\n    With such fell mastery that a man may dare\n    By deeds the blackest purpose to lay bare?\n    Is Death, for one to that condition brought,\n    For him, or any one, the thing that ought                          5\n    To be _most_ dreaded? Lawgivers, beware,\n    Lest, capital pains remitting till ye spare\n    The murderer, ye, by sanction to that thought\n    Seemingly given, debase the general mind;\n    Tempt the vague will tried standards to disown,                   10\n    Nor only palpable restraints unbind,\n    But upon Honour's head disturb the crown,\n    Whose absolute rule permits not to withstand\n    In the weak love of life his least command.\n\n\nV\n\n\"NOT TO THE OBJECT SPECIALLY DESIGNED\"\n\n    Not to the object specially designed,\n    Howe'er momentous in itself it be,\n    Good to promote or curb depravity,\n    Is the wise Legislator's view confined.\n    His Spirit, when most severe, is oft most kind;                    5\n    As all Authority in earth depends\n    On Love and Fear, their several powers he blends,\n    Copying with awe the one Paternal mind.\n    Uncaught by processes in show humane,\n    He feels how far the act would derogate                           10\n    From even the humblest functions of the State;\n    If she, self-shorn of Majesty, ordain\n    That never more shall hang upon her breath\n    The last alternative of Life or Death.\n\n\nVI[202]\n\n\"YE BROOD OF CONSCIENCE--SPECTRES! THAT FREQUENT\"\n\n    Ye brood of conscience--Spectres! that frequent\n    The bad man's restless walk, and haunt his bed--\n    Fiends in your aspect, yet beneficent\n    In act, as hovering Angels when they spread\n    Their wings to guard the unconscious Innocent--                    5\n    Slow be the Statutes of the land to share\n    A laxity that could not but impair\n    _Your_ power to punish crime, and so prevent.\n    And ye, Beliefs! coiled serpent-like about\n    The adage on all tongues, \"Murder will out,\"[203]                 10\n    How shall your ancient warnings work for good\n    In the full might they hitherto have shown,\n    If for deliberate shedder of man's blood\n    Survive not Judgment that requires his own?\n\n[202] \"The sixth sonnet adverts to the effect of the law in preventing\nthe crime of murder, not merely by fear, but by horror, by investing\nthe crime itself with the colouring of dark and terrible imaginations.\"\n(Sir Henry Taylor.)--ED.\n\n[203] See Chaucer, _The Nonnes Priestes Tale_, l. 232.--ED.\n\n\nVII\n\n\"BEFORE THE WORLD HAD PAST HER TIME OF YOUTH\"\n\n    Before the world had past her time of youth\n    While polity and discipline were weak,\n    The precept eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,\n    Came forth--a light, though but as of day-break,\n    Strong as could then be borne. A Master meek                       5\n    Proscribed the spirit fostered by that rule,\n    Patience _his_ law, long-suffering _his_ school,\n    And love the end, which all through peace must seek.\n    But lamentably do they err who strain\n    His mandates, given rash impulse to controul                      10\n    And keep vindictive thirstings from the soul,\n    So far that, if consistent in their scheme,\n    They must forbid the State to inflict a pain,\n    Making of social order a mere dream.\n\n\nVIII[204]\n\n\"FIT RETRIBUTION, BY THE MORAL CODE\"\n\n    Fit retribution, by the moral code\n    Determined, lies beyond the State's embrace,\n    Yet, as she may, for each peculiar case\n    She plants well-measured terrors in the road\n    Of wrongful acts. Downward it is and broad,                        5\n    And, the main fear once doomed to banishment,\n    Far oftener then, bad ushering worse event,\n    Blood would be spilt that in his dark abode\n    Crime might lie better hid. And, should the change\n    Take from the horror due to a foul deed,                          10\n    Pursuit and evidence so far must fail,\n    And, guilt escaping, passion then might plead\n    In angry spirits for her old free range,\n    And the \"wild justice of revenge\"[205] prevail.\n\n[204] \"In the eighth sonnet the doctrine, which would strive to measure\nout the punishments awarded by the law in proportion to the degrees of\nmoral turpitude, is disavowed.\" (Sir Henry Taylor.)--ED.\n\n[205] See Bacon's Essay _Of Revenge_, beginning, \"Revenge is a sort of\nwild justice.\"--ED.\n\n\nIX\n\n\"THOUGH TO GIVE TIMELY WARNING AND DETER\"\n\n    Though to give timely warning and deter\n    Is one great aim of penalty, extend\n    Thy mental vision further and ascend\n    Far higher, else full surely shalt thou err.[206]\n    What is a State? The wise behold in her                            5\n    A creature born of time, that keeps one eye\n    Fixed on the statutes of Eternity,\n    To which her judgments reverently defer.\n    Speaking through Law's dispassionate voice the State\n    Endues her conscience with external life                          10\n    And being, to preclude or quell the strife\n    Of individual will, to elevate\n    The grovelling mind, the erring to recal,\n    And fortify the moral sense of all.\n\n[206] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 thou shalt err.\n\n    1842.\n\n\nX\n\n\"OUR BODILY LIFE, SOME PLEAD, THAT LIFE THE SHRINE\"\n\n    Our bodily life, some plead, that life the shrine\n    Of an immortal spirit, is a gift\n    So sacred, so informed with light divine,\n    That no tribunal, though most wise to sift\n    Deed and intent, should turn the Being adrift                      5\n    Into that world where penitential tear\n    May not avail, nor prayer have for God's ear\n    A voice--that world whose veil no hand can lift\n    For earthly sight. \"Eternity and Time\"\n    _They_ urge, \"have interwoven claims and rights                   10\n    Not to be jeopardised through foulest crime:\n    The sentence rule by mercy's heaven-born lights.\"\n    Even so; but measuring not by finite sense\n    Infinite Power, perfect Intelligence.\n\n\nXI[207]\n\n\"AH, THINK HOW ONE COMPELLED FOR LIFE TO ABIDE\"\n\n    Ah, think how one compelled for life to abide\n    Locked in a dungeon needs must eat the heart\n    Out of his own humanity, and part\n    With every hope that mutual cares provide;\n    And, should a less unnatural doom confide                          5\n    In life-long exile on a savage coast,\n    Soon the relapsing penitent may boast\n    Of yet more heinous guilt, with fiercer pride.\n    Hence thoughtful Mercy, Mercy sage and pure,\n    Sanctions the forfeiture that Law demands,                        10\n    Leaving the final issue in _His_ hands\n    Whose goodness knows no change, whose love is sure,\n    Who sees, foresees; who cannot judge amiss,\n    And wafts at will the contrite soul to bliss.\n\n[207] \"In the eleventh and twelfth sonnets the alternatives of\nsecondary punishment,--solitary imprisonment, and transportation,--are\nadverted to.\" (Sir Henry Taylor.)--ED.\n\n\nXII\n\n\"SEE THE CONDEMNED ALONE WITHIN HIS CELL\"\n\n    See the Condemned alone within his cell\n    And prostrate at some moment when remorse\n    Stings to the quick, and, with resistless force,\n    Assaults the pride she strove in vain to quell.\n    Then mark him, him who could so long rebel,                        5\n    The crime confessed, a kneeling Penitent\n    Before the Altar, where the Sacrament\n    Softens his heart, till from his eyes outwell\n    Tears of salvation. Welcome death! while Heaven\n    Does in this change exceedingly rejoice;                          10\n    While yet the solemn heed the State hath given\n    Helps him to meet the last Tribunal's voice\n    In faith, which fresh offences, were he cast\n    On old temptations, might for ever blast.\n\n\nXIII[208]\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n    Yes, though He well may tremble at the sound\n    Of his own voice, who from the judgment-seat\n    Sends the pale Convict to his last retreat\n    In death; though Listeners shudder all around,\n    They know the dread requital's source profound;                    5\n    Nor is, they feel, its wisdom obsolete--\n    (Would that it were!) the sacrifice unmeet\n    For Christian Faith. But hopeful signs abound;\n    The social rights of man breathe purer air;\n    Religion deepens her preventive care;                             10\n    Then, moved by needless fear of past abuse,\n    Strike not from Law's firm hand that awful rod,\n    But leave it thence to drop for lack of use:\n    Oh, speed the blessed hour, Almighty God!\n\n[208] \"In the thirteenth sonnet he anticipates that a time may come\nwhen the punishment of death will be needed no longer; but he wishes\nthat the disuse of it should grow out of the absence of the need, not\nbe imposed by legislation.\" (Sir Henry Taylor.)--ED.\n\n\nXIV\n\nAPOLOGY\n\n    The formal World relaxes her cold chain\n    For One who speaks in numbers; ampler scope\n    His utterance finds; and, conscious of the gain,\n    Imagination works with bolder hope\n    The cause of grateful reason to sustain;                           5\n    And, serving Truth, the heart more strongly beats\n    Against all barriers which his labour meets\n    In lofty place, or humble Life's domain.\n    Enough;--before us lay a painful road,\n    And guidance have I sought in duteous love                        10\n    From Wisdom's heavenly Father. Hence hath flowed\n    Patience, with trust that, whatsoe'er the way\n    Each takes in this high matter, all may move\n    Cheered with the prospect of a brighter day.\n\n    1840.[209]\n\n[209] In the editions of 1842, 1845, and 1850 the date \"1840\" follows\nthis poem. It may have been written in that year.--ED.\n\n\n\"MEN OF THE WESTERN WORLD! IN FATE'S DARK BOOK\"\n\nPublished 1842\n\nOne of the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n    Men of the Western World! in Fate's dark book\n    Whence these opprobrious leaves of dire portent?\n    Think ye your British Ancestors forsook\n    Their native Land, for outrage provident;\n    From unsubmissive necks the bridle shook                           5\n    To give, in their Descendants, freer vent\n    And wider range to passions turbulent,\n    To mutual tyranny a deadlier look?\n    Nay, said a voice, soft as the south wind's breath,\n    Dive through the stormy surface of the flood                      10\n    To the great current flowing underneath;\n    Explore the countless springs of silent good;\n    So shall the truth be better understood,\n    And thy grieved Spirit brighten strong in faith.[210]\n\n[210] These lines were written several years ago, when reports\nprevailed of cruelties committed in many parts of America, by men\nmaking a law of their own passions. A far more formidable, as being a\nmore deliberate mischief, has appeared among those States, which have\nlately broken faith with the public creditor in a manner so infamous.\nI cannot, however, but look at both evils under a similar relation to\ninherent good, and hope that the time is not distant when our brethren\nof the West will wipe off this stain from their name and nation.\n\nADDITIONAL NOTE.\n\nI am happy to add that this anticipation is already partly realised;\nand that the reproach addressed to the Pennsylvanians is no longer\napplicable to them. I trust that those other states to which it may yet\napply will soon follow the example now set them by Philadelphia, and\nredeem their credit with the world.--W.W. 1850.\n\n\"This editorial note is on a fly-leaf at the end of the fifth volume of\nthe edition, which was completed only a short time before the Poet's\ndeath. It contains probably the last sentences composed by him for the\npress. It was promptly added by him in consequence of a suggestion\nfrom me, that the sonnet addressed \"_To Pennsylvanians_\" was no longer\njust--a fact which is mentioned to shew that the fine sense of truth\nand justice which distinguish his writings was active to the last.\"\n(Note to Professor Reed's American Edition of 1851.)--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1840\n\nOnly four poems, viz. _Poor Robin_, two sonnets referring to Miss\nGillies, and one on Haydon's portrait of the Duke of Wellington, belong\nto 1840.--ED.\n\n\nTO A PAINTER\n\nComposed 1840.--Published 1842\n\n[The picture which gave occasion to this and the following sonnet was\nfrom the pencil of Miss M. Gillies, who resided for several weeks under\nour roof at Rydal Mount.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    All praise the Likeness by thy skill portrayed;[211]\n    But 'tis a fruitless task to paint for me,\n    Who, yielding not to changes Time has made,\n    By the habitual light of memory see\n    Eyes unbedimmed, see bloom that cannot fade,                       5\n    And smiles that from their birth-place ne'er shall flee\n    Into the land where ghosts and phantoms be;\n    And, seeing this, own nothing in its stead.\n    Couldst thou go back into far-distant years,\n    Or share with me, fond thought! that inward eye,[212]             10\n    Then, and then only, Painter! could thy Art\n    The visual powers of Nature satisfy,\n    Which hold, whate'er to common sight appears,\n    Their sovereign empire in a faithful heart.\n\n[211] Miss Gillies told me that she visited Rydal Mount in 1841, at the\ninvitation of the Wordsworths, to make a miniature portrait of the poet\non ivory, which had been commissioned by Mr. Moon, the publisher, for\nthe purpose of engraving. An engraving of this portrait was published\non the 6th of August 1841. The original is now in America. I think she\nmust have been wrong in her memory of the year, which was 1840. Miss\nGillies also told me that the Wordsworths were so pleased with what she\nhad done for Mr. Moon that they wished a replica for themselves, with\nMrs. Wordsworth added. She painted this; and a copy of it, subsequently\ntaken for Miss Quillinan, was long in her possession at Loughrigg\nHolme. It now belongs to Mr. Gordon Wordsworth. It is to the portrait\nof Mrs. Wordsworth that this sonnet and the next refer.--ED.\n\n[212] Compare the lines in vol. iii. p. 5--\n\n    They flash upon that inward eye\n    Which is the bliss of solitude.\n\nThe fact that these two lines had been added by Mrs. Wordsworth (see\nnote to the poem, p. 7) was doubtless remembered by the poet, when he\nwrote this sonnet suggested by her portrait.--ED.\n\n\nON THE SAME SUBJECT\n\nComposed 1840.--Published 1842\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Though I beheld at first with blank surprise\n    This Work, I now have gazed on it so long\n    I see its truth with unreluctant eyes;\n    O, my Belov\u00e8d! I have done thee wrong,\n    Conscious of blessedness, but, whence it sprung,                   5\n    Ever too heedless, as I now perceive:\n    Morn into noon did pass, noon into eve,\n    And the old day was welcome as the young,\n    As welcome, and as beautiful--in sooth\n    More beautiful, as being a thing more holy:                       10\n    Thanks to thy virtues, to the eternal youth\n    Of all thy goodness, never melancholy;\n    To thy large heart and humble mind, that cast\n    Into one vision, future, present, past.[213]\n\n[213] Compare--\n\n    O dearer far than light and life are dear (1824).\n    Let other bards of angels sing (1824).\n    Such age how beautiful! O Lady bright (1827).\n    What heavenly smiles! O Lady mine (1845).\n\nED.\n\n\nPOOR ROBIN[214]\n\nComposed March 1840.--Published 1842\n\n[I often ask myself what will become of Rydal Mount after our day.\nWill the old walls and steps remain in front of the house and about\nthe grounds, or will they be swept away with all the beautiful mosses\nand ferns and wild geraniums and other flowers which their rude\nconstruction suffered and encouraged to grow among them?[215]--This\nlittle wild flower--\"Poor Robin\"--is here constantly courting my\nattention, and exciting what may be called a domestic interest with the\nvarying aspects of its stalks and leaves and flowers.[216] Strangely do\nthe tastes of men differ according to their employment and habits of\nlife. \"What a nice well would that be,\" said a labouring man to me one\nday, \"if all that rubbish was cleared off.\" The \"_rubbish_\" was some of\nthe most beautiful mosses and lichens and ferns and other wild growths\nthat could possibly be seen. Defend us from the tyranny of trimness and\nneatness showing itself in this way! Chatterton says of freedom--\"Upon\nher head wild weeds were spread,\" and depend upon it if \"the marvellous\nboy\" had undertaken to give Flora a garland, he would have preferred\nwhat we are apt to call weeds to garden flowers. True taste has an eye\nfor both. Weeds have been called flowers out of place. I fear the place\nmost people would assign to them is too limited. Let them come near to\nour abodes, as surely they may, without impropriety or disorder.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    Now when the primrose makes a splendid show,\n    And lilies face the March-winds in full blow,\n    And humbler growths as moved with one desire\n    Put on, to welcome spring, their best attire,\n    Poor Robin is yet flowerless; but how gay                          5\n    With his red stalks upon this sunny day!\n    And, as his tufts[217] of leaves he spreads, content\n    With a hard bed and scanty nourishment,\n    Mixed with the green, some shine not lacking power\n    To rival summer's brightest scarlet flower;                       10\n    And flowers they well might seem to passers-by\n    If looked at only with a careless eye;\n    Flowers--or a richer produce (did it suit\n    The season) sprinklings of ripe strawberry fruit.\n    But while a thousand pleasures come unsought,                     15\n    Why fix upon his wealth or want[218] a thought?\n    Is the string touched in prelude to a lay\n    Of pretty fancies that would round him play\n    When all the world acknowledged elfin sway?\n    Or does it suit our humour to commend                             20\n    Poor Robin as a sure and crafty friend,\n    Whose practice teaches, spite of names to show\n    Bright colours whether they deceive or no?--\n    Nay, we would simply praise the free good-will\n    With which, though slighted, he, on naked hill                    25\n    Or in warm valley, seeks his part to fill;\n    Cheerful alike if bare of flowers as now,\n    Or when his tiny gems shall deck his brow:\n    Yet more, we wish that men by men despised,\n    And such as lift their foreheads overprized,                      30\n    Should sometimes think, where'er they chance to spy\n    This child of Nature's own humility,\n    What recompense is kept in store or left\n    For all that seem neglected or bereft;\n    With what nice care equivalents are given,                        35\n    How just, how bountiful, the hand of Heaven.\n\n    _March, 1840._\n\n[214] The small wild Geranium known by that name.--W.W. 1842.\n\n[215] These things remain comparatively unaltered. Rydal Mount has\nsuffered little in picturesqueness since Wordsworth's death; while the\nhouse, and the grounds, have gained in many ways by what the present\ntenant has done for them. It is impossible to keep such a place exactly\nas it was left by its greatest tenant; and Mr. Crewdson has certainly\nnot injured, but wisely improved the place.--ED.\n\n[216] Compare what is said of it in the _Memoirs of Wordsworth_, by his\nnephew, vol. i. p. 20.--ED.\n\n[217] 1849.\n\n    \u2026 tuft\n\n    1842.\n\n[218] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 want or wealth\n\n    1842.\n\n\nON A PORTRAIT OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON UPON THE FIELD OF WATERLOO, BY\nHAYDON[219]\n\nComposed August 31, 1840.--Published 1842\n\n[This was composed while I was ascending Helvellyn in company with my\ndaughter and her husband. She was on horseback, and rode to the top\nof the hill without once dismounting, a feat which it was scarcely\npossible to perform except during a season of dry weather; and a guide,\nwith whom we fell in on the mountain, told us he believed it had never\nbeen accomplished before by any one.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets\"; but first published in the \"Poems\nchiefly of Early and Late Years.\"--ED.\n\n    By Art's bold privilege Warrior and War-horse stand\n    On ground yet strewn with their last battle's wreck;\n    Let the Steed glory while his Master's hand\n    Lies fixed for ages on his conscious neck;\n    But by the Chieftain's look, though at his side                    5\n    Hangs that day's treasured sword, how firm a check\n    Is given to triumph and all human pride!\n    Yon trophied Mound shrinks to a shadowy speck\n    In his calm presence! Him the mighty deed\n    Elates not, brought far nearer the grave's rest,                  10\n    As shows that time-worn face, for he such seed\n    Has sown as yields, we trust, the fruit of fame\n    In Heaven;[220] hence no one blushes for thy name,\n    Conqueror, 'mid some sad thoughts, divinely blest!\n\n[219] Haydon worked at this picture of Wellington from June to\nNovember, 1839. (See his Autobiography, vol. iii. pp. 108-131.) He\nwrites under date, Sept. 4, 1840:--\"Hard at work. I heard from dear\nWordsworth, with a glorious sonnet on the Duke, and Copenhagen.\u2020 It is\nvery fine, and I began a new journal directly, and put in the sonnet.\nGod bless him.\" The following is part of Wordsworth's letter:--\n\n\"MY DEAR HAYDON,--We are all charmed with your etching. It is both\npoetically and pictorially conceived, and finely executed. I should\nhave written immediately to thank you for it, and for your letter\nand the enclosed one, which is interesting, but I wished to gratify\nyou by writing a sonnet. I now send it, but with an earnest request\nthat it may not be put into circulation for some little time, as it\nis warm from the brain, and may require, in consequence, some little\nretouching. It has this, at least, remarkable attached to it, which\nwill add to its value in your eyes, that it was actually composed while\nI was climbing Helvellyn last Monday.\"--ED.\n\n    \u2020 Wellington's war-horse.--ED.\n\n[220] 1842.\n\n                            \u2026 Since the mighty deed\n    Him years have brought far nearer the grave's rest,\n    He shows that face time-worn. But he such seed\n    Has sowed that bears, we trust, the fruit of fame\n    In Heaven.\u2026\n\n    From a copy sent to Haydon.\n\n\n\n\n1841\n\n\nEPITAPH\n\nIN THE CHAPEL-YARD OF LANGDALE, WESTMORELAND\n\nComposed 1841.--Published 1842\n\n[OWEN LLOYD, the subject of this epitaph, was born at Old Brathay,\nnear Ambleside, and was the son of Charles Lloyd and his wife Sophia\n(_n\u00e9e_ Pemberton), both of Birmingham, who came to reside in this part\nof the country, soon after their marriage. They had many children,\nboth sons and daughters, of whom the most remarkable was the subject\nof this epitaph. He was educated under Mr. Dawes, at Ambleside, Dr.\nButler, of Shrewsbury, and lastly at Trinity College, Cambridge, where\nhe would have been greatly distinguished as a scholar but for inherited\ninfirmities of bodily constitution, which, from early childhood,\naffected his mind. His love for the neighbourhood in which he was\nborn, and his sympathy with the habits and characters of the mountain\nyeomanry, in conjunction with irregular spirits, that unfitted him for\nfacing duties in situations to which he was unaccustomed, induced him\nto accept the retired curacy of Langdale. How much he was beloved and\nhonoured there, and with what feelings he discharged his duty under the\noppression of severe malady, is set forth, though imperfectly, in the\nepitaph.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.\"--ED.\n\n    By playful smiles, (alas! too oft\n    A sad heart's sunshine) by a soft\n    And gentle nature, and a free\n    Yet modest hand of charity,\n    Through life was OWEN LLOYD endeared                               5\n    To young and old; and how revered\n    Had been that pious spirit, a tide\n    Of humble mourners testified,\n    When, after pains dispensed to prove\n    The measure of God's chastening love,                             10\n    Here, brought from far, his corse found rest,--\n    Fulfilment of his own request;--\n    Urged less for this Yew's shade, though he\n    Planted with such fond hope the tree;\n    Less for the love of stream and rock,                             15\n    Dear as they were, than that his Flock,\n    When they no more their Pastor's voice\n    Could hear to guide them in their choice\n    Through good and evil, help might have,\n    Admonished, from his silent grave,                                20\n    Of righteousness, of sins forgiven,\n    For peace on earth and bliss in heaven.\n\nThis commemorative epitaph to the Rev. Owen Lloyd--the friend of\nHartley Coleridge and of Faber--is carved on the headstone over his\ngrave in the churchyard at the small hamlet of Chapel Stile, Great\nLangdale, Westmoreland. The stone also carries the inscription, \"To\nthe memory of Owen Lloyd, M.A., nearly twelve years incumbent of this\nchapel. Born at Old Brathay, March 31, 1803, died at Manchester, April\n18, 1841, aged 38.\" See a letter of Wordsworth's referring to Lloyd\namongst his letters in a subsequent volume. In a previous edition I\nerred by giving this poem an earlier date. Professor Dowden has shown\nthe true one conclusively.\n\nWriting from Rydal on 11th August 1841, to his brother Christopher,\nWordsworth said, \"I send you with the last corrections an epitaph which\nI have just written for poor Owen Lloyd. His brother Edward forwarded\nfor my perusal some verses which he had composed with a view to that\nobject; but he expressed a wish that I would compose something myself.\nNot approving Edward's lines altogether, though the sentiments were\nsufficiently appropriate, I sent him what I now forward to you, or\nrather the substance of it, for something has been added, and some\nchange of expression introduced. I hope you will approve of it. I find\nno fault with it myself, the circumstances considered, except that it\nis too long for an Epitaph, but this was inevitable if the memorial was\nto be as conspicuous as the subject required, at least according to the\nlight in which it offered itself to my mind.\"--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1842\n\nThe poems of 1842 include _The Floating Island_, _The Norman Boy_, _The\nPoet's Dream_, _Airey-Force Valley_, the lines _To the Clouds_, and a\nnumber of miscellaneous sonnets.--ED.\n\n\n\"INTENT ON GATHERING WOOL FROM HEDGE AND BRAKE\"\n\nComposed 8th March 1842.--Published 1842\n\n[Suggested by a conversation with Miss Fenwick, who along with her\nsister had, during their childhood, found much delight in such\ngatherings for the purposes here alluded to.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Intent on gathering wool from hedge and brake\n    Yon busy Little-ones rejoice that soon\n    A poor old Dame will bless them for the boon:\n    Great is their glee while flake they add to flake\n    With rival earnestness; far other strife                           5\n    Than will hereafter move them, if they make\n    Pastime their idol, give their day of life\n    To pleasure snatched for reckless pleasure's sake.\n    Can pomp and show allay one heart-born grief?\n    Pains which the World inflicts can she requite?                   10\n    Not for an interval however brief;\n    The silent thoughts that search for stedfast light,\n    Love from her depths,[221] and Duty in her might,\n    And Faith--these only yield secure relief.\n\n    _March 8th, 1842._\n\n[221] 1845.\n\n    Love from on high, \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n\nPRELUDE,\n\nPREFIXED TO THE VOLUME ENTITLED \"POEMS CHIEFLY OF EARLY AND LATE YEARS\"\n\nComposed March 26, 1842.--Published 1842\n\n[These verses were begun while I was on a visit to my son John at\nBrigham, and were finished at Rydal. As the contents of the volume,\nto which they are now prefixed, will be assigned to their respective\nclasses when my poems shall be collected in one volume, I should be at\na loss where with propriety to place this prelude, being too restricted\nin its bearing to serve for a preface for the whole. The lines towards\nthe conclusion allude to the discontents then fomented through the\ncountry by the agitators of the Anti-Corn-Law League: the particular\ncauses of such troubles are transitory, but disposition to excite and\nliability to be excited are nevertheless permanent, and therefore\nproper objects for the poet's regard.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    In desultory walk through orchard grounds,\n    Or some deep chestnut grove, oft have I paused\n    The while a Thrush, urged rather than restrained\n    By gusts of vernal storm, attuned his song\n    To his own genial instincts; and was heard                         5\n    (Though not without some plaintive tones between)\n    To utter, above showers of blossom swept\n    From tossing boughs, the promise of a calm,\n    Which the unsheltered traveller might receive\n    With thankful spirit. The descant, and the wind                   10\n    That seemed to play with it in love or scorn,\n    Encouraged and endeared the strain of words\n    That haply flowed from me, by fits of silence\n    Impelled to livelier pace. But now, my Book!\n    Charged with those lays, and others of like mood,                 15\n    Or loftier pitch if higher rose the theme,\n    Go, single--yet aspiring to be joined\n    With thy Forerunners that through many a year\n    Have faithfully prepared each other's way--\n    Go forth upon a mission best fulfilled                            20\n    When and wherever, in this changeful world,\n    Power hath been given to please for higher ends\n    Than pleasure only; gladdening to prepare\n    For wholesome sadness, troubling to refine,\n    Calming to raise; and, by a sapient Art                           25\n    Diffused through all the mysteries of our Being,\n    Softening the toils and pains that have not ceased\n    To cast their shadows on our mother Earth\n    Since the primeval doom. Such is the grace\n    Which, though unsued for, fails not to descend                    30\n    With heavenly inspiration; such the aim\n    That Reason dictates; and, as even the wish\n    Has virtue in it, why should hope to me\n    Be wanting that sometimes, where fancied ills\n    Harass the mind and strip from off the bowers                     35\n    Of private life their natural pleasantness,\n    A Voice--devoted to the love whose seeds\n    Are sown in every human breast, to beauty\n    Lodged within compass of the humblest sight,\n    To cheerful intercourse with wood and field,                      40\n    And sympathy with man's substantial griefs--\n    Will not be heard in vain? And in those days\n    When unforeseen distress spreads far and wide\n    Among a People mournfully cast down,\n    Or into anger roused by venal words                               45\n    In recklessness flung out to overturn\n    The judgment, and divert the general heart\n    From mutual good--some strain of thine, my Book!\n    Caught at propitious intervals, may win\n    Listeners who not unwillingly admit                               50\n    Kindly emotion tending to console\n    And reconcile; and both with young and old\n    Exalt the sense of thoughtful gratitude\n    For benefits that still survive, by faith\n    In progress, under laws divine, maintained.                       55\n\nRYDAL MOUNT, _March 26, 1842_.\n\n\nFLOATING ISLAND\n\nPublished 1842\n\nThese lines are by the Author of the _Address to the Wind_, etc.,\npublished heretofore along with my Poems. Those to a Redbreast are by a\ndeceased female Relative.--W.W. 1842.\n\n[My poor sister takes a pleasure in repeating these verses, which she\ncomposed not long before the beginning of her sad illness.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    Harmonious Powers with Nature work\n    On sky, earth, river, lake, and sea;\n    Sunshine and cloud, whirlwind and breeze,\n    All in one duteous task agree.\n\n    Once did I see a slip of earth                                     5\n    (By throbbing waves long undermined)\n    Loosed from its hold; how, no one knew,\n    But all might see it float, obedient to the wind;\n\n    Might see it, from the mossy shore\n    Dissevered, float upon the Lake,                                  10\n    Float with its crest of trees adorned\n    On which the warbling birds their pastime take.\n\n    Food, shelter, safety, there they find;\n    There berries ripen, flowerets bloom;\n    There insects live their lives, and die;                          15\n    A peopled world it is; in size a tiny room.\n\n    And thus through many seasons' space\n    This little Island may survive;\n    But Nature, though we mark her not,\n    Will take away, may cease to give.                                20\n\n    Perchance when you are wandering forth\n    Upon some vacant sunny day,\n    Without an object, hope, or fear,\n    Thither your eyes may turn--the Isle is passed away;\n\n    Buried beneath the glittering Lake,                               25\n    Its place no longer to be found;\n    Yet the lost fragments shall remain\n    To fertilize some other ground.\n\n                                                   D. W.\n\nThere is one of these floating islands in Loch Lomond in Argyll,\nanother in Loch Dochart in Perthshire, and another in Loch Treig\nin Inverness. Their origin is probably due to a mass of peat being\ndetached from the shore, and floated out into the lake. A mass of\nvegetable matter, however, has sometimes risen from the bottom of the\nwater, and assumed for a time all the appearance of an island. This\nhas been probably due to an accumulation of gas, within or under the\ndetached portion, produced by the decay of vegetation in extremely hot\nweather.\n\nSouthey, in an unpublished letter to Sir George Beaumont (10th July\n1824), thus describes the Island at Derwentwater: \"You will have seen\nby the papers that the Floating Island has made its appearance. It\nsank again last week, when some heavy rains had raised the lake four\nfeet. By good fortune Professor Sedgewick happened to be in Keswick,\nand examined it in time. Where he probed it a thin layer of mud lies\nupon a bed of peat, which is six feet thick, and this rests upon a\nstratum of fine white clay,--the same I believe which Miss Barker\nfound in Borrowdale when building her unlucky house. Where the gas is\ngenerated remains yet to be discovered, but when the peat is filled\nwith this gas, it separates from the clay and becomes buoyant. There\nmust have been a considerable convulsion when this took place, for a\nrent was made in the bottom of the lake, several feet in depth, and\nnot less than fifty yards long, on each side of which the bottom rose\nand floated. It was a pretty sight to see the small fry exploring this\nnew made strait and darting at the bubbles which rose as the Professor\nwas probing the bank. The discharge of air was considerable here, when\na pole was thrust down. But at some distance where the rent did not\nextend, the bottom had been heaved up in a slight convexity, sloping\nequally in an inclined plane all round: and there, when the pole was\nintroduced, a rush like a jet followed, as it was withdrawn. The thing\nis the more curious, because as yet no example of it is known to have\nbeen observed in any other place.\"\n\nAnother of these detached islands used to float about in Esthwaite\nWater, and was carried from side to side of the pool at the north end\nof the lake--the same pool which the swans, described in _The Prelude_,\nused to frequent. This island had a few bushes on it: but it became\nstranded some time ago. One of the old natives of Hawkeshead described\nthe process of trying to float it off again, by tying ropes to the\nbushes on its surface,--an experiment which was unsuccessful. Compare\nthe reference to the Floating or \"Buoyant\" Island of Derwentwater, and\nto the \"mossy islet\" of Esthwaite, in Wordsworth's _Guide through the\nDistrict of the Lakes_.--ED.\n\n\n\"THE CRESCENT-MOON, THE STAR OF LOVE\"\n\nPublished 1842\n\nOne of the \"Evening Voluntaries.\"--Ed.\n\n    The Crescent-moon, the Star of Love,\n      Glories of evening, as ye there are seen\n      With but a span of sky between--\n      Speak one of you, my doubts remove,\n    Which is the attendant Page and which the Queen?\n\n\n\"_A POET!_--HE HATH PUT HIS HEART TO SCHOOL\"\n\nPublished 1842\n\n[I was impelled to write this Sonnet by the disgusting frequency with\nwhich the word _artistical_, imported with other impertinences from the\nGermans, is employed by writers of the present day: for artistical\nlet them substitute artificial, and the poetry written on this system,\nboth at home and abroad, will be for the most part much better\ncharacterised.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    _A Poet!_--He hath put his heart to school,\n    Nor dares to move unpropped upon the staff\n    Which Art hath lodged within his hand--must laugh\n    By precept only, and shed tears by rule.\n    Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff,                         5\n    And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool,\n    In fear that else, when Critics grave and cool\n    Have killed him, Scorn should write his epitaph.[222]\n    How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold?\n    Because the lovely little flower is free                          10\n    Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold;\n    And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree\n    Comes not by casting in a formal mould,\n    But from its _own_ divine vitality.\n\n[222] Compare _A Poet's Epitaph_ (vol. ii. p. 75).--ED.\n\n\n\"THE MOST ALLURING CLOUDS THAT MOUNT THE SKY\"\n\nPublished 1842\n\n[Hundreds of times have I seen, hanging about and above the vale\nof Rydal, clouds that might have given birth to this sonnet, which\nwas thrown off on the impulse of the moment one evening when I was\nreturning from the favourite walk of ours, along the Rotha, under\nLoughrigg.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    The most alluring clouds that mount the sky\n    Owe to a troubled element their forms,\n    Their hues to sunset. If with raptured eye\n    We watch their splendour, shall we covet storms,\n    And wish the Lord of day his slow decline                          5\n    Would hasten, that such pomp may float on high?\n    Behold, already they forget to shine,\n    Dissolve--and leave to him who gazed a sigh.\n    Not loth to thank each moment for its boon\n    Of pure delight, come whensoe'er[223] it may,                     10\n    Peace let us seek,--to stedfast things attune\n    Calm expectations, leaving to the gay\n    And volatile their love of transient bowers,\n    The house that cannot pass away be ours.[224]\n\n[223] 1849\n\n    \u2026 whencesoe'er \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[224] Compare _To the Clouds_, I. 94, p. 145.--ED.\n\n\n\"FEEL FOR THE WRONGS TO UNIVERSAL KEN\"\n\nPublished 1842\n\n[This Sonnet is recommended to the perusal of those who consider that\nthe evils under which we groan are to be removed or palliated by\nmeasures ungoverned by moral and religious principles.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n    Feel for the wrongs to universal ken\n    Daily exposed, woe that unshrouded lies;\n    And seek the Sufferer in his darkest den,\n    Whether conducted to the spot by sighs\n    And moanings, or he dwells (as if the wren                         5\n    Taught him concealment) hidden from all eyes\n    In silence and the awful modesties\n    Of sorrow;--feel for all, as brother Men!\n    Rest not in hope want's icy chain to thaw\n    By casual boons and formal charities;[225]                        10\n    Learn to be just, just through impartial law;\n    Far as ye may, erect and equalise;\n    And, what ye cannot reach by statute, draw\n    Each from his fountain of self-sacrifice!\n\n[225] 1845.\n\n                                    \u2026 Men!--\n    Feel for the Poor,--but not to still your qualms\n    By formal charity or dole of alms;\n    Learn \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n\nIN ALLUSION TO VARIOUS RECENT HISTORIES AND NOTICES OF THE FRENCH\nREVOLUTION\n\nPublished 1842\n\nOne of the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n    Portentous change when History can appear\n    As the cool Advocate of foul device;[226]\n    Reckless audacity extol, and jeer\n    At consciences perplexed with scruples nice!\n    They who bewail not, must abhor, the sneer                         5\n    Born of Conceit, Power's blind Idolater;\n    Or haply sprung from vaunting Cowardice\n    Betrayed by mockery of holy fear.\n    Hath it not long been said the wrath of Man\n    Works not the righteousness of God? Oh bend,                      10\n    Bend, ye Perverse! to judgments from on High,\n    Laws that lay under Heaven's perpetual ban\n    All principles of action that transcend\n    The sacred limits of humanity.\n\n[226] Wordsworth wrote this sonnet against Carlyle's _French\nRevolution_ in particular. Carlyle knew it, and this may in\npart--although only in part--account for Carlyle's indifference to\nWordsworth.--ED.\n\n\nCONTINUED\n\nPublished 1842\n\nOne of the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n    Who ponders National events shall find\n    An awful balancing of loss and gain,\n    Joy based on sorrow, good with ill combined,\n    And proud deliverance issuing out of pain\n    And direful throes; as if the All-ruling Mind,                     5\n    With whose perfection it consists to ordain\n    Volcanic burst, earthquake, and hurricane,\n    Dealt in like sort with feeble human kind\n    By laws immutable. But woe for him\n    Who thus deceived shall lend an eager hand                        10\n    To social havoc. Is not Conscience ours,\n    And Truth, whose eye guilt only can make dim;\n    And Will, whose office, by divine command,\n    Is to control and check disordered Powers?\n\n\nCONCLUDED\n\nPublished 1842\n\nOne of the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n    Long-favoured England! be not thou misled\n    By monstrous theories of alien growth,\n    Lest alien frenzy seize thee, waxing wroth,\n    Self-smitten till thy garments reek dyed red\n    With thy own blood, which tears in torrents shed                   5\n    Fail to wash out, tears flowing ere thy troth\n    Be plighted, not to ease but sullen sloth,\n    Or wan despair--the ghost of false hope fled\n    Into a shameful grave. Among thy youth,\n    My Country! if such warning be held dear,                         10\n    Then shall a Veteran's heart be thrilled with joy,\n    One who would gather from eternal truth,\n    For time and season, rules that work to cheer--\n    Not scourge, to save the People--not destroy.\n\n\n\"LO! WHERE SHE STANDS FIXED IN A SAINT-LIKE TRANCE\"\n\nPublished 1842\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Lo! where she stands fixed in a saint-like trance,\n    One upward hand, as if she needed rest\n    From rapture, lying softly on her breast!\n    Nor wants her eyeball an ethereal glance;\n    But not the less--nay more--that countenance,                      5\n    While thus illumined, tells of painful strife\n    For a sick heart made weary of this life\n    By love, long crossed with adverse circumstance.\n    --Would She were now as when she hoped to pass\n    At God's appointed hour to them who tread                         10\n    Heaven's sapphire pavement, yet breathed well content,\n    Well pleased, her foot should print earth's common grass,\n    Lived thankful for day's light, for daily bread,\n    For health, and time in obvious duty spent.\n\n\nTHE NORMAN BOY\n\nPublished 1842\n\n[The subject of this poem was sent me by Mrs. Ogle, to whom I was\npersonally unknown, with a hope on her part that I might be induced\nto relate the incident in verse; and I do not regret that I took the\ntrouble, for not improbably the fact is illustrative of the boy's\nearly piety, and may concur with my other little pieces on children\nto produce profitable reflection among my youthful readers. This is\nsaid, however, with an absolute conviction that children will derive\nmost benefit from books which are not unworthy the perusal of persons\nof any age. I protest with all my heart against those productions, so\nabundant in the present day, in which the doings of children are dwelt\nupon as if they were incapable of being interested in anything else. On\nthis subject I have dwelt at length in the poem on the growth of my own\nmind.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Poems referring to the Period of Childhood.\"--ED.\n\n  High on a broad unfertile tract of forest-skirted Down,\n  Nor kept by Nature for herself, nor made by man his own,\n  From home and company remote and every playful joy,\n  Served, tending a few sheep and goats, a ragged Norman boy.\n\n  Him never saw I, nor the spot; but from an English Dame,             5\n  Stranger to me and yet my friend, a simple notice came,\n  With suit that I would speak in verse of that sequestered child\n  Whom, one bleak winter's day, she met upon the dreary Wild.\n\n  His flock, along the woodland's edge with relics sprinkled o'er\n  Of last night's snow, beneath a sky threatening the fall of more,   10\n  Where tufts of herbage tempted each, were busy at their feed,\n  And the poor Boy was busier still, with work of anxious heed.\n\n  There _was_ he, where of branches rent and withered and decayed,\n  For covert from the keen north wind, his hands a hut had made.\n  A tiny tenement, forsooth, and frail, as needs must be              15\n  A thing of such materials framed, by a builder such as he.\n\n  The hut stood finished by his pains, nor seemingly lacked aught\n  That skill or means of his could add, but the architect had wrought\n  Some limber twigs into a Cross, well-shaped with fingers nice,\n  To be engrafted on the top of his small edifice.                    20\n\n  That Cross he now was fastening there, as the surest power and best\n  For supplying all deficiencies, all wants of the rude nest\n  In which, from burning heat, or tempest driving far and wide,\n  The innocent Boy, else shelterless, his lonely head must hide.\n\n  That Cross belike he also raised as a standard for the true         25\n  And faithful service of his heart in the worst that might ensue\n  Of hardship and distressful fear, amid the houseless waste\n  Where he, in his poor self so weak, by Providence was placed.\n\n  ----Here, Lady! might I cease; but nay, let _us_ before we part\n  With this dear holy shepherd-boy breathe a prayer of earnest heart, 30\n  That unto him, where'er shall lie his life's appointed way,\n  The Cross, fixed in his soul, may prove an all-sufficing stay.\n\n\nTHE POET'S DREAM[227]\n\nSEQUEL TO THE NORMAN BOY\n\nPublished 1842\n\nOne of the \"Poems referring to the Period of Childhood.\"--ED.\n\n  Just as those final words were penned, the sun broke out in power,\n  And gladdened all things; but, as chanced, within that very hour,\n  Air blackened, thunder growled, fire flashed from clouds that hid\n     the sky,\n  And, for the Subject of my Verse, I heaved a pensive sigh.\n\n  Nor could my heart by second thoughts from heaviness be cleared,     5\n  For bodied forth before my eyes the cross-crowned hut appeared;\n  And, while around it storm as fierce seemed troubling earth\n     and air,\n  I saw, within, the Norman Boy kneeling alone in prayer.\n\n  The Child, as if the thunder's voice spake with articulate call,\n  Bowed meekly in submissive fear, before the Lord of All;            10\n  His lips were moving; and his eyes, upraised to sue for grace,\n  With soft illumination cheered the dimness of that place.\n\n  How beautiful is holiness!--what wonder if the sight,\n  Almost as vivid as a dream, produced a dream at night?\n  It came with sleep and showed the Boy, no cherub, not transformed,  15\n  But the poor ragged Thing whose ways my human heart had warmed.\n\n  Me had the dream equipped with wings, so I took him in my arms,\n  And lifted from the grassy floor, stilling his faint alarms,\n  And bore him high through yielding air my debt of love to pay,\n  By giving him, for both our sakes, an hour of holiday.              20\n\n  I whispered, \"Yet a little while, dear Child! thou art my own,\n  To show thee some delightful thing, in country or in town.\n  What shall it be? a mirthful throng? or that holy place and calm\n  St. Denis, filled with royal tombs,[228] or the Church of Notre\n     Dame?[229]\n\n  \"St. Ouen's golden Shrine?[230] Or choose what else would please\n     thee most                                                        25\n  Of any wonder Normandy, or all proud France, can boast!\"\n  \"My Mother,\" said the Boy, \"was born near to a bless\u00e8d Tree,\n  The Chapel Oak of Allonville;[231] good Angel, show it me!\"\n\n  On wings, from broad and stedfast poise let loose by this reply,\n  For Allonville, o'er down and dale, away then did we fly;           30\n  O'er town and tower we flew, and fields in May's fresh verdure\n     drest;\n  The wings they did not flag; the Child, though grave, was not\n     deprest.\n\n  But who shall show, to waking sense, the gleam of light that\n     broke\n  Forth from his eyes, when first the Boy looked down on that\n     huge oak,\n  For length of days so much revered, so famous where it stands       35\n  For twofold hallowing--Nature's care, and work of human hands?\n\n  Strong as an Eagle with my charge I glided round and round\n  The wide-spread boughs, for view of door, window, and stair that\n     wound\n  Gracefully up the gnarled trunk; nor left we unsurveyed\n  The pointed steeple peering forth from the centre of the shade.     40\n\n  I lighted--opened with soft touch the chapel's iron door,[232]\n  Past softly, leading in the Boy; and, while from roof to floor\n  From floor to roof all round his eyes the Child with wonder\n     cast,[233]\n  Pleasure on pleasure crowded in, each livelier than the last.\n\n  For, deftly framed within the trunk, the[234] sanctuary showed,     45\n  By light of lamp and precious stones, that glimmered here, there\n     glowed,\n  Shrine, Altar, Image, Offerings hung in sign of gratitude;\n  Sight that inspired accordant thoughts; and speech[235] I thus\n     renewed:\n\n  \"Hither the Afflicted come, as thou hast heard thy Mother say,\n  And, kneeling, supplication make to our Lady de la Paix;[236]       50\n  What mournful sighs have here been heard, and, when the voice was\n     stopt\n  By sudden pangs; what bitter tears have on this pavement dropt!\n\n  \"Poor Shepherd of the naked Down, a favoured lot is thine,\n  Far happier lot, dear Boy, than brings full many to this shrine;\n  From body pains and pains of soul thou needest no release,          55\n  Thy hours as they flow on are spent, if not in joy, in peace.\n\n  \"Then offer up thy heart to God in thankfulness and praise,\n  Give to Him prayers, and many thoughts, in thy most busy days;\n  And in His sight the fragile Cross, on thy small hut, will be\n  Holy as that which long hath crowned the Chapel of this Tree;       60\n\n  \"Holy as that far seen which crowns the sumptuous Church in Rome\n  Where thousands meet to worship God under a mighty Dome;[237]\n  He sees the bending multitude, He hears the choral rites,\n  Yet not the less, in children's hymns and lonely prayer, delights.\n\n  \"God for His service needeth not proud work of human skill;         65\n  They please Him best who labour most to do in peace His will:\n  So let us strive to live, and to our Spirits will be given\n  Such wings as, when our Saviour calls, shall bear us up to heaven.\"\n\n  The Boy no answer made by words, but, so earnest was his look,\n  Sleep fled, and with it fled the dream--recorded in this book,      70\n  Lest all that passed should melt away in silence from my mind,\n  As visions still more bright have done, and left no trace behind.\n\n  But oh! that Country-man of thine, whose eye, loved Child, can see\n  A pledge of endless bliss in acts of early piety,\n  In verse, which to thy ear might come, would treat this simple\n     theme,                                                           75\n  Nor leave untold our happy flight in that adventurous dream.[238]\n\n  Alas the dream,[239] to thee, poor Boy! to thee from whom it flowed,\n  Was nothing, scarcely can be aught, yet 'twas[240] bounteously\n     bestowed,\n  If I may dare to cherish hope that gentle eyes will read\n  Not loth, and listening Little-ones, heart-touched, their fancies\n     feed.                                                            80\n\n[227] 1845.\n\nThe title in 1842 was \"SEQUEL TO THE NORMAN BOY.\"\n\n[228] The Abbey Church of St. Denis, to the north of Paris,--one of the\nfinest specimens of French Gothic,--was the burial-place of the French\nKings for many generations.--ED.\n\n[229] In Paris.--ED.\n\n[230] The Church of St. Ouen, in Rouen, is the most perfect edifice of\nits kind in Europe.--ED.\n\n[231] \"Among ancient Trees there are few, I believe, at least in\nFrance, so worthy of attention as an Oak which may be seen in the 'Pays\nde Caux,' about a league from Yvetot, close to the church, and in the\nburial-ground of Allonville.\n\nThe height of this Tree does not answer to its girth; the trunk, from\nthe roots to the summit, forms a complete cone; and the inside of this\ncone is hollow throughout the whole of its height.\n\nSuch is the Oak of Allonville, in its state of nature. The hand of Man,\nhowever, has endeavoured to impress upon it a character still more\ninteresting, by adding a religious feeling to the respect which its age\nnaturally inspires.\n\nThe lower part of its hollow trunk has been transformed into a Chapel\nof six or seven feet in diameter, carefully wainscotted and paved, and\nan open iron gate guards the humble Sanctuary.\n\nLeading to it there is a staircase, which twists round the body of the\nTree. At certain seasons of the year divine service is performed in\nthis Chapel.\n\nThe summit has been broken off many years, but there is a surface at\nthe top of the trunk, of the diameter of a very large tree, and from it\nrises a pointed roof, covered with slates, in the form of a steeple,\nwhich is surmounted with an iron Cross, that rises in a picturesque\nmanner from the middle of the leaves, like an ancient Hermitage above\nthe surrounding Wood.\n\nOver the entrance to the Chapel an Inscription appears, which informs\nus it was erected by the Abb\u00e9 du D\u00e9troit, Curate of Allonville, in the\nyear 1696; and over a door is another, dedicating it 'To Our Lady of\nPeace.'\"--Vide 14 _No. Saturday Magazine_.--W.W. 1842.\n\n[232] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 touch a grated iron door,\n\n    1842.\n\n[233] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 his eyes the wondering creature cast,\n\n    1842.\n\n[234] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 a \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[235] 1845.\n\n    And swift as lightning went the time, ere speech\n\n    1842.\n\n[236] See note, p. 137.--ED.\n\n[237] St. Peter's Church.--ED.\n\n[238] This stanza was added in the edition of 1845.\n\n[239] 1845.\n\n    And though the dream, \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n[240] 1845.\n\n    Was nothing, nor e'er can be aught, 'twas \u2026\n\n    1842.\n\n\nSUGGESTED BY A PICTURE OF THE BIRD OF PARADISE\n\nPublished 1842\n\n[This subject has been treated of in another note. I will here only, by\nway of comment, direct attention to the fact, that pictures of animals\nand other productions of Nature, as seen in conservatories, menageries,\nand museums, etc., would do little for the national mind, nay, they\nwould be rather injurious to it, if the imagination were excluded by\nthe presence of the object, more or less out of a state of Nature. If\nit were not that we learn to talk and think of the lion and the eagle,\nthe palm-tree, and even the cedar, from the impassioned introduction of\nthem so frequently into Holy Scripture, and by great poets, and divines\nwho wrote as poets, the spiritual part of our nature, and therefore\nthe higher part of it, would derive no benefit from such intercourse\nwith such subjects.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Poems of the Imagination.\"--ED.\n\n    The gentlest Poet, with free thoughts endowed,\n    And a true master of the glowing strain,\n    Might scan the narrow province with disdain\n    That to the Painter's skill is here allowed.\n    This, this the Bird of Paradise! disclaim                          5\n    The daring thought, forget the name;\n    This the Sun's Bird, whom Glendoveers might own\n    As no unworthy Partner in their flight\n    Through seas of ether, where the ruffling sway\n    Of nether air's rude billows is unknown;                          10\n    Whom Sylphs, if e'er for casual pastime they\n    Through India's spicy regions wing their way,\n    Might bow to as their Lord. What character,\n    O sovereign Nature! I appeal to thee,\n    Of all thy feathered progeny                                      15\n    Is so unearthly, and what shape so fair?\n    So richly decked in variegated down,\n    Green, sable, shining yellow, shadowy brown,\n    Tints softly with each other blended,\n    Hues doubtfully begun and ended;                                  20\n    Or intershooting, and to sight\n    Lost and recovered, as the rays of light\n    Glance on the conscious plumes touched here and there?\n    Full surely, when with such proud gifts of life\n    Began the pencil's strife,                                        25\n    O'erweening Art was caught as in a snare.\n\n      A sense of seemingly presumptuous wrong\n    Gave the first impulse to the Poet's song;\n    But, of his scorn repenting soon, he drew\n    A juster judgment from a calmer view;                             30\n    And, with a spirit freed from discontent,\n    Thankfully took an effort that was meant\n    Not with God's bounty, Nature's love, to vie,\n    Or made with hope to please that inward eye\n    Which ever strives in vain itself to satisfy,                     35\n    But to recal the truth by some faint trace\n    Of power ethereal and celestial grace,\n    That in the living Creature find on earth a place.\n\n\nTO THE CLOUDS[241]\n\nPublished 1842\n\n[These verses were suggested while I was walking on the foot-road\nbetween Rydal Mount and Grasmere. The clouds were driving over the top\nof Nab-Scar across the vale: they set my thoughts a-going, and the rest\nfollowed almost immediately.--I.F.]\n\nFirst published (1842) in \"Poems chiefly of Early and Late Years,\"\nafterwards included in the \"Poems of the Imagination.\"--ED.\n\n    Army of Clouds! ye wing\u00e8d Host in troops\n    Ascending from behind the motionless brow\n    Of that tall rock,[242] as from a hidden world,\n    O whither with[243] such eagerness of speed?\n    What seek ye, or what shun ye? of the gale[244]                    5\n    Companions, fear ye to be left behind,\n    Or racing o'er[245] your blue ethereal field\n    Contend ye with each other? of the sea\n    Children, thus post ye over vale and height[246]\n    To sink upon your mother's lap--and rest?[247]                    10\n    Or were ye rightlier hailed, when first mine eyes\n    Beheld in your impetuous march the likeness\n    Of a wide army pressing on to meet\n    Or overtake some unknown enemy?--\n    But your smooth motions suit a peaceful aim;                      15\n    And Fancy, not less aptly pleased, compares\n    Your squadrons to an endless flight of birds\n    Aerial, upon due migration bound\n    To milder climes; or rather do ye urge\n    In caravan your hasty pilgrimage                                  20\n    To pause at last on more aspiring heights\n    Than these,[248] and utter your devotion there\n    With thunderous voice? Or are ye jubilant,\n    And would ye, tracking your proud lord the Sun,\n    Be present at his setting; or the pomp                            25\n    Of Persian mornings would ye fill, and stand\n    Poising your splendours high above the heads\n    Of worshippers kneeling to their up-risen God?\n    Whence, whence, ye Clouds! this eagerness of speed?\n    Speak, silent creatures.--They are gone, are fled,                30\n    Buried together in yon gloomy mass\n    That loads the middle heaven; and clear and bright\n    And vacant doth the region which they thronged\n    Appear; a calm descent of sky conducting\n    Down to the unapproachable abyss,                                 35\n    Down to that hidden gulf from which they rose\n    To vanish--fleet as days and months and years,\n    Fleet as the generations of mankind,\n    Power, glory, empire, as the world itself,\n    The lingering world, when time hath ceased to be.                 40\n    But the winds roar, shaking the rooted trees,\n    And see! a bright precursor to a train\n    Perchance as numerous, overpeers the rock\n    That sullenly refuses to partake\n    Of the wild impulse. From a fount of life                         45\n    Invisible, the long procession moves\n    Luminous or gloomy, welcome to the vale\n    Which they are entering, welcome to mine eye\n    That sees them, to my soul that owns in them,\n    And in the bosom of the firmament                                 50\n    O'er which they move, wherein they are contained,\n    A type of her capacious self and all\n    Her restless progeny.\n\n                          A humble walk\n    Here is my body doomed to tread, this path,\n    A little hoary line and faintly traced,[249]                      55\n    Work, shall we call it, of the shepherd's foot\n    Or of his flock?--joint vestige of them both.\n    I pace it unrepining, for my thoughts\n    Admit no bondage and my words have wings.\n    Where is the Orphean lyre, or Druid harp,                         60\n    To accompany the verse? The mountain blast\n    Shall be our _hand_ of music; he shall sweep\n    The rocks, and quivering trees, and billowy lake,\n    And search the fibres of the caves, and they\n    Shall answer, for our song is of the Clouds                       65\n    And the wind loves them; and the gentle gales--\n    Which by their aid re-clothe the naked lawn\n    With annual verdure, and revive the woods,\n    And moisten the parched lips of thirsty flowers--\n    Love them; and every idle breeze of air                           70\n    Bends to the favourite burthen. Moon and stars\n    Keep their most solemn vigils when the Clouds\n    Watch also, shifting peaceably their place\n    Like bands of ministering Spirits, or when they lie,\n    As if some Protean art the change had wrought,                    75\n    In listless quiet o'er the ethereal deep\n    Scattered, a Cyclades[250] of various shapes\n    And all degrees of beauty. O ye Lightnings!\n    Ye are their perilous offspring;[251] and the Sun--\n    Source inexhaustible of life and joy,                             80\n    And type of man's far-darting reason, therefore\n    In old time worshipped as the god of verse,[252]\n    A blazing intellectual deity--\n    Loves his own glory in their looks, and showers\n    Upon that unsubstantial brotherhood                               85\n    Visions with all but beatific light\n    Enriched--too transient were they not renewed\n    From age to age, and did not, while we gaze\n    In silent rapture, credulous desire\n    Nourish the hope that memory lacks not power                      90\n    To keep the treasure unimpaired. Vain thought!\n    Yet why repine, created as we are\n    For joy and rest, albeit to find them only\n    Lodged in the bosom of eternal things?\n\n[241] The title in the edition of 1842 was _Address to the Clouds_.--ED.\n\n[242] See the Fenwick note and compare Dorothy Wordsworth's Grasmere\nJournal, 31st January 1802.--ED.\n\n[243] 1842.\n\n    \u2026 in \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[244] 1842.\n\n    \u2026 wind\n\n    MS.\n\n[245] 1842.\n\n    \u2026 on \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[246] 1842.\n\n    \u2026 over dale and mountain height\n\n    MS.\n\n[247] 1842.\n\n    \u2026 mother's joyous lap?\n\n    MS.\n\n[248] 1842.\n\n    Or come ye as I hailed you first, a Flight\n    Aerial, on a due migration bound,\n    Embodied travellers not blindly led\n    To milder climes; or rather do ye urge\n    Your Caravan, your hasty pilgrimage\n    With hope to pause at last upon the top\n    Of some remoter mountains more beloved\n    Than these, \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[249] Compare, in the \"Poems on the Naming of Places\" (1805), the lines\nbeginning, \"When, to the attractions of the busy world,\" l. 48--\n\n    A hoary pathway traced between the trees.\n\nED.\n\n[250] The fifty-three small islands in the \u00c6gean surrounding Delos, as\nwith a circle (\u03ba\u03cd\u03ba\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2)--hence the name.--ED.\n\n[251] Compare Coleridge's _Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of\nChamouni_--\n\n    Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!\n\nED.\n\n[252] Sol = Phoebus = Apollo.--ED.\n\n\nAIREY-FORCE VALLEY\n\nPublished 1842\n\nFirst published (1842) in \"Poems, chiefly of Early and Late Years.\"\nAfterwards one of the \"Poems of the Imagination.\"--ED.\n\n                  ----Not a breath of air\n    Ruffles the bosom of this leafy glen.\n    From the brook's margin, wide around, the trees\n    Are stedfast as the rocks; the brook itself,\n    Old as the hills that feed it from afar,                           5\n    Doth rather deepen than disturb the calm\n    Where all things else are still and motionless.\n    And yet, even now, a little breeze, perchance\n    Escaped from boisterous winds that rage without,\n    Has entered, by the sturdy oaks unfelt,                           10\n    But to its gentle touch how sensitive\n    Is the light ash! that, pendent from the brow\n    Of yon dim cave,[253] in seeming silence makes\n    A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs,\n    Powerful almost as vocal harmony                                  15\n    To stay the wanderer's steps and soothe his thoughts.\n\nThe Aira beck rises on the <DW72>s of Great Dodd, passes Dockray, and\nenters Ullswater between Glencoin Park and Gowbarrow Park, about two\nmiles from the head of the lake. The Force is quite near to _Lyulph's\nTower_, where the stream has a fall of about eighty feet. Compare the\nreference to it in _The Somnambulist_ (1833), and Wordsworth's account\nof \"Aira-Force,\" in his _Guide through the District of the Lakes_,\n\"Here is a powerful Brook, which dashes among rocks through a deep\nglen, hung on every side with a rich and happy intermixture of native\nwood; here are beds of luxuriant fern, aged hawthorns and hollies\ndecked with honeysuckles; and fallow deer glancing and bounding over\nthe lawns and through the thickets.\"--ED.\n\n[253] An ash-tree may still be seen at Aira-Force.--ED.\n\n\n\"LYRE! THOUGH SUCH POWER DO IN THY MAGIC LIVE\"\n\nComposed 1842 (or earlier).--Published 1842\n\nOne of the \"Poems of the Imagination.\"--ED.\n\n    Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live\n      As might from India's farthest plain\n      Recal the not unwilling Maid,\n          Assist me to detain\n          The lovely Fugitive:                                         5\n    Check with thy notes the impulse which, betrayed\n    By her sweet farewell looks, I longed to aid.\n    Here let me gaze enrapt upon that eye,\n    The impregnable and awe-inspiring fort\n    Of contemplation, the calm port                                   10\n    By reason fenced from winds that sigh\n    Among the restless sails of vanity.\n    But if no wish be hers that we should part,\n    A humbler bliss would satisfy my heart.\n          Where all things are so fair,                               15\n    Enough by her dear side to breathe the air\n          Of this Elysian weather;\n    And, on or in, or near, the brook, espy\n      Shade upon the sunshine lying\n          Faint and somewhat pensively;                               20\n      And downward Image gaily vying\n          With its upright living tree\n    'Mid silver clouds, and openings of blue sky\n    As soft almost and deep as her cerulean eye.\n\n    Nor less the joy with many a glance                               25\n    Cast up the Stream or down at her beseeching,\n    To mark its eddying foam-balls prettily distrest\n    By ever-changing shape and want of rest;\n          Or watch, with mutual teaching,\n          The current as it plays                                     30\n          In flashing leaps and stealthy creeps\n          Adown a rocky maze;\n    Or note (translucent summer's happiest chance!)\n    In the <DW72>-channel floored with pebbles bright,\n    Stones of all hues, gem emulous of gem,                           35\n    So vivid that they take from keenest sight\n    The liquid veil that seeks not to hide them.[254]\n\n[254] Compare Wordsworth's description of the Duddon as \"diaphanous,\nbecause it travels slowly,\"--ED.\n\n\nLOVE LIES BLEEDING\n\nComposed 1842.--Published 1842\n\n[It has been said that the English, though their country has produced\nso many great poets, is now the most unpoetical nation in Europe. It\nis probably true; for they have more temptation to become so than any\nother European people. Trade, commerce, and manufactures, physical\nscience, and mechanic arts, out of which so much wealth has arisen,\nhave made our countrymen infinitely less sensible to movements of\nimagination and fancy than were our forefathers in their simple state\nof society. How touching and beautiful were, in most instances, the\nnames they gave to our indigenous flowers, or any other they were\nfamiliarly acquainted with!--Every month for many years have we been\nimporting plants and flowers from all quarters of the globe, many of\nwhich are spread through our gardens, and some perhaps likely to be met\nwith on the few Commons which we have left. Will their botanical names\never be displaced by plain English appellations, which will bring them\nhome to our hearts by connexion with our joys and sorrows? It can never\nbe, unless society treads back her steps towards those simplicities\nwhich have been banished by the undue influence of towns spreading and\nspreading in every direction, so that city-life with every generation\ntakes more and more the lead of rural. Among the ancients, villages\nwere reckoned the seats of barbarism. Refinement, for the most part\nfalse, increases the desire to accumulate wealth; and while theories\nof political economy are boastfully pleading for the practice,\ninhumanity pervades all our dealings in buying and selling. This\nselfishness wars against disinterested imagination in all directions,\nand, evils coming round in a circle, barbarism spreads in every quarter\nof our island. Oh for the reign of justice, and then the humblest man\namong us would have more power and dignity in and about him than the\nhighest have now!--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Poems of the Fancy.\"--ED.\n\n    You call it, \"Love lies bleeding,\"--so you may,[255]\n    Though the red Flower, not prostrate, only droops,\n    As we have seen it here from day to day,\n    From month to month, life passing not away:\n    A flower how rich in sadness! Even thus stoops,                    5\n    (Sentient by Grecian sculpture's marvellous power)\n    Thus leans, with hanging brow and body bent\n    Earthward in uncomplaining languishment,\n    The dying Gladiator. So, sad Flower!\n    ('Tis Fancy guides me willing to be led,                          10\n    Though by a slender thread,)\n    So drooped Adonis bathed in sanguine dew\n    Of his death-wound, when he from innocent air\n    The gentlest breath of resignation drew;\n    While Venus in a passion of despair                               15\n    Rent, weeping over him, her golden hair\n    Spangled with drops of that celestial shower.\n    She suffered, as Immortals sometimes do;\n    But pangs more lasting far, _that_ Lover knew\n    Who first, weighed down by scorn, in some lone bower              20\n    Did press this semblance of unpitied smart\n    Into the service of his constant heart,\n    His own dejection, downcast Flower! could share\n    With thine, and gave the mournful name which thou wilt ever bear.\n\n[255] Compare _Midsummer Night's Dream_, act II. scene i. ll.\n165-168.--ED.\n\n\n\"THEY CALL IT LOVE LIES BLEEDING! RATHER SAY\"\n\nThe previous poem was originally composed in sonnet form; and it\nbelongs, in that form, to the year 1833. It occurs in a MS. copy of\nthe sonnets which record the Tour of 1833 to the Isle of Man and to\nScotland.--ED.\n\n    They call it Love lies bleeding! rather say\n    That in this crimson Flower Love bleeding _droops_,\n    A Flower how sick in sadness! Thus it stoops\n    With languid head unpropped from day to day\n    From month to month, life passing not away.                        5\n    Even so the dying Gladiator leans\n    On mother earth, and from his patience gleans\n    Relics of tender thoughts, regrets that stay\n    A moment and are gone. O fate-bowed flower!\n    Fair as Adonis bathed in sanguine dew,                            10\n    Of his death-wound, _that_ Lover's heart was true\n    As heaven, who pierced by scorn in some lone bower\n    Could press thy semblance of unpitied smart\n    Into the service of his constant heart.\n\n\nCOMPANION TO THE FOREGOING\n\nComposed (?)[256]--Published 1845\n\n    Never enlivened with the liveliest ray\n    That fosters growth or checks or cheers decay,\n    Nor by the heaviest rain-drops more deprest,\n    This Flower, that first appeared as summer's guest,\n    Preserves her beauty 'mid autumnal leaves                          5\n    And to her mournful habits fondly cleaves.\n\n    When files of stateliest plants have ceased to bloom,\n    One after one submitting to their doom,\n    When her coevals each and all are fled,\n    What keeps her thus reclined upon her lonesome bed?               10\n\n      The old mythologists, more impress'd than we\n    Of this late day by character in tree\n    Or herb, that claimed peculiar sympathy,\n    Or by the silent lapse of fountain clear,\n    Or with the language of the viewless air                          15\n    By bird or beast made vocal, sought a cause\n    To solve the mystery, not in Nature's laws\n    But in Man's fortunes. Hence a thousand tales\n    Sung to the plaintive lyre in Grecian vales.\n    Nor doubt that something of their spirit swayed                   20\n    The fancy-stricken Youth or heart-sick Maid,\n    Who, while each stood companionless and eyed\n    This undeparting Flower in crimson dyed,\n    Thought of a wound which death is slow to cure,\n    A fate that has endured and will endure,                          25\n    And, patience coveting yet passion feeding,\n    Called the dejected Lingerer, _Love lies bleeding_.\n\n[256] The date of the composition of this poem is uncertain, but, as\n\"companion\" to _Love lies Bleeding_, it must be placed in immediate\nsuccession to it.--ED.\n\n\nTHE CUCKOO-CLOCK\n\nComposed 1842.--Published 1842\n\n[Of this clock I have nothing further to say than what the poem\nexpresses, except that it must be here recorded that it was a\npresent from the dear friend for whose sake these notes were chiefly\nundertaken, and who has written them from my dictation.--I.F.]\n\nOne of the \"Poems of the Imagination.\"--ED.\n\n    Wouldst thou be taught, when sleep has taken flight,\n    By a sure voice that can most sweetly tell,\n    How far-off yet a glimpse of morning light,\n    And if to lure the truant back be well,\n    Forbear to covet a Repeater's stroke,                              5\n    That, answering to thy touch, will sound the hour;\n    Better provide thee with a Cuckoo-clock\n    For service hung behind thy chamber-door;\n    And in due time the soft spontaneous shock,\n    The double note, as if with living power,                         10\n    Will to composure lead--or make thee blithe as bird in bower.\n\n    List, Cuckoo--Cuckoo!--oft tho' tempests howl,\n    Or nipping frost remind thee trees are bare,\n    How cattle pine, and droop the shivering fowl,\n    Thy spirits will seem to feed on balmy air:                       15\n    I speak with knowledge,--by that Voice beguiled,\n    Thou wilt salute old memories as they throng\n    Into thy heart; and fancies, running wild\n    Through fresh green fields, and budding groves among,\n    Will make thee happy, happy as a child;                           20\n    Of sunshine wilt thou think, and flowers, and song,\n    And breathe as in a world where nothing can go wrong.\n\n    And know--that, even for him who shuns the day\n    And nightly tosses on a bed of pain;\n    Whose joys, from all but memory swept away,                       25\n    Must come unhoped for, if they come again;\n    Know--that, for him whose waking thoughts, severe\n    As his distress is sharp, would scorn my theme,\n    The mimic notes, striking upon his ear\n    In sleep, and intermingling with his dream,                       30\n    Could from sad regions send him to a dear\n    Delightful land of verdure, shower and gleam,\n    To mock the _wandering_ Voice[257] beside some haunted\n     stream.[258]\n\n    O bounty without measure! while the grace\n    Of Heaven doth in such wise, from humblest springs,               35\n    Pour pleasure forth, and solaces that trace\n    A mazy course along familiar things,\n    Well may our hearts have faith that blessings come,\n    Streaming from founts above the starry sky,\n    With angels when their own untroubled home                        40\n    They leave, and speed on nightly embassy\n    To visit earthly chambers,--and for whom?\n    Yea, both for souls who God's forbearance try,\n    And those that seek his help, and for his mercy sigh.\n\n[257] Compare _To the Cuckoo_ (vol. ii. p. 289)--\n\n    O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird,\n    Or but a wandering Voice?\n\nED.\n\n[258] Professor Dowden has appropriately called attention to the\nfact that the cuckoo-clock at Rydal Mount was not stopped during\nWordsworth's last illness.--ED.\n\n\n\"WANSFELL! THIS HOUSEHOLD HAS A FAVOURED LOT\"\n\nComposed 1842.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Wansfell![259] this Household has a favoured lot,\n    Living with liberty on thee to gaze,\n    To watch while Morn first crowns thee with her rays,\n    Or when along thy breast serenely float\n    Evening's angelic clouds. Yet ne'er a note                         5\n    Hath sounded (shame upon the Bard!) thy praise\n    For all that thou, as if from heaven, hast brought\n    Of glory lavished on our quiet days.\n    Bountiful Son of Earth! when we are gone\n    From every object dear to mortal sight,                           10\n    As soon we shall be, may these words attest\n    How oft, to elevate our spirits, shone\n    Thy visionary majesties of light,\n    How in thy pensive glooms our hearts found rest.\n\n    _Dec. 24, 1842._\n\n[259] The Hill that rises to the south-east, above Ambleside.--W.W.\n1842.\n\n\n\"THOUGH THE BOLD WINGS OF POESY AFFECT\"\n\nComposed (?)--Published 1842\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Though the bold wings of Poesy affect\n    The clouds, and wheel around the mountain tops\n    Rejoicing, from her loftiest height she drops\n    Well pleased to skim the plain with wild flowers deckt,\n    Or muse in solemn grove whose shades protect                       5\n    The lingering dew--there steals along, or stops\n    Watching the least small bird that round her hops,\n    Or creeping worm, with sensitive respect.\n    Her functions are they therefore less divine,\n    Her thoughts less deep, or void of grave intent                   10\n    Her simplest fancies? Should that fear be thine,\n    Aspiring Votary, ere thy hand present\n    One offering, kneel before her modest shrine,\n    With brow in penitential sorrow bent!\n\n\n\"GLAD SIGHT WHEREVER NEW WITH OLD\"\n\nComposed 1842.[260]--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Poems of the Fancy.\"--ED.\n\n    Glad sight wherever new with old[261]\n    Is joined through some dear homeborn tie;\n\n    The life[262] of all that we behold\n    Depends upon that mystery.\n    Vain is the glory of the sky,[263]                                 5\n    The beauty vain of field and grove,\n    Unless, while with admiring eye[264]\n    We gaze, we also learn to love.[265]\n\n[260] A MS. copy of this fragment in Wordsworth's handwriting, 31st\nDecember 1842, fixes the date approximately.--ED.\n\n[261] 1845.\n\n    Look up, look round, let things unfold\n    Far as they may, their mysteries;\n    What profits it if new with old\n    Unites not with some homeborn ties.\n\n    MS. 31st Dec. 1842.\n\n    Welcome the sight when new with old\n\n    C.\n\n    Glad sight it is when new with old\n\n    MS. 1843.\n\n[262] 1845.\n\n    The good \u2026\n\n    C.\n\n[263] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 skies,\n\n    MS. 1843.\n\n[264] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 eyes\n\n    MS. 1843.\n\n[265] Compare the lines addressed to Mrs. Wordsworth in 1824,\nbeginning--\n\n    True beauty dwells in deep retreats.\n\nED.\n\n\n\n\n1843\n\nTwo sonnets, and an _Inscription_ for a monument to Southey, were\nwritten in 1843.--ED.\n\n\n\"WHILE BEAMS OF ORIENT LIGHT SHOOT WIDE AND HIGH\"\n\nComposed 1st January 1843.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    While beams of orient light shoot wide and high,\n    Deep in the vale a little rural Town[266]\n    Breathes forth a cloud-like creature of its own,\n    That mounts not toward the radiant morning sky,\n    But, with a less ambitious sympathy,                               5\n    Hangs o'er its Parent waking to the cares\n    Troubles and toils that every day prepares.\n    So Fancy, to the musing Poet's eye,\n    Endears that Lingerer. And how blest her sway[267]\n    (Like influence never may my soul reject)[268]                    10\n    If the calm Heaven, now to its zenith decked[269]\n    With glorious forms in numberless array,\n    To the lone shepherd on the hills disclose\n    Gleams from[270] a world in which the saints repose.\n\n    _Jan. 1, 1843._\n\n[266] Ambleside.--W.W. 1845.\n\n[267] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 And blessed be her sway\n\n    MS.\n\n    So Fancy charms the musing Poet's eye\n    Fixed on that Lingerer \u2026\n\n    C.\n\n[268] 1845.\n\n    Ne'er may my soul like influence reject.\n\n    MS.\u2020\n\n[269] 1845.\n\n    Endear that Lingerer. And how blest her sway,\n    The faith how pure and holy in effect,\n    If the calm Heavens, now to their summit decked\n\n    MS.\u2020\n\n[270]\n\n    \u2026 of \u2026\n\n    MS.\u2020\n\n\n\u2020 These MS. variants occur in a copy of the sonnet written by\nWordsworth for Mrs. Arnold at Foxhowe.\n\n\nINSCRIPTION\n\nFOR A MONUMENT IN CROSTHWAITE CHURCH, IN THE VALE OF KESWICK\n\nComposed 1843.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Epitaphs and Elegiac Pieces.\"--ED.\n\n    Ye vales and hills whose beauty hither drew\n    The poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you,\n    His eyes have closed! And ye, lov'd books, no more\n    Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,\n    To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown                     5\n    Adding immortal labours of his own--\n    Whether he traced historic truth, with zeal\n    For the State's guidance, or the Church's weal,\n    Or Fancy, disciplined by studious art,\n    Inform'd his pen, or wisdom of the heart,                         10\n    Or judgments sanctioned in the Patriot's mind\n    By reverence for the rights of all mankind.\n    Wide were his aims, yet in no human breast\n    Could private feelings meet for holier rest.\n    His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud                  15\n    From Skiddaw's top; but he to heaven was vowed\n    Through his industrious life, and Christian faith\n    Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death.\n\nI received, from the late Lord Coleridge, the following extracts\nfrom letters written by Wordsworth to his father, the Hon. Justice\nColeridge, in reference to the Southey Inscription in Crosthwaite\nChurch. Wordsworth seems to have submitted the proposed Inscription to\nMr. Coleridge's judgment, and the changes he made upon it, in deference\nto the opinions he received, shew, as Lord Coleridge says, \"the extreme\ncare Wordsworth took to have the substance, and the expression also, as\nperfect as he could make it.\" The original draft of the \"Inscription\"\nwas as follows:--\n\n    SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT SOUTHEY, WHOSE MORTAL REMAINS\n    ARE INTERRED IN THE ADJOINING CHURCHYARD. HE WAS BORN AT\n    BRISTOL, OCTOBER YE 4TH, 1774, AND DIED, AFTER A RESIDENCE OF\n    NEARLY FORTY YEARS, AT GRETA HALL IN THIS PARISH. MARCH 21ST,\n    1843.\n\n    Ye Vales and Hills, whose beauty hither drew\n    The Poet's steps, and fixed him here, on you\n    His eyes have closed; and ye, loved Books, no more\n    Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,\n    To Works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown\n    Adding immortal labours of his own,\n    As Fancy, disciplined by studious Art\n    Informed his pen, or Wisdom of the heart,\n    Or judgments rooted in a Patriot's mind\n    Taught to revere the rights of all mankind.\n    Friends, Family--ah wherefore touch that string,\n    To them _so_ fondly did the good man cling!\n    His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud\n    From Skiddaw's top; but He to Heaven was vowed\n    Through a long life; and calmed by Christian faith,\n    In his pure soul, the fear of change and death.\n\n    This Memorial was erected by friends of Robert Southey.\n\nAlteration in the Epitaph--\n\n                          \u2026 He to Heaven was vowed\n    Through a life long and pure; and Christian faith\n    Calmed in his soul the fear of change and death.--W.W.\n\n                                                   December the 6th.\n\n    MY DEAR MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE,\n\n    Notwithstanding what I have written before, I could not but\n    wish to meet _your wishes_ upon the points which you mentioned,\n    and, accordingly, have added and altered as on the other side\n    of this paper. If you approve don't trouble yourself to answer.\n\n                        Ever faithfully yours,\n\n                                                     W. WORDSWORTH.\n\n        Ye torrents, foaming down the rocky steeps,\n        Ye lakes, wherein the spirit of water sleeps,\n        Ye vales and hills, etc.\n        Or judgments sanctioned in the Patriot's mind\n        By reverence for the rights of all mankind.\n        Friends, Family--within no human breast\n        Could private feelings need a holier nest.\n        His joys, his griefs, have vanished.\n\n    These alterations are approved of by friends here, and I hope\n    will please you.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    MY DEAR MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE,\n\n    Pray accept my thanks for the pains you have taken with the\n    Inscription, and excuse the few words I shall have to say upon\n    your remarks. There are two lakes in the Vale of Keswick; both\n    which, along with the lateral Vale of Newlands immediately\n    opposite Southey's study window, will be included in the words\n    \"Ye _Vales_ and Hills\" by everyone who is familiar with the\n    neighbourhood.\n\n    I quite agree with you that the construction of the lines\n    that particularize his writings is rendered awkward by so\n    many participles passive, and the more so on account of the\n    transitive verb _informed_. One of these participles may be\n    got rid of, and, I think, a better couplet produced by this\n    alteration--\n\n        Or judgments sanctioned in the Patriot's mind\n        By reverence for the rights of all mankind.\n\n    As I have entered into particulars as to the character of S.'s\n    writings, and they are so various, I thought his historic\n    works ought by no means to be omitted, and therefore, though\n    unwilling to lengthen the Epitaph, I added the two following--\n\n                              \u2026 Labours of his own,\n        Whether he traced historic truth with zeal\n        For the State's guidance, or the Church's weal,\n        Or Fancy, disciplined by studious Art,\n        Informed his pen, or wisdom of the heart,\n        Or judgments sanctioned in the Patriot's mind\n        By reverence for the rights of all mankind.\n\n    I do not feel with you in respect to the word \"so\"; it refers,\n    of course, to the preceding line, and as the reference is to\n    fireside feelings and intimate friends, there appears to me\n    a propriety in an expression inclining to the colloquial.\n    The couplet was the dictate of my own feelings, and the\n    construction is accordingly broken and rather dramatic,--but\n    too much of this. If you have any objection to the couplet\n    as altered, be so kind as let me know; if not, on no account\n    trouble yourself to answer this letter.\n\n    _Prematurely_ I object to as you do. I used the word with\n    reference to that decay of faculties which is not uncommon in\n    advanced life, and which often leads to dotage,--but the word\n    must not be retained.\n\n    We regret much to hear that Lady Coleridge is unwell, pray\n    present to her our best wishes.\n\n    What could induce the Bishop of London to forbid the choral\n    service at St. Mark's? It was in execution, I understand, above\n    all praise.\n\n                      Ever most faithfully yours,\n\n                                                     W. WORDSWORTH.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n                                               _December 2nd, '43._\n\n    MY DEAR MR. JUSTICE COLERIDGE,\n\n    The first line would certainly have more spirit by reading\n    \"your\" as you suggest. I had previously considered _that_;\n    but decided in favour of \"the,\" as \"your,\" I thought, would\n    clog the sentence in sound, there being \"ye\" thrice repeated,\n    and followed by \"_you_\" at the close of the 4th line. I also\n    thought that \"_your_\" would interfere with the application of\n    \"you\" at the end of the fourth line, to the _whole_ of the\n    particular previous images as I intended it to do. But I don't\n    trouble you with this Letter on that account, but merely to ask\n    you whether the couplet now standing:--\n\n        Large were his aims, yet in no human breast\n        Could private feelings find a holier nest,\n\n    would not be better thus\n\n        Could private feelings meet in holier rest.\n\n    This alteration does not quite satisfy me, but I can do no\n    better. The word \"_nest_\" both in itself and in conjunction\n    with \"_holier_\" seems to me somewhat bold and rather startling\n    for marble, particularly in a Church. I should not have thought\n    of any alteration in a merely printed poem, but this makes a\n    difference. If you think the proposed alteration better, don't\n    trouble yourself to answer this; if not, pray be so kind as to\n    tell me so by a single line. I would not on any account have\n    trespassed on your time but for this public occasion. We are\n    sorry to hear of Lady Coleridge's indisposition; pray present\n    to her our kind regards and best wishes for her recovery,\n    united with the greetings of the season both for her and\n    yourself, and believe me faithfully,\n\n                             Your obliged,\n\n                                                    WM. WORDSWORTH.\n\n    RYDAL MOUNT, _December 23rd, '43_.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n    TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT SOUTHEY, A MAN EMINENT FOR GENIUS,\n    VERSATILE TALENTS, EXTENSIVE AND ACCURATE KNOWLEDGE, AND\n    HABITS OF THE MOST CONSCIENTIOUS INDUSTRY. NOR WAS HE LESS\n    DISTINGUISHED FOR STRICT TEMPERANCE, PURE BENEVOLENCE, AND WARM\n    AFFECTIONS; BUT HIS MIND, SUCH ARE THE AWFUL DISPENSATIONS OF\n    PROVIDENCE, WAS PREMATURELY AND ALMOST TOTALLY OBSCURED BY A\n    SLOWLY-WORKING AND INSCRUTABLE MALADY UNDER WHICH HE LANGUISHED\n    UNTIL RELEASED BY DEATH IN THE 69TH YEAR OF HIS AGE.\n\n    READER! PONDER THE CONDITION TO WHICH THIS GREAT AND GOOD\n    MAN, NOT WITHOUT MERCIFUL ALLEVIATIONS, WAS DOOMED, AND LEARN\n    FROM HIS EXAMPLE TO MAKE TIMELY USE OF THY ENDOWMENTS AND\n    OPPORTUNITIES, AND TO WALK HUMBLY WITH THY GOD.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n                    COPY OF THE PRINTED INSCRIPTION\n\n    SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT SOUTHEY, WHOSE MORTAL REMAINS\n    ARE INTERRED IN THE ADJOINING CHURCHYARD. HE WAS BORN AT\n    BRISTOL, OCTOBER 4TH, 1774, AND DIED AFTER A RESIDENCE OF\n    NEARLY 40 YEARS AT GRETA HALL, IN THIS PARISH, MARCH 21ST, 1843.\n\n        Ye torrents, foaming down the rocky steeps,\n        Ye lakes, wherein the spirit of water sleeps,\n        Ye vales and hills, whose beauty hither drew\n        The Poet's steps and fixed him here, on you\n        His eyes have closed! and ye, loved books, no more\n        Shall Southey feed upon your precious lore,\n        To works that ne'er shall forfeit their renown\n        Adding immortal labours of his own--\n        Whether he traced historic truth, with zeal\n        For the State's guidance or the Church's weal,\n        Or Fancy, disciplined by studious art,\n        Informed his pen, or wisdom of the heart,\n        Or judgments sanctioned in the Patriot's mind\n        By reverence for the rights of all mankind.\n        Wide were his aims, yet in no human breast\n        Could private feelings find a holier nest.\n        His joys, his griefs, have vanished like a cloud\n        From Skiddaw's top; but he to Heaven was vowed\n        Through a long life, and calmed by Christian faith,\n        In his pure soul, the fear of change and death.\n\n    This Memorial was erected by friends of Robert Southey.\n\nEdward Quillinan wrote, 25th March 1843, \"Yesterday I drove Mr.\nWordsworth early over to Keswick, that he and I might attend the\nfuneral of Mr. Southey, who was buried in Crosthwaite churchyard there\nat eleven A.M. It was very affecting to see Kate Southey with her\nbrother Cuthbert, and brother-in-law Herbert Hill, at her father's\ngrave as the coffin was lowered into it. She looked as if she yearned\nto be there too. She says she has now got her father back again.\"--ED.\n\n\nTO THE REV. CHRISTOPHER WORDSWORTH, D.D., MASTER OF HARROW SCHOOL[271]\n\nAfter the perusal of his _Theophilus Anglicanus_, recently published.\n\nComposed 1843.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Enlightened Teacher, gladly from thy hand\n    Have I received this proof of pains bestowed\n    By Thee to guide thy Pupils on the road\n    That, in our native isle, and every land,\n    The Church, when trusting in divine command                        5\n    And in her Catholic attributes, hath trod:\n    O may these lessons be with profit scanned\n    To thy heart's wish, thy labour blest by God!\n    So the bright faces of the young and gay\n    Shall look more bright--the happy, happier still;                 10\n    Catch, in the pauses of their keenest play,\n    Motions of thought which elevate the will\n    And, like the Spire that from your classic Hill\n    Points heavenward, indicate the end and way.\n\n    RYDAL MOUNT, _Dec. 11, 1843_.\n\n[271] The poet's nephew, afterwards Canon of Westminster, and Bishop of\nLincoln, and the biographer of his uncle.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1844\n\nOnly four poems were written in 1844.--ED.\n\n\n\"SO FAIR, SO SWEET, WITHAL SO SENSITIVE\"\n\nComposed July 1844.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.\"--ED.\n\n    So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,\n    Would that the little Flowers were born to live,\n    Conscious of half the pleasure which they give;\n\n    That to this mountain-daisy's self were known[272]\n    The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown                       5\n    On the smooth surface of this[273] naked stone!\n\n    And what if hence a bold desire should mount\n    High as the Sun, that he could take account\n    Of all that issues from his glorious fount!\n\n    So might he ken how by his sovereign aid                          10\n    These delicate companionships are made;\n    And how he rules the pomp of light and shade;\n\n    And were the Sister-power that shines by night\n    So privileged, what a countenance of delight\n    Would through the clouds break forth on human sight!              15\n\n    Fond fancies! wheresoe'er shall turn thine eye\n    On earth, air, ocean, or the starry sky,\n    Converse with Nature in pure sympathy;[274]\n\n    All vain desires, all lawless wishes quelled,\n    Be Thou to love and praise alike impelled,                        20\n    Whatever boon is granted or withheld.[275][276]\n\n[272] Compare the lines _To a Child, written in her Album_, in\n1834.--ED.\n\n[273] 1844.\n\n    Its sole companion on this\n\n    C.\n\n[274] 1845.\n\n    Fond fancies' bond, between a smile and sigh,\n    Do thou more wise, where'er thou turn'st thine eye\n    Converse with Nature in pure sympathy.\n\n    C.\n\n                          \u2026 be taught to fix an eye\n    On holy Nature in pure sympathy.\n\n    C.\n\n    Fond fancies, wheresoe'er shall range thine eye\n    Among the forms and powers of earth or sky,\n    Converse with Nature in pure sympathy.\n\n    C.\n\n[275] 1845.\n\n    A thankful heart all lawless wishes quelled,\n    To joy, to praise, to love alike compelled,\n    Whatever boon be granted or withheld.\n\n    C.\n\nThe following variation of the two last stanzas is from a MS. copy by\nWordsworth.\n\n    Fond fancies! wheresoe'er shall range thine eye\n    Among the forms and powers of earth and sky,\n    Converse with nature in pure sympathy.\n    A thankful heart, all lawless wishes quell'd,\n    To joy, to praise, to love alike compell'd,\n    Whatever boon be granted or withheld.\n\n_August, 1844._--ED.\n\n[276] The following account of the circumstance which gave rise to the\npreceding poem is from the _Memoir_ of Professor Archer Butler, by Mr.\nWoodward, prefixed to the \"First Series\" of his Sermons. The late Rev.\nArchdeacon Graves, of Dublin (in 1849 of Windermere), in writing to Mr.\nWoodward, gives an interesting account of a walk, in July 1844, from\nWindermere, by Rydal and Grasmere, to Loughrigg Tarn, etc., in which\nButler was accompanied by Wordsworth, Julius Charles Hare, Sir William\nHamilton, etc. He says, \"The day was additionally memorable as giving\nbirth to an interesting minor poem of Mr. Wordsworth's. When we reached\nthe side of Loughrigg Tarn (which you may remember he notes for its\nsimilarity, in the peculiar character of its beauty, to the Lago di\nNemi--Dianae Speculum), the loveliness of the scene arrested our steps\nand fixed our gaze. The splendour of a July noon surrounded us and\nlit up the landscape, with the Langdale Pikes soaring above, and the\nbright tarn shining beneath; and when the poet's eyes were satisfied\nwith their feast on the beauties familiar to them, they sought relief\nin the search, to them a happy vital habit, for new beauty in the\nflower-enamelled turf at his feet. There his attention was arrested\nby a fair smooth stone, of the size of an ostrich's egg, seeming to\nimbed at its centre, and at the same time to display a dark star-shaped\nfossil of most distinct outline. Upon closer inspection this proved\nto be the shadow of a daisy projected upon it with extraordinary\nprecision by the intense light of an almost vertical sun. The poet drew\nthe attention of the rest of the party to the minute but beautiful\nphenomenon, and gave expression at the time to thoughts suggested by\nit, which so interested our friend Professor Butler, that he plucked\nthe tiny flower, and, saying that \"it should be not only the theme but\nthe memorial of the thought they had heard,\" bestowed it somewhere\ncarefully for preservation. The little poem, in which some of these\nthoughts were afterwards crystallised, commences with the stanza--\n\n    So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,\n    Would that the little flowers were born to live,\n    Conscious of half the pleasure that they give.\"\n\n_Memoir_, pp. 27, 28.--ED.\n\n\nON THE PROJECTED KENDAL AND WINDERMERE RAILWAY\n\nComposed October 12, 1844.--Published 1844[277]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Is then no nook of English ground secure\n    From rash assault?[278] Schemes of retirement sown\n    In youth, and 'mid the busy world kept pure\n    As when their earliest flowers of hope were blown,\n    Must perish;--how can they this blight endure?                     5\n    And must he too the ruthless change bemoan\n    Who scorns a false utilitarian lure\n    'Mid his paternal fields at random thrown?\n    Baffle the threat, bright Scene, from Orrest-head[279]\n    Given to the pausing traveller's rapturous glance:                10\n    Plead for thy peace, thou beautiful romance\n    Of nature; and, if human hearts be dead,\n    Speak, passing winds; ye torrents, with your strong\n    And constant voice, protest against the wrong.\n\n    _October 12th, 1844._\n\n[277] In the first edition of his pamphlet \"On the projected Kendal and\nWindermere Railway.\"--ED.\n\n[278] The degree and kind of attachment which many of the yeomanry\nfeel to their small inheritances can scarcely be over-rated. Near the\nhouse of one of them stands a magnificent tree, which a neighbour of\nthe owner advised him to fell for profit's sake. \"Fell it!\" exclaimed\nthe yeoman, \"I had rather fall on my knees and worship it.\" It happens,\nI believe, that the intended railway would pass through this little\nproperty, and I hope that an apology for the answer will not be thought\nnecessary by one who enters into the strength of the feeling.--W.W.\n1845.\n\nCompare the two letters on the Kendal and Windermere Railway,\ncontributed by Wordsworth to _The Morning Post_ in 1844, at Kendal,\nrevised and reprinted in the same year. See _The Prose Works of\nWordsworth_, vol. ii. pp. 383-405.--ED.\n\n[279] Orresthead is the height close to Windermere, to the north of the\ntown.--ED.\n\n\n\"PROUD WERE YE, MOUNTAINS, WHEN, IN TIMES OF OLD\"\n\nComposed 1844.--Published 1845[280]\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Proud were ye, Mountains, when, in times of old,\n    Your patriot sons, to stem invasive war,\n    Intrenched your brows; ye gloried in each scar:\n    Now, for your shame, a Power, the Thirst of Gold,\n    That rules o'er Britain like a baneful star,                       5\n    Wills that your peace, your beauty, shall be sold,\n    And clear way made for her triumphal car\n    Through the beloved retreats your arms enfold!\n    Heard YE that Whistle? As her long-linked Train\n    Swept onwards, did the vision cross your view?                    10\n    Yes, ye were startled;--and, in balance true,\n    Weighing the mischief with the promised gain,\n    Mountains, and Vales, and Floods, I call on you\n    To share the passion of a just disdain.\n\nThe following by Canon Rawnsley--suggested by an attempt to introduce\na mineral railway into Borrowdale--may be read in connection with\nWordsworth's two sonnets.--ED.\n\nA CRY FROM DERWENTWATER\n\n    Shall then the stream of ruinous Lodore\n      Not fill the valley with its changeful sound\n      Unchallenged! shall grey Derwent's sacred bound\n    Hear the harsh brawl and intermittent roar\n    Of mocking waves upon an iron shore,\n      Whereby nor health nor happiness is found!--\n      While steam-wains drag from Honister's heart wound\n    The long cooled ashes of its fiery core!\n\n    Burst forth ye sulphurous fountains, as ye broke\n      On Skiddaw, lick the waters, blast the trees,\n    And let men have the earth they would desire,--\n    As well go pass our children through the fire\n    With shrieks, Cath-Belus, round thine altar's smoke,\n      As let old Derwent hear such sounds as these.\n\n                                          H.D. RAWNSLEY.\n\n    WRAY VICARAGE, AMBLESIDE.\n\n[280] This sonnet was first published in _The Morning Post_, December\n17, 1844.--ED.\n\n\nAT FURNESS ABBEY\n\nComposed 1844.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Here, where, of havoc tired and rash undoing,\n    Man left this Structure to become Time's prey\n    A soothing spirit follows in the way\n    That Nature takes, her counter-work pursuing.\n    See how her Ivy clasps the sacred Ruin[281]                        5\n    Fall to prevent or beautify decay;\n    And, on the mouldered walls, how bright, how gay,\n    The flowers in pearly dews their bloom renewing!\n    Thanks to the place, blessings upon the hour;\n    Even as I speak the rising Sun's first smile                      10\n    Gleams on the grass-crowned top of yon tall Tower[282]\n    Whose cawing occupants with joy proclaim\n    Prescriptive title to the shattered pile\n    Where, Cavendish,[283] _thine_ seems nothing but a name!\n\n[281] In the chancel of the church at Furness Abbey, ivy almost covers\nthe north wall. In the Belfry and in the Chapter House, it is the same.\nThe \"tower,\" referred to in the sonnet, is evidently the belfry tower\nto the west. It is still \"grass-crowned.\" The sonnet was doubtless\ncomposed on the spot, and if Wordsworth ascended to the top of the\nbelfry tower, he might have seen the morning sunlight strike the small\nremaining fragment of the central tower. But it is more likely that he\nlooked up from the nave, or choir, of the church to the belfry, when he\nspoke of the sun's first smile gleaming from the top of the tall tower.\n\"Flowers\"--crowfoot, campanulas, etc.--still luxuriate on the mouldered\nwalls. With the line,\n\n    Fall to prevent or beautify decay;\n\ncompare,\n\n    Nature softening and concealing,\n    And busy with a hand of healing,\n\nin the description of Bolton Abbey in _The White Doe of Rylstone_,\ncanto i. I. 118. Compare also the _Address from the Spirit of\nCockermouth Castle_, vol. vii. p. 347.--ED.\n\n[282] See preceding note.\n\n[283] Furness Abbey is the property of the Duke of Devonshire, whose\nfamily name is Cavendish.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1845\n\nThe Poems of 1845 include one of the group \"On the Naming of Places,\"\n_The Westmoreland Girl_ (addressed to the Poet's grandchildren),\nseveral fragments addressed to Mrs. Wordsworth, and to friends, with\none or two Sonnets.--ED.\n\n\n\"FORTH FROM A JUTTING RIDGE, AROUND WHOSE BASE\"\n\nComposed 1845.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Poems upon the Naming of Places.\"--ED.\n\n    Forth from a jutting ridge, around whose base\n    Winds our deep Vale, two heath-clad Rocks ascend[284][285]\n    In fellowship, the loftiest of the pair\n    Rising to no ambitious height; yet both,\n    O'er lake[286] and stream, mountain and flowery mead,              5\n    Unfolding prospects fair as human eyes[287]\n    Ever beheld. Up-led with mutual help,\n    To one or other brow of those twin Peaks\n    Were two adventurous Sisters wont to climb,\n    And took no note of the hour while thence they gazed,             10\n    The blooming heath their couch, gazed, side by side,\n    In speechless admiration. I, a witness\n    And frequent sharer of their calm[288] delight\n    With thankful heart, to either Eminence\n    Gave the baptismal name each Sister bore.                         15\n    Now are they parted,[289] far as Death's cold hand\n    Hath power to part the Spirits of those who love\n    As they did love. Ye kindred Pinnacles--\n    That, while the generations of mankind\n    Follow each other to their hiding-place                           20\n    In time's abyss, are privileged to endure\n    Beautiful in yourselves, and richly graced\n    With like command of beauty--grant your aid\n    For MARY'S humble, SARAH'S silent, claim,\n    That their pure joy in nature may survive                         25\n    From age to age in blended memory.\n\n[284] 1845.\n\n    Winds our sequestered vale, two rocks ascend\n\n    MS.\n\n[285] These two rocks rise to the left of the lower high-road from\nGrasmere to Rydal, after it leaves the former lake and turns eastwards\ntowards the latter. They are still \"heath-clad,\" and covered with the\ncoppice of the old Bane Riggs Wood, so named because the shortest\nroad from Ambleside to Grasmere used to pass through it; \"bain\" or\n\"bane\" signifying, in the Westmoreland dialect, a short cut. Dr.\nCradock wrote of them thus:--\"They are now difficult of approach,\nbeing enclosed in a wood, with dense undergrowth, and surrounded by\na high, well-built wall. They can be well seen from the lower road,\nfrom a spot close to the three-mile stone from Ambleside. They are\nsome fifty or sixty feet above the road, about twenty yards apart, and\nseparated by a slight depression of, say, ten feet. The view from the\neasterly one is now much preferable, as it is less encumbered with\nshrubs; and for that reason also is more heath-clad. The twin rocks\nare also well seen, though at a farther distance, from the hill in\nWhite Moss Common between the roads, which Dr. Arnold used to call 'Old\nCorruption,' and 'Bit-by-bit Reform.' Doubtless the rocks were far more\neasily approached fifty years ago, when walls, if any, were low and\nill-built. It is probable, however, that even then they were enclosed\nand protected; for heath will not grow on the Grasmere hills, on places\nmuch frequented by sheep.\" The best view of these \"heath-clad\" rocks\nfrom the lower carriage road is at a spot two or three yards to the\nwest of a large rock on the road-side near the milestone. The view\nof them from the Loughrigg Terrace walks is also interesting. The\ntwo sisters were Mary and Sarah Hutchinson (Mrs. Wordsworth and her\nSister); and, in the Rydal household, the rocks were respectively named\n\"Mary-Point,\" and \"Sarah-Point.\"--ED.\n\n[286] 1845.\n\n    O'er wood \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[287] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 eye\n\n    MS.\n\n[288] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 that deep \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[289] 1845.\n\n    Gone to a common home, their duty done,\n    In this dear vale the Sisters lived, but long\n    Have they been parted \u2026\n\n    C.\n\n    True to a common love, their early choice\n    In this dear Vale, the sisters lived, but long\n    Have they been parted-- \u2026\n\n    C.\n\n\nTHE WESTMORELAND GIRL[290]\n\nTO MY GRANDCHILDREN\n\nComposed June 6, 1845.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Poems referring to the Period of Childhood.\"--ED.\n\n               PART I\n\n    Seek who will delight in fable\n    I shall tell you truth. A Lamb\n    Leapt from this steep bank to follow\n    'Cross the brook its thoughtless dam.[291]\n\n    Far and wide on hill and valley                                    5\n    Rain had fallen, unceasing rain,\n    And the bleating mother's Young-one\n    Struggled with the flood in vain:\n\n    But, as chanced, a Cottage-maiden\n    (Ten years scarcely had she told)                                 10\n    Seeing, plunged into the torrent,\n    Clasped the Lamb and kept her hold.\n    Whirled adown the rocky channel,\n    Sinking, rising, on they go,\n    Peace and rest, as seems, before them                             15\n    Only in the lake below.\n\n    Oh! it was a frightful current\n    Whose fierce wrath the Girl had braved;\n    Clap your hands with joy my Hearers,\n    Shout in triumph, both are saved;                                 20\n\n    Saved by courage that with danger\n    Grew, by strength the gift of love,\n    And belike a guardian angel\n    Came with succour from above.\n\n               PART II\n\n    Now, to a maturer Audience,                                       25\n    Let me speak of this brave Child\n    Left among her native mountains\n    With wild Nature to run wild.\n\n    So, unwatched by love maternal,\n    Mother's care no more her guide,                                  30\n    Fared this little bright-eyed Orphan\n    Even while at her father's side.\n\n    Spare your blame,--remembrance makes him\n    Loth to rule by strict command;\n    Still upon his cheek are living                                   35\n    Touches of her infant hand,\n\n    Dear caresses given in pity,\n    Sympathy that soothed his grief,\n    As the dying mother witnessed\n    To her thankful mind's relief.                                    40\n\n    Time passed on; the Child was happy,\n    Like a Spirit of air she moved,\n    Wayward, yet by all who knew her\n    For her tender heart beloved.\n\n    Scarcely less than sacred passions,                               45\n    Bred in house, in grove, and field,\n    Link her with the inferior creatures,\n    Urge her powers their rights to shield.\n\n    Anglers, bent on reckless pastime,\n    Learn how she can feel alike                                      50\n    Both for tiny harmless minnow\n    And the fierce and sharp-toothed pike.\n\n    Merciful protectress, kindling\n    Into anger or disdain;\n    Many a captive hath she rescued,                                  55\n    Others saved from lingering pain.\n\n    Listen yet awhile;--with patience\n    Hear the homely truths I tell,\n    She in Grasmere's old church-steeple\n    Tolled this day the passing-bell.                                 60\n\n    Yes, the wild Girl of the mountains\n    To their echoes gave the sound,\n    Notice punctual as the minute,\n    Warning solemn and profound.\n\n    She, fulfilling her sire's office,                                65\n    Rang alone the far-heard knell,\n    Tribute, by her hand, in sorrow,\n    Paid to One who loved her well.\n\n    When his spirit was departed\n    On that service she went forth;                                   70\n    Nor will fail the like to render\n    When his corse is laid in earth.[292]\n\n    What then wants the Child to temper,\n    In her breast, unruly fire,\n    To control the froward impulse                                    75\n    And restrain the vague desire?\n\n    Easily a pious training\n    And a stedfast outward power\n    Would supplant the weeds and cherish,\n    In their stead, each opening flower.                              80\n\n    Thus the fearless Lamb-deliv'rer,\n    Woman-grown, meek-hearted, sage,\n    May become a blest example\n    For her sex, of every age.[293]\n\n    Watchful as a wheeling eagle,                                     85\n    Constant as a soaring lark,\n    Should the country need a heroine,\n    She might prove our Maid of Arc.\n\n    Leave that thought; and here be uttered\n    Prayer that Grace divine may raise                                90\n    Her humane courageous spirit\n    Up to heaven, thro' peaceful ways.[294]\n\n[290] This Westmoreland Girl was Sarah Mackereth of Wyke Cottage,\nGrasmere. She married a man named Davis, and died in 1872 at Broughton\nin Furness. The swollen \"flood\" from which she rescued the lamb,\nwas Wyke Gill beck, which descends from the centre of Silver Howe.\nThe picturesque cottage, with round chimney,--a yew tree and Scotch\nfir behind it,--is on the western side of the road from Grasmere\nover to Langdale by Red Bank. The Mackereths have been a well-known\nWestmoreland family for some hundred years. They belong to the \"gentry\nof the soil,\" and have been parish clerks in Grasmere for generations.\nOne of them was the tenant of the Swan Inn referred to in _The\nWaggoner_--the host who painted, with his own hand, the \"famous swan,\"\nused as a sign. (See vol. iii. p. 81.)\n\nThe story of _The Blind Highland Boy_, which gave rise to the poem\nbearing that name, was told to Wordsworth by one of these Mackereths\nof Grasmere. (See the Fenwick note, vol. ii. p. 420.) In a letter to\nProfessor Henry Reed (31st July 1845) Wordsworth said this poem might\ninterest him \"as exhibiting what sort of characters our mountains\nbreed. It is truth to the letter.\"--ED.\n\n[291] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 its simple dam.\n\n    MS.\n\n[292] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 must lie in earth.\n\n    MS.\n\n[293] Compare _Grace Darling_, p. 311 in this volume.--ED.\n\n[294] 1845.\n\n    Leave that word--and here be offered\n    Prayer that Grace divine would raise\n    This humane courageous spirit\n    Up to Heaven through peaceful ways.\n\n    In a letter to Henry Reed, July 1845.\n\n\nAT FURNESS ABBEY\n\nComposed 1845.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Sonnets.\"--ED.\n\n    Well have yon Railway Labourers to THIS ground\n    Withdrawn for noontide rest. They sit, they walk\n    Among the Ruins, but no idle talk\n    Is heard; to grave demeanour all are bound;\n    And from one voice a Hymn with tuneful sound                       5\n    Hallows once more the long-deserted Quire[295]\n    And thrills the old sepulchral earth, around.\n    Others look up, and with fixed eyes admire\n    That wide-spanned arch, wondering how it was raised,\n    To keep, so high in air, its strength and grace:                  10\n    All seem to feel the spirit of the place,\n    And by the general reverence God is praised:\n    Profane Despoilers, stand ye not reproved,\n    While thus these simple-hearted men are moved?\n\n    _June 21st, 1845._\n\n[295] See the note to the previous sonnet on Furness Abbey, p. 168.--ED.\n\n\n\"YES! THOU ART FAIR, YET BE NOT MOVED\"\n\nComposed possibly in 1845.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Poems founded on the Affections.\"--ED.\n\n    Yes! thou art fair, yet be not moved\n      To scorn the declaration,\n    That sometimes I in thee have loved\n      My fancy's own creation.\n\n    Imagination needs must stir;                                       5\n      Dear Maid, this truth believe,\n    Minds that have nothing to confer\n      Find little to perceive.\n\n    Be pleased that nature made thee fit\n      To feed my heart's devotion,                                    10\n    By laws to which all Forms submit\n      In sky, air, earth, and ocean.\n\n\n\"WHAT HEAVENLY SMILES! O LADY MINE\"\n\nComposed 1845.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Poems founded on the Affections.\"--ED.\n\n    What heavenly smiles! O Lady mine\n    Through my[296] very heart they shine;\n    And, if my brow gives back their light,\n    Do thou look gladly on the sight;\n    As the clear Moon with modest pride\n      Beholds her own bright beams\n    Reflected from the mountain's side\n      And from the headlong streams.\n\n[296] 1845.\n\n    \u2026 this \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n\nTO A LADY,\n\nIN ANSWER TO A REQUEST THAT I WOULD WRITE HER A POEM UPON SOME DRAWINGS\nTHAT SHE HAD MADE OF FLOWERS IN THE ISLAND OF MADEIRA\n\nComposed 1845.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Poems of the Fancy.\"--ED.\n\n    Fair Lady! can I sing of flowers\n      That in Madeira bloom and fade,\n    I who ne'er sate within their bowers,\n      Nor through their sunny lawns have strayed?\n    How they in sprightly dance are worn                               5\n      By Shepherd-groom or May-day queen,\n    Or holy festal pomps adorn,\n      These eyes have never seen.\n\n    Yet tho' to me the pencil's art\n      No like remembrances can give,                                  10\n    Your portraits still may reach the heart\n      And there for gentle pleasure live;\n    While Fancy ranging with free scope\n      Shall on some lovely Alien set\n    A name with us endeared to hope,                                  15\n      To peace, or fond regret.[297]\n\n    Still as we look with nicer care,\n      Some new resemblance we may trace:\n    A _Heart's-ease_ will perhaps be there,\n      A _Speedwell_ may not want its place.                           20\n    And so may we, with charm\u00e8d mind\n      Beholding what your skill has wrought,\n    Another _Star-of-Bethlehem_ find,\n      A new[298] _Forget-me-not_.\n\n    From earth to heaven with motion fleet                            25\n      From heaven to earth our thoughts will pass,\n    A _Holy-thistle_ here we meet\n      And there a _Shepherd's weather-glass_;\n    And haply some familiar name\n      Shall grace the fairest, sweetest, plant                        30\n    Whose presence cheers the drooping frame\n      Of English Emigrant.\n\n    Gazing she feels its power beguile\n      Sad thoughts, and breathes with easier breath;\n    Alas! that meek that tender smile                                 35\n      Is but a harbinger of death:\n    And pointing with a feeble hand\n      She says, in faint words by sighs broken,\n    Bear for me to my native land\n      This precious Flower, true love's last token.                   40\n\n[297] 1845.\n\n      And there in sweet communion live:\n    Yet those loved most, in which we own\n      A touching likeness which they bear\n    To flower or herb, by Nature sown,\n      To breathe our English air.\n\n    MS.\n\n      And there in sweet communion live\n    Admired for beauty of their own,\n      Loved for the likeness some may bear\n    To flower \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n    Thus tempted Fancy with free scope\n      Will range, and on these aliens set\n    Names among us endeared to none,\n      To hearts a fond regret.\n\n    MS.\n\n    So tempted \u2026\n      May range, \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[298]\n\n    Nor miss \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n\nTO THE PENNSYLVANIANS\n\nComposed 1845.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n    Days undefiled by luxury or sloth,\n    Firm self-denial, manners grave and staid,\n    Rights equal, laws with cheerfulness obeyed,\n    Words that require no sanction from an oath,\n    And simple honesty a common growth--                               5\n    This high repute, with bounteous Nature's aid,\n    Won confidence, now ruthlessly betrayed\n    At will, your power the measure of your troth!--\n    All who revere the memory of Penn\n    Grieve for the land on whose wild woods his name[299]             10\n    Was fondly grafted with a virtuous aim,\n    Renounced, abandoned by degenerate Men\n    For state-dishonour black as ever came\n    To upper air from Mammon's loathsome den.[300]\n\n[299] To William Penn, son of Admiral Sir W. Penn, a printer and\nQuaker, Charles II. granted lands in America, to which he gave the name\nof Pennsylvania.--ED.\n\n[300] Mr. Ellis Yarnall wrote to me, April 27, 1885: \"The three last\nlines of the Sonnet _To the Pennsylvanians_, in regard to which you\ninquire, I think refer to what at the time Wordsworth wrote was known\nas the _repudiation_ by Pennsylvania of her State debt. The language,\nhowever, is too strong, inasmuch as there was _no_ repudiation. For a\nyear or two the _interest_ on the debt was unpaid, then payment was\nresumed. Members of Wordsworth's family, or his near friends, held, I\nbelieve, some of the Pennsylvania bonds. They held also, as appears\nfrom the _Memoirs_, Mississippi bonds, and these _were_ repudiated, or\nat least five million dollars of a certain class of Mississippi bonds.\nNo such wrong-doing is chargeable to Pennsylvania. I remember the\ndelight with which Professor Reed showed me the note on the fly-leaf at\nthe end of the fifth volume of the edition of 1850--words written at\nhis request, and the last sentences ever composed by the Poet for the\npress.\"--ED.\n\n\n\"YOUNG ENGLAND--WHAT IS THEN BECOME OF OLD\"\n\nComposed 1845.--Published 1845\n\nOne of the \"Sonnets dedicated to Liberty and Order.\"--ED.\n\n    Young England--what is then become of Old\n    Of dear Old England? Think they she is dead,\n    Dead to the very name? Presumption fed\n    On empty air! That name will keep its hold\n    In the true filial bosom's inmost fold                             5\n    For ever.--The Spirit of Alfred, at the head\n    Of all who for her rights watch'd, toil'd and bled,\n    Knows that this prophecy is not too bold.\n    What--how! shall she submit in will and deed\n    To Beardless Boys--an imitative race,                             10\n    The _servum pecus_ of a Gallic breed?\n    Dear Mother! if thou _must_ thy steps retrace,\n    Go where at least meek Innocency dwells;\n    Let Babes and Sucklings be thy oracles.\n\n\n\n\n1846\n\nThe poems written in 1846 were six sonnets, the lines beginning, \"I\nknow an aged man constrained to dwell,\" an \"Evening Voluntary,\" and\nother two short pieces.--ED.\n\n\nSONNET[301]\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\nThis was placed among the \"Epitaphs and Elegiac Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    Why should we weep or mourn, Angelic boy,\n    For such thou wert ere from our sight removed,\n    Holy, and ever dutiful--beloved\n    From day to day with never-ceasing joy,\n    And hopes as dear as could the heart employ                        5\n    In aught to earth pertaining? Death has proved\n    His might, nor less his mercy, as behoved--\n    Death conscious that he only could destroy\n    The bodily frame. That beauty is laid low\n    To moulder in a far-off field of Rome;                            10\n    But Heaven is now, blest Child, thy Spirit's home:\n    When such divine communion, which we know,\n    Is felt, thy Roman-burial place will be\n    Surely a sweet remembrancer of Thee.\n\n[301] This sonnet refers to the poet's grandchild, who died at Rome\nin the beginning of 1846. Wordsworth wrote of it thus to Professor\nHenry Reed, \"_Jan. 23, 1846._ \u2026 Our daughter-in-law fell into bad\nhealth between three and four years ago. She went with her husband to\nMadeira, where they remained nearly a year; she was then advised to go\nto Italy. After a prolonged residence there, her six children (whom her\nhusband returned to England for), went, at her earnest request, to that\ncountry, under their father's guidance; then he was obliged, on account\nof his duty as a clergyman, to leave them. Four of the number resided\nwith their mother at Rome, three of whom took a fever there, of which\nthe youngest--as noble a boy of five years as ever was seen--died,\nbeing seized with convulsions when the fever was somewhat subdued.\"--ED.\n\n\n\"WHERE LIES THE TRUTH? HAS MAN, IN WISDOM'S CREED\"\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\nOne of the \"Evening Voluntaries.\"--ED.\n\n    Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom's creed,\n    A pitiable doom; for respite brief\n    A care more anxious, or a heavier grief?\n    Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed\n    God's bounty, soon forgotten; or indeed,                           5\n    Must Man, with labour born, awake to sorrow[302]\n    When Flowers rejoice and Larks with rival speed\n    Spring from their nests to bid the Sun good morrow?\n    They mount for rapture as their[303] songs proclaim\n    Warbled in hearing both of earth and sky;                         10\n    But o'er the contrast wherefore heave a sigh?\n    Like those aspirants let us soar--our aim,\n    Through life's worst trials, whether shocks or snares,\n    A happier, brighter, purer Heaven than theirs.[304]\n\n[302] 1850.\n\n    Who that lies down and may not wake to sorrow\n\n    MS.\n\n[303] 1850.\n\n    They mount for rapture; this their \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[304] This sonnet was suggested by the death of Wordsworth's grandson\ncommemorated in the previous sonnet, and by the alarming illness of his\nbrother, the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and the expected\ndeath of a nephew (John Wordsworth), at Ambleside, the only son of his\neldest brother, Richard.--ED.\n\n\nTO LUCCA GIORDANO[305]\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\nOne of the \"Evening Voluntaries.\"--ED.\n\n    Giordano, verily thy Pencil's skill\n    Hath here portrayed with Nature's happiest grace\n    The fair Endymion couched on Latmos-hill;\n    And Dian gazing on the Shepherd's face\n    In rapture,--yet suspending her embrace,                           5\n    As not unconscious with what power the thrill\n    Of her most timid touch his sleep would chase,\n    And, with his sleep, that beauty calm and still.\n    O may this work have found its last retreat\n    Here in a Mountain-bard's secure abode,                           10\n    One to whom, yet a School-boy, Cynthia showed\n    A face of love which he in love would greet,\n    Fixed, by her smile, upon some rocky seat;\n    Or lured along where green-wood paths he trod.\n\n    RYDAL MOUNT, 1846.\n\n[305] Lucca Giordano was born at Naples, in 1629. He was at first a\ndisciple of Spagnaletto, next of Pietro da Cortona; but after coming\nunder the influence of Correggio, he went to Venice, where Titian was\nhis inspiring master. In his own work the influence of all of these\npredecessors may be traced, but chiefly that of Titian, whose style\nof colouring and composition he followed so closely that many of his\nworks might be mistaken for those of his greatest master. The picture\nreferred to in this sonnet was brought from Italy by the poet's eldest\nson.--ED.\n\n\n\"WHO BUT IS PLEASED TO WATCH THE MOON ON HIGH\"\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\nOne of the \"Evening Voluntaries.\"--ED.\n\n    Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high\n    Travelling where she from time to time enshrouds\n    Her head, and nothing loth her Majesty\n    Renounces, till among the scattered clouds\n    One with its kindling edge declares that soon                      5\n    Will reappear before the uplifted eye\n    A Form as bright, as beautiful a moon,\n    To glide in open prospect through clear sky.\n    Pity that such a promise e'er should prove\n    False in the issue, that yon seeming space                        10\n    Of sky should be in truth the stedfast face\n    Of a cloud flat and dense, through which must move\n    (By transit not unlike man's frequent doom)\n    The Wanderer lost in more determined gloom.\n\n\nILLUSTRATED BOOKS AND NEWSPAPERS\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\nOne of the \"Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.\"--ED.\n\n    Discourse was deemed Man's noblest attribute,\n    And written words the glory of his hand;\n    Then followed Printing with enlarged command\n    For thought--dominion vast and absolute\n    For spreading truth, and making love expand.                       5\n    Now prose and verse sunk into disrepute\n    Must lacquey a dumb Art that best can suit\n    The taste of this once-intellectual Land.\n    A backward movement surely have we here,[306]\n    From manhood--back to childhood; for the age--                    10\n    Back towards caverned life's first rude career.\n    Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page!\n    Must eyes be all in all, the tongue and ear\n    Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage!\n\n[306] The _Illustrated London News_--the pioneer of illustrated\nnewspapers--was first issued on 14th May 1842. The painter and artist\nmay differ from the poet, in the judgment here pronounced; but had\nWordsworth known the degradation to which many newspapers would sink in\nthis direction, his censure would have been more severe.--ED.\n\n\nSONNET\n\nTO AN OCTOGENARIAN\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\n    Affections lose their object; Time brings forth\n    No successors; and, lodged in memory,\n    If love exist no longer, it must die,--\n    Wanting accustomed food must pass from earth,\n    Or never hope to reach a second birth.[307]                        5\n    This sad belief, the happiest that is left\n    To thousands, share not Thou; howe'er bereft,\n    Scorned, or neglected, fear not such a dearth.\n    Though poor and destitute of friends thou art,\n    Perhaps the sole survivor of thy race,                            10\n    One to whom Heaven assigns that mournful part\n    The utmost solitude of age to face,\n    Still shall be left some corner of the heart\n    Where Love for living Thing can find a place.\n\n[307] Compare Tennyson's _Lines to J.S._--\n\n    God gives us love. Something to love\n      He lends us; but, when love is grown\n    To ripeness, that on which it throve\n      Falls off, and love is left alone.\n\nED.\n\n\n\"I KNOW AN AGED MAN CONSTRAINED TO DWELL\"\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    I know an aged Man constrained to dwell\n    In a large house of public charity,\n    Where he abides, as in a Prisoner's cell,\n    With numbers near, alas! no company.\n\n    When he could creep about, at will, though poor                    5\n    And forced to live on alms, this old Man fed\n    A Redbreast, one that to his cottage door\n    Came not, but in a lane partook his bread.\n\n    There, at the root of one particular tree,\n    An easy seat this worn-out Labourer found                         10\n    While Robin pecked the crumbs upon his knee\n    Laid one by one, or scattered on the ground.\n\n    Dear intercourse was theirs, day after day;\n    What signs of mutual gladness when they met!\n    Think of their common peace, their simple play,                   15\n    The parting moment and its fond regret.\n\n    Months passed in love that failed not to fulfil,\n    In spite of season's change, its own demand,\n    By fluttering pinions here and busy bill;\n    There by caresses from a tremulous hand.                          20\n\n    Thus in the chosen spot a tie so strong\n    Was formed between the solitary pair,\n    That when his fate had housed him 'mid a throng\n    The Captive shunned all converse proffered there.\n\n    Wife, children, kindred, they were dead and gone;                 25\n    But, if no evil hap his wishes crossed,\n    One living Stay was left, and on[308] that one\n    Some recompense for all that he had lost.\n\n    O that the good old Man had power to prove,\n    By message sent through air or visible token,                     30\n    That still he loves the Bird, and still must love;\n    That friendship lasts though fellowship is broken!\n\n[308] So all the editions have it; but, as Principal Greenwood\nsuggested to me, the true reading should be \"in that one.\"--ED.\n\n\n\"THE UNREMITTING VOICE OF NIGHTLY STREAMS\"\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\nOne of the \"Poems of Sentiment and Reflection.\"--ED.\n\n    The unremitting voice of nightly streams\n    That wastes so oft, we think, its tuneful powers,\n    If neither soothing to the worm that gleams\n    Through dewy grass, nor small birds hushed in bowers,\n    Nor unto silent leaves and drowsy flowers,--                       5\n    That voice of unpretending harmony\n    (For who what is shall measure by what seems\n    To be, or not to be,[309]\n    Or tax high Heaven with prodigality?)\n    Wants not a healing influence that can creep                      10\n    Into the human breast, and mix with sleep\n    To regulate the motion of our dreams\n    For kindly issues--as through every clime\n    Was felt near murmuring brooks in earliest time;\n    As at this day, the rudest swains who dwell                       15\n    Where torrents roar, or hear the tinkling knell\n    Of water-breaks, with grateful heart could tell.\n\n[309] _Hamlet_, act III. scene i. l. 56.--ED.\n\n\n\"HOW BEAUTIFUL THE QUEEN OF NIGHT, ON HIGH\"\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\nOne of the \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"--ED.\n\n    How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high\n    Her way pursuing among scattered clouds,\n    Where, ever and anon, her head she shrouds\n    Hidden from view in dense obscurity.\n    But look, and to the watchful eye\n    A brightening edge will indicate that soon\n    We shall behold the struggling Moon\n    Break forth,--again to walk the clear blue sky.\n\n\nON THE BANKS OF A ROCKY STREAM\n\nComposed 1846.--Published 1850\n\n    Behold an emblem of our human mind\n    Crowded with thoughts that need a settled home\n    Yet, like to eddying balls of foam\n    Within this whirlpool, they each other chase\n    Round and round, and neither find\n    An outlet nor a resting-place!\n    Stranger, if such disquietude be thine,\n    Fall on thy knees and sue for help divine.\n\n\nODE\n\nINTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD\n\nComposed 1803-6.--Published 1807\n\n[This was composed during my residence at Town-end, Grasmere. Two years\nat least passed between the writing of the four first stanzas and\nthe remaining part. To the attentive and competent reader the whole\nsufficiently explains itself; but there may be no harm in adverting\nhere to particular feelings or _experiences_ of my own mind on which\nthe structure of the poem partly rests. Nothing was more difficult for\nme in childhood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable\nto my own being. I have said elsewhere--\n\n                  A simple child,\n    That lightly draws its breath,\n    And feels its life in every limb,\n    What should it know of death!--\n\nBut it was not so much from feelings of animal vivacity that my\ndifficulty came as from a sense of the indomitableness of the Spirit\nwithin me. I used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and\nalmost to persuade myself that, whatever might become of others, I\nshould be translated, in something of the same way, to heaven. With\na feeling congenial to this, I was often unable to think of external\nthings as having external existence, and I communed with all that I saw\nas something not apart from, but inherent in, my own immaterial nature.\nMany times while going to school have I grasped at a wall or tree to\nrecall myself from this abyss of idealism to the reality. At that\ntime I was afraid of such processes. In later periods of life I have\ndeplored, as we have all reason to do, a subjugation of an opposite\ncharacter, and have rejoiced over the remembrances, as is expressed in\nthe lines--\n\n              Obstinate questionings\n    Of sense and outward things,\n    Fallings from us, vanishings, etc.\n\nTo that dream-like vividness and splendour which invest objects of\nsight in childhood, every one, I believe, if he would look back, could\nbear testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here; but having in the\npoem regarded it as presumptive evidence of a prior state of existence,\nI think it right to protest against a conclusion, which has given\npain to some good and pious persons, that I meant to inculcate such a\nbelief. It is far too shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith, as\nmore than an element in our instincts of immortality. But let us bear\nin mind that, though the idea is not advanced in revelation, there is\nnothing there to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an analogy\nin its favour. Accordingly, a pre-existent state has entered into the\npopular creeds of many nations; and, among all persons acquainted with\nclassic literature, is known as an ingredient in Platonic philosophy.\nArchimedes said that he could move the world if he had a point whereon\nto rest his machine. Who has not felt the same aspirations as regards\nthe world of his own mind?[310] Having to wield some of its elements\nwhen I was impelled to write this poem on the \"Immortality of the\nSoul,\" I took hold of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient\nfoundation in humanity for authorizing me to make for my purpose the\nbest use of it I could as a poet.--I.F.]\n\n    The Child is Father of the Man;\n    And I could wish my days to be\n    Bound each to each by natural piety.[311]\n\n                          I\n\n    There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,\n    The earth, and every common sight,\n            To me did seem\n          Apparelled in celestial light,\n    The glory and the freshness of a dream.                            5\n    It is not now as it hath[312] been of yore;--\n          Turn wheresoe'er I may,\n            By night or day,\n    The things which I have seen I now can see no more.\n\n                          II\n\n            The Rainbow comes and goes,                               10\n            And lovely is the Rose,\n            The Moon doth with delight\n      Look round her when the heavens are bare,\n            Waters on a starry night\n            Are beautiful and fair;                                   15\n        The sunshine is a glorious birth;\n        But yet I know, where'er I go,\n    That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.\n\n                         III\n\n    Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,\n        And while the young lambs bound                               20\n            As to the tabor's sound,\n    To me alone there came a thought of grief:\n    A timely utterance gave that thought relief,\n            And I again am strong:\n    The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;                 25\n    No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;\n    I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,\n    The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,\n            And all the earth is gay;\n                Land and sea                                          30\n          Give themselves up to jollity,\n            And with the heart of May\n          Doth every Beast keep holiday;--\n            Thou Child of Joy,\n    Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy Shepherd-boy!  35\n\n                          IV\n\n    Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call\n        Ye to each other make; I see\n    The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;\n        My heart is at your festival,\n          My head hath its coronal,[313]                              40\n    The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.[314]\n          Oh evil day! if I were sullen\n          While Earth herself is adorning,[315]\n              This sweet May-morning,\n          And the Children are culling[316]                           45\n              On every side,\n          In a thousand valleys far and wide,\n          Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,\n    And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:--\n          I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!                            50\n          --But there's a Tree, of many, one,\n    A single Field which I have looked upon,\n    Both of them speak of something that is gone:\n          The <DW29> at my feet\n          Doth the same tale repeat:                                  55\n    Whither is fled the visionary gleam?\n    Where is it now,[317] the glory and the dream?\n\n                          V\n\n    Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:\n    The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,\n          Hath had elsewhere its setting,                             60\n            And cometh from afar:\n          Not in entire forgetfulness,\n          And not in utter nakedness,\n    But trailing clouds of glory do we come\n          From God, who is our home:                                  65\n    Heaven lies about us in our infancy!\n    Shades of the prison-house begin to close\n          Upon the growing Boy,\n    But He beholds the light, and whence it flows\n          He sees it in his joy;                                      70\n    The Youth, who daily farther from the east\n          Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,\n          And by the vision splendid\n          Is on his way attended;\n    At length the Man perceives it[318] die away,                     75\n    And fade into the light of common day.[319]\n\n                          VI\n\n    Earth fills her lap with pleasures[320] of her own;\n    Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,\n    And, even with something of a Mother's mind,\n          And no unworthy aim,                                        80\n          The homely Nurse doth all she can\n    To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man,\n          Forget the glories he hath known,\n    And that imperial palace whence he came.\n\n                         VII\n\n    Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,                      85\n    A six years' Darling[321] of a pigmy size!\n    See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,\n    Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,\n    With light upon him from his father's eyes!\n    See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,                      90\n    Some fragment from his dream of human life,\n    Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;\n        A wedding or a festival,\n        A mourning or a funeral;\n          And this hath now his heart,                                95\n        And unto this he frames his song:\n          Then will he fit his tongue\n    To dialogues of business, love, or strife;\n        But it will not be long\n        Ere this be thrown aside,                                    100\n        And with new joy and pride\n    The little Actor cons another part;\n    Filling from time to time his \"humorous stage\"[322]\n    With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,\n    That Life brings with her in her equipage;                       105\n        As if his whole vocation\n        Were endless imitation.\n\n                         VIII\n\n    Thou, whose exterior semblance[323] doth belie\n        Thy Soul's immensity;\n    Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep                         110\n    Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,\n    That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,\n    Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,--\n          Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!\n          On whom those truths do rest,                              115\n    Which we are toiling all our lives to find,\n    In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;[324]\n    Thou, over whom thy Immortality\n    Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave,\n    A Presence which is not to be put by;[325]                       120\n    Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might\n    Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,[326]\n    Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke\n    The years to bring the inevitable yoke,\n    Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?                     125\n    Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,\n    And custom[327] lie upon thee with a weight,[328]\n    Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!\n\n                          IX\n\n            O joy! that in our embers\n            Is something that doth live,                             130\n            That nature yet remembers\n            What was so fugitive!\n    The thought of our past years in me doth breed\n    Perpetual benediction;[329] not indeed\n    For that which is most worthy to be blest;                       135\n    Delight and liberty, the simple creed\n    Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,\n    With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:--[330]\n            Not for these I raise\n            The song of thanks and praise;                           140\n          But for those obstinate questionings\n          Of sense and outward things,\n          Fallings from us, vanishings;\n          Blank misgivings of a Creature\n    Moving about in worlds not realised,                             145\n    High instincts before which our mortal Nature\n    Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:\n            But for those first affections,\n            Those shadowy recollections,\n          Which, be they what they may,                              150\n    Are yet the fountain light of all our day,\n    Are yet a master light of all our seeing;\n        Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make[331]\n    Our noisy years seem moments in the being\n    Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,                        155\n          To perish never;\n    Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,\n            Nor Man nor Boy,\n    Nor all that is at enmity with joy,\n    Can utterly abolish or destroy!                                  160\n          Hence in a season of calm weather,\n            Though inland far we be,\n    Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea\n            Which brought us hither,\n          Can in a moment travel thither,                            165\n    And see the Children sport upon the shore,\n    And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.\n\n                          X\n\n    Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!\n          And let the young Lambs bound\n          As to the tabor's sound!                                   170\n    We in thought will join your throng,\n          Ye that pipe and ye that play,\n          Ye that through your hearts to-day\n          Feel the gladness of the May!\n    What though the radiance which was once so bright                175\n    Be now for ever taken from my sight,\n        Though nothing can bring back the hour\n    Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;\n          We will grieve not, rather find\n          Strength in what remains behind;                           180\n          In the primal sympathy\n          Which having been must ever be;\n          In the soothing thoughts that spring\n          Out of human suffering;\n          In the faith that looks through death,                     185\n    In years that bring the philosophic mind.\n\n                          XI\n\n    And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,\n    Forebode not any severing[332] of our loves!\n    Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;\n    I only have relinquished one delight                             190\n    To live beneath your more habitual sway.\n    I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,\n    Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;\n    The innocent brightness of a new-born Day\n                  Is lovely yet;                                     195\n    The Clouds that gather round the setting sun\n    Do take a sober colouring from an eye\n    That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;\n    Another race hath been, and other palms are won.[333]\n    Thanks to the human heart by which we live,                      200\n    Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,\n    To me the meanest flower that blows[334] can give\n    Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.[335]\n\nThis great _Ode_ was first printed as the last poem in the second\nvolume of the edition of 1807. At that date Wordsworth gave it the\nsimple title _Ode_, prefixing to it the motto, \"Paul\u00f2 majora canamus.\"\nIn 1815, when he revised the poem throughout, he named it--in\nthe characteristic manner of many of his titles--diffuse and yet\nprecise, _Ode. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early\nChildhood_; and he then prefixed to it the lines of his own earlier\npoem on the Rainbow (March 1802):--\n\n    The Child is Father of the Man;\n    And I could wish my days to be\n    Bound each to each by natural piety.\n\nIt retained this longer title and motto in all subsequent editions. In\nthe editions 1807 to 1820, it was placed by itself at the end of the\npoems, and formed their natural conclusion and climax. In the editions\n1827 and 1832, it was inappropriately put amongst \"Epitaphs and Elegiac\nPoems.\" The evident mistake of placing it amongst these seems to have\nsuggested to Wordsworth, in 1836, its having a place by itself,--which\nhe gave it then and retained in the subsequent editions of 1842 and\n1849,--when it closed the series of minor poems in Volume V., and\npreceded the _Excursion_ in Volume VI. The same arrangement was adopted\nin the double-columned single volume edition of 1845.\n\nMr. Aubrey de Vere has urged me to take it out of its chronological\nplace, and let it conclude the whole series of Wordsworth's poems, as\nthe greatest, and that to which all others lead up. Mr. De Vere's wish\nis based on conversations which he had with the poet himself.\n\nThe _Ode, Intimations of Immortality_, was written at intervals,\nbetween the years 1803 and 1806; and it was subjected to frequent and\ncareful revision. No poem of Wordsworth's bears more evident traces\nin its structure at once of inspiration and elaboration; of original\nflight of thought and _afflatus_ on the one hand, and on the other of\ncareful sculpture and fastidious choice of phrase. But it is remarkable\nthat there are very few changes of text in the successive editions.\nMost of the alterations were made before 1815, and the omission of some\nfeeble lines which originally stood in stanza viii. in the editions\nof 1807 and 1815, was a great advantage in disencumbering the poem.\nThe main revision and elaboration of this Ode, however--an elaboration\nwhich suggests the passage of the glacier ice over the rocks of White\nMoss Common, where the poem was murmured out stanza by stanza--was all\nfinished before it first saw the light in 1807. In form it is irregular\nand original. And perhaps the most remarkable thing in its structure,\nis the frequent change of the keynote, and the skill and delicacy with\nwhich the transitions are made. \"The feet throughout are iambic. The\nlines vary in length from the Alexandrine to the line with two accents.\nThere is a constant ebb and flow in the full tide of song, but scarce\ntwo waves are alike.\" (Hawes Turner, _Selections from Wordsworth_.)\n\nIn the \"notes\" to the _Selections_ just referred to on Immortality,\nthere is an excellent commentary on this _Ode_, almost every line of\nwhich is worthy of minute analysis and study. Some of the following are\nsuggested by Mr. Turner's notes.\n\n    (1) _The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep._\n\nThe morning breeze blowing from the fields that were dark during the\nhours of sleep.\n\n    (2) --_But there's a Tree, of many, one._\n\nCompare Browning's _May and Death_--\n\n    Only one little sight, one plant\n    Woods have in May, etc.\n\n    (3) _The <DW29> at my feet_\n    _Doth the same tale repeat._\n\nFrench \"Pens\u00e9e.\" \"<DW29>s, that's for thoughts.\" Ophelia in _Hamlet_.\n\n    (4) _Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting._\n\nThis thought Wordsworth owed, consciously or unconsciously, to Plato.\nThough he tells us in the Fenwick note that he did not mean to\n_inculcate_ the belief, there is no doubt that he clung to the notion\nof a life pre-existing the present, on grounds similar to those on\nwhich he believed in a life to come. But there are some differences in\nthe way in which the idea commended itself to Plato and to Wordsworth.\nThe stress was laid by Wordsworth on the effect of terrestrial life\nin putting the higher faculties to sleep, and making us \"forget the\nglories we have known.\" Plato, on the other hand, looked upon the\nmingled experiences of mundane life as inducing a gradual but slow\nremembrance (\u1f00\u03bd\u03ac\u03bc\u03bd\u03b5\u03c3\u03b9\u03c2) of the past. Compare Tennyson's _Two Voices_,\nand Wordsworth's sonnet, beginning--\n\n    Man's life is like a sparrow, mighty king.\n\n    (5) _Filling from time to time his \"humorous stage\"_\n    _With all the Persons,_\n\n_i.e._ with the _dramatis person\u00e6_.\n\n    (6) \u2026 _thou Eye among the blind,_\n    _That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep._\n\nThere is an admirable parallel illustration of Wordsworth's use of this\nfigure (describing one sense in terms of another), in the lines in\n_Airey-Force Valley_--\n\n    A soft eye-music of slow-waving boughs.\n\n    (7) _Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,_\n    _And custom lie upon thee with a weight,_\n    _Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!_\n\nCompare with this, the lines in the fourth book of _The Excursion_,\nbeginning--\n\n    Alas! the endowment of immortal power\n    Is matched unequally with custom, time.\n\n    (8) _Fallings from us, vanishings._\n\nThe outward sensible universe, visible and tangible, seeming to\nfall away from us, as unreal, to vanish in unsubstantially. See the\nexplanation of this youthful experience in the Fenwick note. That\nconfession of his boyish days at Hawkshead, \"many times, while going to\nschool, have I grasped at a wall or tree, _to recall myself from this\nabyss of idealism to the reality_\" (by which he explains those--\n\n    Fallings from us, vanishings, etc.),\n\nsuggests a similar experience and confession of Cardinal Newman's in\nhis _Apologia_ (see p. 67).\n\nThe late Rev. Robert Perceval Graves, of Windermere, and afterwards of\nDublin, wrote to me in 1850:--\"I remember Mr. Wordsworth saying, that\nat a particular stage of his mental progress, he used to be frequently\nso rapt into an unreal transcendental world of ideas that the external\nworld seemed no longer to exist in relation to him, and he _had to\nreconvince himself of its existence by clasping a tree, or something\nthat happened to be near him_. I could not help connecting this fact\nwith that obscure passage in his great _Ode on the Intimations of\nImmortality_, in which he speaks of--\n\n        Those obstinate questionings\n    Of sense and outward things;\n    Fallings from us, vanishings; etc.\"\n\nProfessor Bonamy Price further confirms the explanation which\nWordsworth gave of the passage, in a letter written to me in 1881,\ngiving an account of a conversation he had with the poet, as follows:--\n\n                                         \"OXFORD, _April 21, 1881_.\n\n    \"MY DEAR SIR,--You will be glad, I am sure, to receive an\n    interpretation, which chance enabled me to obtain from\n    Wordsworth himself of a passage in the immortal _Ode on\n    Immortality_.\u2026\n\n    \"It happened one day that the poet, my wife, and I were taking\n    a walk together by the side of Rydal Water. We were then by the\n    sycamores under Nab Scar. The aged poet was in a most genial\n    mood, and it suddenly occurred to me that I might, without\n    unwarrantable presumption, seize the golden opportunity thus\n    offered, and ask him to explain these mysterious words. So\n    I addressed him with an apology, and begged him to explain,\n    what my own feeble mother-wit was unable to unravel, and for\n    which I had in vain sought the assistance of others, what\n    were those 'fallings from us, vanishings,' for which, above\n    all other things, he gave God thanks. The venerable old man\n    raised his aged form erect; he was walking in the middle,\n    and passed across me to a five-barred gate in the wall which\n    bounded the road on the side of the lake. He clenched the top\n    bar firmly with his right hand, pushed strongly against it,\n    and then uttered these ever-memorable words: 'There was a time\n    in my life when I had to push against something that resisted,\n    to be sure that there was anything outside of me. I was sure\n    of my own mind; everything else fell away, and vanished into\n    thought.' Thought, he was sure of; matter for him, at the\n    moment, was an unreality--nothing but a thought. Such natural\n    spontaneous idealism has probably never been felt by any other\n    man.\n\n                                                    \"BONAMY PRICE.\"\n\nThis, however, was not an experience peculiar to Wordsworth, as\nProfessor Price imagined--and its value would be much lessened if it\nhad been so--but was one to which (as the poet said to Miss Fenwick)\n\"every one, if he would look back, could bear testimony.\"\n\nThe following is from S.T. Coleridge's _Biographia Literaria_ (chap.\nxxii. p. 29, edition 1817)--\n\n\"To the _Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of\nEarly Childhood_, the poet might have prefixed the lines which Dante\naddresses to one of his own Canzoni--\n\n    Canzone, i' credo, che saranno radi\n    Color che tua ragione intendan bene:\n    Tanto lor sei faticoso ed alto.\n\n    O lyric song, there will be few, think I,\n    Who may thy import understand aright:\n    Thou art for them so arduous and so high!\n\nBut the Ode was intended for such readers only as had been accustomed\nto watch the flux and reflux of their inmost nature, to venture\nat times into the twilight realms of consciousness, and to feel a\ndeep interest in modes of inmost being, to which they know that the\nattributes of time and space are inapplicable and alien, but which yet\ncannot be conveyed, save in symbols of time and space. For such readers\nthe sense is sufficiently plain, and they will be as little disposed to\ncharge Mr. Wordsworth with believing the Platonic pre-existence in the\nordinary interpretation of the words, as I am to believe, that Plato\nhimself ever meant or taught it.\n\n    \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u03ac \u03bc\u03bf\u03b9 \u1f51\u03c0' \u1f00\u03b3\u03ba\u1ff6\u03bd\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f60\u03ba\u03ad\u03b1 \u03b2\u03ad\u03bb\u03b7\n    \u1f14\u03bd\u03b4\u03bf\u03bd \u1f10\u03bd\u03c4\u1f76 \u03c6\u03b1\u03c1\u03ad\u03c4\u03c1\u03b1\u03c2\n    \u03c6\u03c9\u03bd\u1fb6\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u03c3\u03c5\u03bd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u1fd6\u03c3\u03b9\u03bd \u1f10\u03c2\n    \u03b4\u1f72 \u03c4\u1f78 \u03c0\u1fb6\u03bd \u1f11\u03c1\u03bc\u03b7\u03bd\u03ad\u03c9\u03bd\n    \u03c7\u03b1\u03c4\u03af\u03b6\u03b5\u03b9. \u03c3\u03bf\u03c6\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f41 \u03c0\u03bf\u03bb\u03bb\u1f70 \u03b5\u1f30\u03b4\u1f7c\u03c2 \u03c6\u03c5\u1fb7.\n    \u03bc\u03b1\u03b8\u03cc\u03bd\u03c4\u03b5\u03c2 \u03b4\u1f72 \u03bb\u03ac\u03b2\u03c1\u03bf\u03b9\n    \u03c0\u03b1\u03b3\u03b3\u03bb\u03c9\u03c3\u03c3\u03af\u1fb3, \u03ba\u03cc\u03c1\u03b1\u03ba\u03b5\u03c2 \u1f65\u03c2,\n    \u1f04\u03ba\u03c1\u03b1\u03bd\u03c4\u03b1 \u03b3\u03b1\u03c1\u03cd\u03b5\u03c4\u03bf\u03bd\n    \u0394\u03b9\u1f78\u03c2 \u03c0\u03c1\u1f78\u03c2 \u1f44\u03c1\u03bd\u03b9\u03c7\u03b1 \u03b8\u03b5\u1fd6\u03bf\u03bd.\n\n                 PINDAR, OLYMP. ii.\"[336]\n\nThe following parallel passages from _The Excursion_, _The Prelude_,\nRuskin's _Modern Painters_, Keble's _Praelectiones de Poeticae vi\nMedica_ (p. 788, Prael. xxxix.), and the _Silex Scintillans_ of\nHenry Vaughan, are quoted, in an interesting note to the _Ode_ on\nImmortality, in Professor Henry Reed's American edition of the Poems\n(1851).\n\n    I\n\n                      Ah! why in age\n    Do we revert so fondly to the walks\n    Of childhood--but that there the Soul discerns\n    The dear memorial footsteps unimpaired\n    Of her own native vigour--thence can hear\n    Reverberations; and a choral song,\n    Commingling with the incense that ascends,\n    Undaunted, toward the imperishable heavens,\n    From her own lonely altar?\n\n               _The Excursion_, book ix. ll. 36-44.\n\n    II\n\n                        Our childhood sits,\n    Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne\n    That hath more power than all the elements.\n    I guess not what this tells of Being past,\n    Nor what it augurs of the life to come; etc.\n\n             _The Prelude_, book v. ll. 507-511.\n\nIII\n\n\" \u2026 There was never yet the child of any promise (so far as the\ntheoretic faculties are concerned) but awaked to the sense of beauty\nwith the first gleam of reason; and I suppose there are few, among\nthose who love Nature otherwise than by profession and at second-hand,\nwho look not back to their youngest and least learned days as those of\nthe most intense, superstitious, insatiable, and beatific perception of\nher splendours. And the bitter decline of this glorious feeling, though\nmany note it not, partly owing to the cares and weight of manhood,\nwhich leave them not the time nor the liberty to look for their lost\ntreasure, and partly to the human and divine affections which are\nappointed to take its place, yet have formed the subject, not indeed of\nlamentation, but of holy thankfulness for the witness it bears to the\nimmortal origin and end of our nature, to one whose authority is almost\nwithout appeal in all questions relating to the influence of external\nthings upon the pure human soul.\n\n      Not for these I raise\n      The song of thanks and praise\n    But for those obstinate questionings, etc. etc.\n\nAnd if it were possible for us to recollect all the unaccountable and\nhappy instincts of the careless time, and to reason upon them with the\nmaturer judgment, we might arrive at more right results than either\nthe philosophy or the sophisticated practice of art has yet attained.\nBut we love the perceptions before we are capable of methodising or\ncomparing them.\" (Ruskin's _Modern Painters_, vol. ii. p. 36, part iii.\nch. v. sec. i.)\n\n\" \u2026 Etenim qui velit acutius indagare causas propensae in antiqua\nsaecula voluntatis, mirum ni conjectura incidat aliquando in commentum\nillud Pythagorae, docentis, animarum nostrarum non tum fieri initium,\ncum in hoc mundo nascimur; immo ex ignota quadam regione venire eas,\nin sua quamque corpora; neque tam penitus Lethaeo potu imbui, quin\npermanet quasi quidam anteactae aetatis sapor; hunc autem excitari\nidentidem, et nescio quo sensu percipi, tacito quidem illo et obscuro,\nsed percipi tamen. Atque hac ferme sententia extat summi hac memoria\nPoetae nobilissimum carmen; nempe non aliam ob causam tangi pueritiae\nrecordationem exquisita illa ac pervagata dulcedine, quam propter\ndebilem quendam prioris aevi Deique propioris sensum.\n\nQuamvis autem hanc opinionem vix ferat divinae philosophiae ratio,\nfatemur tamen eam eatenus ad verum accedere, quo sanctum aliquod\net grave tribuit memoriae et caritati puerilium annorum. Nosmet\ncerte infantes novimus quam prope tetigerit Divina benignitas; quis\nporro scit, an omnis illa temporis anteacti dulcedo habeat quandam\nsignificationem Illius Praesentiae?\" (Keble, _Praelectiones de Poeticae\nvi Medica_, p. 788, Prael. xxxix.)\n\n\"CORRUPTION\n\n    Sure, it was so. Man in those early days\n            Was not all stone and earth;\n    He shined a little, and by those weak rays,\n            Had some glimpse of his birth.\n    He saw Heaven o'er his head, and knew from whence\n            He came condemned hither,\n    And, as first Love draws strongest, so from hence\n            His mind sure progressed thither.\"\n\n                    Henry Vaughan, _Silex Scintillans_.\n\nMr. Reed also quotes a passage from Vaughan's poem _Childehood_; but\na more apposite passage may be found in _The Retreate_, in _Silex\nScintillans_.\n\n    Happy those early dayes, when I\n    Shined in my Angell-infancy!\n    Before I understood this place\n    Appointed for my second race,\n    Or taught my soul to fancy ought\n    But a white celestiall thought;\n    When yet I had not walkt above\n    A mile or two from my first Love,\n    And looking back, at that short space,\n    Could see a glimpse of his bright face;\n    When on some _gilded Cloud or Flowre_\n    My gazing soul would dwell an houre,\n    And in those weaker glories spy\n    Some shadows of eternity;\n    \u2026\n    But felt through all this fleshly dresse\n    Bright _shootes_ of everlastingnesse.\n\nThe extent of Wordsworth's debt to Vaughan has been discussed a good\ndeal. There was no copy of the _Silex Scintillans_ in the Rydal\nMount sale-catalogue. I believe that he had read _The Retreate_, and\nforgotten it more completely perhaps than Coleridge forgot Sir John\nDavies' _Orchestra, a Poem on Dancing_, when he wrote _The Ancient\nMariner_.\n\nThe following may be added from _The Friend_ (the edition of 1818),\nvol. i. p. 183:--\"To find no contradiction in the union of old and new\nto contemplate the Ancient of Days with feelings as fresh as if they\nthen sprang forth at his own fiat, this characterizes the minds that\nfeel the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it! To carry on\nthe feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood, to combine the\nchild's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every\nday, for perhaps 40 years, had rendered familiar,\n\n    With sun and moon and stars throughout the year\n    And man and woman----\n\nThis is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks\nwhich distinguish genius from talent.\"--ED.\n\n[310] Compare the Atman of the Vedanta Philosophy.--ED.\n\n[311] See vol. ii. p. 292.--ED.\n\n[312] 1820.\n\n    \u2026 has \u2026\n\n    1807.\n\n[313] Compare _The Idle Shepherd Boys_, ll. 28-30 (vol. ii. p.\n138).--ED.\n\n[314] 1807.\n\n    Even yet more gladness, I can hold it all.\n\n    MS.\n\n[315] 1836.\n\n    While the Earth herself \u2026\n\n    1807.\n\n    \u2026 itself \u2026\n\n    1827.\n\nThe text of 1832 returns to that of 1807.\n\n[316] 1836.\n\n    \u2026 pulling\n\n    1807.\n\n[317]\n\n    Where is it gone, \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[318] 1807.\n\n    \u2026 beholds it \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[319] Compare, in Bacon's Essay _Of Youth and Age_, \"A certaine Rabbine\nupon the Text, _Your Young Men shall see visions, and your Old Men\nshall dream dreames_, inferreth that Young Men are admitted nearer to\nGod than Old, because _Vision_ is a clearer Revelation than a Dreame.\"\n\nSee Professor Max M\u00fcller's note to his translation of the Upanishads\n(_Sacred Books of the East_, vol. xv. p. 164), beginning \"Drivudagomga\nuses a curious argument in support of the existence of another\nworld.\"--ED.\n\n[320] 1807.\n\n    \u2026 pleasure \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[321] 1815.\n\n    A four years' Darling \u2026\n\n    1807.\n\n[322] See, in Daniel's _Musophilus_, the introductory sonnet to Fulke\nGreville, l. 1.--ED.\n\n[323] 1807.\n\n    \u2026 presence \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[324] This line is not in the editions of 1807 and 1815.\n\n[325] The editions of 1807 and 1815 have, after \"put by\":\n\n          To whom the grave\n    Is but a lowly bed without the sense or sight\n          Of day or the warm light,\n    A place of thought where we in waiting lie;\n\n    MS.\n\nThe subsequent omission of these lines was due to Coleridge's\ndisapproval of them, expressed in _Biographia Literaria_.--ED.\n\n[326] 1815.\n\n    Of untamed pleasures, on thy Being's height,\n\n    1807.\n\n[327] 1807.\n\n    The world upon thy noble nature seize\n            With all its vanities,\n    And custom \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[328] Compare _The Excursion_, book iv. ll. 205, 206--\n\n    Alas! the endowment of immortal power\n    Is matched unequally with custom, time.\n\nED.\n\n[329] 1827.\n\n    Perpetual benedictions: \u2026\n\n    1807.\n\n[330] 1815.\n\n    Of Childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,\n    With new-born hope for ever in his breast:\n\n    1807.\n\n[331] 1815.\n\n    Uphold us, cherish us, and make\n\n    1807.\n\n[332] 1836.\n\n    Think not of any severing \u2026\n\n    1807.\n\n[333] Professor Dowden writes of this line: \"It is a sunset reflection,\nnatural to one who has 'kept watch o'er man's mortality': the day is\nclosing, as human lives have closed; the sun went forth out of his\nchamber as a strong man to run a race, and now the race is over and the\npalm has been won: all things have their hour of fulfilment.\" (See vol.\nv. p. 365, of his edition of Wordsworth's Poems.)--ED.\n\n[334] Compare the introduction to the first canto of _Marmion_--\n\n    The vernal sun new life bestows\n    Upon the meanest flower that blows,\n\nED.\n\n[335] Compare Wither's _The Shepherds Hunting_, the fourth eclogue, ll.\n368-380.--ED.\n\n[336] The text of Pindar, as given by S.T.C., is corrected in the above\nquotation.--ED.\n\n\n\n\nPOEMS BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AND BY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH NOT INCLUDED IN\nTHE EDITION OF 1849-50\n\n\n\n\n1787\n\n\nSONNET, ON SEEING MISS HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS WEEP AT A TALE OF\nDISTRESS[337]\n\n    She wept.--Life's purple tide began to flow\n    In languid streams through every thrilling vein;\n    Dim were my swimming eyes--my pulse beat slow,\n    And my full heart was swell'd to dear delicious pain.\n\n    Life left my loaded heart, and closing eye;                        5\n    A sigh recall'd the wanderer to my breast;\n    Dear was the pause of life, and dear the sigh\n    That call'd the wanderer home, and home to rest.\n\n    That tear proclaims--in thee each virtue dwells,\n    And bright will shine in misery's midnight hour;                  10\n    As the soft star of dewy evening tells\n    What radiant fires were drown'd by day's malignant pow'r,\n    That only wait the darkness of the night\n    To chear the wand'ring wretch with hospitable light.\n\n                                                   AXIOLOGUS.\n\n[European Magazine, 1787, vol. xi. p. 302.]\n\nS.T.C. addressed some lines to Wordsworth under the name Axiologus. The\nfollowing is a sample, sent to me by the late Mr. <DW18>s Campbell, _Ad\nVilmum Axiologum_.--ED.[338]\n\nAD VILMUM AXIOLOGUM\n\n    This be the meed, that thy song creates a thousand-fold echo!\n    Sweet as the warble of woods, that awakes at the gale of the morning!\n    List! the Hearts of the Pure, like caves in the ancient mountains\n    Deep, deep _in_ the Bosom, and _from_ the Bosom resound it,\n    Each with a different tone, complete or in musical fragments--\n    All have welcomed thy Voice, and receive and retain and prolong it!\n\n    This is the word of the Lord! it is spoken and Beings Eternal\n    Live and are borne as an Infant, the Eternal begets the Immortal--\n    Love is the Spirit of Life, and Music the Life of the Spirit!\n\n[337] The only justification for republishing this sonnet is that it is\nthe earliest authoritative record of Wordsworth's attempts in Verse. It\nis a much more authentic one than the _Extract from the conclusion of\na Poem, composed in anticipation of leaving School_, or than the lines\n_Written in very early Youth_, and beginning\n\n    Calm is all nature as a resting wheel.\n\nWordsworth dated the former of these poems 1786, but I do not believe\nthat he wrote that poem, and still less that he wrote \"Calm is all\nnature,\" etc., _as we now have it_, in that year. Doubtless he wrote\nverses on these two subjects; but the best evidence against the notion\nthat the text, as we now have it, was written in 1786, is this 1787\nsonnet on Miss Maria Williams. It is not only dated authoritatively,\nbut it was _published_ in 1787; and therefore serves (as nothing else\ncan until we come to 1793) as evidence in regard to the development of\nhis poetic power. The translation of Francis Wrangham's lines--which\nhe called _The Birth of Love_--in 1795, is further evidence in the\nsame direction. No doubt there were many poor poetic utterances by\nWordsworth later in life--failures in his manhood, as dismal as the\n\"Walford Tragedy\" was in his youth--but I think that the _Lines written\nin very early Youth_, and the _Extract from the Poem composed in\nanticipation of leaving School_, were rehandled by him, and the text\ngreatly improved before they were first published. The late Mr. J.\n<DW18>s Campbell wrote to me in 1892: \"Poets tell dreadful fibs about\ntheir early verses--as witness S.T.C. who declared he wrote _The Advent\nof Love_ at fifteen! I _know_ he didn't, and am going to print one or\ntwo of his prize school verses of that age, which I have found in his\nown fifteen-year-old fist.\"--ED.\n\n[338] I should add, in a footnote, that I have no knowledge of the\nsource whence Mr. Campbell derived this; but I am sure that it must\nhave reached him from an authentic one.--ED.\n\n\nLINES WRITTEN BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH AS A SCHOOL EXERCISE AT HAWKSHEAD,\nANNO \u00c6TATIS 14\n\nIn the \"Autobiographical Memoranda\"--dictated at Rydal Mount in\n1847--Wordsworth said, \"The first verses which I wrote were a task\nimposed by my master: the subject _The Summer Vacation_, and of my\nown accord I added others upon _Return to School_. There was nothing\nremarkable in either poem; but I was called upon, among other scholars,\nto write verses upon the completion of the second century from the\nfoundation of the school in 1585, by Archbishop Sandys. These verses\nwere much admired, far more than they deserved, for they were but a\ntame imitation of Pope's versification, and a little in his style.\nThis exercise, however, put it into my head to compose verses from the\nimpulse of my own mind; and I wrote, while yet a schoolboy, a long poem\nrunning upon my own adventures, and the scenery of the county in which\nI was brought up.\"\n\nThe _Summer Vacation_, and the _Return to School_, were destroyed by\nWordsworth.--ED.\n\n    And has the Sun his flaming chariot driven\n    Two hundred times around the ring of heaven,\n    Since Science first, with all her sacred train,\n    Beneath yon roof began her heavenly reign?\n    While thus I mused, methought, before mine eyes,                   5\n    The Power of EDUCATION seemed to rise;\n    Not she whose rigid precepts trained the boy\n    Dead to the sense of every finer joy;\n    Nor that vile wretch who bade the tender age\n    Spurn Reason's law and humour Passion's rage;                     10\n    But she who trains the generous British youth\n    In the bright paths of fair majestic Truth:\n    Emerging slow from Academus' grove\n    In heavenly majesty she seem'd to move.\n    Stern was her forehead, but a smile serene                        15\n    \"Soften'd the terrors of her awful mien.\"[339]\n    Close at her side were all the powers, design'd\n    To curb, exalt, reform the tender mind:\n    With panting breast, now pale as winter snows,\n    Now flushed as Hebe, Emulation rose;                              20\n    Shame follow'd after with reverted eye,\n    And hue far deeper than the Tyrian dye;\n    Last Industry appear'd with steady pace,\n    A smile sat beaming on her pensive face.\n    I gazed upon the visionary train,                                 25\n    Threw back my eyes, return'd, and gazed again.\n    When lo! the heavenly goddess thus began,\n    Through all my frame the pleasing accents ran.\n\n      When Superstition left the golden light\n    And fled indignant to the shades of night;                        30\n    When pure Religion rear'd the peaceful breast\n    And lull'd the warring passions into rest,\n    Drove far away the savage thoughts that roll\n    In the dark mansions of the bigot's soul,\n    Enlivening Hope display'd her cheerful ray,                       35\n    And beam'd on Britain's sons a brighter day,\n    So when on Ocean's face the storm subsides,\n    Hush'd are the winds and silent are the tides;\n    The God of day, in all the pomp of light,\n    Moves through the vault of heaven, and dissipates the night;      40\n    Wide o'er the main a trembling lustre plays,\n    The glittering waves reflect the dazzling blaze;\n    Science with joy saw Superstition fly\n    Before the lustre of Religion's eye;\n    With rapture she beheld Britannia smile,                          45\n    Clapp'd her strong wings, and sought the cheerful isle.\n    The shades of night no more the soul involve,\n    She sheds her beam, and, lo! the shades dissolve;\n    No jarring monks, to gloomy cell confined,\n    With mazy rules perplex the weary mind;                           50\n    No shadowy forms entice the soul aside,\n    Secure she walks, Philosophy her guide.\n    Britain, who long her warriors had adored,\n    And deemed all merit centred in the sword;\n    Britain, who thought to stain the field was fame,                 55\n    Now honour'd Edward's less than Bacon's name.\n    Her sons no more in listed fields advance\n    To ride the ring, or toss the beamy lance;\n    No longer steel their indurated hearts\n    To the mild influence of the finer arts;                          60\n    Quick to the secret grotto they retire\n    To court majestic truth, or wake the golden lyre;\n    By generous Emulation taught to rise,\n    The seats of learning brave the distant skies.\n    Then noble Sandys, inspir'd with great design,                    65\n    Rear'd Hawkshead's happy roof, and call'd it mine;\n    There have I loved to show the tender age\n    The golden precepts of the classic page;\n    To lead the mind to those Elysian plains\n    Where, throned in gold, immortal Science reigns;                  70\n    Fair to the view is sacred Truth display'd,\n    In all the majesty of light array'd,\n    To teach, on rapid wings, the curious soul\n    To roam from heaven to heaven, from pole to pole,\n    From thence to search the mystic cause of things                  75\n    And follow Nature to her secret springs;\n    Nor less to guide the fluctuating youth\n    Firm in the sacred paths of moral truth,\n    To regulate the mind's disorder'd frame,\n    And quench the passions kindling into flame;                      80\n    The glimmering fires of Virtue to enlarge,\n    And purge from Vice's dross my tender charge.\n    Oft have I said, the paths of Fame pursue,\n    And all that virtue dictates, dare to do;\n    Go to the world, peruse the book of man,                          85\n    And learn from thence thy own defects to scan;\n    Severely honest, break no plighted trust,\n    But coldly rest not here--be more than just;\n    Join to the rigours of the sires of Rome\n    The gentler manners of the private dome;                          90\n    When Virtue weeps in agony of woe,\n    Teach from the heart the tender tear to flow;\n    If Pleasure's soothing song thy soul entice,\n    Or all the gaudy pomp of splendid Vice,\n    Arise superior to the Siren's power,                              95\n    The wretch, the short-lived vision of an hour;\n    Soon fades her cheek, her blushing beauties fly,\n    As fades the chequer'd bow that paints the sky,\n      So shall thy sire, whilst hope his breast inspires,\n    And wakes anew life's glimmering trembling fires,                100\n    Hear Britain's sons rehearse thy praise with joy,\n    Look up to heaven, and bless his darling boy.\n    If e'er these precepts quell'd the passions' strife,\n    If e'er they smooth'd the rugged walks of life,\n    If e'er they pointed forth the blissful way                      105\n    That guides the spirit to eternal day,\n    Do thou, if gratitude inspire thy breast,\n    Spurn the soft fetters of lethargic rest.\n    Awake, awake! and snatch the slumbering lyre,\n    Let this bright morn and Sandys the song inspire.                110\n\n        I look'd obedience: the celestial Fair\n        Smiled like the morn, and vanished into air.\n\n[339] This quotation I am unable to trace--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1792 (or earlier)\n\n\n\"SWEET WAS THE WALK ALONG THE NARROW LANE\"\n\nThis sonnet is found in one of Dorothy Wordsworth's letters to her\nfriend Miss Jane Polland, written from Forncett Rectory, on 6th May\n1792. She wrote:--\n\n\"I promised to transcribe some of William's compositions. As I made\nthe promise I will give you a little sonnet, but all the same I charge\nyou, as you value our friendship, not to read it, or to show it to\nany one--to your sister, or any other person.\u2026 I take the first that\noffers. It is only valuable to me because the lane which gave birth to\nit was the favourite evening walk of my dear William and me.\" \u2026 \"I have\nnot chosen this sonnet because of any particular beauty it has; it was\nthe first I laid my hands upon.\"--ED.\n\n    Sweet was the walk along the narrow lane\n    At noon, the bank and hedgerows all the way\n    Shagged with wild pale green tufts of fragrant hay,\n    Caught by the hawthorns from the loaded wain\n    Which Age, with many a slow stoop, strove to gain;                 5\n    And Childhood seeming still more busy, took\n    His little rake with cunning sidelong look,\n    Sauntering to pluck the strawberries wild unseen.\n    _Now_ too, on melancholy's idle dream\n    Musing, the lone spot with my soul agrees                         10\n    Quiet and dark; for through the thick-wove trees\n    Scarce peeps the curious star till solemn gleams\n    The clouded moon, and calls me forth to stray\n    Through tall green silent woods and ruins grey.\n\n\n\"WHEN LOVE WAS BORN OF HEAVENLY LINE\"\n\nComposed 1795 (or earlier).--Published 1795\n\nTranslated from some French stanzas by Francis Wrangham, and Printed\nin _Poems by Francis Wrangham_, M.A., Member of Trinity College,\nCambridge, London (1795), Sold by J. Mawman, 22 Poultry, pp. 106-111.\nIn the edition of 1795, the original French lines are printed side by\nside with Wordsworth's translation, which closes the volume.--ED.\n\n    When Love was born of heavenly line,\n      What dire intrigues disturb'd Cythera's joy!\n    Till Venus cried, \"A mother's heart is mine;\n      None but myself shall nurse my boy.\"\n\n    But, infant as he was, the child                                   5\n      In that divine embrace enchanted lay;\n    And, by the beauty of the vase beguiled,\n      Forgot the beverage--and pined away.\n\n    \"And must my offspring languish in my sight?\"\n      (Alive to all a mother's pain,                                  10\n    The Queen of Beauty thus her court address'd)\n      \"No: Let the most discreet of all my train\n    Receive him to her breast:\n    Think all, he is the God of young delight.\"\n\n    Then TENDERNESS with CANDOUR join'd,                              15\n      And GAIETY the charming office sought;\n    Nor even DELICACY stay'd behind:\n      But none of those fair Graces brought\n    Wherewith to nurse the child--and still he pined.\n    Some fond hearts to COMPLIANCE seem'd inclined;                   20\n      But she had surely spoil'd the boy:\n        And sad experience forbade a thought\n    On the wild Goddess of VOLUPTUOUS JOY.\n\n    Long undecided lay th' important choice,\n    Till of the beauteous court, at length, a voice                   25\n    Pronounced the name of HOPE:--The conscious child\n    Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled.[340]\n\n    'Tis said ENJOYMENT (who averr'd\n      The charge belong'd to her alone)\n    Jealous that HOPE had been preferr'd                              30\n      Laid snares to make the babe her own.\n\n    Of INNOCENCE the garb she took,\n    The blushing mien and downcast look;\n      And came her services to proffer:\n    And HOPE (what has not Hope believed!)                            35\n    By that seducing air deceived,\n      Accepted of the offer.\n\n    It happen'd that, to sleep inclined,\n      Deluded HOPE for one short hour\n      To that false INNOCENCE'S power                                 40\n    Her little charge consign'd.\n\n    The Goddess then her lap with sweetmeats fill'd\n      And gave, in handfuls gave, the treacherous store:\n    A wild delirium first the infant thrill'd;\n      But soon upon her breast he sunk--to wake no more.              45\n\n[340] Compare Gray's _Progress of Poesy_, iii. I. 87--\n\n                      The dauntless child\n    Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled.\n\nED.\n\n\nTHE CONVICT\n\nComposed (?).--Published 1798\n\n    The glory of evening was spread through the west;\n      --On the <DW72> of a mountain I stood,\n    While the joy that precedes the calm season of rest\n      Rang loud through the meadow and wood.\n\n    \"And must we then part from a dwelling so fair?\"                   5\n      In the pain of my spirit I said,\n    And with a deep sadness I turned, to repair\n      To the cell where the convict is laid.\n\n    The thick-ribbed walls that o'ershadow the gate\n      Resound; and the dungeons unfold:                               10\n    I pause; and at length, through the glimmering grate,\n      That outcast of pity behold.\n\n    His black matted hair on his shoulder is bent,\n      And deep is the sigh of his breath,\n    And with stedfast dejection his eyes are intent                   15\n      On the fetters that link him to death.\n\n    'Tis sorrow enough on that visage to gaze,\n      That body dismiss'd from his care;\n    Yet my fancy has pierced to his heart, and pourtrays\n      More terrible images there.                                     20\n\n    His bones are consumed, and his life-blood is dried,\n      With wishes the past to undo;\n    And his crime, through the pains that o'erwhelm him, descried,\n      Still blackens and grows on his view.\n\n    When from the dark synod, or blood-reeking field,                 25\n      To his chamber the monarch is led,\n    All soothers of sense their soft virtue shall yield,\n      And quietness pillow his head.\n\n    But if grief, self-consumed, in oblivion would doze,\n      And conscience her tortures appease,                            30\n    'Mid tumult and uproar this man must repose,\n      In the comfortless vault of disease.\n\n    When his fetters at night have so press'd on his limbs,\n      That the weight can no longer be borne,\n    If, while a half-slumber his memory bedims,                       35\n      The wretch on his pallet should turn,\n\n    While the jail-mastiff howls at the dull clanking chain,\n      From the roots of his hair there shall start\n    A thousand sharp punctures of cold-sweating pain,\n      And terror shall leap at his heart.                             40\n\n    But now he half-raises his deep-sunken eye,\n      And the motion unsettles a tear;\n    The silence of sorrow it seems to supply,\n      And asks of me why I am here.\n\n    \"Poor victim! no idle intruder has stood                          45\n      With o'erweening complacence our state to compare,\n    But one, whose first wish is the wish to be good,\n      Is come as a brother thy sorrows to share.\n\n    \"At thy name though compassion her nature resign,\n      Though in virtue's proud mouth thy report be a stain,           50\n    My care, if the arm of the mighty were mine,\n      Would plant thee where yet thou might'st blossom again.\"\n\n\n\n\n1798\n\n\n\"THE SNOW-TRACKS OF MY FRIENDS I SEE\"\n\nThe following incomplete stanzas were evidently written when _The\nComplaint of a Forsaken Indian Woman_ was being composed. They were all\ndiscarded, but have a biographical interest. I assign them to the year\n1798.--ED.\n\n    The snow-tracks of my friends I see,\n    Their foot-marks do not trouble me,\n    For ever left alone am I.\n    Then wherefore should I fear to die?\n    They to the last my friends did cherish                            5\n    And to the last were good and kind,\n    Methinks 'tis strange I did not perish\n    The moment I was left behind.\n\n    Why do I watch those running deer?\n    And wherefore, wherefore come they here?                          10\n    And wherefore do I seem to love\n    The things that live, the things that move?\n    Why do I look upon the sky?\n    I do not live for what I see.\n    Why open thus mine eyes? To die                                   15\n    Is all that now is left for me,\n    If I could smother up my heart\n    My life would then at once depart.\n    My friends, you live, and yet you seem\n    To me the people of a dream;                                      20\n    A dream in which there is no love,\n    And yet, my friends, you live and move.\n\n    When I could live without a pain,\n    And feel no wish to be alive,\n    In quiet hopelessness I sleep,                                    25\n    Alas! how quiet, and how deep!\n\n    Oh no! I do not, cannot rue,\n    I did not strive to follow you.\n    I might have dropp'd, and died alone\n    On unknown snows, a spot unknown.                                 30\n    This spot to me must needs be dear,\n    Of my dear friends I see the trace.\n    You saw me, friends, you laid me here,\n    You know where my poor bones shall be,\n    Then wherefore should I fear to die?                              35\n    Alas that one beloved, forlorn,\n    Should lie beneath the cold starlight!\n    With them I think I could have borne\n    The journey of another night,\n    And with my friends now far away                                  40\n    I could have lived another day.\n\n\nTHE OLD CUMBERLAND BEGGAR\n\nMS. Variants, not inserted in Vol. I.\n\n    (l. 3) On a small pile of humble masonry\n    Placed at the foot of \u2026\n\n    (l. 24) He travels on, a solitary man.\n    His age has no companion. He is weak,\n    So helpless in appearance that, for him\n    The sauntering horseman-traveller does not throw\n    With careless hand his pence upon the ground\n    But stops that he may lodge the coin\n    Safe in the old man's hat: nor quits him so,\n    But as he goes towards him turns a look\n    Sidelong and half-reverted.\u2026\n\n\n\n\n1800\n\n\nANDREW JONES\n\nComposed 1800.--Published 1800\n\n_Andrew Jones_ was included in the \"Lyrical Ballads\" of 1800, 1802,\n1805, and in the Poems of 1815. It was also printed in _The Morning\nPost_, February 10, 1801. It was not republished after 1815. With this\npoem compare _The Old Cumberland Beggar_.--ED.\n\n    I hate that Andrew Jones; he'll breed\n    His children up to waste and pillage.\n    I wish the press-gang or the drum\n    Would with its rattling music come,[341]\n    And sweep him from the village!                                    5\n\n    I said not this, because he loves\n    Through the long day to swear and tipple;\n    But for the poor dear sake of one\n    To whom a foul deed he had done,\n    A friendless man, a travelling <DW36>!                           10\n    For this poor crawling helpless wretch\n    Some horseman who was passing by,[342]\n    A penny on the ground had thrown;\n    But the poor <DW36> was alone\n    And could not stoop--no help was nigh.                            15\n\n    Inch-thick the dust lay on the ground\n    For it had long been droughty weather;\n    So with his staff the <DW36> wrought\n    Among the dust till he had brought\n    The half-pennies together.                                        20\n\n    It chanced that Andrew passed that way\n    Just at the time; and there he found\n    The <DW36> in the mid-day heat\n    Standing alone, and at his feet\n    He saw the penny on the ground.                                   25\n\n    He stooped and took the penny up:[343]\n    And when the <DW36> nearer drew,\n    Quoth Andrew, \"Under half-a-crown,\n    What a man finds is all his own,\n    And so, my friend, good-day to you.\"                              30\n\n    And _hence_ I said, that Andrew's boys\n    Will all be trained to waste and pillage:\n    And wished the press-gang, or the drum\n    Would with its rattling music come,[344]\n    And sweep him from the village!                                   35\n\n[341] 1815.\n\n    With its tantara sound would come,\n\n    1800.\n\n[342]\n\n    It chanc'd some Traveller passing by,\n\n    MS.\n\n[343] In the text of 1800, this line is, \"He stopped and took the\npenny up,\" but in the list of _errata_, \"stooped\" is substituted for\n\"stopped.\"--ED.\n\n[344] 1815.\n\n    With its tantara sound would come\n\n    1800.\n\n\n\"THERE IS A SHAPELESS CROWD OF UNHEWN STONES\"\n\nNumerous fragments of verse, more or less unfinished, occur in the\nGrasmere Journals, written by Dorothy Wordsworth. One of these--which\nis broken up into irregular fragments, and very incomplete--is\nevidently part of the material which was written about the old Cumbrian\nshepherd Michael. The successive alterations of the text of the poem\n_Michael_ are in the Grasmere Journal. These fragments have a special\ntopographical interest, from their description of Helvellyn, and its\nspring, the fountain of the mists, and the stones on the summit. On the\noutside leather cover of the MS. book there is written, \"May to Dec.\n1802.\"\n\nThe following lines come first:--\n\n    There is a shapeless crowd of unhewn stones[345]\n    That lie together, some in heaps, and some\n    In lines, that seem to keep themselves alive\n    In the last dotage of a dying form.\n    At least so seems it to a man who stands\n    In such a lonely place.\n\nThese are followed by a few lines, some of which were afterwards used\nin _The Prelude_ (see vol. iii. p. 269):--\n\n    Shall he who gives his days to low pursuits,\n    Amid the undistinguishable crowd\n    Of cities, 'mid the same eternal flow\n    Of the same objects, melted and reduced\n    To one identity, by differences\n    That have no law, no meaning, and no end,\n    Shall he feel yearning to those lifeless forms,\n    And shall we think that Nature is less kind\n    To those, who all day long, through a long life,\n    Have walked within her sight? It cannot be.\n\n        Mary Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth,\n                William Wordsworth.\n           Sat. Eve., 20 past 6, May 29.\n\nOther fragments follow, less worthy of preservation. Then the passage,\nwhich occurs in book xiii. of _The Prelude_, beginning--\n\n    There are who think that strong affection, love,\n\n(see vol. iii. p. 361), with one or two variations from the final text,\nwhich were not improvements.\n\nFive lines on Helvellyn, afterwards included in the _Musings near\nAquapendente_ (see vol. viii. p. 47, ll. 61-65), come next.\n\nThe fragments referring to _Michael_ are written down, probably just\nas the brother dictated them to his sister, and would be--if not\nunintelligible--certainly without any literary connection or unity,\nwere they printed in the order in which they occur. I therefore\ntranspose them slightly, to give something like continuity to the\nwhole; which remains, of course, a torso.\n\n    I will relate a tale for those who love\n    To lie beside the lonely mountain brooks,\n    And hear the voices of the winds and flowers.\n    \u2026\n                                   \u2026 It befell\n    At the first falling of the autumnal snows,\n    Old Michael and his son one day went forth\n    In search of a stray sheep. It was the time\n    When from the heights our shepherds drive their flocks\n    To gather all their mountain family\n    Into the homestalls, ere they send them back\n    There to defend themselves the winter long.\n    Old Michael for this purpose had driven down\n    His flock into the vale, but as it chanced,\n    A single sheep was wanting. They had sought\n    The straggler during all the previous day\n    All over their own pastures, and beyond.\n    And now at sunrise, sallying forth again\n    Far did they go that morning: with their search\n    Beginning towards the south, where from Dove Crag\n    (Ill home for bird so gentle), they looked down\n    On Deep-dale-head, and Brothers water (named\n    From those two Brothers that were drowned therein);\n    Thence northward did they pass by Arthur's seat,[346]\n    And Fairfield's highest summit, on the right\n    Leaving St. Sunday's Crag, to Grisdale tarn\n    They shot, and over that cloud-loving hill,\n    Seat-Sandal, a fond lover of the clouds;\n    Thence up Helvellyn, a superior mount,\n    With prospect underneath of Striding edge,\n    And Grisdale's houseless vale, along the brink\n    Of Sheep-cot-cove, and those two other coves,\n    Huge skeletons of crags which from the coast\n    Of old Helvellyn spread their arms abroad\n    And make a stormy harbour for the winds.\n    Far went these shepherds in their devious quest,\n    From mountain ridges peeping as they passed\n    Down into every nook; \u2026\n                            \u2026 and many a sheep\n    On height or bottom[347] did they see, in flocks\n    Or single. And although it needs must seem\n    Hard to believe, yet could they well discern\n    Even at the utmost distance of two miles\n    (Such strength of vision to the shepherd's eye\n    Doth practice give) that neither in the flocks\n    Nor in the single sheep was what they sought.\n    So to Helvellyn's eastern side they went,\n    Down looking on that hollow, where the pool\n    Of Thirlmere flashes like a warrior's shield\n    His light high up among the gloomy rocks,\n    With sight of now and then a straggling gleam\n    On Armath's[348] pleasant fields. And now they came,\n    To that high spring which bears no human name,\n    As one unknown by others, aptly called\n    The fountain of the mists. The father stooped\n    To drink of the clear water, laid himself\n    Flat on the ground, even as a boy might do,\n    To drink of the cold well. When in like sort\n    His son had drunk, the old man said to him\n    That now he might be proud, for he that day\n    Had slaked his thirst out of a famous well,\n    The highest fountain known on British land.\n    Thence, journeying on a second time, they passed\n    Those small flat stones, which, ranged by traveller's hands\n    In cyphers on Helvellyn's highest ridge,\n    Lie loose on the bare turf, some half-o'ergrown\n    By the grey moss, but not a single stone\n    Unsettled by a wanton blow from foot\n    Of shepherd, man or boy. They have respect\n    For strangers who have travelled far perhaps,\n    For men who in such places, feeling there\n    The grandeur of the earth, have left inscribed\n    Their epitaph, which rain and snow\n    And the strong wind have reverenced.\n    \u2026\n      But soon as Luke, full ten years old, could stand\n    Against the mountain blasts, and to the heights\n    Not fearing toil, nor length of weary ways,\n    He with his Father daily went, and they\n    Were as companions, why should I relate\n    That objects which the shepherd lov'd before\n    Were dearer now? that from the Boy there came\n    Feelings and emanations, things which were\n    Light to the sun and music to the wind;\n    And that the old man's heart seem'd born again?\n      Thus in his Father's sight the Boy grew up;\n    And now when he had reached his eighteenth year,\n    He was his comfort and his daily hope.\n    \u2026\n    Though often thus industriously they passed[349]\n    Whole hours with but small interchange of speech,\n    Yet were there times in which they did not want\n    Discourse both wise and pleasant,[350] shrewd remarks\n    Of moral prudence,[351] clothed in images\n    Lively and beautiful, in rural forms,\n    That made their conversation fresh and fair\n    As is a landscape; and the shepherd oft\n    Would draw out of his heart the mysteries[352]\n    And admirations that were there, of God\n    And of his works: or, yielding to the bent\n    Of his peculiar humour, would let loose\n    His tongue, and give it the wind's freedom; then,\n    Discoursing on remote imaginations, strong\n    Conceits, devices, plans, and schemes,[353]\n    Of alterations human hands might make\n    Among the mountains, fens which might be drained,\n    Mines opened, forests planted, and rocks split,\n    The fancies of a solitary man.[354]\n    Not with a waste of words, but for the sake\n    Of pleasure which I know that I shall give\n    To many living now, have I described\n    Old Michael's manners and discourse, and thus\n    Minutely spoken of that aged Lamp\n    Round which the Shepherd and his household sate\n    --The light was famous in the neighbourhood\n    And was a public symbol \u2026\n\nThen follow four pages of Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal (May 4th and\n5th, 1802); and then, irregularly written, and with numerous erasures,\nthe remainder of these unpublished lines.\n\n                            \u2026 At length the boy\n    Said, \"Father, 'tis lost labour; with your leave\n    I will go back and range a second time\n    The grounds which we have hunted through before.\"\n    So saying, homeward, down the hill the boy\n    Sprang like a gust of wind: [and with a heart\n    Brimful of glory said within himself,\n    \"I know where I shall find him, though the storm\n    Have driven him twenty miles.\"\n    For ye must know][355] that though the storm\n    Drive one of those poor creatures miles and miles,\n    If he can crawl, he will return again\n    To his own hills, the spots where when a lamb\n    He learned to pasture at his mother's side.\n    Bethinking him of this, again the boy\n    Pursued his way toward a brook, whose course\n    Was through that unfenced tract of mountain ground\n    Which to his father's little farm belonged,\n    The home and ancient birthright of their flock.\n    Down the deep channel of the stream he went,\n    Prying through every nook. Meanwhile the rain\n    Began to fall upon the mountain tops,\n    Thick storm, and heavy, which for three hours' space\n    Abated not; and all that time the boy\n    Was busy in his search, until at length\n    He spied the sheep upon a plot of grass,\n    An island in the brook. It was a place\n    Remote and deep, piled round with rocks, where foot\n    Of man or beast was seldom used to tread.\n    But now, when everywhere the summer grass\n    Began to fail, this sheep by hunger pressed\n    Had left his fellows, made his way alone\n    To the green plot of pasture in the brook.\n    Before the boy knew well what he had seen\n    He leapt upon the island, with proud heart,\n    And with a shepherd's joy. Immediately\n    The sheep sprang forward to the further shore,\n    And was borne headlong by the roaring flood.\n    At this the boy looked round him, and his heart\n    Fainted with fear. Thrice did he turn his face\n    To either bank, nor could he summon up\n    The courage that was needful to leap back\n    'Cross the tempestuous torrent; so he stood\n    A prisoner on the island, not without\n    More than one thought of death, and his last hour.\n    Meantime the father had returned alone\n    To his own home, and now at the approach\n    Of evening he went forth to meet his son,\n    Nor could he guess the cause for which the boy\n    Had stayed so long. The shepherd took his way\n    Up his own mountain grounds, where, as he walked\n    Along the steep that overhung the brook,\n    He seemed to hear a voice, which was again\n    Repeated, like the whistling of a kite.\n    At this, not knowing why--as often-times\n    The old man afterwards was heard to say--\n    Down to the brook he went, and tracked its course\n    Upwards among the o'erhanging rocks; nor\n    Had he gone far ere he espied the boy\n    Right in the middle of the roaring stream.\n    Without distress or fear the shepherd heard\n    The outcry of his son: he stretched his staff\n    Towards him, bade him leap, which word scarce said\n    The boy was safe.\u2026\n    \u2026\n\nOf Michael it is said--\n\n    No doubt if you in terms direct had asked\n    Whether he loved the mountains, true it is\n    That with blunt repetition of your words\n    He might have stared at you, and said that they\n    Were frightful to behold, but had you then\n    Discoursed with him \u2026\n    Of his own business, and the goings on\n    Of earth and sky, then truly had you seen\n    That in his thoughts there were obscurities,\n    Wonder, and admiration, things that wrought\n    Not less than a religion in his heart.\n    And if it was his fortune to converse\n    With any who could talk of common things\n    In an unusual way, and give to them\n    Unusual aspects, or by questions apt\n    Wake sudden recognitions, that were like\n    Creations in the mind (and were indeed\n    Creations often), then when he discoursed\n    Of mountain sights, this untaught shepherd stood\n    Before the man with whom he so conversed\n    And looked at him as with a poet's eye.\n    But speaking of the vale in which he dwelt,\n    And those bare rocks, if you had asked if he\n    For other pastures would exchange the same\n    And dwell elsewhere, \u2026\n                          \u2026 you then had seen\n    At once what spirit of love was in his heart.\n    \u2026\n    I have related that this Shepherd loved\n    The fields and mountains, not alone for this\n    That from his very childhood he had lived\n    Among them, with a body hale and stout,\n    And with a vigorous mind \u2026\n                              \u2026 But exclude\n    Such reasons, and he had less cause to love\n    His native vale and patrimonial fields\n    Than others have, for Michael had liv'd on\n    Childless, until the time when he began\n    To look towards the shutting in of life.\n\nIn this MS. book there are also some of the original stanzas of _Ruth_,\nwith a few variations of text.--ED.\n\n[345] Compare the first line of those _Written with a Slate Pencil upon\na Stone, the largest of a Heap lying near a deserted Quarry, upon one\nof the Islands at Rydal_, vol. ii. p. 63.--ED.\n\n[346] Stone Arthur. See, in the \"Poems on the Naming of Places,\" the\none beginning--\n\n    There is an Eminence,\n\nED.\n\n[347] Bottom is a common Cumbrian word for valley.--ED.\n\n[348] Armboth, on the western side of Thirlmere.--ED.\n\n[349] Though in these occupations they would pass\u2020\n\n[350] \u2026 prudent, \u2026\u2020\n\n[351] Of daily Providence \u2026\u2020\n\n[352] \u2026 obscurities\u2020\n\n[353] Day-dreams, thoughts, and schemes.\u2020\n\n\u2020 These variants occur in a letter of Dorothy Wordsworth to Thomas\nPoole.--ED.\n\n[354] All doubt as to these fragments being originally intended to form\npart of _Michael_ is set at rest by a letter from Wordsworth to Thomas\nPoole, of Nether Stowey, written from Grasmere on the 9th of April\n1801, in which he gives first some new lines to be added to _Michael_,\nat pp. 210 and 211 of vol. ii. of the \"Lyrical Ballads\" (ed. 1800); to\nwhich letter Dorothy Wordsworth added the postscript, \"My brother has\nwritten the following lines, to be inserted page 206, after the ninth\nline--\n\n    Murmur as with the sound of summer flies;\"\n\nand then follow--\n\n    Though in these occupations they would pass\n    Whole hours, etc.\n\nas printed above.\n\nDorothy Wordsworth adds, \"Tell whether you think the insertion of these\nlines an improvement.\"--ED.\n\n[355] An erased version.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1802\n\n\n\"AMONG ALL LOVELY THINGS MY LOVE HAD BEEN\"\n\nComposed April 12, 1802.--Published 1807\n\nThis poem--known in the Wordsworth household as _The Glowworm_--was\nwritten on the 12th of April 1802, during a ride from Middleham to\nBarnard Castle, and was published in the edition of 1807. It was never\nreproduced. The \"Lucy\" of this and other poems was his sister Dorothy.\nIn a letter to Coleridge, written in April 1802, he thus refers to\nthe poem, and to the incident which gave rise to it:--\"I parted from\nM---- on Monday afternoon, about six o'clock, a little on this side\nRushyford. Soon after I missed my road in the midst of the storm.\u2026\nBetween the beginning of Lord Darlington's park at Raby, and two or\nthree miles beyond Staindrop, I composed the poem the opposite page. I\nreached Barnard Castle about half-past ten.\u2026 The incident of this poem\ntook place about seven years ago between my sister and me.\"\n\nI think it probable that the \"incident\" occurred near Racedown,\nDorsetshire, where, in the autumn of 1795 Wordsworth settled with his\nsister. The following is Dorothy's account of the composition of the\npoem:--\"Tuesday, April 20, 1802.--We sate in the orchard and repeated\n_The Glowworm_, and other poems. Just when William came to a well, or\ntrough, which there is in Lord Darlington's park, he began to write\nthat poem of _The Glowworm_; interrupted in going through the town of\nStaindrop, finished it about two miles and a-half beyond Staindrop. He\ndid not feel the jogging of the horse while he was writing; but, when\nhe had done, he felt the effect of it.\u2026 So much for _The Glowworm_. It\nwas written coming from Middleham, on Monday, April 12, 1802.\"--ED.\n\n    Among all lovely things my Love had been;\n    Had noted well the stars, all flowers that grew\n    About her home; but she had never seen\n    A glow-worm, never one, and this I knew.\n\n    While riding near her home one stormy night                        5\n    A single glow-worm did I chance to espy;\n    I gave a fervent welcome to the sight,\n    And from my horse I leapt; great joy had I.\n\n    Upon a leaf the glow-worm did I lay,\n    To bear it with me through the stormy night:                      10\n    And, as before, it shone without dismay;\n    Albeit putting forth a fainter light.\n\n    When to the dwelling of my Love I came,\n    I went into the orchard quietly;\n    And left the glow-worm, blessing it by name,                      15\n    Laid safely by itself, beneath a tree.\n\n    The whole next day I hoped, and hoped with fear;\n    At night the glow-worm shone beneath the tree;\n    I led my Lucy to the spot, \"Look here,\"\n    Oh! joy it was for her, and joy for me!                           20\n\n\n\"ALONG THE MAZES OF THIS SONG I GO\"\n\nThis, and the next two fragments, by Wordsworth, are extracted from his\nsister's Grasmere Journal.--ED.\n\n    Along the mazes of this song I go\n    As inward motions of the wandering thought\n    Lead me, or outward circumstance impels.\n    Thus do I urge a never-ending way\n    Year after year, with many a sleep between,\n    Through joy and sorrow; if my lot be joy\n    More joyful if it be with sorrow sooth'd.\n\n\n\"THE RAINS AT LENGTH HAVE CEAS'D, THE WINDS ARE STILL'D\"\n\n    The rains at length have ceas'd, the winds are still'd,\n    The stars shine brightly between clouds at rest,\n    And as a cavern is with darkness fill'd,\n    The vale is by a mighty sound possess'd\n\n\n\"WITNESS THOU\"\n\n                                Witness thou\n    The dear companion of my lonely walk,\n    My hope, my joy, my sister, and my friend,\n    Or something dearer still, if reason knows\n    A dearer thought, or in the heart of love\n    There be a dearer name.[356]\n\n[356] Compare Byron's _Epistle to Augusta_--\n\n    My sister! my sweet sister! if a name\n    Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.\n\nIt is a mere coincidence, as Byron could not have seen the Wordsworth\nMS.--ED.\n\n\nWILD-FOWL\n\n                              The order'd troops\n    In spiral circles mount aloft, and soar\n    In prospect far above the denser air\n    That hangs o'er the moist plain. Again they view\n    The glorious sun, and while the light of day\n    Still gleams upon their polish'd plumes--the bright\n    Sonorous squadrons sing their evening hymn.\n\n\nWRITTEN IN A GROTTO\n\nPublished in _The Morning Post_, March 9, 1802\n\nI cannot affirm, with any certainty, that these lines were written by\nWordsworth; but I agree with Mr. Ernest Coleridge in thinking that they\nwere. He showed them to his relative--the late Chief Justice--who said\nthat he did not know who else _could_ have written them, at that time.\nLord Coleridge said the same to myself.--ED.\n\n    O moon! if e'er I joyed when thy soft light\n      Danc'd to the murmuring rill on Lomond's wave,\n    Or sighed for thy sweet presence some dark night\n      When thou wert hidden in thy monthly grave,[357]\n    If e'er on wings which active fancy gave                           5\n      I sought thy golden vale with dancing flight\n    Then stretcht at ease in some sequestered cave\n      Gaz'd on thy lovely Nymphs with fond delight,\n    Thy Nymphs with more than earthly beauty bright,\n    If e'er thy beam, as Smyrna's shepherds tell,                     10\n      Soft as the gentle kiss of amorous maid\n    On the closed eye of young Endymion fell[358]\n      That he might wake to clasp thee in the shade,\n    Each night while I recline within this cell\n    Guide hither, O sweet Moon, the maid I love so well.              15\n\nThe shepherds of Smyrna show a cave, where, as they say, Luna descended\nto Endymion, laid on a bed under a large oak which was the scene of\ntheir loves. See Chandler's _Travels in Asia Minor_.\n\n[357] Compare _To the Moon_, vol. viii. p. 15, l. 64.--ED.\n\n[358] Compare, in the \"Evening Voluntaries,\" _To Lucca Giordano_\n(1846), p. 183.--ED.\n\n\nHOME AT GRASMERE\n\nThe canto of Wordsworth's autobiographical poem, unpublished in _The\nPrelude_ (1851), and first given to the world in 1888, is appropriately\nentitled \"Home at Grasmere.\"\n\nThe introduction to _The Recluse_ was not only kept back by him during\nhis lifetime, but was omitted by his representatives--with what must be\nregarded as true critical insight--when _The Prelude_ was published in\n1850. As a whole, it is not equal to _The Prelude_. Certain passages\nare very inferior, but there are others that posterity must cherish,\nand \"not willingly let die.\" It was probably a conviction of its\ninequality and inferiority that led Wordsworth to give only one or two\nselected extracts from this canto to the world, in his own lifetime.\nTwo passages were printed in his _Guide to the District of the Lakes_;\nanother--a description of the flight and movement of birds--was\npublished in 1827, and subsequent editions, under the title of\n_Water-Fowl_; while the Bishop of Lincoln published other two passages\nin the _Memoirs_ of his uncle, beginning respectively--\n\n    On Nature's invitation do I come,\n\nand\n\n    Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak.\n\nInternal evidence (see the numerous allusions to Dorothy, and the\nreference to John Wordsworth) shows that this canto of _The Recluse_\nwas written at Grasmere, not long after Wordsworth's arrival there,\nand certainly before his marriage. The text, as now printed, has been\ncarefully compared with the original MS. by Mr. Gordon Wordsworth. The\nMS. heading is--THE RECLUSE. BOOK FIRST, PART FIRST.\n\nHOME AT GRASMERE\n\n    Once to the verge of yon steep barrier came\n    A roving school-boy; what the Adventurer's age\n    Hath now escaped his memory--but the hour,\n    One of a golden summer holiday,\n    He well remembers, though the year be gone.                        5\n    Alone and devious from afar he came;\n    And, with a sudden influx overpowered\n    At sight of this seclusion, he forgot\n    His haste, for hasty had his footsteps been\n    As boyish his pursuits; and, sighing said,                        10\n    \"What happy fortune were it here to live!\n    And, (if a thought of dying, if a thought\n    Of mortal separation, could intrude\n    With paradise before him), here to die!\"\n    No prophet was he, had not even a hope,                           15\n    Scarcely a wish, but one bright pleasing thought,\n    A fancy in the heart of what might be\n    The lot of others, never could be his.\n      The station whence he looked was soft and green,\n    Not giddy yet aerial, with a depth                                20\n    Of vale below, a height of hills above.\n    For rest of body, perfect was the spot,\n    All that luxurious nature could desire,\n    But stirring to the spirit. Who could gaze\n    And not feel motions there? He thought of clouds                  25\n    That sail on winds, of breezes that delight\n    To play on water, or in endless chase\n    Pursue each other through the yielding plain\n    Of grass or corn, over and through and through,\n    In billow after billow, evermore                                  30\n    Disporting. Nor unmindful was the Boy\n    Of sunbeams, shadows, butterflies and birds,\n    Of fluttering Sylphs, and softly-gliding Fays,\n    Genii, and winged Angels that are Lords\n    Without restraint of all which they behold.                       35\n    The illusion strengthening as he gazed, he felt\n    That such unfettered liberty was his,\n    Such power and joy; but only for this end,\n    To flit from field to rock, from rock to field,\n    From shore to island, and from isle to shore,                     40\n    From open ground to covert, from a bed\n    Of meadow-flowers into a tuft of wood,\n    From high to low, from low to high, yet still\n    Within the bound of this high concave; here\n    Must be his home, this Valley be his world.                       45\n      Since that day forth the place to him--_to me_\n    (For I who live to register the truth\n    Was that same young and happy being) became\n    As beautiful to thought, as it had been,\n    When present, to the bodily sense; a haunt                        50\n    Of pure affections, shedding upon joy\n    A brighter joy; and through such damp and gloom\n    Of the gay mind, as ofttimes splenetic youth\n    Mistakes for sorrow darting beams of light\n    That no self-cherished sadness could withstand:                   55\n    And now 'tis mine, perchance for life, dear Vale,\n    Beloved Grasmere (let the Wandering Streams\n    Take up, the cloud-capped hills repeat, the Name),\n    One of thy lowly dwellings is my Home.\n      And was the cost so great? and could it seem                    60\n    An act of courage, and the thing itself\n    A conquest? who must bear the blame? sage man\n    Thy prudence, thy experience--thy desires;\n    Thy apprehensions--blush thou for them all.\n      Yes, the realities of life so cold,                             65\n    So cowardly, so ready to betray,\n    So stinted in the measure of their grace\n    As we pronounce them, doing them much wrong,\n    Have been to me more bountiful than hope,\n    Less timid than desire--but that is passed.                       70\n      On Nature's invitation do I come,[359]\n    By reason sanctioned--Can the choice mislead,\n    That made the calmest, fairest spot of earth,\n    With all its unappropriated good,\n    My own; and not mine only, for with me                            75\n    Entrenched, say rather peacefully embowered,\n    Under yon orchard, in yon humble cot,\n    A younger orphan of a home extinct,\n    The only daughter of my parents, dwells.\n      Aye, think on that, my heart, and cease to stir,                80\n    Pause upon that, and let the breathing frame\n    No longer breathe, but all be satisfied.\n    --Oh if such silence be not thanks to God\n    For what hath been bestowed, then where, where then\n    Shall gratitude find rest? Mine eyes did ne'er                    85\n    Fix on a lovely object, nor my mind\n    Take pleasure in the midst of happy thoughts,\n    But either She whom now I have, who now\n    Divides with me this loved abode, was there,\n    Or not far off. Where'er my footsteps turned,                     90\n    Her Voice was like a hidden Bird that sang,\n    The thought of her was like a flash of light,\n    Or an _unseen_ companionship, a breath,\n    Or fragrance independent of the wind.\n    In all my goings, in the new and old                              95\n    Of all my meditations, and in this\n    Favourite of all, in this the most of all.\n    --What Being, therefore, since the birth of man\n    Had ever more abundant cause to speak\n    Thanks, and if favours of the heavenly Muse                      100\n    Make him more thankful, then to call on verse\n    To aid him, and in Song resound his joy.\n    The boon is absolute; surpassing grace\n    To me hath been vouchsafed; among the bowers\n    Of blissful Eden this was neither given,                         105\n    Nor could be given, possession of the good\n    Which had been sighed for, ancient thought fulfilled\n    And dear Imaginations realized\n    Up to their highest measure, yea and more.\n      Embrace me then, ye Hills, and close me in,                    110\n    Now in the clear and open day I feel\n    Your guardianship; I take it to my heart;\n    'Tis like the solemn shelter of the night.\n    But I would call thee beautiful, for mild\n    And soft, and gay, and beautiful thou art,                       115\n    Dear Valley, having in thy face a smile\n    Though peaceful, full of gladness. Thou art pleased,\n    Pleased with thy crags, and woody steeps, thy Lake,\n    Its one green Island and its winding shores;\n    The multitude of little rocky hills,                             120\n    Thy Church and cottages of mountain stone\n    Clustered like stars some few, but single most,\n    And lurking dimly in their shy retreats,\n    Or glancing at[360] each other cheerful looks,\n    Like separated stars with clouds between.                        125\n    What want we? have we not perpetual streams,\n    Warm woods, and sunny hills, and fresh green fields,\n    And mountains not less green, and flocks, and herds,\n    And thickets full of songsters, and the voice\n    Of lordly birds, an unexpected sound                             130\n    Heard now and then from morn till latest eve,\n    Admonishing the man who walks below\n    Of solitude, and silence in the sky?\n    These have we, and a thousand nooks of earth\n    Have also these, but _no_ where else is found,                   135\n    No where (or is it fancy?) _can_ be found\n    The one sensation that is here; 'tis here,\n    Here as it found its way into my heart\n    In childhood, here as it abides by day,\n    By night, here only; or in chosen minds                          140\n    That take it with them hence, where'er they go.\n    'Tis, but I cannot name it, 'tis the sense\n    Of majesty, and beauty, and repose,\n    A blended holiness of earth and sky,\n    Something that makes this individual Spot,                       145\n    This small abiding-place of many men,\n    A termination, and a last retreat,\n    A centre, come from wheresoe'er you will,\n    A whole without dependence or defect,\n    Made for itself; and happy in itself,                            150\n    Perfect Contentment, Unity entire.\n      Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak,[361]\n    When hitherward we journeyed, side by side,\n    Through bursts of sunshine and through flying showers,\n    Paced the long Vales--how long they were--and yet                155\n    How fast that length of way was left behind,\n    Wensley's rich Vale and Sedbergh's naked heights.\n    The frosty wind, as if to make amends\n    For its keen breath, was aiding to our steps,\n    And drove us onward like two ships at sea,                       160\n    Or like two birds, companions in mid air,\n    Parted and re-united by the blast.\n    Stern was the face of Nature. We rejoiced\n    In that stern countenance, for our souls thence drew\n    A feeling of their strength. The naked trees,                    165\n    The icy brooks, as on we passed, appeared\n    To question us. \"Whence come ye? to what end?\"\n    They seemed to say; \"What would ye,\" said the shower,\n    \"Wild wanderers, whither through my dark domain?\"\n    The sunbeam said, \"Be happy.\" When this Vale                     170\n    We entered, bright and solemn was the sky\n    That faced us with a passionate welcoming,\n    And led us to our threshold. Daylight failed\n    Insensibly, and round us gently fell\n    Composing darkness, with a quiet load                            175\n    Of full contentment, in a little shed\n    Disturbed, uneasy in itself as seemed,\n    And wondering at its new inhabitants.\n    It loves us now, this Vale so beautiful\n    Begins to love us! By a sullen storm,                            180\n    Two months unwearied of severest storm,\n    It put the temper of our minds to proof,\n    And found us faithful through the gloom, and heard\n    The Poet mutter his prelusive songs\n    With cheerful heart, an unknown voice of joy,                    185\n    Among the silence of the woods and hills;\n    Silent to any gladsomeness of sound\n    With all their Shepherds.\n                            But the gates of Spring\n    Are opened. Churlish Winter hath given leave\n    That she should entertain for this one day,                      190\n    Perhaps for many genial days to come,\n    His guests, and make them jocund. They are pleased,\n    But most of all the Birds that haunt the flood\n    With the mild summons; inmates though they be\n    Of winter's household, they keep festival                        195\n    This day, who drooped, or seemed to droop, so long;\n    They shew their pleasure, and shall I do less?\n    Happiest of happy though I be, like them\n    I cannot take possession of the sky,\n    Mount with a thoughtless impulse, and wheel there,               200\n    One of a mighty multitude, whose way\n    Is a perpetual harmony, and dance\n    Magnificent. Behold, how with a grace\n    Of ceaseless motion,[362] that might scarcely seem\n    Inferior to angelical, they prolong                              205\n    Their curious pastime, shaping in mid air,\n    And sometimes with ambitious wing that soars\n    High as the level of the mountain tops,\n    A circuit ampler than the lake beneath,\n    Their own domain;--but ever, while intent                        210\n    On tracing and retracing that large round,\n    Their jubilant activity evolves\n    Hundreds of curves and circlets, to and fro,\n    Upwards and downwards, progress intricate\n    Yet unperplexed, as if one spirit swayed                         215\n    Their indefatigable flight. 'Tis done--\n    Ten times and more, I fancied it had ceased;\n    But lo! the vanished company again\n    Ascending, they approach--I hear their wings\n    Faint, faint at first; and then an eager sound                   220\n    Passed in a moment--and as faint again!\n    They tempt the sun to sport among[363] their plumes;\n    Tempt the smooth water,[364] or the gleaming ice,\n    To show them a fair image; 'tis themselves,\n    Their own fair forms, upon the glimmering plain,                 225\n    Painted more soft and fair as they descend,\n    Almost to touch;--then up again aloft,\n    Up with a sally, and a flash of speed,\n    As if they scorned both resting-place and rest![365]\n    This day is a thanksgiving, 'tis a day                           230\n    Of glad emotion and deep quietness;\n    Not upon me alone hath been bestowed,\n    Me rich in many onward-looking thoughts,\n    The penetrating bliss; oh surely these\n    Have felt it, not the happy Quires of Spring,                    235\n    Her own peculiar family of love\n    That sport among green leaves, a blither train.\n      But two are missing--two, a lonely pair\n    Of milk-white Swans, wherefore are _they_ not seen\n    Partaking this day's pleasure? From afar                         240\n    They came, to sojourn here in solitude,\n    Choosing this Valley, they who had the choice\n    Of the whole world.[366] We saw them day by day,\n    Through these two months of unrelenting storm,\n    Conspicuous at the centre of the Lake,                           245\n    Their safe retreat. We knew them well, I guess\n    That the whole Valley knew them; but to us\n    They were more dear than may be well believed,\n    Not only for their beauty, and their still\n    And placid way of life, and constant love                        250\n    Inseparable, not for these alone,\n    But that _their_ state so much resembled ours,\n    They having also chosen this abode;\n    They strangers, and we strangers; they a pair,\n    And we a solitary pair like them.                                255\n    They should not have departed; many days\n    Did I look forth in vain, nor on the wing\n    Could see them, nor in that small open space\n    Of blue unfrozen water, where they lodged,\n    And lived so long in quiet, side by side.                        260\n    Shall we behold them, consecrated friends,\n    Faithful companions, yet another year\n    Surviving--they for us, and we for them--\n    And neither pair be broken? Nay perchance\n    It is too late already for such hope,                            265\n    The Dalesmen may have aimed the deadly tube,\n    And parted them; or haply both are gone\n    One death, and that were mercy given to both.\n    Recal my song the ungenerous thought; forgive,\n    Thrice favoured Region, the conjecture harsh                     270\n    Of such inhospitable penalty,\n    Inflicted upon confidence so pure.\n    Ah, if I wished to follow where the sight\n    Of all that is before mine eyes, the voice\n    Which speaks from a presiding Spirit here,                       275\n    Would lead me, I should whisper to myself;\n    They who are dwellers in this holy place\n    Must needs themselves be hallowed, they require\n    No benediction from the stranger's lips,\n    For they are blest already. None would give                      280\n    The greeting \"peace be with you\" unto them,\n    For peace they have, it cannot but be theirs,\n    And mercy, and forbearance. Nay--not these,\n    Their healing offices a pure goodwill\n    Precludes, and charity beyond the bounds                         285\n    Of charity--an overflowing love,\n    Not for the creature only, but for all\n    That is around them, love for every thing\n    Which in this happy region they behold!\n      Thus do we soothe ourselves, and when the thought              290\n    Is past we blame it not for having come.\n    What, if I floated down a pleasant Stream\n    And now am landed, and the motion gone,\n    Shall I reprove myself? Ah no, the stream\n    Is flowing, and will never cease to flow,[367]                   295\n    And I shall float upon that stream again.\n    By such forgetfulness the soul becomes,\n    Words cannot say, how beautiful. Then hail,\n    Hail to the visible Presence, hail to thee,\n    Delightful Valley, habitation fair!                              300\n    And to whatever else of outward form\n    Can give us inward help, can purify,\n    And elevate, and harmonise, and soothe,\n    And steal away, and for a while deceive\n    And lap in pleasing rest, and bear us on                         305\n    Without desire in full complacency,\n    Contemplating perfection absolute\n    And entertained as in a placid sleep.\n      But not betrayed by tenderness of mind\n    That feared, or wholly overlooked the truth,                     310\n    Did we come hither, with romantic hope\n    To find, in midst of so much loveliness,\n    Love, perfect love; of so much majesty\n    A like majestic frame of mind in those\n    Who here abide, the persons like the place.                      315\n    Not from such hope, or aught of such belief\n    Hath issued any portion of the joy\n    Which I have felt this day. An awful voice,\n    'Tis true, hath in my walks been often heard,\n    Sent from the mountains or the sheltered fields;                 320\n    Shout after shout--reiterated whoop\n    In manner of a bird that takes delight\n    In answering to itself; or like a hound\n    Single at chase among the lonely woods,\n    His yell repeating;[368] yet it was in truth                     325\n    A human voice--a Spirit of coming night,\n    How solemn when the sky is dark, and earth\n    Not dark, nor yet enlightened, but by snow\n    Made visible, amid a noise of winds\n    And bleatings manifold of mountain sheep,                        330\n    Which in that iteration recognise\n    Their summons, and are gathering round for food,\n    Devoured with keenness ere to grove or bank\n    Or rocky _bield_ with patience they retire.\n      That very voice, which, in some timid mood                     335\n    Of superstitious fancy, might have seemed\n    Awful as ever stray Demoniac uttered,\n    His steps to govern in the Wilderness;\n    Or as the Norman Curfew's regular beat,\n    To hearths when first they darkened at the knell:                340\n    That Shepherd's voice, it may have reached mine ear\n    Debased and under profanation, made\n    The ready Organ of articulate sounds\n    From ribaldry, impiety, or wrath\n    Issuing when shame hath ceased to check the brawls               345\n    Of some abused Festivity--so be it.\n    I came not dreaming of unruffled life,\n    Untainted manners; born among the hills,\n    Bred also there, I wanted not a scale\n    To regulate my hopes. Pleased with the good,                     350\n    I shrink not from the evil with disgust,\n    Or with immoderate pain. I look for Man,\n    The common creature of the brotherhood,\n    Differing but little from the Man elsewhere,\n    For selfishness, and envy, and revenge,                          355\n    Ill neighbourhood--pity that this should be--\n    Flattery and double-dealing, strife and wrong.\n      Yet is it something gained, it is in truth\n    A mighty gain, that Labour here preserves\n    His rosy face, a servant only here                               360\n    Of the fire-side, or of the open field,\n    A freeman, therefore, sound and unimpaired;\n    That extreme penury is here unknown,\n    And cold and hunger's abject wretchedness,\n    Mortal to body, and the heaven-born mind;                        365\n    That they who want, are not too great a weight\n    For those who can relieve. Here may the heart\n    Breathe in the air of fellow-suffering\n    Dreadless, as in a kind of fresher breeze\n    Of her own native element, the hand                              370\n    Be ready and unwearied without plea\n    From tasks too frequent, or beyond its power\n    For languor, or indifference, or despair.\n    And as these lofty barriers break the force\n    Of winds, this deep Vale,--as it doth in part                    375\n    Conceal us from the storm,--so here abides\n    A power and a protection for the mind,\n    Dispensed indeed to other solitudes,\n    Favoured by noble privilege like this,\n    Where kindred independence of estate                             380\n    Is prevalent, where he who tills the field,\n    He, happy man! is master of the field,[369]\n    And treads the mountains which his fathers trod.\n      Not less than half-way up yon Mountain's side\n    Behold a dusky spot, a grove of Firs,                            385\n    That seems still smaller than it is. This grove\n    Is haunted--by what ghost? a gentle spirit\n    Of memory faithful to the call of love;\n    For, as reports the dame, whose fire sends up\n    Yon curling smoke from the grey cot below,                       390\n    The trees (her first-born child being then a babe)\n    Were planted by her husband and herself,\n    That ranging o'er the high and houseless ground\n    Their sheep might neither want (from perilous storms\n    Of winter, nor from summer's sultry heat)                        395\n    A friendly covert. \"And they knew it well,\"\n    Said she, \"for thither as the trees grew up,\n    We to the patient creatures carried food\n    In times of heavy snow.\" She then began\n    In fond obedience to her private thoughts                        400\n    To speak of her dead husband. Is there not\n    An art, a music, and a strain of words\n    That shall be like the acknowledged voice of life,\n    Shall speak of what is done among the fields,\n    Done truly there, or felt, of solid good                         405\n    And real evil, yet be sweet withal,\n    More grateful, more harmonious than the breath,\n    The idle breath of softest pipe attuned\n    To pastoral fancies? Is there such a stream,\n    Pure and unsullied, flowing from the heart                       410\n    With motions of true dignity and grace?\n    Or must we seek that stream where Man is not?\n    Methinks I could repeat in tuneful verse,\n    Delicious as the gentlest breeze that sounds\n    Through that aerial fir-grove, could preserve                    415\n    Some portion of its human history\n    As gathered from the Matron's lips, and tell\n    Of tears that have been shed at sight of it,\n    And moving dialogues between this pair,\n    Who in their prime of wedlock, with joint hands                  420\n    Did plant the grove, now flourishing, while they\n    No longer flourish, he entirely gone,\n    She withering in her loneliness. Be this\n    A task above my skill; the silent mind\n    Has her own treasures, and I think of these,                     425\n    Love what I see, and honour humankind.\n      No, we are not alone, we do not stand,\n    My Sister, here misplaced and desolate,\n    Loving what no one cares for but ourselves;\n    We shall not scatter through the plains and rocks                430\n    Of this fair Vale, and o'er its spacious heights\n    Unprofitable kindliness, bestowed\n    On objects unaccustomed to the gifts\n    Of feeling, which were cheerless and forlorn\n    But few weeks past, and would be so again                        435\n    Were we not here; we do not tend a lamp\n    Whose lustre we alone participate,\n    Which shines dependent upon us alone,\n    Mortal though bright, a dying, dying flame.\n    Look where we will, some human hand has been                     440\n    Before us with its offering; not a tree\n    Sprinkles these little pastures but the same\n    Hath furnished matter for a thought; perchance,\n    For some one, serves as a familiar friend.\n    Joy spreads, and sorrow spreads; and this whole Vale,            445\n    Home of untutored shepherds as it is,\n    Swarms with sensation, as with gleams of sunshine,\n    Shadows or breezes, scents or sounds. Nor deem\n    These feelings, though subservient more than ours\n    To every day's demand for daily bread,                           450\n    And borrowing more their spirit, and their shape\n    From self-respecting interests, deem them not\n    Unworthy therefore, and unhallowed: no,\n    They lift the animal being, do themselves\n    By Nature's kind and ever-present aid                            455\n    Refine the selfishness from which they spring,\n    Redeem by love the individual sense\n    Of anxiousness with which they are combined.\n    And thus it is that fitly they become\n    Associates in the joy of purest minds,                           460\n    They blend therewith congenially: meanwhile,\n    Calmly they breathe their own undying life\n    Through this their mountain sanctuary. Long,\n    Oh long may it remain inviolate,\n    Diffusing health and sober cheerfulness,                         465\n    And giving to the moments as they pass\n    Their little boons of animating thought\n    That sweeten labour, make it seen and felt\n    To be no arbitrary weight imposed,\n    But a glad function natural to man.                              470\n      Fair proof of this, newcomer though I be,\n    Already have I gained. The inward frame\n    Though slowly opening, opens every day\n    With process not unlike to that which cheers\n    A pensive stranger, journeying at his leisure                    475\n    Through some Helvetian dell, when low-hung mists\n    Break up, and are beginning to recede;\n    How pleased he is where thin and thinner grows\n    The veil, or where it parts at once, to spy\n    The dark pines thrusting forth their spiky heads;                480\n    To watch the spreading lawns with cattle grazed,\n    Then to be greeted by the scattered huts,\n    As they shine out; and _see_ the streams whose murmur\n    Had soothed his ear while _they_ were hidden: how pleased\n    To have about him, which way e'er he goes,                       485\n    Something on every side concealed from view,\n    In every quarter something visible,\n    Half-seen or wholly, lost and found again,\n    Alternate progress and impediment,\n    And yet a growing prospect in the main.                          490\n      Such pleasure now is mine, albeit forced,\n    Herein less happy than the Traveller\n    To cast from time to time a painful look\n    Upon unwelcome things, which unawares\n    Reveal themselves; not therefore is my heart                     495\n    Depressed, nor does it fear what is to come,\n    But confident, enriched at every glance.\n    The more I see the more delight my mind\n    Receives, or by reflexion can create.\n    Truth justifies herself, and as she dwells                       500\n    With Hope, who would not follow where she leads?\n      Nor let me pass unheeded other loves\n    Where no fear is, and humbler sympathies.\n    Already hath sprung up within my heart\n    A liking for the small grey horse that bears                     505\n    The paralytic man, and for the brute--\n    In Scripture sanctified--the patient brute,\n    On which the <DW36>, in the quarry maimed,\n    Rides to and fro: I know them and their ways.[370]\n    The famous sheep-dog, first in all the Vale,                     510\n    Though yet to me a stranger, will not be\n    A stranger long; nor will the blind man's guide,\n    Meek and neglected thing, of no renown!\n    Soon will peep forth the primrose; ere it fades\n    Friends shall I have at dawn, blackbird and thrush               515\n    To rouse me, and a hundred warblers more;\n    And if those eagles to their ancient hold\n    Return, Helvellyn's eagles! with the pair\n    From my own door I shall be free to claim\n    Acquaintance as they sweep from cloud to cloud.                  520\n    The owl that gives the name to Owlet-Crag\n    Have I heard whooping, and he soon will be\n    A chosen one of my regards. See there\n    The heifer in yon little croft belongs\n    To one who holds it dear; with duteous care                      525\n    She reared it, and in speaking of her charge\n    I heard her scatter some endearing words\n    Domestic, and in spirit motherly\n    She being herself a Mother, happy Beast\n    If the caresses of a human voice                                 530\n    Can make it so, and care of human hands.\n      And ye as happy under Nature's care,\n    Strangers to me, and all men, or at least\n    Strangers to all particular amity,\n    All intercourse of knowledge or of love                          535\n    That parts the individual from his kind,\n    Whether in large communities ye keep\n    From year to year, not shunning Man's abode,\n    A settled residence, or be from far,\n    Wild creatures, and of many homes, that come                     540\n    The gift of winds, and whom the winds again\n    Take from us at your pleasure--yet shall ye\n    Not want, for this, your own subordinate place\n    In my affections. Witness the delight\n    With which erewhile I saw that multitude                         545\n    Wheel through the sky, and see them now at rest,\n    Yet not at rest, upon the glassy lake.\n    They _cannot_ rest, they gambol like young whelps;\n    Active as lambs, and overcome with joy.\n    They try all frolic motions; flutter, plunge,                    550\n    And beat the passive water with their wings.\n    Too distant are they for plain view, but lo!\n    Those little fountains, sparkling in the sun,\n    Betray their occupation, rising up,\n    First one and then another silver spout,                         555\n    As one or other takes the fit of glee,\n    Fountains and spouts, yet somewhat in the guise\n    Of play-thing fire-works, that on festal nights\n    Sparkle about the feet of wanton boys.\n    --How vast the compass of this theatre,                          560\n    Yet nothing to be seen but lovely pomp\n    And silent majesty; the birch-tree woods\n    Are hung with thousand thousand diamond drops\n    Of melted hoar-frost, every tiny knot\n    In the bare twigs, each little budding place                     565\n    Cased with its several beads, what myriads there\n    Upon one tree, while all the distant grove\n    That rises to the summit of the steep\n    Shows like a mountain built of silver light.\n    See yonder the same pageant, and again                           570\n    Behold the universal imagery\n    Inverted, all its sun-bright features touched\n    As with the varnish, and the gloss of dreams;\n    Dreamlike the blending also of the whole\n    Harmonious landscape; all along the shore                        575\n    The boundary lost, the line invisible\n    That parts the image from reality;\n    And the clear hills, as high as they ascend\n    Heavenward, so piercing deep the lake below.\n    Admonished of the days of love to come                           580\n    The raven croaks, and fills the upper air\n    With a strange sound of genial harmony;[371]\n    And in and all about that playful band,\n    Incapable although they be of rest,\n    And in their fashion very rioters,                               585\n    There is a stillness, and they seem to make\n    Calm revelry in that their calm abode.\n    Them leaving to their joyous hours I pass,\n    Pass with a thought the life of the whole year\n    That is to come, the throng of woodland flowers,                 590\n    And lilies that will dance upon the waves.\n      Say boldly then that solitude is not\n    Where these things are. He truly is alone,\n    He of the multitude whose eyes are doomed\n    To hold a vacant commerce day by day                             595\n    With objects wanting life, repelling love;\n    He by the vast Metropolis immured,\n    Where pity shrinks from unremitting calls,\n    Where numbers overwhelm humanity,\n    And neighbourhood serves rather to divide                        600\n    Than to unite. What sighs more deep than his,\n    Whose nobler will hath long been sacrificed;\n    Who must inhabit, under a black sky,\n    A City where, if indifference to disgust\n    Yield not, to scorn, or sorrow, living men                       605\n    Are ofttimes to their fellow-men no more\n    Than to the forest hermit are the leaves\n    That hang aloft in myriads--nay, far less,\n    For they protect his walk from sun and shower,\n    Swell his devotion with their voice in storms,                   610\n    And whisper while the stars twinkle among them\n    His lullaby. From crowded streets remote,\n    Far from the living and dead wilderness\n    Of the thronged world, Society is here[372]\n    A true Community, a genuine frame                                615\n    Of many into one incorporate.\n    _That_ must be looked for here, paternal sway,\n    One household under God for high and low,\n    One family, and one mansion; to themselves\n    Appropriate, and divided from the world                          620\n    As if it were a cave, a multitude\n    Human and brute, possessors undisturbed\n    Of this recess, their legislative hall,\n    Their Temple, and their glorious dwelling-place.\n      Dismissing therefore, all Arcadian dreams,                     625\n    All golden fancies of the golden age,\n    The bright array of shadowy thoughts from times\n    That were before all time, or is to be\n    Ere time expire, the pageantry that stirs\n    And will be stirring when our eyes are fixed                     630\n    On lovely objects, and we wish to part\n    With all remembrance of a jarring world,\n    --Take we at once this one sufficient hope,\n    What need of more? that we shall neither droop,\n    Nor pine for want of pleasure in the life                        635\n    Scattered about us, nor through dearth of aught\n    That keeps in health the insatiable mind;\n    That we shall have for knowledge and for love\n    Abundance; and that, feeling as we do\n    How goodly, how exceeding fair, how pure                         640\n    From all reproach is yon ethereal vault,\n    And this deep vale its earthly counterpart,\n    By which, and under which, we are enclosed\n    To breathe in peace, we shall moreover find\n    (If sound, and what we ought to be ourselves,                    645\n    If rightly we observe and justly weigh)\n    The inmates not unworthy of their home\n    The dwellers of their dwelling.\n                                  And if this\n    Were otherwise, we have within ourselves\n    Enough to fill the present day with joy,                         650\n    And overspread the future years with hope,\n    Our beautiful and quiet home, enriched\n    Already with a stranger whom we love\n    Deeply, a stranger of our father's house,\n    A never-resting Pilgrim of the Sea,[373]                         655\n    Who finds at last an hour to his content\n    Beneath our roof. And others whom we love\n    Will seek us also, sisters of our hearts,[374]\n    And one, like them, a brother of our hearts,\n    Philosopher and Poet,[375] in whose sight                        660\n    These mountains will rejoice with open joy.\n    --Such is our wealth; O Vale of Peace, we are\n    And must be, with God's will, a happy band.\n      Yet 'tis not to enjoy that we exist,\n    For that end only; something must be done.                       665\n    I must not walk in unreproved delight\n    These narrow bounds, and think of nothing more,\n    No duty that looks further, and no care.\n    Each being has his office, lowly some\n    And common, yet all worthy if fulfilled                          670\n    With zeal, acknowledgment that with the gift\n    Keeps pace, a harvest answering to the seed--\n    Of ill-advised Ambition and of Pride\n    I would stand clear, but yet to me I feel\n    That an internal brightness is vouchsafed                        675\n    That must not die, that must not pass away.\n    Why does this inward lustre fondly seek,\n    And gladly blend with outward fellowship?\n    Why do _they_ shine around me whom I love?\n    Why do they teach me whom I thus revere?                         680\n    Strange question, yet it answers not itself.\n    That humble roof embowered among the trees,\n    That calm fire-side, it is not even in them,\n    --Blest as they are--to furnish a reply,\n    That satisfies and ends in perfect rest.                         685\n    Possessions have I that are solely mine,\n    Something within which yet is shared by none,\n    Not even the nearest to me and most dear,\n    Something which power and effort may impart,\n    I would impart it, I would spread it wide,                       690\n    Immortal in the world which is to come.\n    Forgive me if I add another claim,\n    And would not wholly perish even in this,\n    Lie down and be forgotten in the dust,\n    I and the modest partners of my days                             695\n    Making a silent company in death;\n    Love, knowledge, all my manifold delights\n    All buried with me without monument\n    Or profit unto any but ourselves.\n    It must not be, if I, divinely taught,                           700\n    Be privileged to speak as I have felt\n    Of what in man is human or divine.\n      While yet an innocent little-one, with a heart\n    That doubtless wanted not its tender moods,\n    I breathed (for this I better recollect)                         705\n    Among wild appetites and blind desires,\n    Motions of savage instinct, my delight\n    And exaltation. Nothing at that time\n    So welcome, no temptation half so dear\n    As that which urged me to a daring feat.                         710\n    Deep pools, tall trees, black chasms, and dizzy crags,\n    And tottering towers; I loved to stand and read\n    Their looks forbidding, read and disobey,\n    Sometimes in act, and evermore in thought.\n    With impulses that scarcely were by these                        715\n    Surpassed in strength, I heard of danger, met\n    Or sought with courage; enterprize forlorn\n    By one, sole keeper of his own intent,\n    Or by a resolute few who for the sake\n    Of glory, fronted multitudes in arms.                            720\n    Yea to this hour I cannot read a tale\n    Of two brave vessels matched in deadly fight,\n    And fighting to the death, but I am pleased\n    More than a wise man ought to be. I wish,\n    Fret, burn, and struggle, and in soul am there;                  725\n    But me hath Nature tamed, and bade to seek\n    For other agitations, or be calm;\n    Hath dealt with me as with a turbulent stream,\n    Some nursling of the mountains, which she leads\n    Through quiet meadows, after he has learnt                       730\n    His strength, and had his triumph and his joy,\n    His desperate course of tumult and of glee.\n    That which in stealth by Nature was performed\n    Hath Reason sanctioned. Her deliberate voice\n    Hath said, \"Be mild and cleave to gentle things,                 735\n    Thy glory and thy happiness be there.\n    Nor fear, though thou confide in me, a want\n    Of aspirations that _have_ been, of foes\n    To wrestle with, and victory to complete,\n    Bounds to be leapt, darkness to be explored,                     740\n    All that inflamed thy infant heart, the love,\n    The longing, the contempt, the undaunted quest,\n    All shall survive--though changed their office, all\n    Shall live,--it is not in their power to die.\"\n      Then farewell to the Warrior's schemes, farewell               745\n    The forwardness of soul which looks that way\n    Upon a less incitement than the cause\n    Of Liberty endangered, and farewell\n    That other hope, long mine, the hope to fill\n    The heroic trumpet with the Muse's breath!                       750\n    Yet in this peaceful Vale we will not spend\n    Unheard-of days, though loving peaceful thoughts.\n    A voice shall speak, and what will be the theme?[18]\n\n[359] The following lines, 71-97, and 110-125, were first published in\nthe _Memoirs of Wordsworth_, in 1851.--ED.\n\n[360]\n\n    \u2026 on \u2026\n\n    1851.\n\n[361] The lines 152-167 were first published in the _Memoirs of\nWordsworth_ in 1851.--ED.\n\n[362]\n\n    Mark how the feathered tenants of the flood\n    With grace of motion \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[363]\n\n    \u2026 amid \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[364]\n\n    They tempt the water, or \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[365] The foregoing twenty-seven lines were published under the title\n_Water-Fowl_, in the 1827 edition of Wordsworth's \"Poetical Works.\"\nThey are also printed in the fifth edition of the _Guide through the\nDistrict of the Lakes in the North of England_ (section first).--ED.\n\n[366] Compare _Paradise Lost_, book xii. l. 646.--ED.\n\n[367] Compare, in the _After-Thought_ to \"The Duddon Sonnets\"--\n\n    Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide.\n\nED.\n\n[368] Compare, in _An Evening Walk_, l. 378--\n\n    Or yell, in the deep woods, of lonely hound.\n\nED.\n\n[369] Compare Wordsworth's numerous references to the Cumbrian and\nWestmoreland \"Statesmen,\" in his Prose Works, and elsewhere.--ED.\n\n[370] Compare _Peter Bell_.--ED.\n\n[371] Compare _The Excursion_, book iv. ll. 1175-1187.--ED.\n\n[372] Wordsworth says elsewhere that\n\n    Solitude is blithe Society.\n\nED.\n\n[373] John Wordsworth.--ED.\n\n[374] The Hutchinsons.--ED.\n\n[375] Coleridge.--ED.\n\n\n\"SHALL HE WHO GIVES HIS DAYS TO LOW PURSUITS\"\n\nThe following lines occur in the experimental efforts made by\nWordsworth to write an autobiographical poem. They occur in one of his\nsister's Journals, entitled \"May to December, 1802\"; and were probably\neither dictated to her in that year, or were copied by her from some\nearlier fragment. They stand related to passages in _The Prelude_. (See\nvol. iii. p. 269.)--ED.\n\n    Shall he who gives his days to low pursuits\n    Amid the undistinguishable crowd\n    Of cities, 'mid the same eternal flow\n    Of the same objects, melted and reduced\n    To one identity, by differences                                    5\n    That have no law, no meaning, and no end,\n    Shall he feel yearning to those lifeless forms,\n    And shall we think that Nature is less kind\n    To those, who all day long, through a busy life,\n    Have walked within her sight? It cannot be.                       10\n\n\n\n\n1803\n\n\n\"I FIND IT WRITTEN OF SIMONIDES\"\n\nPublished in _The Morning Post_, October 10, 1803\n\nS.T.C. writing to Tom Poole, October 14, 1803, said that Wordsworth\nwrote to _The Morning Post_ \"as W. L. D., and sometimes with no\nsignature.\" There is ample evidence that the following sonnet was\nwritten by Wordsworth. He had contributed five sonnets to _The Morning\nPost_ before the month of September 1803; and on the 10th of October in\nthat year the following appeared.--ED.\n\n    I find it written of Simonides,\n    That, travelling in strange countries, once he found\n    A corpse that lay expos'd upon the ground,\n    For which, with palms, he caus'd due obsequies\n    To be perform'd, and paid all holy fees.                           5\n    Soon after this man's ghost unto him came,\n    And told him not to sail, as was his aim,\n    On board a ship then ready for the seas.\n    Simonides, admonish'd by the ghost,\n    Remain'd behind: the ship the following day                       10\n    Set sail, was wreck'd, and all on board were lost.\n    Thus was the tenderest Poet that could be,\n    Who sang in antient Greece his loving lay,\n    Sav'd out of many by his piety.\n\n\n\n\n1804\n\n\n\"NO WHIMSEY OF THE PURSE IS HERE\"\n\nWriting to Sir George Beaumont, on Christmas Day, 1804, Wordsworth\nsaid: \"We have lately built in our little rocky orchard a circular\nhut, lined with moss, like a wren's nest, and coated on the outside\nwith heath, that stands most charmingly, with several views from the\ndifferent sides of it, of the Lake, the Valley, and the Church.\u2026 I will\ncopy a dwarf inscription which I wrote for it\" (_i.e._ the circular\nhut, in his Orchard-Garden) \"the other day before the building was\nentirely finished, which indeed it is not yet.\"[376]--ED.\n\n    No whimsey of the purse is here,\n    No pleasure-house forlorn;\n    Use, comfort, do this roof endear;\n    A tributary shed to cheer\n    The little cottage that is near,\n    To help it and adorn.\n\n[376] See the _Memorials of Coleorton_, vol. i. p. 81; and Wordsworth's\nletter on the subject in a later volume of this edition.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1805\n\n\n\"PEACEFUL OUR VALLEY, FAIR AND GREEN\"\n\nThis is extracted from a copy of an appendix to _Recollections of a\nTour in Scotland_ by Dorothy Wordsworth, written by Mrs. Clarkson,\nSeptember-November 1805. It was composed by the poet's sister. In\nFebruary 1892 it was published in _The Monthly Packet_ under the title\n\"Grasmere: a Fragment,\" and with the signature \"Rydal Mount, September\n26, 1829.\" It is now printed from the MS. of 1805.--ED.\n\n    Peaceful our valley, fair and green;\n      And beautiful the cottages\n    Each in its nook, its sheltered hold,\n      Or underneath its tuft of trees.\n\n    Many and beautiful they are;                                       5\n      But there is one that I love best,\n    A lowly roof in truth it is,\n      A brother of the rest.\n\n    Yet when I sit on rock or hill\n      Down-looking on the valley fair,                                10\n    That cottage with its grove of trees\n      Summons my heart; it settles there.\n\n    Others there are whose small domain\n      Of fertile fields with hedgerows green\n    Might more seduce the traveller's mind                            15\n      To wish that there his home had been.\n\n    Such wish be his! I blame him not,\n      My fancies they, perchance, are wild;\n    I love that house because it is\n      The very mountain's child.                                      20\n\n    Fields hath it of its own, green fields;\n      But they are craggy, steep, and bare;\n    Their fence is of the mountain stone,\n      And moss and lichen flourish there.\n\n    And when the storm comes from the North                           25\n      It lingers near that pastoral spot,\n    And piping through the mossy walls,\n      It seems delighted with its lot.\n\n    And let it take its own delight,\n      And let it range the pastures bare                              30\n    Until it reach that grove of trees\n      ----It may not enter there!\n\n    A green unfading grove it is,\n      Skirted with many a lesser tree,\n    Hazel and holly, beech and oak,                                   35\n      A fair and flourishing company!\n\n    Precious the shelter of those trees!\n      They screen the cottage that I love;\n    The sunshine pierces to the roof\n      And the tall pine trees tower above.                            40\n\n    When first I saw that dear abode\n      It was a lovely winter's day:\n    After a night of perilous storm\n      The West wind ruled with gentle sway;\n\n    A day so mild, it might have been                                 45\n      The first day of the gladsome spring;\n    The robins warbled; and I heard\n      One solitary throstle sing:\n\n    A stranger in the neighbourhood,\n      All faces then to me unknown,                                    50\n    I left my sole companion-friend\n      To wander out alone.\n\n    Lur'd by a little winding path,\n      I quitted soon the public road,\n    A smooth and tempting path it was                                 55\n      By sheep and shepherds trod.\n\n    Eastward, toward the mighty hills\n      This pathway led me on,\n    Until I reach'd a lofty Rock\n      With velvet moss o'ergrown.                                      60\n\n    With russet Oak and tufts of Fern\n      Its top was richly garlanded;\n    Its sides adorn'd with Eglantine\n      Bedropp'd with hips of glossy red.\n\n    There too in many a shelter'd chink                               65\n      The foxglove's broad leaves flourish'd fair,\n    And silver birch whose purple twigs\n      Bend to the softest breathing air.\n\n    Beneath that rock my course I stay'd\n      And, looking to its summit high,                                 70\n    \"Thou wear'st,\" said I, \"a splendid garb,\n      Here winter keeps his revelry.\n\n    \"I've been a dweller on the plains,\n      Have sigh'd when summer days were gone;\n    No more I'll sigh; for winter here                                75\n      Hath gladsome gardens of his own.\n\n    \"What need of flowers? The splendid moss\n      Is gayer than an April mead;\n    More rich its hues of various green,\n      Orange and gold and glowing red.\"                               80\n\n    ----Beside that gay and lovely rock\n      There came with merry voice\n    A foaming streamlet glancing by,\n      It seem'd to say \"Rejoice!\"\n\n    My youthful wishes all fulfill'd,                                 85\n      Wishes matured by thoughtful choice,\n    I stood an Inmate of this vale,\n      How could I but rejoice?\n\n\n\"AH! IF I WERE A LADY GAY\"\n\nThe following two stanzas were added by Wordsworth to his sister's\npoem, entitled _The Cottager to her Infant_--composed in 1805, and\nissued in 1815 (see vol. iii. pp. 74, 75); but they were never\npublished in Wordsworth's lifetime.--ED.\n\n    Ah! if I were a lady gay\n    I should not grieve with thee to play;\n    Right gladly would I lie awake\n    Thy lively spirits to partake,\n      And ask no better cheer.                                         5\n\n    But, Babe! there's none to work for me,\n    And I must rise to industry;\n    Soon as the cock begins to crow\n    Thy mother to the fold must go\n      To tend the sheep and kine.                                     10\n\n\n\n\n1806\n\n\nTO THE EVENING STAR OVER GRASMERE WATER, JULY 1806\n\n                                The Lake is thine,\n    The mountains too are thine, some clouds there are,\n    Some little feeble stars, but all is thine,\n    Thou, thou art king, and sole proprietor.\n\n    A moon among her stars, a mighty vale,                             5\n    Fresh as the freshest field, scoop'd out, and green\n    As is the greenest billow of the sea.\n\n    The multitude of little rocky hills,\n    Rocky or green, that do like islands rise\n    From the flat meadow lonely there.                                10\n    \u2026\n    Embowering mountains, and the dome of Heaven\n    And waters in the midst, a Second Heaven.\n\n\nMICHAEL ANGELO IN REPLY TO THE PASSAGE UPON HIS STATUE OF NIGHT SLEEPING\n\nIn the first volume of a copy of the edition of 1836,--long kept by\nWordsworth at Rydal Mount, and afterwards the property of the late Lord\nColeridge--which has been referred to in the Preface to Vol. 1., and\nvery often in the footnotes to all the volumes, signed C.--Wordsworth\nwrote in MS. two translations of a fragment of Michael Angelo's on\nSleep, and a translation of some Latin verses by Thomas Warton on the\nsame subject. These fragments were never included in any edition of his\npublished works, and it is impossible to say to what year they belong.\nFrom their close relation to other translations from Michael Angelo,\nmade by Wordsworth in 1806, I assign them, conjecturally, to the same\nyear. The title is from Wordsworth's own MS.--ED.\n\n                        I\n\n    Grateful is Sleep, my life, in stone bound fast,\n    More grateful still: while wrong and shame shall last,\n    On me can Time no happier state bestow\n    Than to be left unconscious of the woe.\n    Ah then, lest you awaken me, speak low.                            5\n\n                       II\n\n    Grateful is Sleep, more grateful still to be\n    Of marble; for while shameless wrong and woe\n    Prevail, 'tis best to neither hear nor see.\n    Then wake me not, I pray you. Hush, speak low.\n\n\n\"COME, GENTLE SLEEP, DEATH'S IMAGE THO' THOU ART\"\n\n    Come, gentle Sleep, Death's image tho' thou art,\n    Come share my couch, nor speedily depart;\n    How sweet thus living without life to lie,\n    Thus without death how sweet it is to die.\n\nThe Latin verse by Thomas Warton, of which these lines are a\ntranslation, is as follows:--\n\n    Somne veni! quamvis placidissima Mortis imago es,\n      Consortem cupio te tamen esse tori;\n    Hue ades, haud abiture cit\u00f2! nam sic sine vita\n      Vivere quam suave est, sic sine morte mori!\n\nThomas Warton, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, and Professor of\nPoetry in that University, is chiefly known by his _History of English\nPoetry_ (1774-1781).--ED.\n\n\n\"BROOK, THAT HAST BEEN MY SOLACE DAYS AND WEEKS\"\n\nThe following version of the sonnet beginning \"Brook! whose society the\nPoet seeks,\" probably written in 1806 and first published in 1815 (see\nvol. iv. p. 52), has come to light since that volume was issued. The\nvariants throughout are sufficient to warrant its publication here. Had\nI received it earlier they would have appeared in vol. iv.--ED.\n\n    Brook, that hast been my solace days and weeks,\n    And months, and let me add the long year through,\n    I come to thee, thou dost my heart renew;\n    O happy Thing! among thy flowery creeks,\n    And happy, dancing down thy water-breaks:                          5\n    If I some type of thee did wish to view,\n    Thee, and not thee thyself, I would not do\n    Like Grecian Poets, give thee human cheeks,\n    Channels for tears! No Naiad should'st thou be;\n    Have neither wings, feet, feathers, joints, nor hairs.            10\n    It seems the Eternal Soul is clothed in thee\n    With purer robes than those of flesh and blood,\n    And hath bestowed on thee a better good;\n    The joy of fleshly life without its cares.\n\n\nTRANSLATION FROM MICHAEL ANGELO\n\nThe date of this is unknown, and the original MS. is difficult to\ndecipher. It is here and there illegible. It may belong to the year\nof the \"Ecclesiastical Sonnets,\" but I place it beside the other\ntranslation from Michael Angelo.--ED.\n\n    Rid of a vexing and a heavy load,\n    Eternal Lord! and from the world set free,\n    Like a frail Bark, weary I turn to Thee,--\n    From frightful storms into a quiet road.\n    On much repentance Grace will be bestow'd.                         5\n    The nails, the thorns, and thy two hands, thy face\n    Benign, meek, \u2026, offers grace\n    To sinners whom their sins oppress and goad.\n    Let not thy justice view, O Light Divine,\n    My fault, and keep it from thy sacred ear.                        10\n    \u2026\n    Cleanse with thy blood my sins, to this incline\n    More readily, the more my years require\n    Prompt aid, forgiveness speedy and entire.\n\n\n\n\n1808\n\n\nGEORGE AND SARAH GREEN\n\nComposed 1808.--Published 1839\n\nThis poem was first printed in De Quincey's \"Recollections of\nGrasmere,\" which appeared in _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, September\n1839, p. 573, and afterwards in his _Recollections of the Lakes_\n(1853), p. 23.\n\nThe text is printed as it is found in De Quincey's article. Doubtless\nWordsworth, or some member of the family, had supplied him with a\ncopy of these verses. Wordsworth himself seemed to have thought them\nunworthy of publication. A copy of the poem was transcribed at Grasmere\nby Dorothy Wordsworth for Lady Beaumont on the 20th April 1808. In\nthis copy there are numerous variations from the text as published by\nDe Quincey, and these are indicated in the footnotes. In the letter to\nLady Beaumont, Dorothy Wordsworth says, \"I am going to transcribe a\npoem composed by my brother a few days after his return. It was begun\nin the churchyard when he was looking at the grave of the Husband and\nWife, and is in fact supposed to be entirely composed there.\"\n\nWordsworth returned to his old home at Dove Cottage, Grasmere, after a\nshort visit to London, on the 6th April 1808; and there he remained,\ntill Allan Bank was ready for occupation. I therefore conclude that\nthis poem was written in April 1808.\n\nCompare De Quincey's account of the disaster that befell the Greens, as\nreported in his _Early Recollections of Grasmere_. The Wordsworths had\nevidently taken part in the effort to raise subscriptions in behalf of\nthe orphan children. They issued a printed appeal on the subject. The\nfollowing is an extract from a letter of Dorothy Wordsworth's to Lady\nBeaumont on the subject:--\n\n                                    \"GRASMERE, _April 20th, 1808_.\n\n    \"We received your letter this morning, enclosing the half of a\n    \u00a35 note. I am happy to inform you that the orphans have been\n    fixed under the care of very respectable people. The baby is\n    with its sister--she who filled the Mother's place in the house\n    during their two days of fearless solitude. It has clung to her\n    ever since, and she has been its sole nurse. I went with two\n    ladies of the Committee (in my sister's place, who was then\n    confined to poor John's bedside) to conduct the family to their\n    separate homes. The two Girls are together, as I have said; two\n    Boys at another Home; and the third Boy by himself at the house\n    of an elderly man who had a particular friendship for their\n    father. The kind reception that the children met with was very\n    affecting.\"\n\nSee the letters from Wordsworth to Richard Sharpe, Esq., Mark Lane,\nLondon, in a subsequent volume, referring to the catastrophe.--ED.\n\n    Who weeps for strangers? Many wept\n      For George and Sarah Green;\n    Wept for that pair's unhappy fate,\n      Whose grave may here be seen.[377]\n\n    By night, upon these stormy fells,[378]                            5\n      Did wife and husband roam;\n    Six little ones at home had left,\n      And could not find that home.[379]\n\n    For _any_ dwelling-place of man\n      As vainly did they seek.                                        10\n    He perish'd; and a voice was heard--\n      The widow's lonely shriek.[380]\n\n    Not many steps, and she was left[381]\n      A body without life--\n    A few short steps were the chain that bound[382]                  15\n      The husband to the wife.[383]\n\n    Now do those[384] sternly-featured hills\n      Look gently on this grave;\n    And quiet now are the depths[385] of air,\n      As a sea without a wave.                                        20\n\n    But deeper lies the heart of peace\n      In quiet more profound;[386]\n    The heart of quietness is here\n      Within this churchyard bound.[387]\n\n    And from all agony of mind                                        25\n      It keeps them safe, and far\n    From fear and grief, and from all need\n      Of sun or guiding star.[388]\n\n    O darkness of the grave! how deep,[389]\n      After that living night--                                       30\n    That last and dreary living one\n      Of sorrow and affright!\n\n    O sacred marriage-bed of death,\n      That keeps[390] them side by side\n    In bond of peace, in bond of love,[391]                           35\n      That may not be untied!\n\n[377] 1839.\n\n    Wept for that Pair's unhappy end,\n    Whose Grave may here be seen.\n\n    MS. letter of Dorothy Wordsworth's.\n\n[378] 1839.\n\n    \u2026 these stormy Heights,\n\n    MS.\n\n[379] 1839.\n\n    Six little ones the Pair had left,\n    And could not find their home.\n\n    MS.\n\n[380] 1839.\n\n    Down the dark precipice he fell,\n      And she was left alone,\n    Not long to think of her children dear,\n      Not long to pray, or groan.\n\n    Added in MS.\n\n[381] 1839.\n\n    A few wild steps--she too was left,\n\n    MS.\n\n[382] 1839.\n\n    The chain of but a few wild steps.\n\n    MS. in Dorothy Wordsworth's handwriting--sent to Lady Beaumont.\n\n[383] 1839.\n\nFour stanzas are here added in MS., only one of which need be given--\n\n    Our peace is of the immortal soul,\n      Our anguish is of clay;\n    Such bounty is in Heaven: so pass\n      The bitterest pangs away.\n\n[384] 1839.\n\n    Now do the \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[385] 1839.\n\n    \u2026 is the depth \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[386] 1839.\n\n    In shelter more profound.\n\n    MS.\n\n[387] 1839.\n\n    \u2026 ground.\n\n    MS.\n\n[388] 1839.\n\n    From fear, and from all need of hope\n      From sun or guiding star.\n\n    MS.\n\n[389] 1839.\n\n    \u2026 how calm,\n\n    MS.\n\n[390] 1839.\n\n    That holds \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n[391] 1839.\n\n    In bond of love, in bond of God,\n\n    MS.\n\n\n\n\n1818\n\n\n\"THE SCOTTISH BROOM ON BIRD-NEST BRAE\"[392]\n\n    The Scottish Broom on Bird-nest brae[393]\n    Twelve tedious years ago,\n    When many plants strange blossoms bore\n    That puzzled high and low,\n    A not unnatural longing felt,                                      5\n    What longing would ye know?\n    Why, friend, to deck her supple twigs\n    With _yellow_ in full blow.\n\n    To Lowther Castle she addressed\n    A prayer both bold and sly,                                       10\n    (For all the Brooms on Bird-nest brae\n    Can talk and speechify)\n    That flattering breezes blowing thence\n    Their succour would supply,\n    Then she would instantly put forth                                15\n    A flag of _yellow_ dye.\n\n    But from the Castle turret blew\n    A chill forbidding blast,\n    Which the poor Broom no sooner felt\n    Than she shrank up so fast;                                       20\n    Her _wished-for_ yellow she forswore,\n    And since that time has cast\n    Fond looks on colours three or four\n    And put forth _Blue_ at last.\n    And now, my lads, the Election comes                              25\n    In June's sunshining hours,\n    When every field and bank and brae\n    Is clad with yellow flowers.\n    While faction Blue from shops and booths\n    Tricks out her blustering powers,                                 30\n    Lo! smiling Nature's lavish hand\n    Has furnished wreaths for ours.\n\n[392] \"Written, in my opinion, at the General Election of 1818.\"--(The\nRev. Thomas Hutchinson of Kimbolton.)\n\n[393] \"Bird-nest\" was the old name of Brougham Hall.--ED.\n\n\nPLACARD FOR A POLL BEARING AN OLD SHIRT\n\nWordsworth was deeply interested in the successive parliamentary\nelections for Westmoreland (see his \"Addresses to the Freeholders of\nWestmorland, 1818,\" in the Prose Works.) He particularly disliked\nLord Brougham's candidature. The following squib is in MS. at Lowther\nCastle. He wrote on the MS.--\"For a version of part of B.'s famous\nLondon Tower Speech see opposite page.\"--ED.\n\n    If money's slack,\n    The shirt on my back\n    Shall off, and go to the hammer:\n    Though I sell shirt and skin\n    By Jove I'll be in,\n    And raise up a radical clamor!\n\n\n\"CRITICS, RIGHT HONOURABLE BARD, DECREE\"\n\nI have found this in a catalogue of Autograph Letters, and have no\nknowledge of its date, or of the Bard referred to. Solomon Gesner wrote\na poem on _The Death of Abel_, which was translated into English. See\nfootnote to _The Prelude_, book vii. l. 564.--ED.\n\n    \"Critics, right honourable Bard, decree\n    Laurels to some, a night-shade wreath to thee,\n    Whose muse a sure though late revenge hath ta'en\n    Of harmless Abel's death, by murdering Cain.\"\n\nOn Cain, a Mystery, dedicated to Sir Walter Scott:--\n\n    \"A German Haggis from receipt\n    Of him who cooked the death of Abel,\n    And sent 'warm-reeking, rich and sweet,'\n    From Venice to Sir Walter's table.\"\n\n\n\n\n1819\n\n\n\"THROUGH CUMBRIAN WILDS, IN MANY A MOUNTAIN COVE\"\n\nIn 1819 Wordsworth wrote the sonnet beginning, \"Grief, thou hast lost\nan ever ready friend.\" In the note to that sonnet (vol. vi. p. 196)\nI have given a different version of its last six lines, from a MS.\nsonnet. But as these six lines also form the conclusion of another\nunpublished sonnet, it may be given in full by itself, in this\nAppendix.--ED.\n\n    Through Cumbrian wilds, in many a mountain cove,\n    The pastoral Muse laments the Wheel--no more\n    Engaged, near blazing hearth on clean-swept floor,\n    In tasks which guardian Angels might approve,\n    Friendly the weight of leisure to remove,                          5\n    And to beguile the lassitude of ease;\n    Gracious to all the dear dependencies\n    Of house and field,--to plenty, peace, and love.\n    There too did _Fancy_ prize the murmuring wheel;\n    For sympathies, inexplicably fine,                                10\n    Instilled a confidence--how sweet to feel!\n    That ever in the night-calm, when the Sheep\n    Upon their grassy beds lay couch'd in sleep,\n    The quickening spindle drew a trustier line.\n\n\n\"MY SON! BEHOLD THE TIDE ALREADY SPENT\"\n\nThe following sonnet occurs after the above in the same MS. whence both\nare extracted.--ED.\n\n    My Son! behold the tide already spent\n    That rose, and steadily advanced to fill\n    The shores and channels, working Nature's will\n    Among the mazy streams that backward went,\n    And in the sluggish Ports where ships were pent.                   5\n    And now, its task performed, the flood stands still\n    At the green base of many an inland hill,\n    In placid beauty and entire content.\n    Such the repose that Sage and Hero find,\n    Such measured rest the diligent and good                          10\n    Of humbler name, whose souls do like the flood\n    Of ocean press right on, or gently wind,\n    Neither to be diverted nor withstood\n    Until they reach the bounds by Heaven assigned.\n\n\n\n\n1820\n\n\nAUTHOR'S VOYAGE DOWN THE RHINE\n\n(THIRTY YEARS AGO)\n\n    The confidence of Youth our only Art,\n    And Hope gay Pilot of the bold design,\n    We saw the living Landscapes of the Rhine,\n    Reach after reach, salute us and depart;\n    Slow sink the Spires,--and up again they start!                    5\n    But who shall count the Towers as they recline\n    O'er the dark steeps, or in the horizon line\n    Striding, with shattered crests, the eye athwart?\n    More touching still, more perfect was the pleasure,\n    When hurrying forward till the slack'ning stream                  10\n    Spread like a spacious Mere, we there could measure\n    A smooth free course along the watery gleam,\n    Think calmly on the past, and mark at leisure\n    Features which else had vanished like a dream.\n\nThis sonnet was published in the first edition of the Memorials of\nthis Tour (1822), but was struck out of the next edition, and never\nrepublished. Its rejection by Wordsworth is curious.\n\nIt refers to the pedestrian tour which the Poet took, with his\nfriend Jones, in 1790, which he afterwards recorded in full in his\n_Descriptive Sketches_.\n\nDorothy Wordsworth, in her Journal of the Tour in 1820, refers to it\nthus:--\"Our journey through the narrower and most romantic passages\nof the Vale of the Rhine was connected with times long past, when my\nbrother and his Friend (it was thirty years ago) floated down the\nstream in their little Bark. Often did my fancy place them with a\nfreight of happiness in the centre of some bending reach, overlooked\nby tower or castle, or (when expectation would be most eager) at the\nturning of a promontory, which had concealed from their view some\ndelicious winding which we had left behind; but no more of my own\nfeelings, a record of his will be more interesting.\"\n\nShe then quotes the sonnet, beginning\n\n    The confidence of Youth our only Art.\n\nThere are also numerous allusions in Mrs. Wordsworth's Journal to\nthis early tour; _e.g._ under date August 13. \"We left Meyringen;\nsoon reached a sort of Hotel, which Wm. pointed out to us with great\ninterest, as being the only spot where he and his friend Jones were ill\nused, during the course of their adventurous journey--a wild looking\nbuilding, a little removed from the road, where the vale of Hasli\nends.\" Again, in describing the sunset from the woody hill Colline de\nGibet, overlooking the two lakes of Brienz and Thun, at Interlaken,\n\"with the loveliest of green vallies between us and Jungfrau,\" \"Surely\nWilliam must have had this Paradise in his thoughts when he began his\n_Descriptive Sketches_--\n\n    Were there, below, a spot of holy ground,\n    By Pain and her sad family unfound, etc.\n\nBut no habitation was there among these rocky knolls, and tiny\npastures. One fragment, something like a ruined convent, lurked under\na steep, woody-fringed crag. What a Refuge for a pious Sisterhood!\"\nCompare also the note to _Stanzas composed in the Simplon Pass_, vol.\nvi. p. 359.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1822\n\n\n\"THESE VALES WERE SADDENED WITH NO COMMON GLOOM\"\n\nIn the _Memoirs of William Wordsworth_ by his nephew (the late Bishop\nof Lincoln) vol. i. chap. xxx. the following occurs as an addendum\ntransferred to the footnotes:--\n\n\"The first six lines of an epitaph in Grasmere Church were also his\ncomposition. The elegant marble tablet on which they were engraved was\ndesigned by Sir Francis Chantry, and prepared by Allan Cunningham,\n1822. It is over the chancel door.\"\n\nThe following is the Inscription:--\n\n                         In the Burial Ground\n              of this Church are deposited the remains of\n                         JEMIMA ANNE DEBORAH,\n                          second daughter of\n           Sir Egerton Brydges, of Denton Court, Kent, Bart.\n           She departed this life at the Ivy Cottage, Rydal,\n                     May 25th 1822, aged 28 years.\n                This memorial is erected by her husband\n\n                           EDWARD QUILLINAN.\n\nThe entire sonnet, of which Wordsworth wrote the \"first six lines,\" is\nas follows:--\n\n    These vales were saddened with no common gloom\n    When good Jemima perished in her bloom;\n    When, such the awful will of heaven, she died\n    By flames breathed on her from her own fireside.\n    On earth we dimly see, and but in part                             5\n    We know, yet faith sustains the sorrowing heart;\n    And she, the pure, the patient and the meek,\n    Might have fit epitaph could feelings speak;\n    If words could tell and monuments record,\n    How Treasures lost are inwardly deplored,                         10\n    No name by grief's fond eloquence adorned\n    More than Jemima's would be praised and mourned.\n    The tender virtues of her blameless life,\n    Bright in the daughter, brighter in the wife,\n    And in the cheerful mother brightest shone,--                     15\n    That light hath past away--the will of God[394] be done.\n\n[394]\n\n    \u2026 of Heaven \u2026\n\n    MS.\n\n\nTRANSLATION OF PART OF THE FIRST BOOK OF THE \u00c6NEID\n\nComposed 1823 (?).--Published 1836\n\nThis translation was included in the _Philological Museum_, edited\nby Julius Charles Hare, and published at Cambridge in 1832 (vol. i.\np. 382, etc.). Three Books were translated by Wordsworth, but the\ngreater portion is still in MS., unpublished. What is now reproduced\nappeared in the _Museum_. As it was never included by Wordsworth\nhimself in any edition of his Works, his own estimate of its literary\nvalue was slight. It was published by Professor Henry Reed in his\nAmerican reprint of 1851. Writing to Lord Lonsdale on 9th Nov. 1823,\nWordsworth says, \"I have just finished a Translation into English rhyme\nof the First _\u00c6neid_. Would you allow me to send it to you? I would\nbe much gratified if you would take the trouble of comparing some\npassages with the original. I have endeavoured to be much more literal\nthan Dryden, or Pitt--who keeps more close to the original than his\npredecessor.\"--ED.\n\n            TO THE EDITORS OF THE \"PHILOLOGICAL MUSEUM\"\n\n    Your letter, reminding me of an expectation I some time since\n    held out to you of allowing some specimens of my translation\n    from the _\u00c6neid_ to be printed in the _Philological Museum_\n    was not very acceptable; for I had abandoned the thought of\n    ever sending into the world any part of that experiment,--for\n    it was nothing more,--an experiment begun for amusement, and I\n    now think a less fortunate one than when I first named it to\n    you. Having been displeased in modern translations with the\n    additions of incongruous matter, I began to translate with a\n    resolve to keep clear of that fault, by adding nothing; but\n    I became convinced that a spirited translation can scarcely\n    be accomplished in the English language without admitting a\n    principle of compensation. On this point, however, I do not\n    wish to insist, and merely send the following passage, taken at\n    random, from a wish to comply with your request.--W.W.\n\n      But Cytherea, studious to invent\n    Arts yet untried, upon new counsels bent,\n    Resolves that Cupid, chang'd in form and face\n    To young Ascanius, should assume his place;\n    Present the maddening gifts, and kindle heat                       5\n    Of passion at the bosom's inmost seat.\n    She dreads the treacherous house, the double tongue;\n    She burns, she frets--by Juno's rancour stung;\n    The calm of night is powerless to remove\n    These cares, and thus she speaks to wing\u00e8d Love:                  10\n\n      \"O son, my strength, my power! who dost despise\n    (What, save thyself, none dares through earth and skies)\n    The giant-quelling bolts of Jove, I flee,\n    O son, a suppliant to thy deity!\n    What perils meet \u00c6neas in his course,                             15\n    How Juno's hate with unrelenting force\n    Pursues thy brother--this to thee is known;\n    And oft-times hast thou made my griefs thine own.\n    Him now the generous Dido by soft chains\n    Of bland entreaty at her court detains;                           20\n    Junonian hospitalities prepare\n    Such apt occasion that I dread a snare.\n    Hence, ere some hostile God can intervene,\n    Would I, by previous wiles, inflame the queen\n    With passion for \u00c6neas, such strong love                          25\n    That at my beck, mine only, she shall move.\n    Hear, and assist;--the father's mandate calls\n    His young Ascanius to the Tyrian walls;\n    He comes, my dear delight,--and costliest things\n    Preserv'd from fire and flood for presents brings.                30\n    Him will I take, and in close covert keep,\n    'Mid groves Idalian, lull'd to gentle sleep,\n    Or on Cythera's far-sequestered steep,\n    That he may neither know what hope is mine,\n    Nor by his presence traverse the design.                          35\n    Do thou, but for a single night's brief space,\n    Dissemble; be that boy in form and face!\n    And when enraptured Dido shall receive\n    Thee to her arms, and kisses interweave\n    With many a fond embrace, while joy runs high,                    40\n    And goblets crown the proud festivity,\n    Instil thy subtle poison, and inspire,\n    At every touch, an unsuspected fire.\"\n\n      Love, at the word, before his mother's sight\n    Puts off his wings, and walks, with proud delight,                45\n    Like young Iulus; but the gentlest dews\n    Of slumber Venus sheds, to circumfuse\n    The true Ascanius steep'd in placid rest;\n    Then wafts him, cherish'd on her careful breast,\n    Through upper air to an Idalian glade,                            50\n    Where he on soft _amaracas_ is laid,\n    With breathing flowers embraced, and fragrant shade.\n    But Cupid, following cheerily his guide\n    Achates, with the gifts to Carthage hied;\n    And, as the hall he entered, there, between                       55\n    The sharers of her golden couch, was seen\n    Reclin'd in festal pomp the Tyrian queen.\n    The Trojans, too (\u00c6neas at their head),\n    On couches lie, with purple overspread:\n    Meantime in canisters is heap'd the bread,                        60\n    Pellucid water for the hands is borne,\n    And napkins of smooth texture, finely shorn.\n    Within are fifty handmaids, who prepare,\n    As they in order stand, the dainty fare;\n    And fume the household deities with store                         65\n    Of odorous incense; while a hundred more\n    Match'd with an equal number of like age,\n    But each of manly sex, a docile page,\n    Marshal the banquet, giving with due grace\n    To cup or viand its appointed place.                              70\n    The Tyrians rushing in, an eager band,\n    Their painted couches seek, obedient to command.\n    They look with wonder on the gifts--they gaze\n    Upon Iulus, dazzled with the rays\n    That from his ardent countenance are flung,                       75\n    And charm'd to hear his simulating tongue;\n    Nor pass unprais'd the robe and veil divine,\n    Round which the yellow flowers and wandering foliage twine.\n\n      But chiefly Dido, to the coming ill\n    Devoted, strives in vain her vast desires to fill;                80\n    She views the gifts; upon the child then turns\n    Insatiable looks, and gazing burns.\n    To ease a father's cheated love he hung\n    Upon \u00c6neas, and around him clung;\n    Then seeks the queen; with her his arts he tries;                 85\n    She fastens on the boy enamour'd eyes,\n    Clasps in her arms, nor weens (O lot unblest!)\n    How great a God, incumbent o'er her breast,\n    Would fill it with his spirit. He, to please\n    His Acidalian mother, by degrees                                  90\n    Blots out Sichaeus, studious to remove\n    The dead, by influx of a living love,\n    By stealthy entrance of a perilous guest.\n    Troubling a heart that had been long at rest.\n\n      Now when the viands were withdrawn, and ceas'd                  95\n    The first division of the splendid feast,\n    While round a vacant board the chiefs recline,\n    Huge goblets are brought forth; they crown the wine;\n    Voices of gladness roll the walls around;\n    Those gladsome voices from the courts rebound;                   100\n    From gilded rafters many a blazing light\n    Depends, and torches overcome the night.\n    The minutes fly--till, at the queen's command,\n    A bowl of state is offered to her hand:\n    Then she, as Belus wont, and all the line                        105\n    From Belus, filled it to the brim with wine;\n    Silence ensued. \"O Jupiter, whose care\n    Is hospitable dealing, grant my prayer!\n    Productive day be this of lasting joy\n    To Tyrians, and these exiles driven from Troy;                   110\n    A day to future generations dear!\n    Let Bacchus, donor of soul-quick'ning cheer,\n    Be present; kindly Juno, be thou near!\n    And, Tyrians, may your choicest favours wait\n    Upon this hour, the bond to celebrate!\"                          115\n    She spake and shed an offering on the board;\n    Then sipp'd the bowl whence she the wine had pour'd\n    And gave to Bitias, urging the prompt lord;\n    He rais'd the bowl, and took a long deep draught;\n    Then every chief in turn the beverage quaff'd.                   120\n\n      Graced with redundant hair, Iopas sings\n    The lore of Atlas, to resounding strings,\n    The labours of the Sun, the lunar wanderings;\n    Whence human kind, and brute; what natural powers\n    Engender lightning, whence are falling showers.                  125\n    He haunts Arcturus,--that fraternal twain\n    The glittering Bears,--the Pleiads fraught with rain;\n    --Why suns in winter, shunning heaven's steep heights\n    Post seaward,--what impedes the tardy nights.\n    The learned song from Tyrian hearers draws                       130\n    Loud shouts,--the Trojans echo the applause.\n    --But, lengthening out the night with converse new,\n    Large draughts of love unhappy Dido drew;\n    Of Priam ask'd, of Hector--o'er and o'er--\n    What arms the son of bright Aurora wore;--                       135\n    What steeds the car of Diomed could boast;\n    Among the leaders of the Grecian host\n    How look'd Achilles, their dread paramount--\n    \"But nay--the fatal wiles, O guest, recount,\n    Retrace the Grecian cunning from its source,                     140\n    Your own grief and your friends'--your wandering course;\n    For now, till this seventh summer have ye rang'd\n    The sea, or trod the earth, to peace estrang'd.\"\n\n\n\n\n1823\n\n\n\"ARMS AND THE MAN I SING, THE FIRST WHO BORE\"\n\nThe following version of the first few lines of the _\u00c6neid_ were copied\nby Professor Reed of Philadelphia, with Mrs. Wordsworth's permission,\nduring a visit to Rydal Mount in 1854, four years after the poet's\ndeath. Mrs. Reed kindly sent them to me.--ED.\n\n    Arms and the Man I sing, the first who bore\n    His course to Latium from the Trojan shore,\n    A fugitive of fate. Long time was he\n    By powers celestial tossed on land and sea\n    Thro' wrathful Juno's far-famed enmity;\n    Much too from war endured till new abodes\n    He planted, and in Latium fixed his Gods,\n    Whence flows the Latin people, whence have come\n    The Alban Sites and walls of lofty Rome.\n\n\n\n\n1826\n\n\nLINES ADDRESSED TO JOANNA H. FROM GWERNDWFFNANT IN JUNE 1826\n\nBY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH[395]\n\n    A twofold harmony is here;\n    I listen with the bodily ear,\n    But dull and cheerless is the sound\n    Contrasted with the heart's rebound.\n\n    Now at the close of fervid June,                                   5\n    Upon this breathless hazy noon,\n    I seek the deepest darkest shade\n    Within the covert of that glade,\n\n    Which you and I first named our own\n    When primroses were fully blown,                                  10\n    Oaks just were budding, and the grove\n    Rang with the gladdest songs of love.\n\n    Then did the Leader of the Band,\n    A gallant thrush, maintain his stand\n    Unshrouded from the eye of day                                    15\n    Upon yon Beech's topmost spray.\n\n    Within the selfsame lofty tree\n    A thrush sings now--perchance 'tis he--\n    The lusty joyous gallant bird,\n    Which on that April morn we heard.                                20\n\n    But oh! how different that voice\n    Which bade the very hills rejoice.\n    Through languid air, through leafy boughs\n    It falls, and can no echo rouse.\n\n    But on the workings of my heart                                   25\n    Doth memory act a busy part;\n    That jocund April morn lives there,\n    Its cheering sounds, its hues so fair.\n\n    Why mixes with remembrance blithe\n    What nothing but the restless scythe                              30\n    Of Death can utterly destroy,\n    A heaviness, a dull alloy?\n\n    Ah Friend! thy heart can answer why.\n    Even then I heaved a bitter sigh,\n    No word of sorrow did'st thou speak,                              35\n    But tears stole down thy tremulous cheek.\n\n    The wished for hour at length was come,\n    And thou had'st housed me in thy home,\n    On fair Gwerndwffnant's billowy hill,\n    Had'st led me to its crystal rill,                                40\n\n    And led me through the dingle deep\n    Up to the highest grassy steep,\n    The sheep walk where the snow-white lambs\n    Sported beside their quiet dams.\n\n    But thou wert destined to remove                                  45\n    From all these objects of thy love,\n    In this thy later day to roam\n    Far off, and seek another home.\n\n    _Now_ thou art gone--belike 'tis best--\n    And I remain a passing guest,                                     50\n    Yet for thy sake, beloved Friend,\n    When from this spot my way shall tend,\n\n    And if my timid soul might dare\n    To shape the future in its prayer,\n    Then fervently would I entreat                                    55\n    Our gracious God to guide thy feet\n    Back to the peaceful sunny cot,\n    Where thou so oft hast blessed thy lot.\n\n[395] I owe my knowledge of this and the following poem to the nephew\nof Mrs. Wordsworth, the Reverend Thomas Hutchinson of Kimbolton,\nHerefordshire, who wrote: \"The two following poems were found among his\npapers on the demise of Mr. Monkhouse--a first cousin of Wordsworth;\nthe first in the hand-writing of Wordsworth's wife, and the second of\nher daughter.\"--ED.\n\n\nHOLIDAY AT GWERNDWFFNANT, MAY 1826\n\nIRREGULAR STANZAS\n\nBY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH\n\n    You're here for one long vernal day;\n    We'll give it all to social play,\n    Though forty years have rolled away\n        Since we were young as you.\n\n    Then welcome to our spacious Hall!                                 5\n    Tom, Bessy, Mary, welcome all!\n    Though removed from busy men,\n    Yea lonesome as the foxes' den,\n    'Tis a place for joyance fit,\n    For frolic games and inborn wit.                                  10\n\n    'Twas nature built this hall of ours;\n    She shap'd the bank; she framed the bowers\n        That close it all around;\n    From her we hold our precious right,\n    And here, thro' live-long day and night,                          15\n        She rules with modest sway.\n\n    Our carpet is our verdant sod;\n    A richer one was never trod\n        In prince's proud saloon.\n    Purple, and gold, and spotless white,                             20\n    And quivering shade, and sunny light,\n        Blend with the emerald green.\n\n    She opened for the mountain brook\n        A gentle winding pebbly way\n    Into this placid secret nook.                                     25\n    Its bell-like tinkling--list, you hear--\n    'Tis never loud, yet always clear\n        As linnet's song in May.\n\n    And we have other music here:\n    A thousand songsters through the year                             30\n    Dwell in these happy groves,\n    And in this season of their loves\n    They join their voices with the doves\n        To raise a perfect harmony.\n\n    Thus spake I while with sober pace                                35\n    We slipped into that chosen place\n    And from the centre of our Hall\n        The young ones played around,\n    Then, like a flock of vigorous lambs,\n    That quit their grave and slow-paced dams                         40\n        To frolic o'er the mead,\n\n    That innocent fraternal troop\n    Erewhile a steady listening group\n        Off starting--Girl and Boy\n    In gamesome race with agile bound                                 45\n    Beat o'er and o'er the grassy ground\n        As if in motion--perfect joy.\n\n    So vanishes my idle scheme\n    That we through this long vernal day,\n        Associates in their youthful play,                            50\n    With them might travel in one stream.\n        Ah! how should we whose heads are grey?\n    Light was my heart, my spirits gay,\n        And fondly did I dream.\n\n    But now, recalled to consciousness,                               55\n    With weight of years, of changed estate,\n    Thought is not needed to repress\n    Those shapeless fancies of delight\n    That flash before my dazzled sight\n        Upon this joy-devoted morn.                                   60\n\n    Gladly we seek the stillest nook\n    Whence we may read, as in a book,\n    A history of years gone by,\n    Recalled to faded memory's eye\n    By bright reflection from the mirth                               65\n    Of youthful hearts--a transient second-birth\n        Of our own childish days.\n\n    Pleasure unbidden is their guide\n    Their leader--faithful to their side\n    Prompting each wayward feat of strength:                          70\n    The ambitious leap, the emulous race,\n    The startling shout, the mimic chase,\n    The simple half-disguis\u00e8d wile\n    Detected through the flattering smile.\n\n    A truce to this unbridled course                                  75\n    Doth intervene--no need of force.\n    We spread upon the flowery grass\n    The noontide meal--each lad and lass\n    Obeys the call--we form a Round,\n    And all are seated on the ground.                                 80\n\n    The sun's meridian hour is passed,\n    Again begins the emulous race,\n    Again succeeds the sportive chase.\n    And thus was spent that vernal day,\n    Till twilight checked the noisy play;                             85\n    Then did they feel a languor spread\n    Over their limbs, the beating tread\n    Was stilled--the busy throbbing heart--\n        And silently we all depart.\n\n    The shelter of our rustic cot                                     90\n    Receives us, and we envy not\n    The palace, or the stately dome;\n    But wish that _all_ had such a home.\n    Each child repeats his nightly prayer\n    That God may bless their parents' care                            95\n    To guide them in the way of truth\n    Through helpless childhood, giddy youth.\n\n    The closing hymn of cheerful praise\n    Doth yet again their spirits raise;\n    But 'tis not now a thoughtless joy.                              100\n    For tender parents, loving friends,\n    And all the gifts God's blessing sends,\n    Feelingly do they bless his name.\n\n    That homage paid, the young retire\n    With no unsatisfied desire;                                      105\n    Theirs is one long, one steady sleep,\n    Till the sun, tip-toe on the steep\n    In front of our beloved cot,\n    Casts on the walls her brightest beams.\n    Within, a startling lustre streams.                              110\n    They all awaken suddenly;\n    As at the touch of magic skill,\n    Or, as the pilgrim, at the bell\n        That summons him to matin-prayer.\n\n    And is it sorrow that they feel?                                 115\n    Nay! call it not by such a name,\n    The stroke of sadness that doth steal\n    With rapid motion through their hearts,\n    When comes the thought that yesterday\n    With all its joys is passed away,                                120\n        The long expected happy day.\n\n    An instant--and all sadness goes;\n    Nor brighter looks the half-blown rose\n    Than does the countenance of each child\n    Whether of ardent soul or mild.                                  125\n    The hour was fixed--they are prepared--\n    And homeward now they must depart,\n    And after many a brisk adieu,\n    On pony trim, and fleet of limb,\n    Their bustling journey they pursue.                              130\n\n    The fair-hair'd gentle quiet maid,\n    And she who is of daring mood,\n    The valiant and the timid Boy\n    Alike are ranged to hardihood;\n    And wheresoe'er the troop appear                                 135\n    They scatter smiles, a hearty cheer\n    Comes from both old and young,\n    And blessings fall from many a tongue.\n\n    They reach the dear paternal roof,\n    Nor dread a cold or stern reproof,                               140\n    While they pour forth the history\n    Of three days' mirth and revelry.\n    Ah! Children, happy is your lot,\n    Still bound together in one knot\n    Beneath your tender mother's eye!                                145\n    Too soon these blessed days shall fly,\n    And brothers shall from sisters part;\n    And, trust me, whatsoe'er your doom,\n    Whate'er betide through years to come,\n    The punctual pleasures of your home                              150\n    Shall linger in your thoughts,\n    More clear than any future hope\n    Though fancy take her freest scope.\n    For oh! too soon your hearts shall own\n    The past is all that is your own.                                155\n\n    And every day of _festival_\n    Gratefully shall ye then recal,\n    Less for their own sakes than for this,\n    That each shall be a resting-place\n    For memory, and divide the race                                  160\n    Of childhood's smooth and happy years,\n    Thus lengthening out that term of life\n    Which governed by your parents' care\n    Is free from sorrow and from strife.\n\n\nCOMPOSED WHEN A PROBABILITY EXISTED OF OUR BEING OBLIGED TO QUIT RYDAL\nMOUNT AS A RESIDENCE\n\nThe following lines were written by Wordsworth in 1826. He never\npublished them. They were the result of a slight disagreement between\nthe Wordsworth family and the Le Flemings, which led the former to fear\nthat they might have to \"quit Rydal Mount as a residence.\" It was an\ninsignificant difference, and the Wordsworths did not leave their home.\nThe only thing worthy of record, in connection with the matter, is that\nthe fear of being dispossessed led the poet to write what follows.--ED.\n\n    The doubt to which a wavering hope had clung\n    Is fled; we must depart, willing or not;\n    Sky-piercing Hills! must bid farewell to you\n    And all that ye look down upon with pride,\n    With tenderness, embosom; to your paths,                           5\n    And pleasant dwellings, to familiar trees\n    And wild-flowers known as well as if our hands\n    Had tended them: and O pellucid Spring!\n    Unheard of, save in one small hamlet, here\n    Not undistinguished, for of wells that ooze                       10\n    Or founts that gurgle from yon craggy steep,\n    Their common sire, thou only bear'st his name.\n    Insensibly the foretaste of this parting\n    Hath ruled my steps, and seals me to thy side,\n    Mindful that thou (ah! wherefore by my Muse                       15\n    So long unthanked) hast cheered a simple board\n    With beverage pure as ever fixed the choice\n    Of hermit, dubious where to scoop his cell;\n    Which Persian kings might envy; and thy meek\n    And gentle aspect oft has ministered                              20\n    To finer uses. They for me must cease;\n    Days will pass on, the year, if years be given,\n    Fade,--and the moralising mind derive\n    No lessons from the presence of a Power\n    By the inconstant nature we inherit                               25\n    Unmatched in delicate beneficence;\n    For neither unremitting rains avail\n    To swell thee into voice; nor longest drought\n    Thy bounty stints, nor can thy beauty mar,\n    Beauty not therefore wanting change to stir                       30\n    The fancy pleased by spectacles unlooked for.\n      Nor yet, perchance, translucent Spring, had tolled\n    The Norman curfew bell when human hands\n    First offered help that the deficient rock\n    Might overarch thee, from pernicious heat                         35\n    Defended, and appropriate to man's need.\n    Such ties will not be severed: but, when we\n    Are gone, what summer loiterer will regard,\n    Inquisitive, thy countenance, will peruse,\n    Pleased to detect the dimpling stir of life,                      40\n    The breathing faculty with which thou yield'st\n    (Tho' a mere goblet to the careless eye)\n    Boons inexhaustible? Who, hurrying on\n    With a step quickened by November's cold,\n    Shall pause, the skill admiring that can work                     45\n    Upon thy chance-defilements--withered twigs\n    That, lodged within thy crystal depths, seem bright,\n    As if they from a silver tree had fallen--\n    And oaken leaves that, driven by whirling blasts,\n    Sunk down, and lay immersed in dead repose                        50\n    For Time's invisible tooth to prey upon\n    Unsightly objects and uncoveted,\n    Till thou with crystal bead-drops didst encrust\n    Their skeletons, turned to brilliant ornaments.\n    But, from thy bosom, should some venturous[396] hand              55\n    Abstract those gleaming relics, and uplift them,\n    However gently, toward the vulgar air,\n    At once their tender brightness disappears,\n    Leaving the intermeddler to upbraid\n    His folly. Thus (I feel it while I speak),                        60\n    Thus, with the fibres of these thoughts it fares;\n    And oh! how much, of all that love creates\n    Or beautifies, like changes undergo,\n    Suffers like loss when drawn out of the soul,\n    Its silent laboratory! Words should say                           65\n    (Could they depict the marvels of thy cell)\n    How often I have marked a plumy fern\n    From the live rock with grace inimitable\n    Bending its apex toward a paler self\n    Reflected all in perfect lineaments--                             70\n    Shadow and substance kissing point to point\n    In mutual stillness; or, if some faint breeze\n    Entering the cell gave restlessness to one,\n    The other, glassed in thy unruffled breast,\n    Partook of every motion, met, retired,                            75\n    And met again. Such playful sympathy,\n    Such delicate caress as in the shape\n    Of this green plant had aptly recompensed\n    For baffled lips and disappointed arms\n    And hopeless pangs, the spirit of that youth,                     80\n    The fair Narcissus by some pitying God\n    Changed to a crimson flower; when he, whose pride\n    Provoked a retribution too severe,\n    Had pined; upon his watery duplicate\n    Wasting that love the nymphs implored in vain.                    85\n      Thus while my Fancy wanders, thou, clear Spring,\n    Moved (shall I say?) like a dear friend who meets\n    A parting moment with her loveliest look,\n    And seemingly her happiest, look so fair\n    It frustrates its own purpose, and recalls                        90\n    The grieved one whom it meant to send away--\n    Dost tempt me by disclosures exquisite\n    To linger, bending over thee: for now,\n    What witchcraft, mild enchantress, may with thee\n    Compare! thy earthly bed a moment past                            95\n    Palpable to sight as the dry ground,\n    Eludes perception, not by rippling air\n    Concealed, nor through effect of some impure\n    Upstirring; but, abstracted by a charm\n    Of my own cunning, earth mysteriously                            100\n    From under thee hath vanished, and slant beams\n    The silent inquest of a western sun,\n    Assisting, lucid well-spring! Thou revealest\n    Communion without check of herbs and flowers,\n    And the vault's hoary sides to which they cling,                 105\n    Imaged in downward show; the flower, the Herbs,[397]\n    _These_ not of earthly texture, and the vault\n    Not _there_ diminutive, but through a scale\n    Of vision less and less distinct, descending\n    To gloom imperishable. So (if truths                             110\n    The highest condescend to be set forth\n    By processes minute), even so--when thought\n    Wins help from something greater than herself--\n    Is the firm basis of habitual sense\n    Supplanted, not for treacherous vacancy                          115\n    And blank dissociation from a world\n    We love, but that the residues of flesh,\n    Mirrored, yet not too strictly, may refine\n    To Spirit; for the idealising Soul\n    Time wears the features of Eternity;                             120\n    And Nature deepens into Nature's God.\n      Millions of kneeling Hindoos at this day\n    Bow to the watery element, adored\n    In their vast stream, and if an age hath been\n    (As books and haply votive altars vouch)                         125\n    When British floods were worshipped, some faint trace\n    Of that idolatry, through monkish rites\n    Transmitted far as living memory,\n    Might wait on thee, a silent monitor,\n    On thee, bright Spring, a bashful little one,                    130\n    Yet to the measure of thy promises\n    True, as the mightiest; upon thee, sequestered\n    For meditation, nor inopportune\n    For social interest such as I have shared.\n    Peace to the sober matron who shall dip                          135\n    Her pitcher here at early dawn, by me\n    No longer greeted--to the tottering sire,\n    For whom like service, now and then his choice,\n    Relieves the tedious holiday of age--\n    Thoughts raised above the Earth while here he sits               140\n    Feeding on sunshine--to the blushing girl\n    Who here forgets her errand, nothing loth\n    To be waylaid by her betrothed, peace\n    And pleasure sobered down to happiness!\n      But should these hills be ranged by one whose soul             145\n    Scorning love-whispers shrinks from love itself\n    As Fancy's snare for female vanity,\n    Here may the aspirant find a trysting-place\n    For loftier intercourse. The Muses crowned\n    With wreaths that have not faded to this hour                    150\n    Sprung from high Jove, of sage Mnemosyne\n    Enamoured, so the fable runs; but they\n    Certes were self-taught damsels, scattered births\n    Of many a Grecian vale, who sought not praise,\n    And, heedless even of listeners, warbled out                     155\n    Their own emotions given to mountain air\n    In notes which mountain echoes would take up\n    Boldly and bear away to softer life;\n    Hence deified as sisters they were bound\n    Together in a never-dying choir;                                 160\n    Who with their Hippocrene and grottoed fount\n    Of Castaly, attest that Woman's heart\n    Was in the limpid age of this stained world\n    The most assured seat of [        ]\n    And new-born waters, deemed the happiest source                  165\n    Of inspiration for the conscious lyre.\n      Lured by the crystal element in times\n    Stormy and fierce, the Maid of Arc withdrew\n    From human converse to frequent alone\n    The Fountain of the Fairies. What to her,                        170\n    Smooth summer dreams, old favours of the place.\n    Pageant and revels of blithe elves--to her\n    Whose country groan'd under a foreign scourge?\n    She pondered murmurs that attuned her ear\n    For the reception of far other sounds                            175\n    Than their too happy minstrelsy,--a Voice\n    Reached her with supernatural mandate charged\n    More awful than the chambers of dark earth\n    Have virtue to send forth. Upon the marge\n    Of the benignant fountain, while she stood                       180\n    Gazing intensely, the translucent lymph\n    Darkened beneath the shadow of her thoughts\n    As if swift clouds swept o'er it, or caught\n    War's tincture, 'mid the forest green and still,\n    Turned into blood before her heart-sick eye.                     185\n    Erelong, forsaking all her natural haunts,\n    All her accustomed offices and cares\n    Relinquishing, but treasuring every law\n    And grace of feminine humanity,\n    The chosen Rustic urged a warlike steed                          190\n    Toward the beleaguered city, in the might\n    Of prophecy, accoutred to fulfil,\n    At the sword's point, visions conceived in love.\n      The cloud of rooks descending thro' mid air\n    Softens its evening uproar towards a close[398]                  195\n    Near and more near; for this protracted strain\n    A warning not unwelcome. Fare thee well!\n    Emblem of equanimity and truth,\n    Farewell!--if thy composure be not ours,\n    Yet as thou still, when we are gone, wilt keep                   200\n    Thy living chaplet of fresh flowers and fern,\n    Cherished in shade tho' peeped at[399] by the sun;\n    So shall our bosoms feel a covert growth\n    Of grateful recollections, tribute due\n    To thy obscure and modest attributes                             205\n    To thee, dear Spring,[400] and all-sustaining Heaven!\n\n[396] The MS. has a second reading, \"covetous hand.\"--ED.\n\n[397] In MS. also \"its herbs.\"--ED.\n\n[398]\n\n    \u2026 to a close\n\n    From a MS. copied at Rydal by Professor Reed in 1854.\n\n[399]\n\n    \u2026 pecked at \u2026\n\n    From a MS. copied at Rydal by Professor Reed in 1854.\n\n[400]\n\n    \u2026 clear Spring \u2026\n\n    From a MS. copied at Rydal by Professor Reed in 1854.\n\n\n\"I, WHOSE PRETTY VOICE YOU HEAR\"\n\nThese lines were written for Miss Fanny Barlow of Middlethorpe Hall,\nYork. She was first married to the Rev. E. Trafford Leigh, and\nafterwards to Dr. Eason Wilkinson of Manchester.--ED.\n\n    I, whose pretty Voice you hear,\n    Lady (you will think it queer),\n    Have a Mother, once a Statue,\n    I, thus boldly looking at you,\n    Do the name of Paphus bear,                                        5\n    Fam'd Pygmalion's Son and Heir,\n    By that wondrous marble wife\n    That from Venus took her life.\n    Cupid's Nephew then am I,\n    Nor unskill'd his darts to ply;                                   10\n    But from Him I crav'd no warrant,\n    Coming thus to seek my Parent;\n    Not equipp'd with bow and quiver\n    Her by menace to deliver,\n    But resolv'd with filial care                                     15\n    Her captivity to share.\n    Hence, while on your toilet, She\n    Is doom'd a Pincushion to be,\n    By her side I'll take my place,\n    As a humble Needle-case;                                          20\n    Furnish'd too with dainty thread,\n    For a Sempstress thorough-bred.\n    Then let both be kindly treated,\n    Till the Term, for which She's fated\n    Durance to sustain, be over;                                      25\n    So will I ensure a Lover\n    Lady! to your heart's content;\n    But on harshness are you bent\n    Bitterly shall you repent,\n    When to Cyprus back I go                                          30\n    And take up my Uncle's bow.\n\n    _Composed_, and in part transcribed, for Fanny Barlow, by her\n                         affectionate Friend\n\n                                                  WM. WORDSWORTH.\n\n    RYDAL MOUNT,\n        _Shortest Day, 1826_.\n\n\n\n\n1827\n\n\nTO MY NIECE DORA\n\nBY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH\n\nThe following lines were written in Dora Wordsworth's \"Album,\" in which\nSir Walter Scott also wrote some verses.--ED.\n\n    Confiding hopes of youthful hearts,\n    And each bright visionary scheme,\n    Shall here remain in vivid hues\n    The hues of a celestial dream.\n\n    The farewell of the laurelled Knight                               5\n    Traced by a brave but tremulous hand,\n    Pledge of his truth and loyalty\n    Thro' changeful years, unchanged shall stand.\n\n    But why should I inscribe my name,\n    No Poet I--no longer young?                                       10\n    The ambition of a loving heart\n    Makes garrulous the tongue.\n\n    Memorials of thy aged Friend\n    Dora thou dost not need;\n    And when the cold earth covers her                                15\n    No flattery shall she heed.\n\n    Yet still a lurking wish prevails\n    That when from life we all have passed\n    The friends who loved thy Father's name\n    On her's a thought may cast.                                      20\n\n                             DOROTHY WORDSWORTH.\n\n    _January 1827._\n\n\n\n\n1829\n\n\n\"MY LORD AND LADY DARLINGTON\"\n\nThese lines were written by Wordsworth, after reading a sentence in\nthe Stranger's Book at \"The Station,\"--not a railway station!--on\nthe western side of Windermere lake, opposite Bowness. Their poetic\nmerit is slight, but they illustrate the honesty and directness of\nthe writer's mind. The Stranger's Book at \"The Station\" contained the\nfollowing:--\n\n    \"Lord and Lady Darlington, Lady Vane, Miss Taylor, and Captain\n    Stamp pronounce this Lake superior to Lac de Gen\u00e8ve, Lago\n    de Como, Lago Maggiore, L'Eau de Zurich, Loch Lomond, Loch\n    Katerine, or the Lakes of Killarney.\"-ED.\n\n    My Lord and Lady Darlington,\n    I would not speak in snarling-tone;\n    Nor, to you, good Lady Vane,\n    Would I give one moment's pain;\n    Nor Miss Taylor, Captain Stamp,                                    5\n    Would I your flights of _memory_ cramp.\n    Yet, having spent a summer's day\n    On the green margin of Loch Tay,\n    And doubled (prospect ever bettering)\n    The mazy reaches of Loch Katerine,                                10\n    And more than once been free at Luss,\n    Loch Lomond's beauties to discuss,\n    And wished, at least, to hear the blarney\n    Of the sly boatmen of Killarney,\n    And dipped my hand in dancing wave                                15\n    Of Eau de Zurich, Lac Gen\u00e8ve,\n    And bowed to many a major domo\n    On stately terraces of Como,\n    And seen the Simplon's forehead hoary,\n    Reclined on Lago Maggiore                                         20\n    At breathless eventide at rest\n    On the broad water's placid breast,\n    I, not insensible, Heaven knows,\n    To all the charms this Station shows,\n    Must tell you, Captain, Lord, and Ladies--                        25\n    For honest worth one poet's trade is--\n    That your praise appears to me\n    Folly's own hyperbole.\n\n\n\n\n1833\n\n\nTO THE UTILITARIANS\n\nThese lines were written and sent in a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson,\ndated 5th May 1833.--ED.\n\n    Avaunt this \u0153conomic rage!\n    What would it bring?--an iron age,\n    Where Fact with heartless search explored\n    Shall be Imagination's Lord,\n    And sway with absolute controul                                    5\n    The god-like Functions of the Soul.\n    Not _thus_ can knowledge elevate\n    Our Nature from her fallen state.\n    With sober Reason Faith unites\n    To vindicate the ideal rights                                     10\n    Of human-kind--the tone agreeing\n    Of objects with internal seeing,\n    Of effort with the end of Being.\n\nWordsworth added, in the letter to Robinson, \"Is the above\nintelligible? I fear not! I know, however, my own meaning, and that's\nenough for Manuscripts.\"--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1835\n\n\n\"THRONED IN THE SUN'S DESCENDING CAR\"\n\nThese lines were placed by Wordsworth amongst the \"Evening Voluntaries\"\nin the two editions of _Yarrow Revisited and other Poems_ (1835, 1836);\nbut they were never afterwards reprinted in his life-time.--ED.\n\nFor printing the following Piece, some reason should be given, as not\na word of it is original: it is simply a fine stanza of Akenside,[401]\nconnected with a still finer from Beattie[402]by a couplet of\nThomson.[403] This practice, in which the author sometimes indulges, of\nlinking together, in his own mind, favourite passages from different\nauthors, seemed in itself unobjectionable; but, as the _publishing_\nsuch compilations might lead to confusion in literature, he should\ndeem himself inexcusable in giving this specimen, were it not from\na hope that it might open to others a harmless source of _private_\ngratification.--W. W. 1835.\n\n    Throned in the Sun's descending car,\n    What Power unseen diffuses far\n    This tenderness of mind?\n    What Genius smiles on yonder flood?\n    What God in whispers from the wood                                 5\n    Bids every thought be kind?\n\n    O ever-pleasing solitude,\n    Companion of the wise and good.\n\n    Thy shades, thy silence, now be mine\n      Thy charms my only theme;                                       10\n\n    Why haunt the hollow cliff whose Pine\n      Waves o'er the gloomy stream;\n    Whence the scared Owl on pinions grey\n      Breaks from the rustling boughs,\n    And down the lone vale sails away                                 15\n      To more profound repose!\n\n[401] See his Ode V., _Against Suspicion_, stanza viii.--ED.\n\n[402] See his poem, _Retirement_, 1758.--ED.\n\n[403] See his _Hymn on Solitude_, which begins, \"Hail, ever-pleasing\nSolitude!\"--ED.\n\n\n\"AND OH! DEAR SOOTHER OF THE PENSIVE BREAST\"\n\nThe following ten lines were written by Wordsworth in a copy of his\nworks, after the lines _To the Moon_ (Rydal) 1835. They may have been\nintended as a possible sequel to them, or to the lines _To the Moon,\ncomposed by the Seaside--on the coast of Cumberland_ (1835).--ED.\n\n    And oh! dear soother of the pensive breast,\n    Let homelier words without offence attest\n    How where on random topics as they hit\n    The moments' humour, rough Tars spend their wit.\n    Thy changes, which to wiser Spirits seem                           5\n    Dark as a riddle, prove a favourite theme;\n    Thy motions, intricate and manifold,\n    Oft help to make bold fancy's flight more bold;\n    Beget strange themes; and to freaks give birth\n    Of speech as wild as ever heightened mirth.                       10\n\n\n\n\n1836\n\n\n\"SAID RED-RIBBONED EVANS\"\n\nOn the 26th of March 1836, Wordsworth sent the following lines to Henry\nCrabb Robinson; written, he tells him, \"immediately on reading Evans's\nmodest self-defence speech the other day.\" George de Lacy Evans was\nradical member of Parliament for Westminster. \"In 1835, he took command\nof the British Legion raised for the service of the Queen Regent of\nSpain against Don Carlos.\" (Professor Dowden.)--ED.\n\n    Said red-ribboned Evans:\n    \"My legions in Spain\n    Were at sixes and sevens;\n    Now they're famished or slain:\n    But no fault of mine,                                              5\n    For, like brave Philip Sidney,\n    In campaigning I shine,\n    A true knight of his kidney.\n    Sound flogging and fighting\n    No chief, on my troth,                                            10\n    E'er took such delight in\n    As I in them both.\n    Fontarabbia can tell\n    How my eyes watched the foe,\n    Hernani knows well                                                15\n    That our feet were not slow;\n    Our hospitals, too,\n    They are matchless in story;\n    Where her thousands Fate slew,\n    All panting for glory.\"                                           20\n    Alas for this Hero!\n    His fame touched the skies,\n    Then fell below zero,\n    Never, never to rise!\n    For him to Westminster                                            25\n    Did Prudence convey,\n    There safe as a Spinster\n    The Patriot to play.\n    But why be so glad on\n    His feats or his fall?                                            30\n    He's got his red ribbon,\n    And laughs at us all.\n\n\n\n\n1837\n\n\nON AN EVENT IN COL. EVANS'S REDOUBTED PERFORMANCES IN SPAIN\n\nMrs. Wordsworth sent this to Henry Crabb Robinson in 1837, \"to show\nyou that _we_ can write an Epigram--we _do not say_ a good one.\" She\nthen quoted it, and added, \"The Producer thinks it not amiss, as being\nmurmured between sleep and awake over the fire, while thinking of you\nlast night!\"--Ed.\n\n    The Ball whizzed by,--it grazed his ear,\n      And whispered as it flew,\n    \"I only touch--not take--don't fear,\n    For both, my honest Buccaneer!\n      Are to the Pillory due.\"\n\n\n\n\n1838\n\n\n\"WOULDST THOU BE GATHERED TO CHRIST'S CHOSEN FLOCK\"\n\nThe following lines were cut on the face of a rock at Rydal Mount in\n1838. There, they still remain.--ED.\n\n    Wouldst thou be gathered to Christ's chosen flock,\n    Shun the broad way too easily explored,\n    And let thy path be hewn out of the Rock,\n    The living Rock of God's eternal Word.\n\n\nPROTEST AGAINST THE BALLOT, 1838[404]\n\nComposed 1838.--Published 1838\n\n    Forth rushed, from Envy sprung and Self-conceit,\n    A Power misnamed the SPIRIT OF REFORM,\n    And through the astonished Island swept in storm,\n    Threatening to lay all Orders at her feet\n    That crossed her way. Now stoops she to entreat                    5\n    Licence to hide at intervals her head,\n    Where she may work, safe, undisquieted,\n    In a close Box, covert for Justice meet.\n    St. George of England! keep a watchful eye\n    Fixed on the Suitor; frustrate her request--                      10\n    Stifle her hope; for, if the State comply,\n    From such Pandorian gift may come a Pest\n    Worse than the Dragon that bowed low his crest,\n    Pierced by thy spear in glorious victory.\n\n[404] In his notes to the volume of Collected Sonnets (1838),\nWordsworth writes:--\"'_Protest against the Ballot._' Having in this\nnotice alluded only in general terms to the mischief which, in my\nopinion, the Ballot would bring along with it, without especially\nbranding its immoral and antisocial tendency (for which no political\nadvantages, were they a thousand times greater than those presumed\nupon, could be a compensation), I have been impelled to subjoin a\nreprobation of it upon that score. In no part of my writings have\nI mentioned the name of any contemporary, that of Buonaparte only\nexcepted, but for the purpose of eulogy; and therefore, as in the\nconcluding verse of what follows, there is a deviation from this rule\n(for the blank will be easily filled up) I have excluded the sonnet\nfrom the body of the collection, and placed it here as a public record\nof my detestation, both as a man and a citizen, of the proposed\ncontrivance.\"\n\nThen follows the sonnet beginning--\n\n    Said Secrecy to Cowardice and Fraud.\n\nED.\n\n\n\"SAID SECRECY TO COWARDICE AND FRAUD\"\n\nComposed, probably, in 1838.--Published 1838[405]\n\n    Said Secrecy to Cowardice and Fraud,\n    Falsehood and Treachery, in close council met,\n    Deep under ground, in Pluto's cabinet,\n    \"The frost of England's pride will soon be thawed;\n    Hooded the open brow that overawed                                 5\n    Our schemes; the faith and honour, never yet\n    By us with hope encountered, be upset;--\n    For once I burst my bands, and cry, applaud!\"\n    Then whispered she, \"The Bill is carrying out!\"\n    They heard, and, starting up, the Brood of Night                  10\n    Clapped hands, and shook with glee their matted locks;\n    All Powers and Places that abhor the light\n    Joined in the transport, echoed back their shout,\n    Hurrah for ----, hugging his Ballot-box![406]\n\n[405] This was first published in a note to the sonnet entitled\n_Protest against the Ballot_, in the volume of 1838. It was never\nrepublished by Wordsworth.\n\n[406] See the note to the previous sonnet. George Grote was the\nperson satirised. \"Since that time,\" adds Mr. Reed, in a note to his\nAmerican edition, \"Mr. Grote's political notoriety, as an advocate of\nthe ballot, has been merged in the high reputation he has acquired as\nprobably the most eminent modern historian of ancient Greece\"--ED.\n\n\nA POET TO HIS GRANDCHILD\n\n(SEQUEL TO THE FOREGOING)[407]\n\nPublished 1838\n\n    \"Son of my buried Son, while thus thy hand\n    Is clasping mine, it saddens me to think\n    How Want may press thee down, and with thee sink\n    Thy Children left unfit, through vain demand\n    Of culture, even to feel or understand                             5\n    My simplest Lay that to their memory\n    May cling;--hard fate! which haply need not be\n    Did Justice mould the Statutes of the Land.\n    A Book time-cherished and an honoured name\n    Are high rewards; but bound they Nature's claim                   10\n    Or Reason's? No--hopes spun in timid line\n    From out the bosom of a modest home\n    Extend through unambitious years to come,\n    My careless Little-one, for thee and thine!\"[408][409]\n\n[407] \"The foregoing\" was the Sonnet named _A Plea for Authors, May\n1838_.--ED.\n\n[408] 1836.\n\n    Son of my buried Son, whose tiny hand\n    Thus clings to mine, it {saddens} me to think\n                            {troubles}\n    That thou pressed down by poverty mayst sink\n    Even till thy children shall in vain demand\n    {Culture and neither feel nor} understand\n    {Culture required to feel and}\n    {My simplest lay that to their memory}\n    {My least recondite lay, which memory}\n    {Perchance may cleave}; hard fate, which need not be\n    {May keep in trust   }\n    Did justice mould the statutes of the land.\n    {A book time-cherished} and an honoured name\n    {A cherished volume   }\n    Are high rewards, but bound not {Reason's} claim.\n                                    {Nature's}\n    No--hopes {in fond hereditary line    }\n              {and wishes in a living line}\n    Spun from the bosom of a modest home\n    Extend thro' unambitious years to come,\n    My careless Little-one, for thee and thine!\n\n    MS.\n\n[409] The author of an animated article, printed in the _Law Magazine_,\nin favour of the principle of Serjeant Talfourd's Copyright Bill,\nprecedes me in the public expression of this feeling; which had been\nforced too often upon my own mind, by remembering how few descendants\nof men eminent in literature are even known to exist.--W.W. 1838.\n\nThis sonnet was not addressed to any grandson of the Poet's.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1840\n\n\nON A PORTRAIT OF I.F., PAINTED BY MARGARET GILLIES[410]\n\nComposed 1840.--Published 1850\n\n    We gaze--nor grieve to think that we must die,\n    But that the precious love this friend hath sown\n    Within our hearts, the love whose flower hath blown\n    Bright as if heaven were ever in its eye,\n    Will pass so soon from human memory;                               5\n    And not by strangers to our blood alone,\n    But by our best descendants be unknown,\n    Unthought of--this may surely claim a sigh.\n    Yet, bless\u00e8d Art, we yield not to dejection:\n    Thou against Time so feelingly dost strive;                       10\n    Where'er, preserved in this most true reflection,\n    An image of her soul is kept alive,\n    Some lingering fragrance of the pure affection,\n    Whose flower with us will vanish, must survive.\n\n                                     WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.\n\n    RYDAL MOUNT,\n        _New Year's Day, 1840_.\n\n[410] See the note to the next sonnet.--ED.\n\n\nTO I.F.[411]\n\nComposed 1840.--Published 1850\n\n    The star which comes at close of day to shine\n    More heavenly bright than when it leads the morn,\n    Is friendship's emblem,[412] whether the forlorn\n    She visiteth, or, shedding light benign\n    Through shades that solemnize Life's calm decline,                 5\n    Doth make the happy happier. This have we\n    Learnt, Isabel, from thy society,\n    Which now we too unwillingly resign\n    Though for brief absence. But farewell! the page\n    Glimmers before my sight through thankful tears,                  10\n    Such as start forth, not seldom, to approve\n    Our truth, when we, old yet unchill'd by age,\n    Call thee, though known but for a few fleet years,\n    The heart-affianced sister of our love!\n\n                                   WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.\n\n    RYDAL MOUNT,\n        _Feb. 1840_.\n\n[411] This and the preceding sonnet, beginning \"We gaze--nor grieve\nto think that we must die,\" were addressed to Miss Fenwick, to whom\nwe owe the invaluable \"Fenwick Notes.\" Were it not that the date is\nvery minutely given, I would believe that they belong to 1841, as Miss\nGillies told me she resided at Rydal Mount in that year, when she\npainted Mrs. Wordsworth's portrait.--ED.\n\n[412] 1850.\n\n    Bright is the star which comes at eve to shine\n    More heavenly bright than when it leads the morn,\n    And such is Friendship, whether the forlorn, etc.\n\n    1840.\n\n\n\"OH BOUNTY WITHOUT MEASURE, WHILE THE GRACE\"\n\nIn his copy of the edition of 1845 at the close of the poem, _Animal\nTranquillity and Decay_ (1798) (see the \"Poem referring to the Period\nof Old Age,\" vol. i. p. 307), Henry Crabb Robinson wrote the following\nlines, sent to him by Wordsworth.--ED.\n\n    Oh Bounty without measure, while the Grace\n    Of Heaven doth in such wise from humblest springs\n    Pour pleasures forth, and solaces that trace\n    A mazy course along familiar things,\n    Well may our hearts have faith that blessings come                 5\n    Streaming from points above the starry sky,\n    With angels, when their own untroubled home\n    They leave, and speed on mighty embassy\n    To visit earthly chambers,--and for whom?\n    Yea, both for souls who God's forbearance try,                    10\n    And those that seek his help and for his mercy sigh.\n\n    _7th April 1840. My 70th Birthday._\n\n                                                    W.W.\n\n\n\n\n1842\n\n\nTHE EAGLE AND THE DOVE[413]\n\nThe following poem was contributed to, and printed in, a volume\nentitled \"_La Petite Chouannerie, ou Histoire d'un Coll\u00e8ge Breton sous\nl'Empire_. Par A. F. Rio. Londres: Moxon, Dover Street, 1842,\" pp. 62,\n63. The Hon. Mrs. Norton, Walter Savage Landor, and Monckton Milnes\n(Lord Houghton), were among the other English contributors to the\nvolume, the bulk of which is in French. It was printed at Paris, and\nnumbered 398 pages, including the title. It was a narrative of \"the\nromantic revolt of the royalist students of the college of Vannes in\n1815, and of their battles with the soldiers of the French Empire.\" (H.\nREED.)--ED.\n\nComposed (?).--Published 1842\n\n    Shade of Caractacus, if spirits love\n    The cause they fought for in their earthly home,\n    To see the Eagle ruffled by the Dove\n    May soothe thy memory of the chains of Rome.\n\n    These children claim thee for their sire; the breath               5\n    Of thy renown, from Cambrian mountains, fans\n    A flame within them that despises death,\n    And glorifies the truant youth of Vannes.\n\n    With thy own scorn of tyrants they advance,\n    But truth divine has sanctified their rage,                       10\n    A silver cross enchased with flowers of France\n    Their badge, attests the holy fight they wage.\n\n    The shrill defiance of the young crusade\n    Their veteran foes mock as an idle noise;\n    But unto Faith and Loyalty comes aid                              15\n    From Heaven, gigantic force to beardless boys.\n\n[413] In the volume from which the above is copied, the original French\nlines (commencing at p. 106) are printed side by side with Wordsworth's\ntranslation, which ends on p. 111, and closes the volume.--ED.\n\n\nGRACE DARLING[414]\n\nComposed 1842.--Published 1845\n\nWordsworth's lines on Grace Darling were printed privately, and\nanonymously, at Carlisle, before they were included in the 1845 edition\nof his works. A copy was sent to Mr. Dyce, and is preserved in the Dyce\nLibrary at South Kensington. Another was sent to Professor Reed (March\n27, 1843), with a letter, in which the following occurs: \"I threw it\noff two or three weeks ago, being in a great measure impelled to it\nby the desire I felt to do justice to the memory of a heroine, whose\nconduct presented, some time ago, a striking contrast to the inhumanity\nwith which our countrymen, shipwrecked lately upon the French coast,\nhave been treated.\"\n\nEdward Quillinan, writing on 25th March 1843, enclosed a copy, adding,\n\"Mr. Wordsworth desires me to send you the enclosed eulogy on Grace\nDarling, recently composed. He begs me to say that he wishes it kept\nout of the newspapers, as he has printed it only for some of his\nfriends, and his friends' friends more peculiarly interested in the\nsubject, for the present. Do not therefore give a copy to any one.\"\n\n\"Almost immediately after I had composed my tribute to the memory of\nGrace Darling, I learnt that the Queen and Queen Dowager had both just\nsubscribed towards the erection of a monument to record her heroism,\nupon the spot that witnessed it.\" (Wordsworth to Sir W. Gomm, March 24,\n1843.)--ED.\n\n    Among the dwellers in the silent fields\n    The natural heart is touched, and public way\n    And crowded streets resound with ballad strains,\n    Inspired by ONE whose very name bespeaks\n    Favour divine, exalting human love;                                5\n    Whom, since her birth on bleak Northumbria's coast,\n    Known unto few but prized as far as known,\n    A single Act endears to high and low\n    Through the whole land--to Manhood, moved in spite\n    Of the world's freezing cares--to generous Youth--                10\n    To Infancy, that lisps her praise--to Age\n    Whose eye reflects it, glistening through a tear\n    Of tremulous admiration. Such true fame\n    Awaits her _now_; but, verily, good deeds\n    Do no imperishable record find                                    15\n    Save in the rolls of heaven, where hers may live\n    A theme for angels, when they celebrate\n    The high-souled virtues which forgetful earth\n    Has witness'd. Oh! that winds and waves could speak\n    Of things which their united power called forth                   20\n    From the pure depths of her humanity!\n    A Maiden gentle, yet, at duty's call,\n    Firm and unflinching, as the Lighthouse reared\n    On the Island-rock, her lonely dwelling-place;\n    Or like the invincible Rock itself that braves,                   25\n    Age after age, the hostile elements,\n    As when it guarded holy Cuthbert's cell.[415]\n\n      All night the storm had raged, nor ceased, nor paused,\n    When, as day broke, the Maid, through misty air,\n    Espies far off a Wreck, amid the surf,                            30\n    Beating on one of those disastrous isles--\n    Half of a Vessel, half--no more; the rest\n    Had vanished, swallowed up with all that there\n    Had for the common safety striven in vain,\n    Or thither thronged for refuge.[416] With quick glance            35\n    Daughter and Sire through optic-glass discern,\n    Clinging about the remnant of this Ship,\n    Creatures--how precious in the Maiden's sight!\n    For whom, belike, the old Man grieves still more\n    Than for their fellow-sufferers engulfed                          40\n    Where every parting agony is hushed,\n    And hope and fear mix not in further strife.\n    \"But courage, Father! let us out to sea--\n    A few may yet be saved.\" The Daughter's words,\n    Her earnest tone, and look beaming with faith,                    45\n    Dispel the Father's doubts: nor do they lack\n    The noble-minded Mother's helping hand\n    To launch the boat; and with her blessing cheered,\n    And inwardly sustained by silent prayer,\n    Together they put forth, Father and Child!                        50\n    Each grasps an oar, and struggling on they go--\n    Rivals in effort; and, alike intent\n    Here to elude and there surmount, they watch\n    The billows lengthening, mutually crossed\n    And shattered, and re-gathering their might;                      55\n    As if the tumult, by the Almighty's will\n    Were, in the conscious sea, roused and prolonged,[417]\n    That woman's fortitude--so tried, so proved--\n    May brighten more and more!\n                                      True to the mark,\n    They stem the current of that perilous gorge,                     60\n    Their arms still strengthening with the strengthening heart,\n    Though danger, as the Wreck is near'd, becomes\n    More imminent. Not unseen do they approach;\n    And rapture, with varieties of fear\n    Incessantly conflicting, thrills the frames                       65\n    Of those who, in that dauntless energy,\n    Foretaste deliverance; but the least perturbed\n    Can scarcely trust his eyes, when he perceives\n    That of the pair--tossed on the waves to bring\n    Hope to the hopeless, to the dying, life--                        70\n    One is a Woman, a poor earthly sister,\n    Or, be the Visitant other than she seems,\n    A guardian Spirit sent from pitying Heaven,\n    In woman's shape. But why prolong the tale,\n    Casting weak words amid a host of thoughts                        75\n    Armed to repel them? Every hazard faced\n    And difficulty mastered, with resolve\n    That no one breathing should be left to perish,\n    This last remainder of the crew are all\n    Placed in the little boat, then o'er the deep                     80\n    Are safely borne, landed upon the beach,\n    And, in fulfilment of God's mercy, lodged\n    Within the sheltering Lighthouse.--Shout, ye Waves!\n    Send forth a song of triumph. Waves and Winds,\n    Exult in this deliverance wrought through faith                   85\n    In Him whose Providence your rage hath served![418]\n    Ye screaming Sea-mews, in the concert join!\n    And would that some immortal Voice--a Voice\n    Fitly attuned to all that gratitude\n    Breathes out from floor or couch, through pallid lips             90\n    Of the survivors--to the clouds might bear--\n    Blended with praise of that parental love,\n    Beneath whose watchful eye the Maiden grew\n    Pious and pure, modest and yet so brave,\n    Though young so wise, though meek so resolute--                   95\n    Might carry to the clouds and to the stars,\n    Yea, to celestial Choirs, GRACE DARLING'S name!\n\n[414] Grace Darling was the daughter of William Darling, the lighthouse\nkeeper on Longstone, one of the Farne Islands on the Northumbrian\ncoast. On the 7th of September 1838, the Forfarshire steamship was\nwrecked on these islands. At the instigation of his daughter, and\naccompanied by her, Darling went out in his lifeboat through the surf,\nto the wreck, and --by their united strength and daring--rescued the\nnine survivors.--ED.\n\n[415] St. Cuthbert of Durham, born about 635, was first a shepherd boy,\nthen a monk in the monastery of Melrose, and afterwards its prior. He\nleft Melrose for the island monastery of Lindisfarne; but desiring\nan austerer life than the monastic, he left Lindisfarne, and became\nan anchorite, in a hut which he built with his own hands, on one of\nthe Farne Islands. He was afterwards induced to accept the bishopric\nof Hexham, but soon exchanged it for the see in his old island home\nat Lindisfarne, and after two years there resigned his bishopric,\nreturning to his cell in Farne Island, where he died in 687. His\nremains were carried to Durham, and placed within a costly shrine.--ED.\n\n[416] Fifty-four persons had perished, before Grace Darling's lifeboat\nreached the wreck.--ED.\n\n[417] 1845.\n\n    As if the wrath and trouble of the sea\n    Were by the Almighty's sufferance prolonged,\n\n    In privately printed edition.\n\n[418] 1845.\n\nFor the last three lines, the privately printed edition has the single\none--\n\n    Pipe a glad song of triumph, ye fierce Winds.\n\n\n\"WHEN SEVERN'S SWEEPING FLOOD HAD OVERTHROWN\"\n\nComposed 23rd January 1842.--Published 1842\n\nIn 1842 a bazaar was held in Cardiff Castle to aid in the erection of\na Church, on the site of one which had been washed away by a flood in\nthe river Severn (and a consequent influx of waters into the estuary\nof the British Channel) two hundred years before. Wordsworth and James\nMontgomery were asked to write some verses, which might be printed and\nsold to assist the cause. They did so. The following was Wordsworth's\ncontribution.--ED.\n\n    When Severn's sweeping flood had overthrown\n    St. Mary's Church, the preacher then would cry:--\n    \"Thus, Christian people, God his might hath shown\n    That ye to him your love may testify;\n    Haste, and rebuild the pile.\"--But not a stone                     5\n    Resumed its place. Age after age went by,\n    And Heaven still lacked its due, though piety\n    In secret did, we trust, her loss bemoan.\n    But now her Spirit hath put forth its claim\n    In Power, and Poesy would lend her voice;                         10\n    Let the new Church be worthy of its aim,\n    That in its beauty Cardiff may rejoice!\n    Oh! in the past if cause there was for shame,\n    Let not our times halt in their better choice.\n\n    RYDAL MOUNT, _23rd Jan. 1842_.\n\n\nTHE PILLAR OF TRAJAN\n\nThe Fenwick note to _The Pillar of Trajan_ mentions that the author's\nson having declined to attempt to compete for the Oxford prize poem on\n\"The Pillar of Trajan,\" his father wrote it, to show him how the thing\nmight be done. This son--the Rev. John Wordsworth of Brigham--wrote\nLatin verse with considerable success; and as specimens of the poetic\nwork of Dorothy Wordsworth and of Sarah Hutchinson are included in\nthese volumes, the following _Epistola ad Patrem suum_, written at\nMadeira by John Wordsworth in 1844, may be reproduced.--ED.\n\n    I pete longinquas, non segnis Epistola, terras,\n      I pete, Rydaliae conscia saxa lyrae:\n    I pete qu\u00e0 valles rident, sylvaeque lacusque,\n      Quamvis Arctoo paen\u00e8 sub axe jacent.\n    Parvos quaere Lares, non aurea Tecta, poetae,                      5\n      Qui tamen ingenii sceptraque mentis habet.\n    Quid faciat genitor? valeatne, an cura senilis\n      Opprimat? Ista refer, filius ista rogat.\n    Scire velit, quare venias tu scripta _latine_?\n      Dic \"fugio linguam, magne poeta, tuam!                          10\n    Quem Regina jubet circumdare tempora lauro,\n      Quem ver\u00e8 vatem saecula nostra vocant.\"\n    Inde refer gressus responsaque tradita curae\n      Fida tuae, numeris in loca digna senis,\n    Haec ego tradiderim, majoribus ire per altum                      15\n      Nunc velis miserum me mea musa rapit.\n    Solvimus \u00e8 portu, navisque per aequora currit\n      Neptuni auxilio fluctifragisque rotis.\n    Neptunus videt attonitus, Neptunia conjux,\n      Omnis et aequorei nympha comata chori.                          20\n    Radimus Hispanum litus, loca saxea crebris\n      Gallorum belli nobilitata malis.\n    Haud mora, sunt visae Gades,[419] urbs fabula quondam,\n      Claraque ab Herculeo nomine, clara suo.\n    Hanc magnam cognovit Arabs, Romanus candem,                       25\n      Utraque gens illi vimque decusque tulit.\n    Hora brevis, fragilisque viris! similisque ruina\n      Viribus humanis omnia facta manet\n    Pulchra jaces, olim Carthaginis aemula magnae,\n      Nataque famosae non inhonesta Tyri!                             30\n    En! ratibus navale caret, nautis caret alnus,\n      Mercatorque fugit dives inane Forum.\n    Templa vacant pomp\u00e2, nitidisque theatra catervis,\n      Tristis et it foed\u00e2 foemina virque via.\n    Segnis in officiis, nec rectus ad aethera miles                   35\n      Pauperis et vestes, armaque juris habet.\n    Sic gens quaeque perit,[420] quando civilia bella\n      Viscera divellunt, jusque fidesque fugit.\n    Auspiciis laetam nostris lux proxima pandit\n      Te, Calpe[421] celsis imperiosa jugis.                          40\n    Urbs munimen habet nullo quassabile bello,\n      Claustrum Tyrrhenis, claustrum et Atlantis, aquis.\n    Undique nam vastae sustentant moenia rupes,\n      Quae torv\u00e8 in terras inque tuentur aquas.\n    Arteque sunt mir\u00e2 sectae per saxa cavernae,                       45\n      Atria sanguineo saeva sacrata Deo.\n    Urbs invicta tamen populis commercia tuta\n      Praebet, et in portus illicit inque Forum.\n    Hic Mercator adest Maurus cui rebus agendis.\n      Ah! nimis est cordi Punica prisca fides;                        50\n    Afer et \u00e8 mediis Libyae sitientis arenis,\n      Suetus in immund\u00e2 vivere barbarie;\n    Multus et aequoreis, ut quondam, Graius in undis,\n      Degener, antiquum sic probat ille genus;\n    Niliacae potator aquae, Judaeus, et omne                          55\n      Litus Tyrrhenum quos, et Atlantis, alit.\n    Hos qu\u00e0m dissimiles (linguae sive ora notentur)\n      Hos qu\u00e0m felices pace Britannus habet!\n    Anglia! dum pietas et honos, dum nota per orbem\n      Sit tibi in intacto pectore prisca fides;                       60\n    Dum pia cura tibi, magnos meruisse triumphos,\n      Justaque per populos jura tulisse feros;\n    Longinquas teneat tua vasta potentia terras,\n      Et maneat Calpe gloria magna Tibi!\n    Insula Atlanteis assurgit ab aequoris undis,                      65\n      Insula flammigero semper amata Deo,\n    Seu teneat celsi flagrantia signa Leonis,\n      Seu gyro Pisces interiore petat.\n    \"Hic ver assiduum atque alienis mensibus aestas,\"\n      Flavus et autumnus frugibus usque tumet.                        70\n    Non jacet Ionio felicior Insula ponto\n      Ulla, nec Eoi fluctibus oceani.\n    Vix, Madeira! tuum nunc refert dicere nomen,\n      Floribus, et Bacchi munere pingue solum.\n    Te vetus haud vanis cumulavit laudibus aetas,                     75\n      O fortunato conspicienda choro!\n    Haec nunc terra sinu nos detinet alma, proculque\n      A Patriae curis, anxietate domi.\n    Sic cepisse ferunt humanae oblivia curae\n      Quisquis Lethaeae pocula sumpsit aquae:                         80\n    Sic semota sequi studiisque odiisque docebas\n      Otia discipulos, docte Epicure, tuos.\n    Sed non ulla dies grato sine sole, nec ullo\n      Fruge carens hortus tempore,[422] fronde nemus;[423]\n    Nec levis ignotis oneratus odoribus aer,                          85\n      Quales doctus equum flectere novit Arabs;\n    Nec caecae quaecumque jacent sub rupe cavernae,[424]\n      Que\u00ees nunquam radiis Phoebus adire potest;\n    Nec currentis aquae strepitus,[425] nec saxa, petensque\n      Mons[426] excelsa suis sidera culminibus;                       90\n    Nec tranquilla quies, rerumque oblivia, ponti\n      Suadebunt iterum solicitare vias!\n    Rideat at quamvis haec vultu terra sereno,\n      Tabescit pravo gens malefida jugo:\n    Dum sedet heu! tristis morborum pallor in ore,                    95\n      Crebraque anhelanti pectore tussis inest.\n    Ambitus et luxus, totoque accersita mundo,\n      Que\u00ees omnis populus quoque sub axe peril;\n    Famae dira sitis, rerumque onerosa cupido,\n      Raptaque ab irato templa diesque Deo,                          100\n    Supplicium non lene suum, poenasque tulerunt;\n      Saep\u00e8 petis proprio, vir miser, ense latus!\n    Uxor adhuc aegros dilecta resuscitat artus;\n      Anxia cura suis, anxia cura mihi.\n    Altera quodque dies jam roboris attulit, illud                   105\n      Altera dura suis febribus abstulerit.\n    Aurea mens illi, mollique in pectore corda,\n      Et clarum long\u00e2 nobilitate genus.\n    Quanqu\u00e0m saepe trahunt Libycum non[427] aera sanum\n      (Gratia magna Dei), pignora nostra vigent.                     110\n    Iamque vale grandaeve Pater, grandaevaque Mater,\n      Tuque O dilecto conjuge laeta soror!\n    Quaeque pias nobis partes cognata ferebas,\n      Nomina vana cadunt, Tu mihi Mater eras;\n    Ingenioque mari, pietate ornata fideque,                         115\n      Sanguine nulla dom\u00fbs, semper amore, soror;\n    Tu quoque, care, vale, Frater, quamvis procul absis,\n      Per virides campos, qu\u00e0 petit aequor Eden.\n    Denique tota domus, cunctique valete propinqui,\n      Carmina plura mihi musa manusque negat.                        120\n\n    MADEIRAE, _MARTIIS CALENDIS_, 1844.\n\n[419] Cadiz.\n\n[420] Hispania hoc tempore bello civili divulsa fuit.\n\n[421] Gibraltar.\n\n[422] Sunt hibernis mensibus aurea mala.\n\n[423] Laureae sylvae sunt.\n\n[424] Antris abundat Insula.\n\n[425] Multos rivos natur\u00e2, mir\u00e2que humani ingenii arte constructos\ncontinet Madeira.\n\n[426] Pace Lusitanorum Insula nil nisi mons est, rectis culminibus mari\nconspicua.\n\n[427] Ventus ex Africa.--_Leste._\n\nSee also the _Carmen Maiis calendis compositum_, the _Carmen ad Maium\nmensem_, and the _Somnivaga_,--evidently by the same writer,--in the\nappendix to the second edition of _Yarrow Revisited_, 1836.--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1846\n\n\n\"DEIGN, SOVEREIGN MISTRESS! TO ACCEPT A LAY\"\n\nIn January 1846 Wordsworth sent a copy of his Poems to the Queen, for\nthe Royal Library at Windsor, and inscribed the following lines upon\nthe fly-leaf. For their republication I am indebted to the gracious\npermission of Her Majesty.--ED.\n\n    Deign, Sovereign Mistress![428] to accept a lay,\n      No Laureate offering of elaborate art;\n    But salutation taking its glad way\n      From deep recesses of a loyal heart.\n\n    Queen, Wife, and Mother! may All-judging Heaven                    5\n      Shower with a bounteous hand on Thee and Thine\n    Felicity that only can be given\n      On earth to goodness blest by grace divine.\n\n    Lady! devoutly honoured and beloved\n      Through every realm confided to thy sway;                       10\n    Mayst thou pursue thy course by God approved,\n      And He will teach thy people to obey.\n\n    As thou art wont, thy sovereignty adorn\n      With woman's gentleness, yet firm and staid;\n    So shall that earthly crown thy brows have worn                   15\n      Be changed for one whose glory cannot fade.\n\n    And now, by duty urged, I lay this Book\n      Before thy Majesty, in humble trust\n    That on its simplest pages thou wilt look\n      With a benign indulgence more than just.                        20\n\n    Nor wilt thou blame an aged Poet's prayer,\n    That issuing hence may steal into thy mind\n    Some solace under weight of royal care,\n    Or grief--the inheritance of humankind.\n\n    For know we not that from celestial spheres,                      25\n    When Time was young, an inspiration came\n    (Oh, were it mine!) to hallow saddest tears,\n    And help life onward in its noblest aim.\n\n                                              W.W.\n\n    _9th January 1846._\n\n[428] Compare the address presented by the Deputies of the Kingdom of\nItaly to Buonaparte, on Oct. 27, 1808, beginning, \"Deign, Sovereign\nMaster of all Things.\"--ED.\n\n\n\n\n1847\n\n\nODE, PERFORMED IN THE SENATE-HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, ON THE 6TH OF JULY 1847,\nAT THE FIRST COMMENCEMENT AFTER THE INSTALLATION OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS\nTHE PRINCE ALBERT, CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY.[429]\n\nINSTALLATION ODE\n\nComposed 1847.--Published 1847.\n\n             INTRODUCTION AND CHORUS\n\n    For thirst of power that Heaven disowns,\n    For temples, towers, and thrones,\n    Too long insulted by the Spoiler's shock,\n            Indignant Europe cast\n            Her stormy foe at last\n    To reap the whirlwind on a Libyan rock.\n\n                 SOLO.--TENOR\n\n            War is passion's basest game\n            Madly played to win a name;\n    Up starts some tyrant, Earth and Heaven to dare;\n            The servile million bow;\n    But will the lightning glance aside to spare\n            The Despot's laurelled brow?\n\n                   CHORUS\n\n    War is mercy, glory, fame,\n    Waged in Freedom's holy cause;\n    Freedom, such as Man may claim\n    Under God's restraining laws.\n    Such is Albion's fame and glory:\n    Let rescued Europe tell the story.\n\n       RECIT. (_accompanied_).--CONTRALTO\n\n    But lo, what sudden cloud has darkened all\n            The land as with a funeral pall?\n    The Rose of England suffers blight,\n    The flower has drooped, the Isle's delight,\n            Flower and bud together fall--\n    A Nation's hopes lie crushed in Claremont's desolate hall.\n\n                AIR.--SOPRANO\n\n    Time a chequered mantle wears;--\n          Earth awakes from wintry sleep;\n    Again the Tree a blossom bears,--\n        Cease, Britannia, cease to weep!\n    Hark to the peals on this bright May-morn!\n    They tell that your future Queen is born!\n\n            SOPRANO SOLO AND CHORUS\n\n        A Guardian Angel fluttered\n        Above the Babe, unseen;\n        One word he softly uttered--\n        It named the future Queen:\n    And a joyful cry through the Island rang,\n    As clear and bold as the trumpet's clang,\n      As bland as the reed of peace--\n        \"VICTORIA be her name!\"\n      For righteous triumphs are the base\n    Whereon Britannia rests her peaceful fame.\n\n                  QUARTETT\n\n    Time, in his mantle's sunniest fold,\n    Uplifted in his arms the child;\n    And, while the fearless Infant smiled,\n    Her happier destiny foretold:--\n      \"Infancy, by Wisdom mild,\n      Trained to health and artless beauty;\n      Youth, by Pleasure unbeguiled\n      From the lore of lofty duty;\n      Womanhood in pure renown,\n      Seated on her lineal throne:\n      Leaves of myrtle in her Crown,\n      Fresh with lustre all their own.\n      Love, the treasure worth possessing\n      More than all the world beside,\n      This shall be her choicest blessing,\n      Oft to royal hearts denied.\"\n\n         RECIT. (_accompanied_).--BASS\n\n    That eve, the Star of Brunswick shone\n        With stedfast ray benign\n    On Gotha's ducal roof, and on\n        The softly flowing Leine;\n    Nor failed to gild the spires of Bonn,\n        And glittered on the Rhine.--\n    Old Camus too on that prophetic night\n        Was conscious of the ray;\n    And his willows whispered in its light,\n        Not to the Zephyr's sway,\n    But with a Delphic life, in sight\n        Of this auspicious day:\n\n                  CHORUS\n\n    This day, when Granta hails her chosen Lord,\n      And proud of her award,\n      Confiding in the Star serene\n    Welcomes the Consort of a happy Queen.\n\n              AIR.--CONTRALTO\n\n    Prince, in these Collegiate bowers,\n    Where Science, leagued with holier truth,\n    Guards the sacred heart of youth,\n    Solemn monitors are ours.\n    These reverend aisles, these hallowed towers,\n    Raised by many a hand august,\n    Are haunted by majestic Powers,\n    The memories of the Wise and Just,\n    Who, faithful to a pious trust,\n    Here, in the Founder's spirit sought\n    To mould and stamp the ore of thought\n    In that bold form and impress high\n    That best betoken patriot loyalty.\n    Not in vain those Sages taught.--\n    True disciples, good as great,\n    Have pondered here their country's weal,\n    Weighed the Future by the Past,\n    Learned how social frames may last,\n    And how a Land may rule its fate\n    By constancy inviolate,\n      Though worlds to their foundations reel,\n    The sport of factious Hate or godless Zeal.\n\n                AIR.--BASS\n\n      Albert, in thy race we cherish\n      A Nation's strength that will not perish\n      While England's sceptered Line\n      True to the King of Kings is found;\n      Like that Wise[430] Ancestor of thine\n    Who threw the Saxon shield o'er Luther's life,\n    When first, above the yells of bigot strife,\n      The trumpet of the Living Word\n    Assumed a voice of deep portentous sound\n    From gladdened Elbe to startled Tiber heard.\n\n                 CHORUS\n\n    What shield more sublime\n    E'er was blazoned or sung?\n    And the PRINCE whom we greet\n    From its Hero is sprung.\n      Resound, resound the strain\n      That hails him for our own!\n    Again, again, and yet again;\n    For the Church, the State, the Throne!--\n    And that Presence fair and bright,\n    Ever blest wherever seen,\n    Who deigns to grace our festal rite,\n    The pride of the Islands, VICTORIA THE QUEEN!\n\n[429] This \"Ode\" was printed and sung at Cambridge on the occasion of\nthe installation of His Royal Highness Prince Albert as Chancellor of\nthe University. It was published in the newspapers of the following\nday, as \"written for the occasion by the Poet Laureate, by royal\ncommand.\"\n\nThere is no evidence, however, that Wordsworth wrote a single line\nof it. Dr. Cradock used to attribute the authorship to the poet's\nnephew, the late Bishop of Lincoln. It is much more likely that Edward\nQuillinan was the author of the whole, although Christopher Wordsworth\nmay have revised it. Mr. Aubrey de Vere wrote to me, November 12,\n1893, \"It was from Miss Fenwick that I heard that the Laureate poem\n(_Ode, etc._), was written by Quillinan, at Wordsworth's request, he\nhaving himself wholly failed in a reluctant attempt to write one. If\nhe _had_ written it, I doubt much whether he would ever have admitted\nit to a place among his works, for he did not hold 'Laureate Odes' in\nhonour, and had only taken the Laureateship on the condition that he\nwas to write none. Tennyson made the same condition: which could not,\nof course, interfere with either poet addressing lines to the Queen, if\nthey felt specially moved from within to do so.\"\n\nMiss Frances Arnold writes, \"Miss Quillinan was my authority for saying\nthat the Cambridge Ode had been written by her father, owing to the\ndeep depression in which Wordsworth then was.\"--ED.\n\n[430] Frederic the Wise, Elector of Saxony (1847).\n\n\nTO MISS SELLON\n\nThis sonnet exists, _in Wordsworth's handwriting_; but it is doubtful\nwhether it was written by him, or not. Possibly Mr. Quillinan wrote it.\nThe place, and the date of composition--given in MS.--are, \"Ambleside,\n22nd February, 1849.\" Miss Sellon was a relation of the late Count\nCavour.--ED.\n\n    The vestal priestess of a sisterhood who knows\n    No self, and whom the selfish scorn--\n    She seeks a wilderness of weed and thorn,\n    And, undiverted from the blessed mood\n    By keen reproach or blind ingratitude,                             5\n    A wreath she twines of blossoms lowly born--\n    An amaranthine crown of flowers forlorn--\n    And hangs her garland on the Holy Rood.\n    Sister of Mercy, bravely hast thou won\n    From men who winnow charity from Faith                            10\n    The Pharasaic sneer that treats as dross\n    The works by faith ordained. Pursue thy path,\n    Till, at the last, thou hear the voice--\"Well done,\n    Thou good and faithful servant of the Cross.\"\n\n\n\"THE WORSHIP OF THIS SABBATH MORN\"\n\nBY DOROTHY WORDSWORTH\n\nThese lines were published in _The Monthly Packet_, in July 1891, where\nthe following note is appended by Miss Christabel Coleridge:--\"Written\n_circa_ 1852-3, and given to Mrs. Derwent Coleridge.\" But Miss Edith\nColeridge, and Mr. E. H. Coleridge, tell me that they think they\n\"belong to an earlier period.\" Mr. Coleridge writes, \"I have heard Miss\nWordsworth repeat the lines now printed, seated in her arm-chair, on\nthe terrace at Rydal Mount.\"--ED.\n\n    The worship of this Sabbath morn,\n    How sweetly it begins!\n    With the full choral hymn of birds\n    Mingles no sad lament for sins.\n\n    Alas! my feet no more may join                                     5\n    The cheerful Sabbath train;\n    But if I inwardly lament,\n    Oh! may a will subdued all grief restrain.\n\n    No prisoner am I on this couch,\n    My mind is free to roam,                                          10\n    And leisure, peace, and loving friends,\n    Are the best treasures of an earthly home.\n\n    Such gifts are mine, then why deplore\n    The body's slow decay?\n    A warning mercifully sent                                         15\n    To fix my hopes upon a surer stay.\n\n\n\n\nA WORDSWORTH BIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n\n\n\nI.--_GREAT BRITAIN_\n\n\nI\n\nEDITIONS PUBLISHED DURING WORDSWORTH'S LIFETIME\n\nIn the Bibliographies by Mr. Tutin and Professor Dowden there are\nnumerous and valuable details as to these editions, which it is\nunnecessary to reproduce here.--ED.\n\n1\n\n1793. AN EVENING WALK. An Epistle; in verse. Addressed to a Young\nLady, from the Lakes of the North of England. By W. Wordsworth, B. A.,\nof St. John's, Cambridge. London: printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's\nChurch-yard. 4to.\n\n2\n\n1793. DESCRIPTIVE SKETCHES. In verse. Taken during a pedestrian tour\nin the Italian, Grison, Swiss, and Savoyard Alps. By W. Wordsworth,\nB. A., of St. John's, Cambridge. Loca pastorum deserta atque otia\ndia.--_Lucret._ Castella in tumulis--Et longe saltus lateque\nvacantes.--_Virgil._ London: printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's\nChurchyard. 4to.\n\n3\n\n1798. LYRICAL BALLADS, with a few other Poems. Bristol: printed by\nBiggs and Cottle; for T. N. Longman, Paternoster-Row, London. 8vo.\n\n1798. LYRICAL BALLADS, with a few other Poems. London: printed for J. &\nA. Arch, Gracechurch Street. 8vo.[431]\n\n4\n\n1800. LYRICAL BALLADS, with other Poems. In two volumes. By W.\nWordsworth. Quam nihil ad genium. Papiniane, tuum! Vol. I. Second\nEdition. [Vol. II.] London: printed for T. N. Longman and O. Rees,\nPaternoster-Row, by Biggs and Co., Bristol. 8vo.[432]\n\n5\n\n1802. LYRICAL BALLADS, with Pastoral and other Poems. In two volumes.\nBy W. Wordsworth. Quam nihil ad genium, Papiniane, tuum! Third Edition.\nLondon: printed for T. N. Longman & O. Rees, Paternoster-Row, by Biggs\nand Cottle, Crane-Court, Fleet-Street. 8vo.[433]\n\n6\n\n1805. LYRICAL BALLADS, with Pastoral and other Poems. In two volumes.\nBy W. Wordsworth. Quam nihil ad genium, Papiniane, tuum! Fourth\nEdition. London: printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, & Orme, by R.\nTaylor and Co., 38 Shoe Lane. 8vo.[434]\n\n7\n\n1807. POEMS, in two volumes, By William Wordsworth, Author of the\nLyrical Ballads. _Posterius graviore sono tibi Musa loquetur Nostra,\ndabunt cum securos mihi tempora fructus._ Vol. I. [Vol. II.] London:\nprinted for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster-Row. 12mo.\n\n8\n\n1809. CONCERNING THE RELATIONS OF GREAT BRITAIN, SPAIN, AND\nPORTUGAL, TO EACH OTHER, AND TO THE COMMON ENEMY, AT THIS CRISIS;\nand specifically as affected by the Convention of Cintra: _The whole\nbrought to the test of those principles by which alone the Independence\nand Freedom of Nations can be Preserved or Recovered_. Qui didicit\npatriae quid debeat;--Quod sit conscripti, quod judicis officium; quae\nPartes in bellum missi ducis. By William Wordsworth. London: printed\nfor Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, Paternoster-Row. 8vo.\n\n9\n\n1814. THE EXCURSION, being a portion of The Recluse, a Poem. By William\nWordsworth. London: printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown,\nPaternoster-Row. 4to.[435]\n\n10\n\n1815. POEMS BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: including Lyrical Ballads, and\nthe Miscellaneous Pieces of the Author. With additional Poems, a new\nPreface, and a Supplementary Essay. In two volumes. Vol. I. [Vol.\nII.] London: printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown,\nPaternoster-Row. 8vo.[436]\n\n11\n\n1815. THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE; OR, THE FATE OF THE NORTONS. A Poem.\nBy William Wordsworth. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme,\nand Brown, Paternoster-Row, by James Ballantyne and Co., Edinburgh.\n4to.[437]\n\n12\n\n1816. A LETTER TO A FRIEND OF ROBERT BURNS: occasioned by an intended\nrepublication of the account of the Life of Burns, by Dr. Currie;\nand of the Selection made by him from his Letters. By William\nWordsworth. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown,\nPaternoster-Row. 8vo.[438]\n\n13\n\n1816. THANKSGIVING ODE, January 18, 1816. With other short Pieces,\nchiefly referring to Recent Public Events. By William Wordsworth.\nLondon: Printed by Thomas Davison, Whitefriars; for Longman, Hurst,\nRees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row. 8vo.\n\n14\n\n1818. TWO ADDRESSES TO THE FREEHOLDERS OF WESTMORELAND. Kendal: Printed\nby Airy and Bellingham. 8vo.\n\n15\n\n1819. PETER BELL, a Tale in Verse, by William Wordsworth. London:\nPrinted by Strahan and Spottiswoode. Printers-Street; for Longman,\nHurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row. 8vo.[439]\n\n16\n\n1819. PETER BELL, A Tale in Verse, by William Wordsworth. Second\nEdition. London: Printed by Strahan and Spottiswoode, Printers-Street;\nfor Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row. 8vo.\n\n17\n\n1819. THE WAGGONER, a Poem, to which are added, Sonnets. By William\nWordsworth. \"What's in a NAME?\" \"Brutus will start a Spirit as soon as\nC\u00e6sar,\" London: Printed by Strahan & Spottiswoode, Printers-Street; for\nLongman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, & Brown, Paternoster-Row. 8vo.[440]\n\n18\n\n1820. THE RIVER DUDDON, a Series of Sonnets; Vaudracour and Julia:\nand other Poems. To which is annexed, a Topographical Description\nof the Country of the Lakes, in the North of England. By William\nWordsworth. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown,\nPaternoster-Row. 8vo.[441]\n\n19\n\n1820. THE MISCELLANEOUS POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. In four\nvolumes. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown,\nPaternoster-Row. 12mo.[442]\n\n20\n\n1820. THE EXCURSION, being a portion of The Recluse, A Poem. By William\nWordsworth. Second Edition. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees,\nOrme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row. 8vo.\n\n21\n\n1822. MEMORIALS OF A TOUR ON THE CONTINENT, 1820. By William\nWordsworth. London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown,\nPaternoster-Row. 8vo.\n\n22\n\n1822. ECCLESIASTICAL SKETCHES. By William Wordsworth. London: Printed\nfor Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Paternoster-Row. 8vo.[443]\n\n23\n\n1822. A DESCRIPTION OF THE SCENERY OF THE LAKES IN THE NORTH OF\nENGLAND. Third Edition (now first published separately), with\nadditions, and illustrative remarks upon the Scenery of the Alps. By\nWilliam Wordsworth. London: printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme,\nand Brown, Paternoster-Row. 12mo.[444]\n\n24\n\n1827. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. In five volumes.\nLondon: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green,\nPaternoster-Row. 12mo.[445]\n\n25\n\n1828. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Complete in one volume.\nParis: Published by A. and W. Galignani, No. 18, Rue Vivienne. 8vo.[446]\n\n26\n\n1831. SELECTIONS FROM THE POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, ESQ., chiefly\nfor the use of Schools and Young Persons. London: Edward Moxon, 64 New\nBond Street. 12mo.[447]\n\n27\n\n1832. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. A new Edition. In four\nvolumes. London: Printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, &\nLongman, Paternoster-Row. 8vo.[448]\n\n28\n\nSELECTIONS FROM THE POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, ESQ., chiefly for the\nuse of Schools and young persons. A New Edition. London: Edward Moxon,\nDover Street. MDCCCXXXIV.\n\n29\n\nThe Memorial Lines \"Written after the Death of Charles Lamb\" were\nissued privately, without title or date, probably late in 1835, or\nearly in 1836. 8vo. pp. 7.\n\n30\n\n1835. YARROW REVISITED, AND OTHER POEMS. By William Wordsworth.\n\n    Poets \u2026 dwell on earth\n    To clothe whate'er the soul admires and loves;\n    With language and with numbers.--AKENSIDE.\n\nLondon: printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman,\nPaternoster-Row; and Edward Moxon, Dover Street. 12mo.\n\n31\n\n1835. A GUIDE THROUGH THE DISTRICT OF THE LAKES IN THE NORTH OF\nENGLAND, with a Description of the Scenery, &c. For the use of Tourists\nand Residents. Fifth Edition, with considerable additions. By William\nWordsworth. Kendal: published by Hudson and Nicholson; and in London by\nLongman & Co., Moxon, and Whittaker and Co. 12mo.\n\n32\n\n1836. YARROW REVISITED, AND OTHER POEMS. By William Wordsworth.\n\n    Poets \u2026 dwell on earth\n    To clothe whate'er the soul admires and loves;\n    With language and with numbers.--AKENSIDE.\n\nSecond Edition. London: printed for Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green,\n& Longman, Paternoster-Row; and Edward Moxon, Dover Street. 8vo.[449]\n\n33\n\nTHE EXCURSION. A Poem. By William Wordsworth. A New Edition. London:\nEdward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXXXVI. 8vo.[450]\n\n34\n\nTHE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. A New Edition. In six\nvolumes. Vol. I. (Vol. II.-VI.) London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street.\nMDCCCXXXVI.-MDCCCXXXVII. Fcap. 8vo.[451]\n\n35\n\nTHE SONNETS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Collected in one volume, with a\nfew additional ones, now first published. London: Edward Moxon, Dover\nStreet. MDCCCXXXVIII. 8vo.[452]\n\n36\n\nYARROW REVISITED; AND OTHER POEMS. By William Wordsworth. London:\nEdward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXXXIX. 18mo.[453]\n\n37\n\nPOEMS, CHIEFLY OF EARLY AND LATE YEARS; including The Borderers, a\nTragedy. By William Wordsworth. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street.\nMDCCCXLII. 8vo.[454]\n\n38\n\n1843. SELECT PIECES FROM THE POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. London: James\nBurns. Sq. 12mo.[455]\n\n39\n\n1844. KENDAL AND WINDERMERE RAILWAY. Two Letters, re-printed from\nthe Morning Post. Revised, with additions. Kendal: printed by R.\nBranthwaite and Son.\n\n40\n\n1845. THE POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, D.C.L., Poet Laureate, etc. etc.\nA New Edition. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. MDCCCXLV. Royal\n8vo.[456]\n\n41\n\n1847. ODE, performed in the Senate-House, Cambridge, on the sixth of\nJuly, M.DCCC.XLVII. At the first commencement after the Installation\nof his Royal Highness the Prince Albert, Chancellor of the University.\nCambridge: printed at the University Press. 4to.\n\n42\n\n1847. ODE on the installation of His Royal Highness Prince Albert as\nChancellor of the University of Cambridge. By William Wordsworth, Poet\nLaureate. London: Printed, by permission, by Vizetelley Brothers & Co.\nPublished by George Bell, Fleet Street. 4to.\n\n43\n\nTHE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, D.C.L., Poet Laureate, etc.\netc. In six volumes. A New Edition. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street.\nMDCCCXLIX.-MDCCCL. 12mo.[457]\n\n[431] These two editions of 1798 are the same; but as Cottle sold to\nArch most of the copies printed, the majority bear the name of Arch as\npublisher.\n\nFour of the poems were by S.T. Coleridge, viz. _The Rime of the\nAncyent Marinere_; _The Foster-Mother's Tale_; _The Nightingale, a\nConversational Poem_; and _The Dungeon_.--ED.\n\n[432] The first volume of this edition is a reprint of the editions\nof 1798, _The Convict_ being left out. In it there is one poem by\nColeridge entitled _Love_, which was not in the edition of 1798. The\npoems in the second volume are new. The preface to Volume 1. contains\nWordsworth's poetical theory in its original form. This preface was\nincluded in the 1802 and 1805 editions of Lyrical Ballads, and also--in\nan expanded form--in almost every subsequent edition of his poems.--ED.\n\n[433] This was almost a reproduction of the two volumes of 1800, with\na few variations of text. The preface, however, was much enlarged.\nThe poem _A Character in the Antithetical Manner_ was left out, also\nColeridge's poem _The Dungeon_.--ED.\n\n[434] A reprint of the edition of 1802, with slight variations of\ntext.--ED.\n\n[435] The _Essay on Epitaphs_ inserted in the notes to this volume was\noriginally published in _The Friend_, February 22, 1810.--ED.\n\n[436] This was the first edition of Wordsworth's Poems arranged by\nhim under distinctive headings, viz. \"Poems referring to the Period\nof Childhood,\" \"Juvenile Pieces,\" \"Poems founded on the Affections,\"\n\"Poems of the Fancy,\" \"Poems of the Imagination,\" \"Poems proceeding\nfrom Sentiment and Reflection,\" \"Miscellaneous Sonnets,\" \"Sonnets,\netc., dedicated to Liberty,\" \"Poems on the Naming of Places,\"\n\"Inscriptions,\" \"Poems referring to the Period of Old Age,\" \"Epitaphs\nand Elegiac Poems,\" \"Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections\nof Childhood.\" In it, he gave _dates_ to his poems.\n\nIn Volume I. is an engraving by Mr. Bromley from a picture by Sir\nGeorge Beaumont; Volume II. has an engraving by Mr. Reynolds from Sir\nGeorge's picture of Peele Castle in a storm.--ED.\n\n[437] The poem _The Force of Prayer; or, the Founding of Bolton Priory_\nfollows the _White Doe of Rylstone_; and the volume contains an\nengraving by Mr. Bromley from a painting of Bolton Abbey by Sir George\nBeaumont.--ED.\n\n[438] The \"Friend\" was Mr. James Gray, Edinburgh.--ED.\n\n[439] The volume contains an engraving by Mr. Bromley from a painting\nby Sir George Beaumont. In addition to _Peter Bell_, this volume\ncontained four sonnets.--ED.\n\n[440] This volume was dedicated to Charles Lamb.--ED.\n\n[441] In 1820 the four separate publications, _The Waggoner_, etc.,\n_Thanksgiving Ode_, etc., _Peter Bell_, etc., and _The River Duddon,\nVaudracour and Julia_, etc., were bound up together with their separate\ntitle-pages, and issued under the title, _Poems by William Wordsworth_,\nmaking Volume III. of the _Miscellaneous Poems_.--ED.\n\n[442] Each of these volumes contained an engraving from a picture by\nSir George Beaumont. They were \"Lucy Gray,\" \"Peter Bell,\" \"The White\nDoe of Rylstone,\" and \"Peele Castle.\" All had appeared in previous\neditions. The \"Advertisement\" states that this edition contains the\nwhole of the published poems of the Author, with the exception of _The\nExcursion_, and that a few Sonnets \"are now first published.\"\n\nIt is worthy of note that, in this edition, Wordsworth for the first\ntime abandoned the practice of putting in an apostrophe, instead of\na vowel letter, in words ending with \"ed,\" and in similar cases of\ncontraction.--ED.\n\n[443] Wordsworth added to this series of Sonnets, in the one-volume\nedition of 1845 which contained 132. In the first edition, there were\n102 sonnets.--ED.\n\n[444] This originally appeared as an Introduction to Wilkinson's\n_Select Views in Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Lancashire_, which was\npublished in 1810. In 1820 it was included (see No. 18) in _The River\nDuddon: A Series of Sonnets_. In 1823 a fourth edition appeared which\nwas a reprint of that of 1822.--ED.\n\n[445] To this edition Wordsworth prefixed the following\n\"Advertisement\":--\"In these volumes will be found the whole of the\nAuthor's published poems, for the first time collected in a uniform\nedition, with several new pieces interspersed.\"--ED.\n\n[446] In this edition--copied without authority, from the poet or\nhis publishers, and with many errata, from the issue of 1827--there\nis an engraving of Wordsworth by Mr. Wedgewood, after the portrait\nby Carruthers, now in the possession of Mr. Hutchinson at Kimbolton.\nThe Galignani edition of Southey is even worse; three poems, not by\nSouthey, being included in it.--ED.\n\n[447] The editor of these selections was Joseph Hine.--ED.\n\n[448] The \"Advertisement\" to this edition is as follows:--\"The contents\nof the last edition in five volumes are compressed into the present\nof four, with some additional pieces reprinted from miscellaneous\npublications.\"--ED.\n\n[449] As this volume (No. 32 in the list) was the last printed for the\nMessrs. Longman, and issued by that firm and by Mr. Moxon jointly,\nit is desirable to mention here, in a footnote, that, with the\nexception of _The Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_ (which were\npublished by J. Johnson) every one of Wordsworth's works from 1798 to\n1836--thirty in number--were introduced to the world by the Messrs.\nLongman. It is questionable if any firm has ever had a similar \"record\"\nin connection with the works of any great poet.--ED.\n\n[450] A reprint of the sixth volume of the 1836-37 edition. It was\nagain reprinted in 1841, 1844, and 1847.--ED.\n\n[451] Volumes one and two are dated 1836; the remaining four 1837. This\nedition was stereotyped. It was reprinted in 1840, 1841, 1842, 1843,\n1846, 1849, etc.; and some of the reprints contain slight variations\nof text, etc. All the editions issued after 1841 include the volume,\n_Poems of Early and Late Years_ (see No. 37) as a seventh volume. After\n1850 _The Prelude_ was added as an eighth volume.\n\nIn the first volume of this edition there is a steel engraving by\nMr. Watt of a portrait of the Poet by W. Pickersgill, which is in\nSt. John's College, Cambridge. This engraving was reproduced in the\neditions of 1840, 1841, and following ones.--ED.\n\n[452] This edition includes (as its \"Advertisement\" tells us) \"twelve\nnew Sonnets which were composed while the sheets were going through the\npress.\"--ED.\n\n[453] Mr. Tutin writes in his Wordsworth Bibliography:--\"This Pocket\nedition of _Yarrow Revisited_, etc., is the third separate issue of the\nPoem. It seems to have been intended as a supplementary volume to the\nfour vol. edition of 1832, as the sheets of it are all imprinted 'Vol.\nv.,' but I have no direct proof that it was ever so issued.\"--ED.\n\n[454] In his \"Advertisement\" the Author states that about one-third of\nthe Poem _Guilt and Sorrow_ was written in 1794, and was published in\nthe year 1798 under the title of _The Female Vagrant_.--ED.\n\n[455] This volume is dedicated \"To her Most Sacred Majesty,\nVictoria.\"--ED.\n\n[456] Frequently republished. After 1851 _The Prelude_ was included.\nThe edition of 1869 has \"nine additional poems,\" dated 1846. All the\neditions which I have seen contain an engraving by Mr. Finden from the\nbust of Wordsworth by Chantrey--the original of which is at Coleorton\nHall--and a picture of Rydal Mount engraved by Mr. House after Finden.\nProfessor Dowden tells us that, in some later editions \"the Pickersgill\nportrait, engraved by J. Skelton, replaces Chantrey's bust.\" In this\nedition, as in that of 1815, Wordsworth gave dates to his poems.--ED.\n\n[457] Volumes I. and II. are dated 1849, and Volumes III.-VI. 1850.\n_The Excursion_ formed the sixth volume. It was reprinted separately in\n1851, 1853, and 1857.--ED.\n\n\nII\n\nEDITIONS OF THE POEMS, AND OF SELECTIONS FROM THEM, PUBLISHED AFTER THE\nPOET'S DEATH.\n\n1\n\n1850. THE PRELUDE, OR GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND; an Autobiographical\nPoem; by William Wordsworth. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. Demy\n8vo.\n\n2\n\n1851. THE PRELUDE, OR GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND; an Autobiographical\nPoem; By William Wordsworth. Second Edition. London: Edward Moxon,\nDover Street. Fcap. 8vo.\n\n3\n\n1855. SELECT PIECES FROM THE POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. London:\nEdward Moxon. Sq. 12mo.\n\n4\n\n1857. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. In six volumes. A new\nEdition. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. 8vo.[458]\n\n5\n\nTHE EARLIER POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Corrected as in the latest\nEditions. With Preface, and Notes showing the text as it stood in 1815.\nBy William Johnston. London: Edward Moxon, Dover Street. Fcap. 8vo.\n\n6\n\n1859. THE DESERTED COTTAGE. By William Wordsworth. Illustrated with\ntwenty-one designs by Birket Foster, J. Wolf, and John Gilbert,\nengraved by the Brothers Dalziel. London: George Routledge and Co.,\nFarringdon Street. New York: 18 Beekman Street. Small 4to.[459]\n\n7\n\nPOEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Selected and Edited by Robert Aris\nWillmott, Incumbent of Bear Wood. Illustrated with one hundred designs\nby Birket Foster, J. Wolf, and John Gilbert, Engraved by the Brothers\nDalziel. London: George Routledge and Co., Farringdon Street. New York:\n18 Beekman Street, MDCCCLIX. Small 4to.\n\n8\n\nTHE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE; OR, THE FATE OF THE NORTONS. By William\nWordsworth. London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts. Small\n4to.[460]\n\n9\n\nPASSAGES FROM \"THE EXCURSION,\" by William Wordsworth, Illustrated\nwith Etchings on Steel by Agnes Fraser. London: published by Paul and\nDominic Colnaghi and Co., publishers to Her Majesty, 13 and 14 Pall\nMall East. Oblong 4to.[461]\n\n10\n\nTHE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE; OR, THE FATE OF THE NORTONS. With\nIllustrations by Birket Foster, and others. London: Longman, Brown,\nGreen, Longmans, and Roberts.\n\n11\n\nPASTORAL POEMS, by William Wordsworth. London: Sampson, Low, etc.\n\n12\n\n1864. THE SELECT POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Copyright\nEdition. In two volumes. Leipzig, Bernhard Tauchnitz.[462]\n\n13\n\n1865. A SELECTION FROM THE WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, Poet Laureate.\nMoxon's Miniature Poets. Selected and arranged by Francis Turner\nPalgrave. Published in London: Edward Moxon & Co., Dover Street. Sq.\n12mo.[463]\n\n14\n\nTHE POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. A new Edition. London: Edward Moxon &\nCo., Dover Street.\n\n15\n\n1867. THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE; OR, THE FATE OF THE NORTONS. By\nWilliam Wordsworth. London: Bell and Daldy, 186 Fleet Street. 8vo.[464]\n\n16\n\n1869. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. A new Edition. London:\nEdward Moxon, Son, & Co., 44 Dover Street, Piccadilly.\n\n17\n\n1870. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited, with a critical\nMemoir, by William Michael Rossetti. Illustrated by artistic etchings\nby Edwin Edwards. London: E. Moxon, Son, & Co., Dover Street. Small 4to.\n\n18\n\nTHE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited, with a critical\nMemoir, by William Michael Rossetti. Illustrated by Henry Dell. London:\nE. Moxon, Son, & Co., Dover Street. 8vo.[465]\n\n19\n\n1876. THE PROSE WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. For the first time\ncollected, with additions from unpublished manuscripts. Edited, with\nPreface, Notes and Illustrations, by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, St.\nGeorge's, Blackburn, Lancashire. In three volumes. Volume I. Political\nand Ethical. Volume II. \u00c6sthetical and Literary. Volume III. Critical\nand Ethical. London: Edward Moxon, Son, and Co., 1 Amen Corner,\nPaternoster Row. 8vo.\n\n20\n\n1879. POEMS OF WORDSWORTH, chosen and edited by Matthew Arnold. London:\nMacmillan and Co. 18mo.[466]\n\n21\n\nTHE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited by William Knight,\nLL.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy, St. Andrews. Edinburgh: William\nPaterson. MDCCCLXXXII. [MDCCCLXXXII.-- MDCCCLXXXVI.] 8 vols. Demy\n8vo.[467]\n\n22\n\nSELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH. Edited, with an Introductory Memoir, by J.\nS. Fletcher. London: Alex. Gardner, 12 Paternoster Row, and Paisley.\nMDCCCLXXXIII. Fcap. 8vo. Parchment.[468]\n\n23\n\n1883. WINNOWINGS FROM WORDSWORTH. Edited by J. Robertson. Simpkin & Co.\n1883.\n\n24\n\nTHE BROTHERS, AND OTHER POEMS FOUNDED ON THE AFFECTIONS. 18mo. Collins.\n\n25\n\n1884. THE RIVER DUDDON. A Series of Sonnets. By William Wordsworth.\nWith ten Etchings by R. S. Chattock, The Fine Art Society, 148 New Bond\nStreet, London. Folio.\n\n26\n\nTHE SONNETS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Collected in one volume, with an\nEssay on The History of the English Sonnet by Richard Chenevix Trench,\nD.D., Archbishop of Dublin, Chancellor of the Order of St. Patrick.\nLondon: Suttaby and Co., Amen Corner. MDCCCLXXXIV. 8vo.[469]\n\n27\n\nSELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH. By Misses Wordsworth. London: Kegan Paul, &\nCo. April 8, 1884.\n\n28\n\nTHE WORDSWORTH BIRTHDAY BOOK. Edited by Adelaide and Violet Wordsworth.\nLondon: Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.\n\n29\n\nBIRTHDAY TEXTS FROM WORDSWORTH. Edinburgh: W. P. Nimmo. N. D.\n\n30\n\nTHE GOLDEN POETS. \"Wordsworth.\" London: Marcus Ward & Co. N. D.\n\n31\n\n1885. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, With a Prefatory\nNotice, Biographical and Critical. By Andrew James Symington. London:\nWalter Scott, 14 Paternoster Square and Newcastle-on-Tyne. 16mo.[470]\n\n32\n\nWORDSWORTH'S EXCURSION. THE WANDERER. Edited, with Notes, etc., by H.\nH. Turner. London: Rivingtons. N. D.\n\n33\n\nODE ON IMMORTALITY, AND LINES ON TINTERN ABBEY. Illustrated. Cassell.\n4to.\n\n34\n\nTINTERN ABBEY, ODES, AND THE HAPPY WARRIOR. 8vo. Chambers. (Republished\nin 1892.)\n\n35\n\n1887. THROUGH THE WORDSWORTH COUNTRY. By Harry Goodwin and Professor\nKnight. London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey & Co., Paternoster Square.\nImperial 8vo.[471]\n\n36\n\nWORDSWORTH AND KEATS, Selections. In 16mo. M. Ward.\n\n37\n\n1888. THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. With an\nIntroduction by John Morley. With a Portrait. London: Macmillan & Co.\nCrown 8vo.\n\n38\n\n1888. SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH. By William Knight, and other Members\nof the Wordsworth Society. With Preface and Notes. London: Kegan\nPaul, Trench, & Co., 1 Paternoster Square. MDCCCLXXXVIII. Large Crown\n8vo.[472]\n\n39\n\n1888. THE RECLUSE. By William Wordsworth. London: Macmillan and Co.[473]\n\n40\n\n1888. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WORDSWORTH. With Memoir, Explanatory Notes,\netc. London: Griffith, Farren, & Co., Newbury House, Charing Cross Road.\n\n41\n\nPROSE WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH: Selected and Edited, with an\nIntroduction, by William Knight. London: Walter Scott. No date.\n\n42\n\n1889. WE ARE SEVEN. Illustrated by Agnes Gardner King. 16mo.\n\n43\n\n1891. LYRICS AND SONNETS OF WORDSWORTH. With Introduction and\nBibliography. By Clement R. Shorter. Scott Library. 32mo.\n\n44\n\nTHE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited, with Memoir, by\nEdward Dowden. London: George Bell & Sons. 1892-1893.[474]\n\n45\n\n1891. LYRICAL BALLADS, ETC. A reprint of the original edition of 1798.\nEdited by Edward Dowden. London: David Nutt. 16mo.\n\n46\n\n1891. THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE, WITH THE SONG AT THE FEAST OF BROUGHAM\nCASTLE. Edited, with introduction and notes, by William Knight. Oxford:\nAt the Clarendon Press.\n\n47\n\nTHE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edinburgh: W.P. Nimmo, Hay,\nand Mitchell. 1892.\n\n48\n\nWORDSWORTH FOR THE YOUNG. With notes by J.C. Wright. 8vo. 1893.\n\n49\n\n1895. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, with introductions and\nnotes. Edited by Thomas Hutchinson, M.A. London: Henry Froude, Oxford\nUniversity Press Warehouse, Amen Corner, E.C.\n\n50\n\nTHE PENNY POETS, in \"The Masterpiece Library.\" Wordsworth. Nos. XXXII.\nand XXXVII.\n\n51\n\n1896. LYRIC POEMS. Edited by Ernest Rhys. 8vo. London: Dent & Co.\n\n52\n\nTHE PRELUDE; OR, GROWTH OF A POET'S MIND. 18mo. London: Dent & Co.\n\n53\n\n\"The Lansdowne Poets\" included one of Wordsworth. The \"Albion\" edition\nwas published by Messrs. Froude, Oxford University Press.[475]\n\n[458] In this edition--reprinted as \"The Centenary Edition\" in 1870,\n1881, and 1882--the Fenwick notes were printed, for the first time in\nfull, as prefatory notes to the poems.--ED.\n\n[459] Reproduced in 1864.--ED.\n\n[460] It contains illustrations by H. N. Humphreys and Birket\nFoster.--ED.\n\n[461] This volume contains eleven etchings of varying merit.--ED.\n\n[462] These are volumes 707 and 708 of Tauchnitz's \"Collection of\nBritish Authors.\"--ED.\n\n[463] It contains a steel engraving from Chantrey's bust of the Poet.\nThis selection was re-issued in 1866, and 1869; and, recently, in a\nsmall pocket edition.--ED.\n\n[464] This is a reprint, in a different form, of No. 8.--ED.\n\n[465] In this edition, which is a reprint, on smaller paper, of No. 19.\nthere is an engraving from one of the portraits of the Poet by Miss\nGillies. The engraving first appeared in Volume I. of _The New Spirit\nof the Age_, edited by R. H. Horne.--ED.\n\n[466] It contains an idealised engraving of one of Haydon's portraits\nof Wordsworth, after Lupton, by C. H. Jeens, and on the outside cover a\ndrawing of Dove Cottage.--ED.\n\n[467] In this edition the Poems were arranged for the first time\nin the chronological order of composition; the changes of text, in\nthe successive editions, were given in footnotes, with the dates of\nthese changes; many new readings, or suggested changes of text--which\nwere written by the Poet on the margins of a copy of the edition of\n1836-37, kept at Rydal Mount, and afterwards in the possession of Lord\nColeridge--were added; all the Fenwick notes were printed as Prefatory\nnotes; Topographical notes--containing allusions to localities in the\nEnglish Lake District, and elsewhere--were given; several Poems and\nFragments hitherto unpublished were printed; a Bibliography of the\nPoems, and of editions published in England and America from 1793 to\n1850 was added. Etchings of localities associated with the Poet, from\ndrawings by Mr. MacWhirter, were given as frontispieces to Volumes I.,\nII., III., IV., V., VI., and VII. The text adopted was Wordsworth's\nfinal text of 1849-50.--ED.\n\n[468] It contains an engraving of Rydal Mount on the fly-leaf.--ED.\n\n[469] This volume is a reprint of Wordsworth's own edition of his\nSonnets, published in 1838, with the addition of Archbishop Trench's\n_History of the English Sonnet_.--ED.\n\n[470] This is one of the volumes of _The Canterbury Poets_. It is only\na selection, though described on the title as \"The Poetical Works.\"--ED.\n\n[471] This volume contains fifty-five engravings from drawings by\nHarry Goodwin of scenes in the English Lake District associated with\nWordsworth, with the poems, or portions of poems, referring to the\nplaces.--ED.\n\n[472] The poems are arranged in chronological order of composition;\nand there is, as frontispiece, an etched portrait of the Poet from a\nminiature by Margaret Gillies in the possession of Sir Henry Doulton.\nAmongst those who contributed to it were Robert Browning, James\nRussell Lowell, the late Lord Selborne, Mr. R. H. Hutton, the Dean\nof Salisbury, the late Lord Coleridge, the Rev. Stopford Brooke, Mr.\nAubrey de Vere, the late Lord Houghton, Canon Rawnsley, the late\nPrincipals Shairp and Greenwood and Professor Veitch, Mr. Spence\nWatson, Mr. Rix, Mr. Heard, Mr. Cotterill, the late Bishop Wordsworth\nof St. Andrews, and the Editor.--ED.\n\n[473] In the prefatory advertisement to the first edition of _The\nPrelude_ 1850, it is stated that that poem was designed to be\nintroductory to _The Recluse_, and that _The Recluse_ if completed,\nwould have consisted of three parts. The second part is _The\nExcursion_. The third part was only planned. The first book of the\nfirst part was left in manuscript by Wordsworth. It was published for\nthe first time _in extenso_ in 1888.--ED.\n\n[474] This Aldine edition, by Professor Dowden, is one of great merit,\nand permanent value. Although it is not immaculate--as no literary work\never is--as a contribution to Wordsworthian Literature it will hold an\nhonoured place. Its \"critical apparatus\" is succinct and admirable.--ED.\n\n[475] Mr. Andrew Lang tells me that he is about to edit a _Selection_\nof the Poems, for the Messrs. Longman; which will, no doubt, be as\nuseful, and popular, as Matthew Arnold's Selection has been.--ED.\n\n\nIII\n\nESTIMATES OF WORDSWORTH IN VARIOUS BOOKS[476]\n\n1811. SEWARD, ANNA. Letters written between the Years 1784 and 1807.\nEdited by A. Constable, vol. vi. No. 66.[477] 8vo. Edinburgh.\n\n1817. COLERIDGE, S. T. Biographia Literaria; or, Biographical Sketches\nof my Literary Life and Opinions. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Rest Fenner.\nSecond Edition. London: William Pickering. 1847. Bohn's Standard\nLibrary. 1866.\n\nCOLERIDGE, S. T. In _The Friend, passim_. Second Edition. London: Rest\nFenner.\n\nHAZLITT, WILLIAM. The Round Table: a Collection of Essays on\nLiterature, Men, and Manners. Observations on Mr. Wordsworth's Poem,\n\"The Excursion.\" 12mo. London: Templeman. Also in Bohn's Standard\nLibrary. Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. Pp. 158-176. London. 1871.\n\n1818. HAZLITT, WILLIAM. Lectures on the English Poets. 8vo. London:\nTaylor and Hessey. Also in Bohn's Standard Library. 1870.\n\n1819. HAZLITT, WILLIAM. Political Essays, with Sketches of Public\nCharacters. My First Acquaintance with Poets. 8vo. London: Templeman.\nAlso in Winterslow, pp. 255-277. Bohn's Standard Library. 1872.\n\n1823. SOLIGNY, VICTOIRE DE, COUNT, _pseud._ (_i.e._ Peter George\nPatmore, father of the late Coventry Patmore). Letters on England, vol.\nii. pp. 7-19. 8vo. London: Henry Colburn and Co.\n\n1824. LANDOR, W. S. Imaginary Conversations of Literary Men and\nStatesmen. Southey and Porson, i. 39. 8vo. London: Taylor and Hessey.\nNew Edition, i. 11, 68, 182. London: Edward Moxon. 1846. New Edition,\niv. 18. London: Chapman and Hall. 1876.\n\n1825. HAZLITT, WILLIAM. The Spirit of the Age; or, Contemporary\nPortraits. 8vo. London: Henry Colburn and Co.; Fourth Edition. George\nBell and Sons. 1886.\n\n1827. HONE, WILLIAM. The Table Book. Wordsworth, ii. 275. 8vo. London:\nHunt and Clarke.\n\nCOLERIDGE, S. T. Table Talk. July 21, 1832; July 31, 1832; February 16,\n1833.\n\n1833. MONTGOMERY, JAMES. Lectures on Poetry and General Literature,\ndelivered at the Royal Institution in 1830 and 1831. Wordsworth's\nTheory of Poetic Diction, pp. 134-141. 8vo. London: Longmans.\n\n1836. Conversations at Cambridge. The Poet Wordsworth and Professor\nSmythe, pp. 235-252. 8vo. London: John W. Parker.\n\n1837. COTTLE, JOSEPH. Early Recollections; chiefly relating to the late\nSamuel Taylor Coleridge, during his long Residence in Bristol. 2 vols.\n8vo. London: Longman, Rees and Co.\n\n1838. CHORLEY, H. F. The Authors of England. 4to. London. New Edition,\nrevised (by G. B.) London. 1861.\n\nHARE, JULIUS C. and AUGUSTUS W. Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers.\nSecond Series. 8vo. London: Taylor and Walton. The Dedication of this\nedition is to William Wordsworth. New Edition, in one volume. Macmillan\nand Co. 1866.\n\n1840. HUNT, LEIGH. The Seer. \"Wordsworth and Milton,\" pp. 5-53. London:\nEdward Moxon.\n\nRUSKIN, JOHN. Modern Painters (1843-1860), _passim_ in all the five\nvolumes. London: George Allen.\n\n1843. CHAMBERS, ROBERT. Cyclop\u00e6dia of English Literature. Wordsworth,\nii. 322-333. Fourth Edition, revised by Robert Carruthers, LL.D. 1888.\n8vo. Edinburgh: William and Robert Chambers.\n\n1844. HORNE, R. H. A New Spirit of the Age. William Wordsworth and\nLeigh Hunt, vol. i. pp. 307-332. 12mo. London: Smith, Elder and Co.\n\nKEBLE, JOHN. Praelectiones Academicae Oxonii habitae, annis\nMDCCCXXXII.-MDCCCXLI., tom. ii. pp. 615, 789. 8vo. Oxonii: J. H. Parker.\n\n1845. GILFILLAN, GEORGE. A Gallery of Literary Portraits. 12mo.\nEdinburgh: Groombridge.\n\nCRAIK, E. L. Sketches of the History of Literature and Learning in\nEngland. Vol. vi., pp. 114-139. London: Charles Knight.\n\n1847. HOWITT, WILLIAM. Homes and Haunts of the most eminent British\nPoets, vol. ii. pp. 259-291. 8vo. London: Richard Bentley. Third\nEdition. Routledge and Sons. 1862.\n\nTUCKERMAN, HENRY T. Thoughts on the Poets. 8vo. London: J. Chapman.\n\n1849. GILFILLAN, GEORGE. A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits. 8vo.\nEdinburgh: Groombridge.\n\nSHAW, THOMAS B. Outlines of English Literature. Wordsworth, pp.\n518-526. 8vo. London: John Murray. Sixteenth Edition, edited by William\nSmith, D.C.L. 1887.\n\nTAYLOR, HENRY. Notes from Books. In four Essays. Wordsworth's Poetical\nWorks and Sonnets, pp. 1-186. 8vo. London: John Murray. Works: Author's\nEdition, vol. v. London: C. Kegan Paul and Co. 1878.\n\n1849-50. SOUTHEY, ROBERT. Life and Correspondence. Edited by the Rev.\nCharles Cuthbert Southey. 6 vols. Comments on Wordsworth in chaps,\nix.-xiii. xv. xix. xxvi. xxxii. and xxxvi. 8vo. London: Longman, Brown,\nGreen and Longmans.\n\n1851. GILLIES, R. P. Memoirs of a Literary Veteran; including Sketches\nand Anecdotes of the most distinguished Literary Characters from 1794\nto 1849. Wordsworth, vol. ii. pp. 136-173. 8vo. London: Richard Bentley.\n\nThe Poetic Companion, vol. i., pp. 168-173. A Biographical and Critical\nSketch of William Wordsworth.\n\nMOIR, D. M. Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the past\nHalf-Century, pp. 59-81; 120. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.\nThird Edition, 1856.\n\nWORDSWORTH, CHRISTOPHER. Memoirs of William Wordsworth, Poet-Laureate,\nD.C.L. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Edward Moxon. 1851.\n\n1852. JANUARY SEARLE (George S. Phillips). Memoirs of William\nWordsworth, compiled from Authentic Sources. 12mo. London: Partridge\nand Oakey.\n\nMITFORD, M. R. Recollections of a Literary Life; or, Books, Places, and\nPeople, vol. iii. chap. i. 8vo. London: Richard Bentley.\n\n1853. An Essay on the Poetry of Wordsworth, 72 pp. 8vo. Liverpool.\n\nAUSTIN, W. S., and JOHN RALPH. The Lives of the Poets-Laureate. With\nan Introductory Essay on the Title and Office. William Wordsworth, pp.\n396-428. 8vo. London: Richard Bentley.\n\nWRIGHT, JOHN. The Genius of Wordsworth harmonised with the Wisdom and\nIntegrity of his Reviewers. 8vo. London: Longman, Brown, Green and\nLongmans.\n\nSPALDING, WILLIAM. The History of English Literature. 8vo. Edinburgh:\nOliver & Boyd.\n\n1854. DE QUINCEY, THOMAS. Autobiographic Sketches. Early Memorials\nof Grasmere, vol. ii. pp. 104-141; William Wordsworth, pp. 227-314;\nWilliam Wordsworth and Robert Southey, pp. 315-345. 8vo. Edinburgh:\nJames Hogg. Also Collected Writings. New and Enlarged Edition. By David\nMasson. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black. 1889-90.\n\nSPALDING, WILLIAM. Wordsworth, pp. 849-851. Cyclop\u00e6dia of Biography,\nedited by Elihu Rich. 8vo. Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Co.\n\nMOORE, THOMAS. Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence of. Edited by the\nRight Honourable Lord John Russell, vol. iii. pp. 161, 163; vol. iv.\npp. 48, 335; vol. vii pp. 72, 85, 197-8; vol. viii. pp. 69, 73, 291.\n\n1856. CARLYON, CLEMENT. Early Years and Late Reflections, vol. i. 8vo.\nLondon: Whittaker and Co.\n\nHOOD, E. P. William Wordsworth: a Biography. 8vo. London: W. and F. G.\nCash.\n\nMASSON, DAVID. Essays, Biographical and Critical: chiefly on English\nPoets. Wordsworth, pp. 346-390. 8vo. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co.\nReprinted from _The North British Review_, August 1850.\n\nROGERS, SAMUEL. Recollections of the Table Talk of Samuel Rogers. 8vo.\nLondon: Edward Moxon.\n\nWILSON, JOHN. Noctes Ambrosianae, vols. i.-iii. 8vo. Edinburgh: William\nBlackwood and Sons. New Edition, 1864.\n\nWILSON, JOHN. Essays, Critical and Imaginative. Wordsworth, vol. i. pp.\n387-408. 8vo. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.\n\n1857. DE QUINCEY, THOMAS. Sketches, Critical and Biographic. On\nWordsworth's Poetry, vol. v. pp. 234-268. 8vo. Edinburgh: James Hogg\nand Sons.\n\nREED, HENRY. Lectures on the British Poets. Wordsworth, Lecture XV.\n8vo. London.\n\nWILSON, JOHN. Recreations of Christopher North, vol. ii. Sacred Poetry.\nWordsworth, pp. 54-70. 8vo. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.\n\n1858. BRIMLEY, GEORGE. Essays. Edited by William George Clark, M.A.\nWordsworth's Poems, pp. 104-187. 8vo. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co.\nSecond Edition, 1860. Third Edition, 1882. Reprinted from _Fraser's\nMagazine_, 1851.\n\nROBERTSON, F. W. Lectures and Addresses on Literary and Social Topics.\nWordsworth, pp. 203-256. 8vo. London: Smith, Elder and Co.\n\nTHE ENGLISH CYCLOP\u00c6DIA. A New Dictionary of Universal Knowledge.\nConducted by Charles Knight. Wordsworth, vol. vi. pp. 808-812.\n\n1859. MILL, J. S. Dissertations and Discussions. Thoughts on Poetry and\nits Varieties, i. 63-94. 8vo. London: John W. Parker and Son. Second\nEdition. Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer. 1867.\n\n1860. CARRUTHERS, R. William Wordsworth. The _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_,\nEighth Edition, xxi. 929-932. 4to. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black.\n\n1861. CRAIK, GEORGE L. A Compendious History of English Literature,\nand of the English Language from the Norman Conquest. Wordsworth, ii.\n435-456; 463-467; 473. 8vo. London: Griffin, Bohn and Co.\n\n1862. GORDON, MRS. \"Christopher North.\" A Memoir of John Wilson,\ncompiled from Family Papers and other Sources. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh:\nEdmonston and Douglas. New Edition, 1879.\n\nPATTERSON, A. S. Poets and Preachers of the Nineteenth Century: Four\nLectures, Biographical and Critical, on Wordsworth, Montgomery, Hall,\nand Chalmers. 8vo. Glasgow: A. Hall.\n\n1863. RUSHTON, WILLIAM. The Classical and Romantic Schools of English\nLiterature, as represented by Spenser, Dryden, Pope, Scott, and\nWordsworth. The Afternoon Lectures on English Literature, delivered in\nDublin, pp. 43-92. 8vo. London: Bell and Daldy.\n\n1864. COLQUHOUN, J. C. Scattered Leaves of Biography. IV.--Life of\nWilliam Wordsworth. 8vo. London: Macintosh.\n\nKNIGHT, CHARLES. Passages from a Working Life during half a century:\nwith a prelude of Early Reminiscences, vol. iii. chap. ii. pp. 27-29.\n\n1865. The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography. Edited by J. F.\nWALLER. Wordsworth, vol. vi. p. 1389. 8vo. London: W. Mackenzie.\n\n1865. DENNIS, JOHN. Evenings in Arcadia. Edited by John Dennis. 12mo.\nLondon.\n\n1868. BUCHANAN, ROBERT. David Gray, and Other Essays, chiefly on\nPoetry. Sampson Low.\n\nMACDONALD, GEORGE. England's Antiphon, pp. 303-7. 8vo. London.\n\nSHAIRP, J. C. Studies in Poetry and Philosophy. Wordsworth: the Man\nand the Poet, pp. 1-115. 8vo. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas. Third\nEdition, 1876. Fourth Edition, 1886.\n\n_Chambers's Encyclop\u00e6dia._ A Dictionary of Universal Knowledge for the\nPeople. Wordsworth, vol. x. pp. 272-274. New Edition, pp. 737-740.\n1892. 8vo. London: W. and R. Chambers.\n\n1869. CLOUGH, A. H. Poems and Prose Remains. Lecture on the Poetry of\nWordsworth, vol. i. pp. 309-325. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nG., F. J. The Old College, being the Glasgow University Album for\nMDCCCLXIX. Edited by Students. William Wordsworth, pp. 243-259. 8vo.\nGlasgow: James Maclehose.\n\nGRAVES, R. P. Recollections of Wordsworth and the Lake Country. The\nAfternoon Lectures on Literature and Art, delivered in Dublin, pp.\n275-321. 8vo. Dublin: William M'Gee.\n\nMARTINEAU, HARRIET. Biographical Sketches. Mrs. Wordsworth, pp.\n402-408. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nROBINSON, HENRY CRABB. Diary, Reminiscences, and Correspondence.\nSelected and edited by Thomas Sadler. 3 vols. 8vo. London: Macmillan\nand Co.\n\n1870. EMERSON, R. W. English Traits, First Visit to England. Bohn's\nStandard Library; also Macmillan and Co. 1883.\n\n1871. HUTTON, R. H. Essays, Theological and Literary. Wordsworth and\nhis Genius, vol. ii. Literary Essays, pp. 101-146. 8vo. London: Strahan\nand Co. Second Edition, 1877.\n\nTAINE, H. A. History of English Literature. Translated by H. Van\nLaun. With a preface by the author. Vol. ii. pp. 248; 260-265. 8vo.\nEdinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas.\n\nHALL, S. C. A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age, from\nPersonal Acquaintance. London: Virtue and Co. Wordsworth, pp. 287-318.\n\n1872. COOPER, THOMAS, Life of: An Autobiography. Reminiscence of\nWordsworth (first published in _Cooper's Journal_, May 1850), pp.\n287-295.\n\nDE MORGAN, AUGUSTUS. A Budget of Paradoxes. Wordsworth and Byron, p.\n435. 8vo. London: Longmans, Green and Co.\n\nNEAVES, CHARLES (Lord Neaves). A Lecture on Cheap and Accessible\nPleasures. With a Comparative Sketch of the Poetry of Burns and\nWordsworth, etc. 8vo. Edinburgh.\n\nYONGE, CHARLES D. Three Centuries of English Literature. Wordsworth,\npp. 251-267. 8vo. London: Longmans, Green and Co.\n\n1873. COLERIDGE, SARA. Memoir and Letters. Edited by her Daughter. 2\nvols. 8vo. London: Henry S. King and Co.\n\nDEVEY, JOSEPH. A Comparative Estimate of Modern English Poets.\nWordsworth, pp. 87-103. 8vo. London: Moxon and Son.\n\nLONSDALE, HENRY. The Worthies of Cumberland. William Wordsworth, vol.\niv. pp. 1-40. 8vo. London: George Routledge and Sons.\n\nMORLEY, H. A First Sketch of English Literature. 8vo. London: Cassell,\nPetter, and Galpin.\n\nNICHOLS, W. L. The Quantocks and their Associations. A Paper read\nbefore the Members of the Bath Literary Club. 12mo. Bath. Printed for\nPrivate Circulation. Second Edition. London: Sampson Low, Marston and\nCo.\n\n1874. BROOKE, STOPFORD A. Theology in the English Poets. Wordsworth,\npp. 93-286. 8vo. London: Henry S. King and Co.\n\nMASSON, DAVID. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and other Essays.\nWordsworth, pp. 3-74. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nWORDSWORTH, DOROTHY. Recollections of a Tour made in Scotland, A.D.\n1803. Edited by J. C. Shairp. 8vo. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas.\n\n1875. FLETCHER, MRS. Autobiography. With Letters and other Family\nMemorials. 8vo. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas.\n\n1876. FORSTER, JOHN. The Works and Life of Walter Savage Landor. Vol.\ni. The Life. 8vo. London: Chapman and Hall.\n\nLAMB, CHARLES. The Life, Letters, and Writings of Charles Lamb. Edited,\nwith Notes and Illustrations, by Percy Fitzgerald. References to, and\nCriticisms of Wordsworth in vols. i. ii. 8vo. London: E. Moxon and Co.\n\nLOWELL, J. RUSSELL. Among my Books. Second Series. Wordsworth, pp.\n201-251. 8vo. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington.\n\nMORLEY, HENRY. Cassell's Library of English Literature. Vols. iii.,\niv., v. Wordsworth. 8vo. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.\n\nSTEDMAN, E. C. Victorian Poets. 8vo. London: Chatto and Windus.\n\nTICKNOR, GEORGE. Life, Letters, and Journals. 2 vols. 8vo. London:\nSampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington.\n\n1877. DOYLE, SIR FRANCIS H. Lectures on Poetry delivered at Oxford.\nSecond Series. Wordsworth Lectures, i.-iii. pp. 1-77. 8vo. London:\nSmith, Elder and Co.\n\nSHAIRP, J. C. On Poetic Interpretation of Nature. Wordsworth as an\nInterpreter of Nature, pp. 225-270. 8vo. Edinburgh: David Douglas.\n\nADAMS (W. DAVENPORT). Dictionary of English Literature. Wordsworth, pp.\n700-701. 8vo. London: Cassell, Petter, and Galpin.\n\n1878. DOWDEN, E. Studies in Literature, 1789-1877. The Prose Works of\nWordsworth, pp. 122-158. 8vo. London: C. Kegan Paul and Co.\n\nKNIGHT, WILLIAM. The English Lake District as Interpreted in the Poems\nof Wordsworth. 12mo. Edinburgh: David Douglas. Second Edition, revised\nand enlarged 1891.\n\nROSSETTI, W. M. Lives of Various Poets. Wordsworth, pp. 203-218. 8vo.\nLondon: E. Moxon and Son.\n\nThe Treasury of Modern Biography. Edited by Robert Cochrane.\nWordsworth, pp. 98-116. 8vo. Edinburgh: W. P. Nimmo.\n\n1879. BAGEHOT, WALTER. Literary Studies. Edited by Richard Holt Hutton.\nWordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or, Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art\nin English Poetry, vol. ii. pp. 338-390. 8vo. London: Longmans, Green\nand Co.\n\nKNIGHT, WILLIAM. Studies in Philosophy and Literature. Wordsworth, pp.\n283-317. Nature as Interpreted by Wordsworth, pp. 405-426. 8vo. London:\nC. Kegan Paul and Co.\n\nSTEPHEN, LESLIE. Hours in a Library. Third Series. Wordsworth's Ethics,\npp. 178-229. 8vo. London: Smith, Elder and Co.\n\n1880. BAYNE, PETER. Two Great Englishwomen: Mrs. Browning and Charlotte\nBront\u00eb. With an Essay on Poetry, illustrated from Wordsworth, Burns,\nand Byron, pp. xi.-lxxviii. 8vo. London: James Clarke and Co.\n\nCHURCH, R. W. William Wordsworth. The English Poets. Edited by Thomas\nHumphry Ward, vol. iv. pp. 1-15. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nMAIN, DAVID M. A Treasury of English Sonnets. Edited from the Original\nSources, with Notes and Illustrations, pp. 365-390. 8vo. Manchester:\nAlexander Ireland and Co.\n\nMYERS, F. W. H. Wordsworth (English Men of Letters). 8vo. Macmillan and\nCo.\n\n1881. CARLYLE, THOMAS. Reminiscences. Edited by James Anthony Froude.\nVol. ii. pp. 330-341. 8vo. London: Longmans, Green and Co.\n\nDOWDEN, E. The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles.\nEdited, with an Introduction, by Edward Dowden. 8vo. Dublin: Hodges,\nFiggis, and Co.\n\nMILNER, GEORGE. The Literature and Scenery of the English Lake\nDistrict. Reprinted from the Papers of the Manchester Literary Club,\nvol. vii. pp. 1-21. 8vo. Manchester.\n\nSHAIRP, J. C. Aspects of Poetry, being Lectures delivered at Oxford.\nThe Three Yarrows, pp. 316-344. The White Doe of Rylstone, pp. 345-376.\n8vo. Oxford: Clarendon Press.\n\nSHORTHOUSE, J. H. On the Platonism of Wordsworth. A Paper read to the\nWordsworth Society, 19th July 1881. 4to. Birmingham: Cornish Brothers.\n\nSYMINGTON, A. J. William Wordsworth: a Biographical Sketch, with\nSelections from his Writings in Poetry and Prose. 2 vols. 8vo. London:\nBlackie and Son.\n\n1882. BUCKLAND, ANNA. The Story of English Literature. 8vo. London:\nCassell and Co.\n\nCOTTERILL, H. B. An Introduction to the Study of Poetry. Wordsworth,\npp. 208-241. 8vo. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co.\n\nOLIPHANT, MRS. The Literary History of England in the end of the\nEighteenth and beginning of the Nineteenth Century. 3 vols. 8vo.\nLondon: Macmillan and Co.\n\nSCHERER, J. A History of English Literature. Translated from the German\nby M. V. 8vo. London: Sampson Low and Co.\n\nSEELEY, J. R. Natural Religion. By the Author of _Ecce Homo_, pp.\n94-111. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nIRELAND, ALEXANDER. Recollections of George Dawson, etc., pp. 22-25.\n\n1883. CAINE, T. HALL. Cobwebs of Criticism. A Review of the First\nReviewers of the \"Lake,\" \"Satanic,\" and \"Cockney\" Schools. Wordsworth,\npp. 1-29. 8vo. London: Elliot Stock.\n\nDENNIS, JOHN. Heroes of Literature: English Poets. William Wordsworth,\npp. 278-299. 8vo. London: S.P.C.K.\n\nHALL, S. C. Retrospect of a Long Life: from 1815 to 1883. Wordsworth,\nvol. ii. pp. 36-42. 8vo. London: Richard Bentley and Son.\n\nHAWTHORNE, N. English Note-Books, vol. ii. 8vo. London: Kegan Paul,\nTrench and Co.\n\nThe Lyme Parish Church Magazine. Lyme-Regis: Walton.\n\n1884. HOFFMANN, F. A. Poetry, its Origin, Nature, and History.\nWordsworth, chap. xxvi. pp. 359-375. 8vo. London: Thurgate and Sons.\n\nKERR, R. N. Our English Laureates and the Birds. Dundee: John Leng\nand Co. Pp. 29-51. (Originally published in the _Newcastle Weekly\nChronicle_.)\n\nNICHOLSON, ALBERT. The Literature of the English Lake District.\nManchester.\n\nSHORTER, C. K. William Wordsworth. The National Cyclop\u00e6dia: a\nDictionary of Universal Knowledge. New Edition. 8vo. London: W.\nMackenzie.\n\nTRAILL, H. D. Coleridge. English Men of Letters. 8vo. London: Macmillan\nand Co.\n\n1885. COURTHOPE, W. J. The Liberal Movement in English Literature.\nEssay III. Wordsworth's Theory of Poetry, pp. 71-108. 8vo. London: John\nMurray.\n\nELIOT, GEORGE. George Eliot's Life, as related in her Letters and\nJournals. By J. W. Cross. Vol. i. p. 61; iii. 388. 8vo. Edinburgh: W.\nBlackwood and Sons.\n\nHUTTON, LAWRENCE. Literary Landmarks, pp. 321-7. London: T. Fisher\nUnwin.\n\nCARNE, JOHN, Letters of, 1813-1837. Privately printed. Pp. 133-138.\n\nTAYLOR, SIR HENRY. Autobiography 1800-1875. 2 vols. 8vo. London:\nLongmans, Green and Co.\n\n1886. DAWSON, GEORGE. Biographical Lectures. Edited by George St.\nClair. The Poetry of Wordsworth, pp. 251-307. 8vo. London: Kegan Paul,\nTrench and Co.\n\nLAW, DAVID. Wordsworth's Country. A series of Five Etchings of the\nEnglish Lake District. 24mo. London: Robert Dunthorne.\n\nLEE, EDMUND. Dorothy Wordsworth. The Story of a Sister's Love. 8vo.\nLondon: James Clarke and Co. New and revised edition 1894.\n\nNICHOLSON, CORNELIUS. Wordsworth and Coleridge: Two Parallel Sketches.\nVentnor: R. Madley. 1886.\n\nNOEL, HON. RODEN B. W. Essays on Poetry and Poets. Wordsworth, pp.\n132-149. 8vo. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co.\n\nSWINBURNE, A. C. Miscellanies, Wordsworth and Byron, pp. 63-156. 8vo.\nLondon. 1886.\n\nLAUNCELOT CROSS (F. Carr). Thinkers of the World in relation to the\nNew Church. 1. Childhood as revealed in Wordsworth; 2. Wordsworth on\nInfancy and Youth. N.D.\n\n1887. DE VERE, AUBREY. Essays, chiefly on Poetry. The Genius and\nPassion of Wordsworth, vol. i. pp. 101-173; The Wisdom and Truth of\nWordsworth's Poetry, vol. i. pp. 174-264; Recollections of Wordsworth,\nvol. ii. pp. 275-295. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nGOODWIN, H., and WILLIAM KNIGHT. Through the Wordsworth Country. 8vo.\nLondon: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey and Co. Third Edition, 1892.\n\nLOWELL, J. RUSSELL. Democracy and other Addresses, pp. 137-156. 8vo.\nLondon: Macmillan and Co.\n\nMemorials of Coleorton: being Letters from Coleridge, Wordsworth and\nhis Sister, Southey, and Sir Walter Scott, to Sir George and Lady\nBeaumont of Coleorton, Leicestershire, 1803 to 1834. Edited, with\nIntroduction and Notes, by William Knight. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh:\nDavid Douglas.\n\nSUTHERLAND, J. M. William Wordsworth: the Story of his Life, with\nCritical Remarks on his Writings. 8vo. London: Elliot Stock.\n\n1888. ARNOLD, MATTHEW. Essays in Criticism. Second Series. Wordsworth,\npp. 122-162. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nCHURCH, R. W. Dante and other Essays. William Wordsworth, pp. 193-219.\n8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nDOWDEN, E. Transcripts and Studies. The Text of Wordsworth's Poems, pp.\n112-152. 8vo. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. Reprinted from _The\nContemporary Review_.\n\nINGLEBY, C. M. Essays. Edited by his Son. 8vo. Tr\u00fcbner and Co.\n\nMINTO, W. William Wordsworth. The _Encyclop\u00e6dia Britannica_, Ninth\nEdition, xxiv. pp. 668-676. 4to. Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black.\n\nSANDFORD, MRS. HENRY. Thomas Poole and his Friends. 2 vols. 8vo.\nLondon: Macmillan and Co.\n\n1889. CLAYDEN, P. W. Rogers and his Contemporaries. 2 vols. 8vo.\nLondon: Smith, Elder and Co.\n\nHOWITT, MARY. Autobiography. Edited by her daughter Margaret Howitt. 2\nvols. 8vo. London: William Isbister.\n\nLetters from the Lake Poets, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William\nWordsworth, Robert Southey, to Daniel Stuart. Printed for Private\nCirculation. Wordsworth, pp. 329-386. 8vo. London: West, Newman and Co.\n\nPATER, WALTER. Appreciations. With an Essay on Style. 8vo. London:\nMacmillan and Co.\n\nWORDSWORTHIANA. A Selection from Papers read to the Wordsworth Society.\nEdited by William Knight. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\n1890. BOLAND, R. Yarrow, its Poets and Poetry, pp. 77-9. Dalbeattie.\n\nBROOKE, STOPFORD A. Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's Home from 1800-1808.\nDecember 21, 1799, to May 1808. 12mo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nDAVEY, SIR HORACE. Wordsworth. An Address read to the Stockton Literary\nand Philosophical Society. 8vo. Stockton-on-Tees. 1890.\n\nDAWSON, W. J. Makers of Modern English. Ch. x. William Wordsworth; ch.\nxi. The Connection between Wordsworth's Life and Poetry; ch. xii. Some\nCharacteristics of Wordsworth's Poetry; ch. xiii. Wordsworth's View of\nNature and Man; ch. xiv. Wordsworth's Patriotic and Political Poems;\nch. xv. Wordsworth's Personal Characteristics; ch. xvi. Concluding\nSurvey.\n\nMALLESON, F. A. Holiday Studies of Wordsworth, by Rivers, Woods, and\nAlps. The Wharfe, the Duddon, and the Stelvio Pass. 4to. Cassell and Co.\n\nM'WILLIAMS, R. Handbook of English Literature, pp. 456-466. London:\nLongmans, Green and Co.\n\nTUTIN, J. R. Birthday Texts. W. P. Nimmo.\n\n1891. DE QUINCEY, THOMAS. De Quincey Memorials. Being Letters and\nRecords here first published.\u2026 Edited, with Introduction, Notes,\nand Narrative, by Alexander H. Japp. 2 vols. 8vo. London: William\nHeinemann.\n\nGOSSE, E. Gossip in a Library. _Peter Bell_ and his Tormentors, pp.\n253-267. 8vo. London: W. Heinemann. Third Edition, 1893.\n\nGRAHAM, P. A. Nature in Books: some Studies in Biography. 8vo. London:\nMethuen and Co.\n\nMORLEY, JOHN. Studies in Literature. Wordsworth, pp. 1-53. 8vo. London:\nMacmillan and Co.\n\nSCHERER, EDMOND. Essays on English Literature, translated by George\nSaintsbury, with a Critical Introduction. 8vo. London: Sampson Low,\nMarston and Co.\n\nTUTIN, J. R. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Persons and Places, with\nthe Familiar Quotations from his Works (including full Index) and a\nchronologically-arranged List of his best Poems. 8vo. Hull: J. R. Tutin.\n\nWORDSWORTH, ELIZABETH. William Wordsworth. 8vo. London: Percival and Co.\n\n1892. CAIRD, EDWARD. Essays on Literature and Philosophy. Wordsworth,\nvol. i. pp. 147-189. 8vo. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons.\n\nDAWSON, W. J. Quest and Vision: essays in Life and Literature.\nWordsworth and his Message, pp. 41-72. 8vo. London: Hodder and\nStoughton.\n\nTUTIN, J. R. An Index to the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms of\nWordsworth. Hull.\n\nTUTIN, J. R. Wordsworth in Yorkshire. First published in _Yorkshire\nNotes and Queries_. Part xix.\n\nWINTRINGHAM, W. H. The Birds of Wordsworth: Poetically, Mythologically,\nand Comparatively examined. 8vo. London: Hutchinson and Co.\n\n1894. CAMPBELL, J. <DW18>s. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. A Narrative of the\nEvents of his Life. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nMINTO, W. The Literature of the Georgian Era. Edited, with a\nBiographical Introduction, by William Knight, LL.D., pp. 140-177. 8vo.\nEdinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons.\n\nRAWNSLEY, H. D. Literary Associations of the English Lakes. 2 vols.\n8vo. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons.\n\n1895. COLERIDGE, S. T. Letters. Edited by Ernest Hartley Coleridge. 2\nvols. 8vo. London: William Heinemann.\n\nIn Lakeland, a Wordsworthic Pilgrimage, Easter 1895.\n\n1896. SAINTSBURY, GEORGE. A History of Nineteenth Century Literature\n(1780-1895). Wordsworth, pp. 49-56. 8vo. London: Macmillan and Co.\n\nA REMINISCENCE OF WORDSWORTH DAY. Cockermouth, April 7, 1896. Edited by\nthe Rev. H. D. Rawnsley, Hon. Canon of Carlisle. Cockermouth: A. Lang.\n\n[476] There are numerous notes and letters on Wordsworth in such\nJournals as _The Athen\u00e6um_, _The Academy_, _Notes and Queries_, the\nexamination of which will repay perusal. In _Notes and Queries_ there\nare at least twenty-four valuable ones which cannot be recorded\nhere.--ED.\n\n[477] A criticism of the \"dancing daffodils.\"--ED.\n\n\nIV\n\nCRITICAL ESTIMATES IN BOOKS, PAMPHLETS, MAGAZINES, AND REVIEWS\n\nIn the following section when the name of an author is placed within\nbrackets, it is to be understood that the name was not given on the\npublication of the Review, but that it is otherwise known.--ED.\n\n1793. \"Descriptive Sketches in Verse.\" _The Monthly Review_, xii. 216.\n\n\"An Evening Walk.\" _The Monthly Review_, xii. 218.\n\n1799. \"Lyrical Ballads, with a few other Poems.\" _The Monthly Review_,\nxxix. 202; _The British Critic_, xiv. 364.\n\n1801. \"Lyrical Ballads, with other Poems.\" In 2 vols. Second Edition.\n_The British Critic_, xvii. 125.\n\n1802. \"Lyrical Ballads, with other Poems.\" Vol. ii. _The Monthly\nReview_, xxxviii. 209.\n\n1807. \"Poems.\" In 2 vols. _The Edinburgh Review_, xi. 214. By Francis\nJeffrey. _Monthly Literary Recreations_, 65. (By Lord Byron.)\n\n1808. \"Poems.\" In 2 vols. _The Eclectic Review_, vii. 35.\n\n1809. \"Poems.\" In 2 vols. _The British Critic_, xxxiii. 298.\n\n1810. \"Concerning the relations of Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal,\nto each other, and to the Common Enemy, at this Crisis, etc.\" _The\nBritish Critic_, xxxiv. 305.\n\n1814. \"The Excursion; being a portion of The Recluse, a Poem.\" _The\nEdinburgh Review_, xxiv. 1. (By Francis Jeffrey); _The Quarterly\nReview_, xii. 100. (By Charles Lamb.)\n\n1815. \"Poems; including Lyrical Ballads, and the miscellaneous\npieces of the Author. With additional Poems, a new Preface, and\na supplementary Essay.\" _The Monthly Review_, lxxviii. 225; _The\nQuarterly Review_, xiv. 201. (By W. Gifford.)\n\n\"The Excursion; being a portion of The Recluse: a Poem.\" _The Eclectic\nReview_, xxi. 13; _The Monthly Review_, lxxvi. 123; _The British\nCritic_, iii. 449.\n\n\"The Excursion: being a portion of The Recluse: a Poem.\" _The British\nReview_, vi. 49.\n\n\"The White Doe of Rylstone.\" _The Quarterly Review_, xiv. 201. (By W.\nGifford.) _The Edinburgh Review_, xxv. 355. (By Francis Jeffrey.) _The\nMonthly Review_, lxxviii. 235.\n\n1816. \"The White Doe of Rylstone.\" _The Eclectic Review_, xxiii. 33.\n\n\"Thanksgiving Ode, with other short Pieces.\" _The Eclectic Review_,\nxxiv. 1.\n\n\"The White Doe of Rylstone.\" _The British Review_, vii. 370.\n\n1817. \"Thanksgiving Ode, with other short Pieces.\" _The Monthly\nReview_, lxxxii. 98.\n\n\"Observations on Mr. Wordsworth's Letter relative to a new Edition of\nBurns's Works.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, i. 261.\n\n\"Vindication of Mr. Wordsworth's Letter to Mr. Gray on a new Edition of\nBurns.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, ii. 65.\n\n\"Letter occasioned by N.'s Vindication of Mr. Wordsworth in last\nNumber.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, ii. 201.\n\n1818. \"Essays on the Lake School of Poetry. I. Wordsworth's White Doe\nof Rylstone.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, iii. 369.\n\n1819. \"Peter Bell: a Tale in Verse.\" _The Edinburgh Monthly Review_,\nii. 654; _Blackwood's Magazine_, v. 130; _The Eclectic Review_, xxx.\n62; _The Monthly Review_, lxxxix. 419; _The Literary Gazette_, 273.\n\n\"The Waggoner: a Poem, to which are added Sonnets.\" _The Monthly\nReview_, xc. 36; _The Edinburgh Monthly Review_, ii. 654; _Blackwood's\nMagazine_, v. 332; _The Eclectic Review_, xxx. 62.\n\n\"Benjamin the Waggoner, a ryghte merrie and conceitede Tale in Verse.\"\n_The Monthly Review_, xc. 41.\n\n\"Peter Bell: a Lyrical Ballad.\" _The Monthly Review_, lxxxix. 422; _The\nEclectic Review_, xxix. 473.\n\n\"Memoir of William Wordsworth, Esq.\" (with a portrait). _The New\nMonthly Magazine_, i. 48.\n\n1820. \"Lake School of Poetry--Mr. Wordsworth.\" _The New Monthly\nMagazine_, xiv. 361.\n\n\"Wordsworth.\" _The London Magazine_, i. 275, 435.\n\n\"Wordsworth's River Duddon, and other Poems.\" _The Gentleman's\nMagazine_, xc. 344; _The London Magazine_, i. 618; _The London Review\nand Literary Journal_, 523; _Blackwood's Magazine_, vii. 206; _The\nEclectic Review_, xxxii. 170; _The Monthly Review_, xciii. 132.\n\n\"The River Duddon, and other Poems.\" _The British Review_, xvi. 37.\n\n\"Essay on Poetry, with Observations on the Living Poets.\" _The London\nMagazine_, ii. 557.\n\n\"The Dead Asses: A Lyrical Ballad.\" _The Monthly Review_, xci. 322.\n\n\"Description of the Scenery of the Lakes.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, xii.\n\n1822. \"Memorials of a Tour on the Continent.\" _The British Critic_,\nxviii. 522; _The Edinburgh Review_, xxxvii. 449. (By F. Jeffrey.)\n_Blackwood's Magazine_, xii. 175; _The British Review_, xx. 459; _The\nLiterary Gazette_, 192, 210; _The Museum_, i. 339.\n\n\"Ecclesiastical Sketches.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, xii. 175; _The\nBritish Critic_, xviii. 522; _The Literary Gazette_, 123.\n\n1829. \"An Essay on the Theory and the Writings of Wordsworth.\"\n_Blackwood's Magazine_, xxvi. 453, 593, 774, 894.\n\n1831. \"Literary Characters--No. III. Mr. Wordsworth.\" _Fraser's\nMagazine_, iii. 557. By Pierce Pungent.\n\n\"Selections from the Poems of W. Wordsworth, chiefly for the use of\nSchools and Young Persons.\" _The New Monthly Magazine_, xxxiii. 304;\n_The Monthly Review_, ii. 602.\n\n1832. \"Gallery of Literary Characters--No. XXIX. William Wordsworth.\"\n_Frasers Magazine_, vi. 313.\n\n\"Poetical Works.\" New Edition. _Fraser's Magazine_, vi. 607.\n\n1833. \"What is Poetry? The two kinds of Poetry.\" _The Monthly\nRepository_, New Series, vii. 60, 714. By Antiquus (John Stuart Mill).\n\n1834. \"The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth.\" A New Edition. _The\nQuarterly Review_, lii. 317. (By Henry Taylor.)\n\n\"Selections from the Poems of William Wordsworth.\" _The Quarterly\nReview_, lii. 317. (By Henry Taylor.)\n\n1835. \"Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems.\" _The New Monthly Magazine_,\nxliv. 12; _Blackwood's Magazine_, xxxvii. 699; _Fraser's Magazine_,\nxi. 689; _The Quarterly Review_, liv. 181; _The Dublin University\nMagazine_, v. 680; _The Monthly Literary Gazette_, 257; _The Athen\u00e6um_,\n293; _The Monthly Review_, cxxxvii. 605; _The Monthly Repository_, New\nSeries, ix. 430.\n\n1838. \"Letter from Tomkins--Bagman _versus_ Pedlar.\" _Blackwood's\nMagazine_, xliv. 509.\n\n\"Our Pocket Companions.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, xliv. 584.\n\n\"The Sonnets of William Wordsworth.\" _The Literary Gazette_, 540.\n\n1839. \"Lake Reminiscences, from 1807 to 1830--Nos. I.-III. William\nWordsworth; No. IV. William Wordsworth and Robert Southey.\" _Taits\nEdinburgh Magazine_, vi. I, 90, 246, 453. (By Thomas de Quincey.)\n\n1841. \"Wordsworth.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, xlix. 359.\n\n\"The Sonnets of William Wordsworth.\" _The Quarterly Review_, lxix. 1.\n(By Henry Taylor.)\n\n1842. \"Poems, chiefly of Early and Late Years; including The\nBorderers.\" _The Monthly Review_, ii. 270; _The Eclectic Review_,\nlxxvi. 568; _The Christian Remembrancer_, iii. 655; _The Athen\u00e6um_, 757.\n\nCriticism in a Review of \"The Book of the Poets\" in _The Athen\u00e6um_. (By\nElizabeth Barrett Browning.)\n\n\"Poems of the Fancy,\" \"Poems of the Imagination.\" _The Gentleman's\nMagazine_, xvii. 3.\n\n\"Imaginary Conversation. Southey and Porson.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_,\nlii. 687. (By Walter Savage Landor.)\n\n1844. \"Oswald Herbst's Letters from England--No. II. Wordsworth and his\nPoetry.\" _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, xi. 641.\n\n1845. \"On Wordsworth's Poetry.\" _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, xii. 545.\n(By Thomas de Quincey.)\n\n\"Poems, chiefly of Early and Late Years; including The Borderers.\" _The\nGentleman's Magazine_, xxiv. 555.\n\n\"William Wordsworth.\" _Hogg's Weekly Instructor_, ii. 243.\n\n1850. \"William Wordsworth.\" _Chambers's Papers for the People_, v. I.\n\n\"William Wordsworth.\" _The Gentleman's Magazine_, New Series, xxxiii.\n668; _The Athen\u00e6um_, 447; _Sharpe's London Magazine_, xi. 349.\n\n\"Poetical Works.\" _The Eclectic Review_, xcii. 56; _The North British\nReview_, xiii. 473. (By David Masson.)\n\n\"The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind.\" _The Eclectic Review_,\nxcii. 550; _The Gentleman's Magazine_, xxxiv. 459; _Fraser's Magazine_,\nxlii. 119; _The Westminster Review_, liv. 271; _The British Quarterly\nReview_, xii. 549; _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, xvii. 521; _The Dublin\nUniversity Magazine_, xxxvi. 329; _The Literary Gazette_, 513; _The\nAthen\u00e6um_, 805; _Sharpe's London Journal_, xii. 185; _The London\nExaminer_, 478.\n\n\"William Wordsworth.\" _Household Words_, i. 210.\n\n\"Wordsworth and his Poetry.\" _Chambers's Journal_, xiii. 363. By C. R.\n\n\"Poetical Works.\" _The Christian Observer_, i. 307.\n\n\"Religious Character of Wordsworth's Poetry.\" _The Christian Observer_,\ni. 381.\n\n\"Death of Wordsworth.\" _The London Examiner_, 259, 265.\n\n\"The Poetry of Wordsworth.\" _The Wesleyan Methodist Magazine_, 27.\n\n1851. \"Memoirs of William Wordsworth.\" _Fraser's Magazine_, xliv.\n101, 186; _The Dublin University Magazine_, xxxviii. 77; _The Dublin\nReview_, xxxi. 313; _The Gentleman's Magazine_, New Series, xxxvi. 107;\n_The Athen\u00e6um_, 445.\n\n\"Poetical Works.\" _The Dublin Review_, xxxi. 313.\n\n\"The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind.\" _The Prospective Review_,\nvii. 94.\n\n1852. \"Memoirs of William Wordsworth.\" By Christopher Wordsworth. _The\nQuarterly Review_, xcii. 182.\n\n\"Memoirs of William Wordsworth, compiled from Authentic Sources.\" By\nJanuary Searle. _The Quarterly Review_, xcii. 182.\n\n\"Lives of the Illustrious. William Wordsworth.\" _The Biographical\nMagazine_, I.\n\n1853. \"William Wordsworth.\" _Sharpe's London Journal_, xvii. 148.\n\n\"The Genius of Wordsworth harmonised with the Wisdom and Integrity of\nhis Reviewers.\" By J. C. Wright. _The Athen\u00e6um_, 824.\n\n1855. \"William Wordsworth.\" _The Leisure Hour_, iv. 439.\n\n1856. \"Poems of William Wordsworth, D.C.L.\" _The Dublin Review_, xl.\n338.\n\n\"William Wordsworth.\" _Sharpe's London Journal_, xi. 349.\n\n1857. \"William Wordsworth. A Biography.\" By Edwin Paxton Hood. _The\nNational Review_, iv. 1.\n\n\"The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth.\" A New Edition. _The\nAthen\u00e6um_, 109.\n\n\"The Earlier Poems of William Wordsworth.\" Edited by William Johnston.\n_The Athen\u00e6um_, 109.\n\n\"Wordsworth's Sister.\" By E. P. Hood. _The Leisure Hour_.\n\n1859. \"Passages from Wordsworth's Excursion.\" Illustrated with Etchings\non Steel. By Agnes Fraser. _The Athen\u00e6um_, i, 361.\n\n\"William Wordsworth. A Biography.\" By Edwin Paxton Hood. _The Christian\nObserver_, lix. 156.\n\n\"A Talk about Rydal Mount.\" _Once a Week_, i. 107. (By Thomas\nBlackburne.)\n\n1860. \"Collected Works of William Wordsworth.\" A New and Revised\nEdition. _The British Quarterly Review_, xxxi. 79.\n\n\"The Prelude, or Growth of a Poet's Mind.\" _The British Quarterly\nReview_, xxxi. 79.\n\n\"Richard Baxter paraphrased by Wordsworth.\" Varieties in _The Leisure\nHour_.\n\n1863. \"The Poems of Hood and of Wordsworth.\" _The Christian Observer_,\nlxiii. 677.\n\n\"William Wordsworth.\" _The Leisure Hour_, xii. 628.\n\n1864. \"Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning; or, Pure, Ornate, and\nGrotesque Art in English Poetry.\" _The National Review_, xix. 27. W. B.\n(Walter Bagehot.)\n\n\"Wordsworth: the Man and the Poet.\" _The North British Review_, xli. 1.\n(By J. C. Shairp.)\n\n1865. \"Two Poets of England. Wordsworth and Landor.\" _Temple Bar_, xvi.\n106.\n\n\"Wordsworth at Rydal Mount in 1849.\" In _The Leisure Hour_.\n\n1866. \"Memories of the Authors of the Age.\" William Wordsworth. _The\nArt Journal_, xviii. 245, 273. S. C. Hall and Mrs. S. C. Hall.\n\n1868. \"Characteristic Letters\"; communicated by the author of Men I\nhave Known--W. Wordsworth.\n\n1870. \"Wordsworth at Work.\" _Chambers's Journal_, xlvii. 247.\n\n\"Personal Recollections of the Lake Poets.\" In _The Leisure Hour_, 651.\nThe Rev. Edward Whately.\n\n\"Wordsworth's Study,\" in _The Leisure Hour_.\n\n1871. \"A Century of Great Poets, from 1750 downwards--No. III. William\nWordsworth.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_, cx. 299.\n\n1872. \"Wordsworth impartially weighed.\" _Temple Bar_, xxxiv. 310.\n\n1873. \"Wordsworth.\" _Macmillan's Magazine_, xxviii. 289. Sir John Duke\nColeridge.\n\n\"Wordsworth's Three Yarrows.\" _Good Words_, xiv. 649. J. C. Shairp.\n\n1874. \"On Wordsworth.\" _The Fortnightly Review_, xxi. 455. Walter H.\nPater.\n\n\"William and Dorothy Wordsworth.\" _Chambers's Journal_, li. 513.\nWilliam Chambers.\n\n\"White Doe of Rylstone.\" _Good Words_, xv. 269. J. C. Shairp.\n\n\"The Cycle of English Song.\" _Temple Bar_, xl. 478.\n\n1875. \"The Prose Works of William Wordsworth.\" Edited by the Rev. A.\nB. Grosart. _The Fortnightly Review_, xxiv. 449. Edward Dowden. _The\nDublin University Magazine_, lxxxvi. 756.\n\n1876. \"Hours in a Library.\" Wordsworth's Ethics. _The Cornhill\nMagazine_, xxxiv. 206. Leslie Stephen.\n\n\"The Prose Works of William Wordsworth.\" Wordsworth and Gray. _The\nQuarterly Review_, cxli. 104.\n\n\"The Prose Works of William Wordsworth.\" Edited by the Rev. A. B.\nGrosart. _The London Quarterly Review_, xlvii. 102.\n\n1877. \"The Wordsworths at Brinsop Court.\" _Temple Bar_, xlix. 110.\n\n1878. \"The Text of Wordsworth's Poems.\" _The Contemporary Review_,\nxxxiii. 734. Edward Dowden.\n\n\"Wordsworth.\" _Transactions of the Cumberland Association for the\nAdvancement of Literature and Science_, Part III. William Knight.\n\n1879. \"Wordsworth.\" _Macmillan's Magazine_, xl. 193. Matthew Arnold.\n\n\"Matthew Arnold's Selections from Wordsworth.\" _The Fortnightly\nReview_, xxxii. 686. J. A. Symonds.\n\n1880. \"Milton and Wordsworth.\" _Temple Bar_, lx. 106.\n\n\"Wordsworth.\" _Frasers Magazine_, ci. 205. Edward Caird.\n\n\"Wordsworth's Poems.\" Selected and edited by Matthew Arnold. _The\nModern Review_, i, 235. William Knight.\n\n\"The Genius and Passion of Wordsworth.\" _The Month_, xxxviii. 465;\nxxxix. 1. Aubrey De Vere.\n\n1881. \"Carlyle's Reminiscences.\" Carlyle's Impressions of Wordsworth.\n_The Nineteenth Century_, lx. 1010. Henry Taylor.\n\n\"Wordsworth.\" _The Churchman_, March.\n\n1882. \"Wordsworth and Byron.\" _The Quarterly Review_, cliv. 53. Matthew\nArnold.\n\n\"My Rare Book.\" _The Gentleman's Magazine_, New Series, xxviii. 531.\nFrederick Wedmore.\n\n\"Wordsworth's Two Styles.\" _The Modern Review_, iii. 525. R. H. Hutton.\n\n\"A French Critic on Wordsworth--M. Sch\u00e9rer.\" _The Saturday Review_,\nliv. 565.\n\n\"Poetical Works.\" Edited by William Knight. _The Academy_, xxii. III.\nEdward Dowden. _The Spectator_, lv. 1141; _The Modern Review_, iii,\n861.\n\n\"Transactions of the Wordsworth Society--No. I. Bibliography of the\nPoems; No. II. On the Platonism of Wordsworth.\" J. H. Shorthouse. _The\nSpectator_, lv. 238.\n\n\"The Weak Side of Wordsworth.\" _The Spectator_, lv. 687.\n\n1883. \"Wordsworth and the Duddon.\" _Good Words_, xxiv. 573. F. A.\nMalleson.\n\n\"Address to the Wordsworth Society.\" _Macmillan's Magazine_, xlviii.\n154. Matthew Arnold.\n\n\"Poetical Works.\" Edited by William Knight. _The Spectator_, lvi. 614.\n\n\"In Wordsworth's Country.\" _The Yorkshire Illustrated Monthly_, 32. N.\nPaton.\n\n\"Poets' Pictures.\" _Temple Bar_, lxxx. 232.\n\n\"Old Age in Bath, to which are added a few unpublished remains of\nWordsworth.\" Henry Julian Hunter.\n\n1884. \"Wordsworth and Byron.\" _The Nineteenth Century_, xv. 583, 764.\nA. C. Swinburne.\n\n\"The Wisdom and Truth of Wordsworth's Poetry.\" _The Catholic World_.\nAubrey de Vere.\n\n\"Wordsworth and 'Natural Religion.'\" _Good Words_, xxv. 307. J. C.\nShairp.\n\n\"Wordsworth's Relations to Science.\" _Macmillan's Magazine_, l. 202. R.\nSpence Watson.\n\n\"Sonnets.\" Edited by the Archbishop of Dublin. _The Academy_, xxv. 108.\nSamuel Waddington.\n\n\"The Literature of the English Lake District.\" _The Manchester\nQuarterly_, No. xii. Albert Nicholson.\n\n\"A Stroll up the Brathay.\" _Good Words_, xxv. 392. Herbert Rix.\n\n\"The Liberal Movement in English Literature--III. Wordsworth's Theory\nof Poetry.\" _The National Review_, iv. 512. William John Courthope.\n\n1885. \"Wordsworth's Influence in Scotland.\" _The Spectator_, lviii.\n1292.\n\n\"Dorothy Wordsworth.\" _The Christian World Magazine_, 314, 360, 464,\n548.\n\n\"Archbishop Sandys' Endowed School, Hawkshead, near Ambleside.\nTercentenary Commemoration.\"\n\n1886. \"Wordsworth.\" _Temple Bar_, lxxvii. 336. Charles F. Johnson.\n\n\"Poetical Works.\" Edited by William Knight. _The Spectator_, lix. 355.\n\n1887. \"Memorials of Coleorton.\" Edited by William Knight. _The\nSpectator_, lx. 1656.\n\n\"Wordsworth, the Poet of Nature.\" _The Sunday Magazine_, xvi. 166.\nHenry C. Ewart.\n\n\"The Mystical Side of Wordsworth.\" _The National Review_, ix. 833. John\nHogben.\n\n1888. \"Mr. Morley on Wordsworth.\" _The Spectator_, lxi. 1807.\n\n\"The Recluse.\" _The Spectator_, lxi. 1852.\n\n\"Selections from Wordsworth.\" By William Knight, and other Members of\nthe Wordsworth Society. _The Spectator_, lxi. 1852.\n\n1889. \"Selections from Wordsworth.\" By William Knight, and other\nMembers of the Wordsworth Society. _The Athen\u00e6um_, i. 109.\n\n\"A Modern Poetic Seer.\" _The Christian World._\n\n\"The Recluse.\" _The Edinburgh Review_, clxix. 415. _The Academy_, xxxv.\n17. Edward Dowden. _The Saturday Review_, lxvii. 43; _The Athen\u00e6um_, i.\n109.\n\n\"Complete Poetical Works.\" With an Introduction by John Morley. _The\nEdinburgh Review_, clxix. 415. _The Academy_, xxxv. 17. Edward Dowden.\n_The Athen\u00e6um_, i. 109.\n\n\"Wordsworthiana.\" Edited by William Knight. _The Edinburgh Review_,\nclxix. 415; _The Academy_, xxxv. 229. Edward Dowden. _The Spectator_,\nlxii. 369.\n\n\"Wordsworth's Great Failure.\" _The Nineteenth Century_, xxvi. 435.\nWilliam Minto.\n\n\"The Life of William Wordsworth.\" By William Knight. _The Saturday\nReview_, lxvii. 732; _The Spectator_, lxiii. 143; _The Athen\u00e6um_, i.\n719.\n\n\"Wordsworth and the Quantock Hills.\" _The National Review_, xiv. 67.\nWilliam Greswell.\n\n1890. \"Lyrical Ballads.\" Edited by Edward Dowden. _The Spectator_,\nlxiv. 479.\n\n\"The Story of a Sonnet.\" _The Athen\u00e6um_, i. 641. James Bromley.\n\n\"Some Early Poems of Wordsworth.\" _The Athen\u00e6um_, ii. 320. J. D. C.\n(James <DW18>s Campbell).\n\n\"The Lyrical Ballads of 1800.\" _The Athen\u00e6um_, ii. 699. J. D. C.\n\n\"Wordsworth's Verses in his Guide to the Lake Country.\" _The Athen\u00e6um._\nJ. D. C.\n\n1891. \"Wordsworth's 'Immortal' Ode.\" _The Parent's Review_, i. 864,\n944; ii. 70.\n\n\"The Wordsworth Dictionary of Persons and Places,\" with the Familiar\nQuotations from his Works. (By J. R. Tutin.) _The Athen\u00e6um_, ii. 756,\n834.\n\n\"The College Days of William Wordsworth.\" _The Eagle_, xvi., No. 94. G.\nC. M. Smith.\n\n\"William Wordsworth.\" By Elizabeth Wordsworth. _The Athen\u00e6um_, ii. 516.\n\n1892. \"The Yarrow of Wordsworth and Scott.\" _Blackwood's Magazine_,\ncli. 638. John Veitch.\n\n\"The last Decade of the last Century.\" _The Contemporary Review_, lxii.\n422. J.W. Hales.\n\n\"The Influence of Burns on Wordsworth.\" _The Manchester Quarterly_, xi.\n285. George Milner.\n\n\"Wordsworth on Old Age.\" _Literary Opinion_, vii. 186, Sir Edward\nStrachey.\n\n\"The Birds of Wordsworth, practically, mythologically, and\ncomparatively examined.\" By William H. Wintringham. _The Athen\u00e6um_, i.\n594, 634, 666, 697.\n\n\"Dove Cottage,\" in _The Athen\u00e6um_, i. 727.\n\n\"The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth.\" Edited by Edward Dowden.\n_The Athen\u00e6um._ No. 3404.\n\n1893. \"Some Unpublished Letters of William Wordsworth.\" _The Cornhill\nMagazine_, New Series, xx. 257.\n\n\"Reminiscences of Scott, Campbell, Jeffrey, and Wordsworth.\" _The\nBookman_, iv. 47.\n\n\"Our Poet's Corner.\" _The Girls' Own Paper_, xiv. 772.\n\n\"Dove Cottage, Grasmere--Wordsworth's Home.\" _The Girls' Own Paper_,\nxiv. 772. Milward Wood.\n\n\"Down the Duddon with Wordsworth.\" _The Leisure Hour_, xlii. 532.\nHerbert Rix.\n\n\"Wordsworth's 'Grace Darling.'\" _The Athen\u00e6um_, No. 3440. Edward Dowden.\n\n\"Note by Wordsworth.\" _The Athen\u00e6um_, No. 3443. E. H. C. (Ernest H.\nColeridge).\n\n\"Wordsworth and the _Morning Post_.\" _The Athen\u00e6um_, No. 3445. E. H. C.\n\n1894. \"Wordsworth's 'Castle of Indolence' Stanzas.\" _The Fortnightly\nReview_, lxii. 685. T. Hutchinson.\n\n\"A Century of Wordsworth.\" _The Sunday at Home_, 641, 646. By E. S.\nCapper.\n\n1895. \"The Charm of Wordsworth.\" _Great Thoughts_, iv. 399.\n\n\"Wordsworth and Carlyle: a Literary Parallel.\" _Temple Bar_, cv. 261.\n\n\"Dorothy Wordsworth, 1771-1855.\" _Great Thoughts_, v. 56. Alexander\nSmall.\n\n1896. \"Wordsworth's Quantock Poems.\" _Temple Bar_, April 1896. William\nGreswell.\n\n\nV\n\nPARODIES ON WORDSWORTH\n\nTHE BATTERED TAR; OR, THE WAGGONER'S COMPANION. A Poem, with Sonnets,\netc. J. Johnston.\n\n1839. PETER BELL THE THIRD. By Miching Mallecho, Esq. (Percy B.\nShelley).\n\n1876. LITERARY REMAINS. By Catherine Maria Fanshawe. B. M. Pickering.\nLondon.\n\n1888. THE POETS AT TEA. _The Cambridge Fortnightly_ (Feb. 7).\n\n1819. THE DEAD ASSES. A Lyrical Ballad.\n\n1819. PETER BELL. a Lyrical Ballad. By John Hamilton Reynolds. London:\nTaylor and Hessey.\n\n1816. THE POETIC MIRROR; OR, THE LIVING BARDS OF BRITAIN, pp. 131-187.\n(By James Hogg.)\n\nThe Stranger; being a further portion of \"The Recluse,\" a poem.\n\nThe Flying Taylor; further extract from \"The Recluse,\" a poem.\n\nJames Rigg; still further extract from \"The Recluse,\" a poem. 12mo.\nLondon: Longmans. Second Edition. 1817.\n\n1888. HAMILTON, WALTER. Parodies of the Works of English and American\nAuthors, collected and annotated by Walter Hamilton. _William\nWordsworth_, pp. 88-106. 8vo. London: Reeves and Turner.\n\n\nVI\n\nPOEMS ADDRESSED TO WORDSWORTH, AND ALLUSIONS TO HIM BY CONTEMPORARY AND\nSUBSEQUENT POETS\n\n1. COLERIDGE, S. T. _To William Wordsworth, composed on the night\nafter his recitation of a poem on the growth of an individual mind._\nPublished in \"Sibylline Leaves.\"\n\n2. COLERIDGE, HARTLEY. _To William Wordsworth, on his seventy-fifth\nBirthday._\n\n3. WILSON, JOHN. In \"The Angler's Tent,\" p. 257 of the edition of 1858.\n\n4. KEATS, JOHN. In his Sonnets [the 2nd addressed to Haydon].\n\n5. SHELLEY, PERCY B. _To Wordsworth._ Another reference occurs in\n_Alastor_.\n\n6. MOIR, D. M. _To Wordsworth._ In _Blackwood's Magazine_, viii. 542;\nafterwards included amongst his \"Poems,\" vol. ii. p. 28. 1852.\n\n7, 8. BROWNING, MRS. _On a Portrait of Wordsworth by B. R. Haydon._\n(Sonnets.) 1866. Vol. ii. p. 264. Also in _Lady Geraldine's Courtship_,\nvol. ii. p. 109. 1866.\n\n9. ELLIOTT, EBENEZER. In _The Village Patriarch_. Book iv. 1840.\n\n10. TENNYSON, ALFRED LORD. In the Dedication of his _Poems_ \"To the\nQueen.\" March 1851.\n\n11, 12. ALFORD, HENRY. In _The School of the Heart_, pp. 66, 67; and\n_Recollections of Wordsworth's_ \"_Ruth_,\" p. 163. 1868.\n\n13. LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL. In _A Fable for Critics_, p. 133. 1873.\n\n14, 15. BYRON, LORD. In _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_. Also in\n_Don Juan_.\n\n16. HUNT, LEIGH. In _The Feast of the Poets_. This first appeared in\n_The Reflector_, which survived from 1810 to 1812.\n\n17. HEMANS, MRS. _To Wordsworth_, in her \"Miscellaneous Poems.\"\n\n18. Scenes and Hymns of Life. Dedicated to Wordsworth. p. 568. N. D.\n\n19. HALLAM, A. H. _Meditative Fragments._ No. vi. 1863.\n\n20, 21, 22. ARNOLD, MATTHEW. _Memorial Verses._ April 1850. Also in\n_Youth and Nature_, and in _Obermann Once More_. p. 203. 1869.\n\n23, 24, 25. DE VERE, SIR AUBREY. _In Rydal with Wordsworth_ (Sonnets).\np. 208. 1842. _Wordsworth._ Composed at Rydal, 1st Sept. 1860. p. 392.\n_Wordsworth, on Visiting the Duddon_, p. 393.\n\n26. TOLLEMACHE, The Hon. BEATRIX L. _Wordsworth_, in \"Safe Studies,\" p.\n409. 1884.\n\n27. TOLLEMACHE, The Hon. BEATRIX L. _To Wordsworth_, in \"Engleberg, and\nother Verses.\" 1890.\n\n28. BELL, GEORGE. _Rydal Mount_, in \"Descriptive and other\nMiscellaneous Pieces in Verse.\" Penrith, 1835.\n\n29. HOUGHTON, LORD. Sonnet beginning \"The hour may come,\" etc. Poetical\nWorks, vol. i. p. 267. 1876.\n\n30. WORSLEY, P. S. Stanzas to Wordsworth, in _Blackwood's Magazine_,\nxcii. pp. 92-93.\n\n31. AUSTIN, ALFRED. _Wordsworth at Dove Cottage._ 1890.\n\n32, 33. SCOTT, W. B. Poems (three Sonnets), pp. 180-182. 1875. Also in\n\"A Poet's Harvest Home,\" 1893. _Wordsworth_, p. 123.\n\n34, 35, 36. RAWNSLEY, H. D. In \"Sonnets at the English Lakes.\" IX.\n_Wordsworth's Seat, Rydal_; LI. _A Tree planted by William Wordsworth\nat Wray Castle_; LXII. _Wordsworth's Tomb._\n\n37. PAYNE, JAMES. _Wordsworth's Grave_, in \"Lakes in Sunshine.\" 1870.\n\n38. LANDOR, L. E. _On Wordsworth's Cottage, near Grasmere Lake_, in her\n\"Poetical Works,\" pp. 551-4. 1873.\n\n39. ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM. _On reading of the Funeral of the Poet\nWordsworth_, p. 258 of \"Poems.\" 1850.\n\n40. PALGRAVE, FRANCIS TURNER. _William Wordsworth_, in his \"Lyrical\nPoems.\" 1871.\n\n41. ANDERSON, G. F. R. _Wordsworth_, in \"The White Book of the Muses,\"\np. 67. 1895.\n\n42. DAWSON, JAMES, jun. _Wordsworth and Hartley Coleridge: in Grasmere\nChurchyard, Westmoreland._ In _Macmillan's Magazine_, xiii. 26.\n\n43. WATSON, WILLIAM. _Wordsworth's Grave._ Originally published in\nthe _National Review_, x. 40; afterwards included in the volume,\n\"Wordsworth's Grave, and other Poems.\" 1890.\n\n44. MATSURA (a Japanese poet). _Moonlight on Windermere_, translated by\nH. D. Rawnsley in _Murray's Magazine_, Oct. 1887.\n\n\n\n\nII.--_AMERICA_\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY of the Various Editions of WORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS,\nwhich have been printed and published in the United States of America,\nfrom 1801 to 1895, arranged in Chronological Order: also a BIBLIOGRAPHY\nOF CRITICAL ESSAYS, and BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, of Wordsworth's Life and\nWorks in Books, Reviews, and Periodicals; with Notes, by Mrs. HENRY A.\nST. JOHN, Ithaca, New York.\n\n\nPREFATORY NOTE\n\nMy ideal in attempting to prepare a _Bibliography of Wordsworth in\nAmerica_ was high. I hoped to see each edition, or at least to identify\nthe editions hinted at in the various catalogues. I determined to\nread every article, in criticism, or review; and to know if the many\nreferences, given by Poole and other authorities, were correct. As\nis usually the case, the reality has fallen far short of the ideal.\nBut, while the results are not what were desired, there have been many\nfortunate discoveries.\n\nTwo things were learned to begin with. First, that astonishingly little\ncare had been taken to preserve the history of the early American\nEditions, or to preserve, even, the earlier American Periodicals.\nMost of our larger libraries are amazingly deficient in these works.\nSecond, it was found that existing Catalogues or Lists are not only\nfar from complete, but full of gross blunders. Roorbach (the Addenda,\nSupplements, etc.) was found to be a mere rehash of the old trade sales\nCatalogues, swarming with blunders. In the matter of dates, imprints,\nthe particular editions, the size of books, Roorbach is utterly\nuntrustworthy. Allibone (so far as Wordsworth is concerned) is also\nconfusing and incomplete. I did not find much in the various Public or\nCollege Library Catalogues.\n\nI wrote to the librarians of some of the older libraries, after I had\nmade out a preliminary list, to ascertain if they could add thereto any\neditions, from their cards or manuscript catalogues. From these sources\nI was enabled several times to solve seemingly insolvable problems.\n\nI had assistance from, and in some instances visited, the following\nlibraries: Cornell University, Boston Public Library, Boston Athen\u00e6um,\nHarvard College, Philadelphia Public Library, the Library College of\nPhiladelphia, Mercantile Library College, Philadelphia; the Public\nLibrary, St. Louis; that of Lennox and Astor, the University of\nVirginia, the State Library, Richmond, Va., and one or two other\nSouthern libraries. I have written more than one hundred letters\nto publishers, editors, authors, the descendants of early American\nWordsworthians, Professors of Literature, and professed Wordsworthians\nin Seminaries and Colleges. I have examined, or employed others to\nexamine, the following works for editions of Wordsworth: the _New York\nLiterary World_, _Norton's Literary Gazette_, _American Publishers'\nCircular_, _Publishers' Weekly_, _Catalogues of Congress Library_, _The\nPort Folio_, _American Quarterly Review_, _Knickerbocker Magazine_,\n_New York Quarterly Review_, _American Review_, _North American\nReview_. And this is but half of my story.\n\nPoole's \"Index,\" of course, was a great assistance. But I did not rely\naltogether on him, after I had discovered several mistakes in titles\nand numbering--mistakes which were confusing in the extreme. I have\nconsulted all other Indexes and Reference Lists that I could procure,\nand have carefully examined the periodicals in which it was possible\nthat such articles could be found.\n\nMy greatest light, however, came from responses to personal appeals,\nto those in the North, South, East, and West of the Country, who\nenlightened me in particular directions. I needed assistance, not only\nto discover the articles, but more particularly to secure the articles\nto read, or to procure proper persons to read the few articles that I\ncould not obtain. When valuable books were sent me, by express, from\ndistant College Libraries, that I might read for myself, I realised the\nbond there is between Wordsworthians.\n\nI cannot begin to speak of the delight that I have had in this work,\ndelight because of the response I have met with, and in opening\nup unknown and rich veins of criticism. I have learned too, that\nWordsworth has many enthusiastic followers in America.\n\nI have included in the Bibliography the accounts of visits paid to\nWordsworth by certain well-known Americans, a half-dozen poems on\nWordsworth, and three or four unpublished Lectures.\n\nI am exceedingly grateful to the many who (to my surprise) have\nanswered my questions, and have given me of their valuable time. I\nam especially indebted to Mr. George P. Philes, of Philadelphia, and\nalso to Mr. F. Saunders of the Astor Library, New York. Dean Murray of\nPrinceton rendered me exceedingly gracious service, and but for Mr.\nEdwin H. Woodruff of Stanford University, California, I should not have\nknown how or where to begin my investigations.\n\nIn all probability my work is not perfect. I would that it were. I only\nknow that I have been enabled, by enthusiasm alone, to lay a foundation\nfor Wordsworth Bibliography in America, that may be an assistance to\nfuture scholars, and will aid the next Wordsworthian who is brave\nenough to build enduringly.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n\nI\n\nAMERICAN EDITIONS OF WORDSWORTH\n\nINCLUDING A FEW WORKS WHICH ARE NOT STRICTLY EDITIONS OF WORDSWORTH\n\nI have endeavoured to include in this list every distinctive American\nedition of Wordsworth, published during the poet's lifetime, and\nsince his death. There are many others, issued with the imprints of\nhonourable publishers; which, upon investigation, were found to be\nEnglish reprints; to say nothing of those editions made from worn-out\nplates, and issued by houses of less reputation for honourableness.\nI was puzzled to account for so many editions of Matthew Arnold's\nSelections, some of them bearing the imprint of Harper Brothers, some\nof Macmillan, and several of Crowell. The Harpers wrote me that these\nvarious publications were possible in view of the fact that there\nwas no copyright of the work, and that all of them might properly be\ncalled American Editions. I have not placed those bearing the Macmillan\nimprint, of course, among purely American editions. Nor have I included\nthe several cheap ones of Crowell. The one of Crowell, given in the\nlist, is copyrighted by the Crowell Company.\n\nThe fact that the introduction of Wordsworth's poetry into America is\nso easily authenticated, and that the history of it is so concise,\nis my apology for deviating from ordinary bibliographical rule in\nincluding among the regular editions certain numbers of America's first\nLiterary Journal, and two or three other volumes.\n\nI have confined myself to a simple chronological arrangement of the\nEditions, with place of imprint, name of publisher, number, and size\nof volumes. This makes the most convenient list for easy reference,\nespecially as I have tried to mention technical points of difference.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n1\n\n1801. THE PORT FOLIO. (Edited by Joseph Dennie.) Philadelphia. 4to.\n\nThe following poems appeared in \"The Port Folio,\" vol. i., before the\npublication of the First American Edition of \"Lyrical Ballads\"--\n\n    (1) _Simon Lee_, p. 24.[478]\n    (2) _The Last of the Flock_, p. 48.\n    (3) _The Thorn_, p. 94.\n    (4) _The Mad Mother_, p. 232.\n    (5) _Anecdote for Fathers_, p. 232.\n    (6) _Ellen Irwin_, p. 391.\n    (7) _Strange Fits of Passion_, etc., p. 392.\n    (8) _The Waterfall and the Eglantine_, p. 408.\n    (9) _Lucy Gray_, p. 408.\n    (10) _Andrew Jones_, p. 408.\n\n2\n\n1801. INTRODUCTION TO THE ENGLISH READER. By Lindley Murray.\nPhiladelphia: Johnson and Warner. 12mo.[479]\n\n3\n\n1802. LYRICAL BALLADS, with Other Poems. In two volumes. By W.\nWordsworth.\n\n    Quam nihil ad genium, Papiniane, tuum!\n\nFrom the London second edition. Philadelphia: Printed and sold by James\nHumphreys. 2 vols. in one. 12mo.[480]\n\n4\n\n1823. THE AMERICAN FIRST CLASS BOOK. By John Pierpont. Boston: William\nB. Fowle. 1 vol. 12mo.[481]\n\n5\n\n1824. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Boston: published by\nCummings, Hilliard and Co. 4 vols. 12mo.[482]\n\n6\n\n1833. SKETCH OF THE GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. With\nSelections from his \"Lyrical Ballads.\"[483] Philadelphia: Greenbak's\nPeriodical Library. Vol. ii. pp. 181-202.\n\n7\n\n1835. YARROW REVISITED, and Other Poems. New York: R. Bartlett and S.\nRaynor. 16mo. pp. 17-244.\n\n1835. Same Title. Boston: R. Bartlett and S. Raynor. 16mo; also,\nBoston: James Munroe and Co. 16mo.\n\n1835. Same Title. Philadelphia. 12mo.\n\n8\n\n1836. YARROW REVISITED. Second Edition. Boston: William D. Ticknor.\n16mo.\n\n9\n\n1836. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. The first complete\nAmerican, from the last London, edition. New Haven: Peck and Newton. In\n1 vol. Royal 8vo.[484]\n\n10\n\n1836. THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, together with\na Description of the Country of the Lakes, etc. Edited by Henry Reed.\nWith Portrait. Philadelphia: Kay and Brother. Royal 8vo; also, by James\nKay and Brother.[485]\n\n1839. Same Title. Philadelphia: Kay and Brother. Boston: Munroe and Co.\nPittsburg: Kay and Co.\n\n1844. Same Title. Philadelphia: James Kay jun.[486]\n\n11\n\n1842. WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. In \"The New World,\" vol. iv. No. 16.\nNew York: Park Benjamin, Editor. Sat. April 9, _Sonnet Written at\nFlorence_; April 16, _Address to the Clouds, Suggested by a Picture\nof the Bird of Paradise_; _Maternal Grief_ (\"New Poems, never before\npublished\"). May 7, _Guilt and Sorrow_ (\"From proof sheets received in\nadvance\").[487]\n\n12\n\n1843. POEMS FROM THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Selected by\nHenry Reed.\n\n    Go forth, my little Book; pursue thy way;\n    Go forth, and please the gentle and the good.\n\nPhiladelphia: John Locken. 32mo.\n\n(Entered according to the Act of Congress in 1841.)\n\n1846. Same Title. Philadelphia: Uriah Hunt and Son. 32mo.\n\nSame Title. New York: Leavitt and Co.[488]\n\n1853. Same Title. New York: Leavitt and Allen. 24mo.\n\n1856. Same Title.[489] New York: Leavitt and Allen.\n\n13\n\n1847. WORDSWORTH'S COMPLETE POETICAL AND PROSE WORKS.[490] In 5 vols.\n(In Press.) Philadelphia: Kay and Troutman. 12mo.\n\n14\n\n1849. POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: with an Introductory Essay on his\nLife and Writings. By H. T. Tuckerman. New York: C. S. Francis and Co.\n12mo. pp. 21-356; also, Boston: J. H. Francis.[491]\n\n15\n\n1849. THE EXCURSION: a Poem. New York: C. S. Francis and Co. 12mo.\n\n1850. THE EXCURSION, etc. New York: C. S. Francis and Co. 12mo.\n\n1852-55. The above was again republished.\n\n16\n\n1850. THE PRELUDE; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind. New York: Appleton and\nCo. 12mo.\n\n1850. THE PRELUDE, etc. Philadelphia: George S. Appleton and Co. 12mo.\n\n17\n\n1850. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Boston: Phillips,\nSampson and Co. 12mo. Reprinted in 1857 and 1859.\n\n1859. Same Title. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co. 16mo.\n\n18\n\n1851. THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited by\nHenry Reed. Royal 8vo. Philadelphia: James Kay jun. and Brother. Also,\nKay and Troutman. Also, Troutman and Hayes. Also, Hayes and Zell. Also,\nPorter and Coates.[492]\n\n1852. THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited by\nHenry Reed. 8vo. Philadelphia: Troutman and Hayes.\n\n1860. THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited by\nHenry Reed. Royal 8vo. pp. 727.[493]\n\n19\n\n1854. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, with a Memoir.[494]\nBoston: Little, Brown and Co. Also, New York: Evans and Dickenson.\nAlso, Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grant and Co. 18mo. 7 vols.\n\n20\n\n1855. POETICAL WORKS OF W. WORDSWORTH. Portrait. Boston: Crosby and\nNichols(?) 12mo.\n\n21\n\n1855. THE PRELUDE. New York: Appleton and Co. 12mo. Second Edition.\n\n22\n\n1860. POETICAL WORKS OF WORDSWORTH.[495] 2 vols. New York: 12mo.\n\n23\n\n1863. SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH, with an Essay by H. T. Tuckerman.\nPhiladelphia. 32mo.[496]\n\n1863. Same Title. Boston.\n\n24\n\n1865. POEMS OF NATURE AND SENTIMENT. By William Wordsworth. Elegantly\nillustrated. Philadelphia: E. H. Butler and Co.[497]\n\n25\n\nTHE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.[498] A new edition. Boston:\nCrosby and Nichols. 12mo.\n\n1867. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. A new edition. Boston:\nCrosby and Ainsworth. New York: Oliver S. Felt. 16mo. pp. 539.[499]\n\n26\n\n1870. THE EXCURSION: a Poem. A new edition. New York: J. Miller. 16mo.\n\n27\n\n1871-75. THE HOWE MEMORIAL PRIMER, in raised letters for the Blind.\nWORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS, with a Memoir. Boston. 7 vols. 16mo.\nPortrait.\n\n28\n\n1876. WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. Selected and Prepared for Schools. Edited by\nH. N. Hudson. Boston: Ginn and Co. 12mo. \"Text-book of Prose and Poetry\nSeries.\"\n\n1882. Same Title. In paper. Hudson's Pamphlet Selections of Poetry.\n(No. VI. Wordsworth.)\n\n29\n\n1877. FAVORITE POEMS. Vest-pocket Series. Boston: Osgood. Illustrated.\n32mo.\n\n1877. FAVORITE POEMS. Illustrated. Boston, Massachusetts. (Printed at\nCambridge.) 16mo.\n\n30\n\n1877. THE POETICAL WORKS. New edition. Boston: Hurd and Houghton. 8vo.\n3 vols.\n\n31\n\n1878. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, with Memoir. 7 vols. in\n3. Boston: Houghton, Osgood and Co. Riverside Press. 8vo; also,\n\n1880. Same Title.[500]\n\n32\n\n1879. WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. Chosen and Edited by Matthew Arnold. Franklin\nSquare Library. New York: Harper and Brother. Paper 4to.\n\n1880. Another Edition.\n\n1891. Another Edition.\n\n33\n\n1881. THE EXCURSION, with a Biographical Sketch. English Classic\nSeries. New York: Clark and Maynard. 16mo.\n\n1889. Same Title. With Explanatory Notes. New York: Effingham, Maynard\nand Co.\n\n34\n\n1881-82. FAVORITE POEMS. By William Wordsworth. In Modern Classics, No.\nVII. Illustrated. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. 32mo.\n\n35\n\n1884. ODE, INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. By William Wordsworth.\nIllustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop Company. Small 4to. Copyright by D.\nLothrop.\n\n36\n\n1884. POEMS BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Selected and Prepared for use in\nSchools. (From Hudson's _Text-Book of Poetry_.) Section I. Boston:\nGinn, Heath and Co. 12mo.\n\n37\n\n1888. PRELUDE; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind. With Notes by A. J. George.\nBoston: D. C. Heath and Co. 12mo.\n\n38\n\n1888. BITS OF BURNISHED GOLD, from William Wordsworth. Compiled by Rose\nPorter. New York: A. D. F. Randolph and Co. 12mo.\n\n39\n\n1889. SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH. With Notes by A. J. George. Boston:\nD. C. Heath and Co. 12mo.\n\n40\n\n1889. MELODIES FROM NATURE. (From Wordsworth.) Illustrated. Boston: D.\nLothrop Company. 4to.\n\n41\n\n1889. SELECT POEMS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.[501] Edited, with Notes, by\nW. J. Rolfe. With Engravings. New York: Harper Brothers. Square 16mo.\n\n42\n\n1889. POEMS BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Selected and Prepared for use in\nSchool. Paper. (From Hudson's _Text-Book of Poetry_.) Section II. 12mo.\nBoston: Ginn and Co.\n\n43\n\n1890. SELECT POEMS FROM WORDSWORTH, with Explanatory Notes. Edited by\nJames H. Dillard. New York: Effingham, Maynard and Co. 12mo.\n\n44\n\n1890. PASTORALS, LYRICS AND SONNETS FROM THE POETIC WORKS OF WILLIAM\nWORDSWORTH. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. 16mo. White\nand Gold Series.\n\n45\n\n1891. A SELECTION OF THE SONNETS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.[502] With\nnumerous Illustrations. By A. Parsons. New York: Harper Brothers. 4to.\n\n46\n\n1891. WORDSWORTH FOR THE YOUNG. Selections. Illustrated. With an\nIntroduction for parents and teachers by Cynthia Morgan St. John.\nBoston: D. Lothrop Company. Small 4to. 153 pp.\n\n47\n\n1892. WORDSWORTH'S PREFACES AND ESSAYS ON POETRY. Edited by A. J.\nGeorge. (Heath's English Classics.) Boston: D. C. Heath and Co. 12mo.\n\n48\n\n1892. POEMS OF WORDSWORTH. Chosen and Edited by Matthew Arnold.\nIllustrated by Edmund H. Garrett. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Co.\n(Copyright 1892 by T. Y. Crowell.)\n\n[478] _Simon Lee_ was probably the first poem of Wordsworth's published\nin a Literary Journal in America, and is the beginning of Wordsworth's\nBibliography in U.S.A. A note in \"The Port Folio\" (vol. i. p. 24) is as\nfollows: \"The public may remember reading in some of the newspapers the\ninteresting little ballads, _We are Seven_, and _Goody Blake and Harry\nGill_. They were extracted from the 'Lyrical Ballads,' a collection\nremarkable for originality, simplicity, and nature.\u2026 The following,\n_Simon Lee_, is from the same work.\"\n\nIt is evident from this that two, at least, of Wordsworth's poems were\ncopied into American newspapers as early as 1800, and that Joseph\nDennie, the founder, as well as editor, of \"The Port Folio\"--the first\npurely Literary Journal established in this country--was the first\nAmerican champion of Wordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[479] _The Pet Lamb_ appeared in this Book almost immediately after\nits publication in England. It was the first poem of Wordsworth's\npublished in a book in America. It was also the first instance of the\nintroduction of a poem of Wordsworth's into a School Book.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[480] The first American edition, and the first work by Wordsworth,\nprinted in America. It looks as if the Poet found appreciative readers\nin America sooner than in England; the first edition of \"Lyrical\nBallads,\" which had fallen dead in his own country in 1798, being\npublished in Philadelphia in 1802. The American edition was delayed in\nthe press, in order to include certain pieces which first appeared in\nthe second (English) edition of 1802. See Humphreys' Preface.\n\nA copy of \"Lyrical Ballads,\" 1802, is in the possession of Judge Henry\nReed, with exactly the same title-page as the above, except that it\nreads--\n\n\"Printed by James Humphreys for Joseph Groff.\"\n\nIt is believed that the work was printed at the joint expense of\nHumphreys and Groff, each bookseller taking a certain number of copies\nupon which was placed his individual imprint. Both book-sellers\nadvertised the volumes almost simultaneously. I know of another copy\nof (1802) \"Lyrical Ballads,\" of which the first volume contains the\nimprint of Humphreys, and the second volume that of Groff. The two\nvolumes are bound together, and are _identical_ in type, paper, etc.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[481] Amongst the contents there are four long extracts from _The\nExcursion_, with titles attributed to W.W. _Goody Blake and Harry Gill_\nis amongst the extracts from \"Lyrical Ballads,\" and there is a long\nnote to the former poem by Joseph Dennie.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[482] The first collected edition of Wordsworth's Poems printed in\nAmerica.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[483] The sketch is by R. H. Home. The poems are _The Last of the\nFlock_, _The Dungeon_, _The Mad Mother_, _Anecdote for Fathers_, _We\nare Seven_, _Lines Written in Early Spring_, _The Female Vagrant_,\n_Goody Blake and Harry Gill_, _The Waterfall and the Eglantine_, _The\nOak and the Broom_, _Lucy Gray_, _Hart-Leap Well_, _Lucy_, _Nutling_,\n_Ruth_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[484] Printed and published by Peck and Newton.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[485] First double-column edition of the poems, adopted by Moxon in\n1845 edition.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[486] The Boxall portrait was engraved for the above. I could not find\nthe 1844 imprint, but presume that it is the same as that of 1837 and\n1839.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[487] In an editorial of April 16 of \"The New World\" is the following:\n\"We are enabled by the purchase of the printed sheets considerably in\nadvance of their publication in England to present the first and only\nAmerican Editions of new poems by William Wordsworth.\"\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[488] This is spoken of in Ellis Yarnall's Reminiscences as having no\ndate. When John Locken--the first publisher--failed, the plates passed\ninto the possession of Messrs. Uriah Hunt and Son. They retired from\nbusiness, and Messrs. Leavitt and Co. took the plates. It is possible\nthat there was an edition earlier than 1843.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[489] The last two named are exactly as in 1843, except that they are\nprinted on larger paper. Why one is put down 32mo and the other 24mo is\na mystery!\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[490] If this edition was published, it seems to have disappeared. It\nis advertised in A. V. Blake's _American Booksellers' Complete Trade\nList_, published at Claremont, N.H., 1847.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[491] Copyright in 1848. It contains about one-fifth of all\nWordsworth's poems. The Essay, which occupies ten pages, is taken \"by\npermission\" from Tuckerman's _Thoughts on Poets_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[492] In connection with this edition, I can vouch for the five firms\nof Publishers in Philadelphia, but I cannot explain it.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[493] \"This edition contains some pieces omitted--inadvertently it is\nbelieved--from the latest London edition.\" Additional poems have been\nintroduced, and the arrangement changed since the 1839 edition.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[494] This edition contains a remarkable \"Sketch of Wordsworth's\nLife,\" by James Russell Lowell, which was afterwards embodied, with\nadditions, in _Among my Books_. Mr. Ellis Yarnall believed that this\nedition was an English reprint. I doubt this from the fact that it is\n\"Entered according to the Act of Congress in 1854,\" and was \"Printed at\nCambridge by H.O. Houghton.\"\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[495] This edition is mentioned in some lists, but I am inclined to\ndoubt if it can be authenticated.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[496] The size is given as 32mo. I have not seen the book.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[497] Edited by Waldron J. Cheney, though not credited to him. C. M.\nST. JOHN.\n\n[498] No date is given to this edition. The firm-name and place of\nbusiness according to the Boston Directory would limit the date of\nthe title page at least to 1863-65. It is in the New Haven Library.\nAllibone notes a volume of \"Selections,\" Boston, 12mo, 1863, which may\nbe this.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[499] I have placed the two works together, as they are closely\nrelated, if not identical. The edition contains _The Excursion_ and\nfifty-seven other poems.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[500] From plates of the 1854 edition, with changes.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[501] This excellent edition--as to selection, size, paper, binding,\nand illustrations--is the best handy edition of Wordsworth issued in\nAmerica.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[502] Eighty-eight of the sonnets are here illustrated with rare skill\nand artistic effect. The illustrations first appeared in wood-cuts in\nHarper's _Monthly Magazine_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n\nII\n\nREPRINTS, AND BOOKS, BOTH ENGLISH AND AMERICAN\n\nA Bibliography of Wordsworth in America is not complete without some\nreference to the many editions of Wordsworth, and of works pertaining\nto him, which have--for the most part--appeared simultaneously in\nEngland and America. These works cannot properly be termed American,\nbut they have been welcomed, and they have also supplied a want, on\nthis side of the Atlantic. The editions are confined, for the most\npart, to the last twenty years. I have endeavoured to select those\nwhich are of most value.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n1\n\n1859. WORDSWORTH'S PASTORAL POEMS. Illustrated. New York: D. Appleton\nand Co. 12mo.\n\n1875. Same Title. New York: Putnam. 12mo.\n\n2\n\n1859. POEMS BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Selected and Edited by Robert Aris\nWillmott. Illustrated with 100 Designs by Birket Foster and others.\nLondon and New York: George Routledge and Co. 4to.\n\n1870. The above republished.\n\n3\n\n1869. THE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Globe Edition. Square\n12mo. Philadelphia: Lippincott and Co.\n\n4\n\n1874. RECOLLECTIONS OF A TOUR MADE IN SCOTLAND. By Dorothy Wordsworth.\nEdited by J. C. Shairp. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Printed at the\nEdinburgh University Press.) 12mo.\n\n5\n\n1880. WORDSWORTH'S POEMS. Chosen and Edited by Matthew Arnold. Large\nPaper Edition. London and New York: Macmillan and Co. 8vo.\n\n1892. Same Title. With Steel Portrait. Printed on India paper. London\nand New York: Macmillan and Co. 8vo.\n\n6\n\n1881. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: a Biography with Selections from Prose and\nPoetry. By A. J. Symington. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 2 vols. 16mo.\n\n7\n\n1885. ODE ON IMMORTALITY AND LINES ON TINTERN ABBEY. London and New\nYork: Cassell and Co. 12mo. (Popular Illustrated Series.)\n\n8\n\n1886. PASTORAL POEMS. London and New York: Cassell and Co. 4to.\n\n9\n\n1887. MEMORIALS OF COLEORTON. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by\nWilliam Knight. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. 12mo.\n(Printed at the Edinburgh University Press.)\n\n10\n\n1887. THROUGH THE WORDSWORTH COUNTRY. By William Knight. London and New\nYork: Scribner and Welford. Engraving. 8vo.\n\n11\n\n1888. THE COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. With an\nIntroduction by John Morley. London and New York: Macmillan and Co.\nCrown 8vo.\n\n12\n\n1888. THE RECLUSE. London and New York: Macmillan and Co. 16mo.\n\n13\n\n1889. WORDSWORTHIANA. Edited by William Knight. London and New York:\nMacmillan and Co. 16mo.\n\n14\n\n1889. POETICAL WORKS, with Memoir. Illustrated. 8 vols. New York: A. C.\nArmstrong and Son. 16mo. (Printed at the University Press, Glasgow.)\n\n15\n\n1889. SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH. By William Knight, and other Members\nof the Wordsworth Society. With Preface and Notes. New York: Scribner\nand Welford. 8vo.\n\n16\n\n1889. WORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS. Edited by William Knight. New York:\nMacmillan and Co. 8 vols. 8vo. (First published in Edinburgh 1882-89.)\n\n17\n\n1889. LIFE OF WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. By William Knight. New York (and\nLondon): Macmillan and Co. 3 vols. 8vo. (First published in Edinburgh,\nin 1889.)\n\n18\n\n1891. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. By Elizabeth Wordsworth. New York: Scribner.\n18mo. (Also London: Percival and Co.)\n\n19\n\n1889. EARLY POEMS BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. Edited by J. R. Tutin. London,\netc., and New York: George Routledge and Sons. (Routledge's Pocket\nLibrary.)\n\n20\n\n1890. DOVE COTTAGE, Wordsworth's Home from 1800 to 1808. By Stopford A.\nBrooke. Small paper. London and New York: Macmillan and Co.\n\n21\n\n1891. WORDSWORTH'S THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE, etc. Edited with\nIntroduction and Notes by William Knight. (Clarendon Press Series.)\nLondon and New York: Macmillan and Co.\n\n22\n\n1892. WORDSWORTH'S LYRICS AND SONNETS. Selected and Edited by C. K.\nShorter. London: David Stott. New York: Macmillan and Co. 32mo.\n\n23\n\n1892. WORDSWORTH'S POETICAL WORKS. Edited with Memoir by E. Dowden. 7\nvols. 16mo. London: George Bell and Sons. New York: 112 Fourth Avenue.\n\n24\n\nGLEANINGS FROM WORDSWORTH. Edited by J. Robertson. Vest-pocket Edition.\nNew York: White, Stokes and Allen. (Printed at the University Press,\nGlasgow.)\n\n25\n\nWE ARE SEVEN. By William Wordsworth.[503] With Drawings by Mary L.\nGrow. Small 4to. New York: E. P. Dutton and Co.\n\n26\n\nODE. INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. With Biographical Sketch and Notes.\nBoston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., \"Riverside Literature Series,\" No.\n76. March 1895.\n\n[503] This was lithographed and printed by Ernest Nister at Nuremberg.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n\nIII\n\nBOOKS CONTAINING BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, AND CRITICAL ESSAYS\n\nTHE WRITERS ARE ARRANGED IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER\n\n1\n\n1867. ALGER, W. R. _The Genius of Solitude._ Boston: Roberts Brothers.\n16mo. _Wordsworth_, p. 277.\n\n2\n\n1859-71. ALLIBONE, S. A. _Critical Dictionary of English Literature,\nand British and American Authors._ Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co. 3\nvols. Imperial 8vo. _Wordsworth_, vol. iii. pp. 2843-2849.\n\n3\n\n1884. BURROUGHS, J. \"Fresh Fields.\" Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.\n16mo. _In the Wordsworth Country_, p. 161.[504]\n\n4\n\n1878. CALVERT, G. H. _Wordsworth; A Biographic, Aesthetic Study._\nBoston: Lee-Sheperd. 16mo.\n\n5\n\n1863. CALVERT, G. H. _Scenes and Thoughts in Europe._ Boston: 16mo.[505]\n\n6\n\n1873. CHANNING, W. ELLERY. Address before the Mercantile Library\nCompany of Philadelphia, May 11, 1841. Also in his \"Complete Works.\"\nBoston.[506]\n\n7\n\n1895. CHENEY, JOHN VANCE. _Thoughts on Poetry and the Poets._ Chicago.\nChapter X. is on Wordsworth.\n\n8\n\n1879. DESHLER, C. D. _Afternoons with the Poets._ New York: Harper and\nBrothers. 12mo. _Wordsworth._\n\n9\n\n1871. FIELDS, J. T. _Yesterdays with Authors._ Boston: Houghton,\nMifflin and Co.; also,\n\n1889. _Wordsworth, A Sketch_, p. 253.\n\n10\n\n1838. FROST, JOHN. _Select Works of the British Poets, with\nBiographical Sketches._ Philadelphia: Thomas Wardle. _Wordsworth._\n\n11\n\n1849. GRAHAM, G. F. _English Synonyms._ New York: D. Appleton and Co.\nEdited with an Introduction and Illustrative Authorities. By Henry\nReed.[507]\n\n12\n\n1854. GILES, H. T. _Illustrations of Genius._ Boston: Ticknor and\nFields. 16mo. _William Wordsworth_, pp. 239-266.\n\n13\n\n1886. GRISWOLD, H. T. _Home Life of Great Authors._ Chicago. 18mo.\n_William Wordsworth_, p. 43.\n\n14\n\n1849. GRISWOLD, R. W. _Sacred Poets of England and America._ New York.\n_Wordsworth._\n\n15\n\n1842. GRISWOLD, R. W. _Poets and Poetry of England._ Philadelphia:\nCarey and Hunt. A Review and Selections.\n\n16\n\nHODGKINS, LOUISE M. _Guide to Nineteenth Century Authors._ Boston.\n_Wordsworth Bibliography._\n\n17\n\n1884. HUDSON, H. N. _Studies in Wordsworth._ Boston: Little, Brown and\nCo.[508]\n\n18\n\n1886. JOHNSON, C. F. _Three Americans and Three Englishmen._ New York.\n_Wordsworth._\n\n19\n\n1864. LOWELL, J. R. _The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth._ Boston:\nLittle, Brown and Co. 4 vols. Vol. 1.--_A Sketch of Wordsworth's Life._\n\n20\n\n1876. LOWELL, J. R. _Among my Books._ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co.\n_Wordsworth_,[509] pp. 201-251.\n\n21\n\n1887. LOWELL, J. R. _Democracy and other Addresses._ Boston: Houghton,\nMifflin and Co. _Wordsworth_,[510] 22 pp.\n\n22\n\n1885. MASON, E. T. _Personal Traits of British Authors._ New York:\nCharles Scribner's Sons. _William Wordsworth_, pp. 7-55.\n\nWhat follows is due to American Enterprise, but it is, of course, not\nstrictly American.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n23\n\n1883. MACDONALD, GEORGE. _The Imagination and other Essays_\n(\"Wordsworth's Poetry,\" pp. 245-263). Boston: D. Lothrop and Co.\n\n24\n\n1881. MYERS, F. W. H. _William Wordsworth._ (\"English Men of Letters\nSeries.\") New York: Harper and Brothers. 12mo.\n\n1884. Same Title. New York: J. W. Lovell. 12mo.\n\n1889. Same Title. New York. Harper and Brothers.\n\n25\n\n1838. OSBORN, LAUGHTON. _The Vision of Rubeta._[511] Boston: Weeks,\nJordan and Co. 8vo.\n\n26\n\n1846. OSSOLI, MARGARET FULLER. _Art, Literature, and the Drama._\nBoston. _Wordsworth._[512]\n\n27\n\n1885. PHILLIPS, MAUD GILLETTE. _A Popular Manual of English\nLiterature._ New York: Harper and Brothers. Vol. ii. pp. 217-264.\n\n28\n\n1851. REED, HENRY. _Memoirs of Wordsworth._ By C. Wordsworth. Edited by\nHenry Reed. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields.[513]\n\n29\n\n1857. REED, HENRY. _Lectures on the British Poets._ In two vols.\nPhiladelphia: Claxton, Remsen and Haffelfinger. Vol. ii. pp. 199-231.\nLecture XV.--_Wordsworth._\n\n30\n\n1870. REED, HENRY. _Lectures on the British Poets._ Philadelphia:\nClaxton, Reinsen and Haffelfinger. _Essay on the English Sonnet_, vol.\nii. pp. 235-272.[514]\n\n31\n\n1887. SAUNDERS, FREDERICK. _Story of some Famous Books._ New York:\nArmstrong and Son. _William Wordsworth_, p. 125.\n\n32\n\nSAUNDERS, FREDERICK. _Evenings with Sacred Poets._ New York: Randolph\nand Co. _Wordsworth._[515]\n\n33\n\n1894. SCUDDER, HORACE E. _Childhood in Literature and Art._ Boston:\nHoughton, Mifflin and Co. In the chapter entitled \"In English\nLiterature and Art,\" Wordsworth is dealt with (chap. vi. pp.\n145-157).[516]\n\n34\n\n1895. SCUDDER, VIDAD. _The Life of the Spirit in Modern English Poets._\nBoston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. Crown 8vo.\n\n35\n\n1892. STEDMAN, C. E. _Nature and Elements of Poetry._ Boston: Houghton,\nMifflin and Co.[517]\n\n36\n\n1846. TUCKERMAN, H. T. _Thoughts on the Poets._ New York. _Genius and\nWritings of Wordsworth._\n\n37\n\n1882. WELSH, A. H. _Development of English Literature and Language._\nChicago. _Wordsworth_, vol. ii. pp. 330-339.\n\n38\n\n1850. WHIPPLE, E. P. _Essays and Reviews._ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin\nand Co. _Wordsworth_, vol. i. p. 222.[518]\n\n39\n\n1871. WHIPPLE, E. P. _Literature and Life._ Boston: Houghton, Mifflin\nand Co. _Wordsworth_, p. 253.[519]\n\n40\n\n1854. WILLIS, N. P. _Famous Persons and Places._ New York: Charles\nScribner.[520]\n\n[504] A reprint of the article was published in _The Century Magazine_,\n1884.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[505] Not of much importance--the author praises Wordsworth and\ncriticises Jeffrey.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[506] About the same in the \"Address\" as in the \"Complete Works.\"\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[507] Contains four hundred quotations from Wordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[508] Contains 258 pages on Wordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[509] The same as above with some corrections, and twenty-three new\npages added.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[510] The above was first given as an address to \"The Wordsworth\nSociety,\" 1884, and appeared in _Wordsworthiana_ in 1889.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[511] In the Appendix are about twenty pages containing a ferocious\ncriticism on \"Wordsworth, his Poetry and his Misrepresentations.\"\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[512] In the Memoirs of M. F. Ossoli (Boston, vol. iii. p. 84) there is\na short reference to Wordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[513] Introduction and Editorial Notes by H. R., interesting and\nvaluable.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[514] In the Lecture on the Sonnet, there are interesting allusions to\nWordsworth's Sonnets.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[515] This book and the previous one have about half a dozen pages each\non Wordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[516] The substance of this chapter on Wordsworth as a revealer of\nChildhood, first appeared in _The Atlantic Monthly_, October 1885.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[517] In this volume there are many references to Wordsworth of\ninterest--especially at pp. 202, 206, 210 and 263--on _Subjective\nInterpretation, The Pathetic Fallacy_, etc.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[518] This essay was also published in _The Complete Poetical Works_.\nPhiladelphia: James Kay jun. and Brothers, 1837. Also in _The North\nAmerican Review_, 1844.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[519] The above appeared first in _The North American Review_. It was\n\"written when the news came of Wordsworth's death.\" It is not given\nelsewhere in this list.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[520] Letter V. contains some characteristic remarks on Wordsworth\nby \"Christopher North,\" who gave Willis a note of introduction to\nWordsworth and Southey. Willis did _not_ write about Wordsworth in this\nbook. As it is inserted in some of the lists, I include it, with this\nexplanation.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n\nIV\n\nREVIEW AND MAGAZINE ARTICLES ON WORDSWORTH PUBLISHED IN AMERICA\n\nFROM 1801 TO 1840\n\nIn examining American Reviews and Magazines, for articles on\nWordsworth, I find--after much laborious search--only some\ninsignificant notices of his poems, of no critical or literary merit.\n\nI have carefully read each article which appears in this list, and I\nadd brief explanatory notes, indicative of the general tenor of the\narticles. It was disheartening to find that many of the references to\nWordsworth, in Poole's elaborate _Index to Periodical Literature_,\nwere inaccurate and misleading; and that nearly all the articles on\nWordsworth published in _Harper's Monthly Magazine_ for 1850 were\n\"conveyed\" from contemporary English journals.\n\n1\n\n1801. _The Port Folio._ Vol. i.\n\nMemoranda regarding the first publication of \"Lyrical Ballads\" in\nAmerica.\n\n1801. December, p. 407. The Original Prospectus of \"Lyrical\nBallads.\"[521] (James Humphreys publisher.)\n\n1801. P. 408.[522]\n\n1802. Vol. ii. p. 62.[523]\n\n1803. Vol. iii. p. 288.[524]\n\n1803. P. 320. Note on the poem beginning,\n\n\"A whirl-blast from behind the hill.\"\n\n1804. Vol. iv. p. 87. Announcement that the editor wishes to obtain a\ncopy of _Descriptive Sketches_ (1798) from some publisher or reader.\n\n1804. P. 96.[525]\n\n2\n\n1802. _The Philadelphia Gazette and Daily Advertiser._ (Published by\nSamuel Relf.) Friday, Jan. 15, \"Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads.\" (The\npublisher's advertisement of the First American Edition.)\n\n3\n\n1819. DANA, R. H.[526] _North American Review._ Vol. xxiii. p. 276. In\nreview of Hazlitt's _English Poets_.\n\n4\n\n1824. _North American Review._ Vol. xviii. p. 356.[527]\n\n5\n\n1824. _United States Literary Gazette._ Vol. i. p. 245.[528]\n\n6\n\n1825. _The Atlantic Magazine_, vol. ii. pp. 334-348.\n\n7\n\n1827. _Christian Monthly Spectator._ Vol. ix. p. 244. (A short article\non Wordsworth.)\n\n8\n\n1832. PRESCOTT, W. H. _North American Review._ Vol. xxxv. pp. 171,\n173-176. (In a \"Review of English Literature of Nineteenth Century,\" is\nan important reference to Wordsworth.)\n\n9\n\n1836. EDWARDS, B. B. _American Biblical Repository._ Vol. vii. pp.\n187-204.[529]\n\n10\n\n1836. _American Quarterly Review._ Vol. xix. p. 66.[530]\n\n11\n\n1836. _American Quarterly Review._ Vol. xix. pp. 420-442.[531]\n\n12\n\n1836. FELTON, C. C. _The Christian Examiner._ Vol. xix. p. 375.[532]\n\n13\n\n1836. PORTER, NOAH. _Christian Quarterly Spectator._[533] Vol. viii.\npp. 127-151.\n\n14\n\n_Christian Monthly Spectator._ Vol xviii. p. 1.[534]\n\n15\n\n1837. _\"Waldie's\" Octavo Library._ (Edited by John J. Smith.)[535]\n\n16\n\n1837. _\"Waldie's\" Octavo Library._ March 21.[536]\n\n17\n\n1837. _Southern Literary Messenger._ Vol. iii. p. 705. \"By a\nVirginian.\"[537]\n\n18\n\n1837. WHIPPLE, E. P. _The Complete Poetical Works of William\nWordsworth_[538] (1837).\n\n19\n\n1839. _New York Review._ Vol. iv. pp. 1-71.[539]\n\n20\n\n1839. _American Biblical Repository._[540] Vol. i. pp. 206-239. (Second\nedition.)\n\n21\n\n1839. _Boston Quarterly Review._ Vol. ii. pp. 137-169. (A review of\n\"Wordsworth's Poetical Works,\" London, 1832.)\n\n22\n\n1839. _American Methodist Review._[541] Vol. xxi. p. 449.\n\n[521] An enthusiastic announcement.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[522] An appreciatory and critical Introductory Note to _The Waterfall\nand the Eglantine_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[523] Editorial reporting the increasing popularity of \"Lyrical\nBallads,\" and further commendation of the poems.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[524] Note on _The Fountain_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[525] An editorial announcement that \"Lyrical Ballads\" had reached\na third edition, and containing one of the most ardent tributes to\nWordsworth in the language.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[526] Not long, but of much interest.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[527] An unsigned and excellent review of the 1824 (Boston) edition\nof the poems. The writer remarks that not a volume of Wordsworth's\npoems has been published in America since 1802. Attributed to F.W.P.\nGreenwood.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[528] Anonymous review of the 1824 (Boston) edition of the poems. One\nof the very best.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[529] Sectarian in spirit, but on the whole fair to Wordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[530] Anonymous. A well-written article of about twenty-four pages,\nreviewing _Yarrow Revisited_. It was one of the earliest reviews in an\nAmerican journal that claimed for Wordsworth a high order of genius. It\nwas probably written by Robert Walsh, the editor of the _Review_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[531] An article on Wordsworth's sonnets on Capital Punishment, in an\narticle on \"The English Sonnet.\" Judge Henry Reed found this to have\nbeen written by his father, Professor Henry Reed.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[532] An appreciative criticism of eight pages.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[533] Entitled \"Wordsworth and his Poetry.\" A review of the 1824\nedition and of _Yarrow Revisited_, Boston, 1835. An estimate of\nWordsworth's claims as a poet, and as a man. A more comprehensive,\nstronger, more inviting criticism (in appealing to those to whom the\npoetry is unknown) has not been written. It ranks, in my opinion, among\nthe best criticisms on Wordsworth written in America.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[534] H. Tuckerman wrote an article on Wordsworth for his magazine.\nThis may be the article.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[535] The number for 7th March contains a notice of Wordsworth, in a\nreview of Reed's _Complete Poetical Works of Wordsworth_ (1837).\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[536] Another mention of Reed's edition, and of the discovery that \"a\nfellow-townsman,\" Dr. T. C. James, anticipated the fact of Wordsworth's\npopularity. A quotation from \"Memoirs of Historical Society of\nPennsylvania\" to prove Dr. James' prophecy.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[537] Writer unknown.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[538] To class this review with others of an early date, I have placed\nit among Periodical Reviews. It appeared in _The North American\nReview_, 1844; and again, in 1850, in _Essays and Reviews_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[539] A review of Reed's 1837 edition of \"Wordsworth's Poetical Works.\"\nProfessor Henry Reed's son--Judge Henry Reed of Philadelphia--informs\nme that it was written by his father.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[540] This article is entitled \"Modern English Poetry--Byron, Shelley,\nand Wordsworth.\"\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[541] By an unknown author.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n\nV\n\nCRITICISMS AND REVIEWS IN PERIODICALS FROM 1840 TO 1870\n\nArranged as far as possible according to merit. It is difficult\nto distinguish between the first twelve or fifteen. After them I\nhave placed the articles in the _Literary World_. Most of them have\nnot been noted in other lists, and are especially interesting, as\nbeing additional tributes of Wordsworth's intimate friend, Henry\nReed. I am indebted to Judge Henry Reed of Philadelphia, for more\ncarefully examining his father's papers, and to the _Literary World_\nfor ascertaining, as far as possible, all that his father wrote on\nWordsworth. The criticisms that immediately follow are not without\ninterest. The last half dozen are given, for the most part, because\nthey appear in _Poole's Index_, or in other lists. I have omitted two\nor three which are of no value whatever.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n1\n\n1844. WHIPPLE, E. P. _North American Review._[542] Vol. lix. pp.\n352-384.\n\n2\n\n1857. HAVEN, GILBERT. _Methodist Quarterly Review._ Vol. xxxix. p.\n362.[543]\n\n3\n\n1851. PASSMORE, J. C. _The Church Review._ Vol. iv. pp. 169-188.[544]\n\n4\n\n1866. ALGER, W. R. _Monthly Religious Magazine._ Vol. xxxvi. p. 294.\n\n5\n\n1850. MUZZEY, A. B. _The Christian Examiner._ Vol. xlix. p. 100. (The\ntitle of this article is \"Wordsworth, the Christian Poet.\")\n\n6\n\n1851. GOODWIN, H. M. _The New Englander._ Vol. xlvii. p. 309. (Title,\n\"Wordsworth as a Spiritual Teacher.\")\n\n7\n\n1851. _North American Review._ Vol. lxxiii. p. 473.[545]\n\n8\n\n1851. MOUNTFORD, W. _The Christian Examiner._ Vol. li. p. 275.[546]\n\n9\n\n1851. PORTER, NOAH. _The New Englander Magazine._ Vol. ix. p. 583.[547]\n\n10\n\n1851. WIGHT, ORLANDO WILLIAMS. _American Whig Review._ Vol. xiv. pp.\n68-81.[548]\n\n11\n\n1851. WIGHT, ORLANDO WILLIAMS. _American Whig Review._ Vol. xiii. pp.\n448-458.[549]\n\n12\n\n1854. _Presbyterian Quarterly Review._ Vol. ii. pp. 643-663.[550]\nArticle 1.\n\n13\n\n1854. _Presbyterian Quarterly Review._ Vol. iii. pp. 69-88.[551]\nArticle 2.\n\n14\n\n1841. TUCKERMAN, H. _Southern Literary Messenger._ Vol. vii. p. 105.\n\n15\n\n1850. _Literary World._ Vol. vi. p. 485. \"William Wordsworth.\"[552]\n\n16\n\n1850. REED, HENRY. _Literary World._ Vol. vi. pp. 581, 582. On\nWordsworth.\n\n17\n\n1850. REED, HENRY. _Literary World._ Vol. vii. pp. 205, 206. A second\nshort article.\n\n18\n\n1850. _Literary World._ \"The Prelude.\" Vol. vii. p. 167.[553]\n\n19\n\n1850. _Literary World._ \"Visit to Wordsworth's Grave.\" Vol. vii. p.\n225.[554]\n\n20\n\n1850. SPENCER, J. A. _Literary World._ \"Visit to Wordsworth.\" November\n23.[555]\n\n21\n\n1851. _Literary World._ Vols. viii. ix. (May 24, June 14, July 12,\nAugust 2.)[556] Reviews of Christopher Wordsworth's _Memoirs_ of his\nuncle.\n\n22\n\n1853. REED, HENRY. _Literary World._ Vol. xii. June 25.[557]\n\n23\n\n1850. _Southern Quarterly Review._ Vol. xviii. p. 1. Review of the\n_Poetical Works of Wordsworth_. London: Moxon, 1845.\n\n24\n\n1856. _United States Democratic Review._ Vol. vi. pp. 281-295. (New\nSeries.) Article 1. \"Of Wordsworth's life, beginning at Bristol.\"\n\n25\n\n1856. _United States Democratic Review._ Vol. vi. p. 363. (New Series.)\nArticle 2.\n\n26\n\n1850. _Graham Magazine._ Vol. i. pp. 105-116. Supposed to be written\nby Charles J. Peterson. (Signed P.) Review of the life and poetry\nof Wordsworth, written by one who confessed to an admiration for\nWordsworth's genius bordering on veneration.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n27\n\n1878. _American Journal of Education._ Wordsworth and Cambridge. Vol.\nxxviii. p. 426.[558]\n\n28\n\n1843. _United States Democratic Review._ Vol. xii. p. 158.[559]\n\n29\n\n1836-63. _Christian Review._ Vol. xvi. p. 434. \"Wordsworth as a\nReligious Poet.\"\n\n30\n\n1844. CUYLER, T. L. _Godey's Lady's Book._ Vol. xxviii. (January). \"On\nthe English Lakes and Wordsworth.\"\n\n31\n\n1850. _International Magazine._ Vol. i. p. 271. \"A Review of _The\nPrelude_, from _The Examiner_.\"\n\n32\n\n1855. _Brownson's Quarterly Review._ Vol. xii. p. 525. \"Wordsworth's\nPoetical Works.\"\n\n33\n\n1850. _Graham Magazine._ Vol. i. pp. 322, 323.[560]\n\n34\n\n1842. _United States Democratic Review._ Vol. x. pp. 272-288. (New\nSeries.)[561]\n\n35\n\n1865. _North American Review._ Vol. c. p. 508. Boston: Little, Brown\nand Co.\n\n36\n\n1850. _Southern Literary Messenger._ Vol. xvi. p. 474.[562]\n\n37\n\n1851. _Harper's Monthly Magazine._ Vol. iii. p. 502.[563]\n\n38\n\n1845. BOWEN, F. _North American Review._ Vol. lxi. p. 217.[564]\n\n39\n\n1863. ALGER, W. R. _North American Review._ Vol. xcvi. p. 141.[565]\n\n40\n\n1850. _Southern Literary Messenger._ Vol. xvi. p. 637.[566]\n\n41\n\n1863. WARD, J. H. _North American Review._ Vol. xcvii. p. 387.\n\n42\n\n1853. _The National Magazine._ Vol. iii. No. 7, \"An Estimate of\nWordsworth.\"\n\n43\n\n1853. _The Christian Observer._ Vol. 1. pp. 307-381.[567]\n\n44\n\n1858. \"The Genius of Wordsworth,\" in the \"Editor's Table\" of _Russell's\nMagazine_. Charleston, S.E. Vol. iii. pp. 271-274.\n\n[542] A review of the 1837 edition of Wordsworth's poems. Perhaps no\nabler or more comprehensive review of Wordsworth's life and writings\nhas been written than this, by America's foremost critic.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[543] One of the best of the early American criticisms.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[544] A review of the 1851 edition. Contains an earnest plea for the\nstudy of Wordsworth's poetry in America. One of the noblest criticisms\nwritten.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[545] On the \"Life and Poetry of Wordsworth.\" A review of _The\nPrelude_. Unsigned; but the name is given elsewhere, as T. Chase.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[546] A review of the _Memoirs of Wordsworth_, by his nephew, the\nBishop of Lincoln.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[547] A review of Professor Reed's edition of the _Memoirs of\nWordsworth_, Boston, 1851.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[548] A review of the _Memoirs_, signed O. W.W.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[549] A review of _The Prelude_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[550] Anonymous. A short review of _The Prelude_, and, at greater\nlength, of _The Life_ (edited by Reed). An estimate of his work and\ninfluence.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[551] Traces the literary life of the poet. Claims for Wordsworth the\nprecedence to Coleridge in the utterance of a spiritual Philosophy.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[552] A notice of Wordsworth's death, unsigned; but Mr. Wilberforce\nEames--of the Lenox Library--informs me, that their library now owns\nMr. Evert A. Duyckinck's copy of the _Literary World_, and that\ngentleman's own initials are appended in pencil to this article. Mr.\nDuyckinck was editor of the _Literary World_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[553] Judge Reed, Professor Henry Reed's son, does not attribute this\narticle to his father. There is an impression that Professor Reed\npublished an article on _The Prelude_. His lecture on that poem was\nnever published.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[554] Signed by R. F. Correspondence, _London Literary Gazette_, August\n31.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[555] Possibly the same as in that scarce number of the _Southern\nLiterary Messenger_. Vol. xvi. p. 474.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[556] These articles, in the opinion of Judge Henry Reed, are not by\nhis father, Professor Henry Reed.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[557] Notice to those who wish to subscribe to the Memorial to\nWordsworth, signed.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[558] An article on the University of Cambridge, and an account of\nWordsworth's residence at St. John's College, 1787-1791.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[559] Six pages on Wordsworth's _Sonnet to Liberty_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[560] A brief review of _The Prelude_ and _Excursion_, and a comparison\nbetween the two poems.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[561] On Wordsworth's sonnets in favour of Capital Punishment.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[562] On the house at Rydal.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[563] An unsigned, four paged article on Wordsworth, Byron Scott, and\nShelley.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[564] In a \"Review of Longfellow's _Poets and Poetry of Europe_,\" a\npage on Wordsworth's influence.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[565] In \"The Origin and Uses of Poetry,\" a few lines on Wordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[566] A notice, with extracts from _The Prelude_.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[567] \"The Religion of Wordsworth's Poetry.\"\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n\nVI\n\nCRITICISMS AND REVIEWS IN PERIODICALS FROM 1870 TO 1895\n\nThese are not chronologically arranged by Mrs. St. John, but see her\nnote to Section V.--ED.\n\n1\n\n1882. DEWITT, DR. JOHN. _Presbyterian Review._ Vol. iii. p. 241.[568]\n\n2\n\n1884. BURROUGHS, JOHN. _The Century Magazine._ Vol. v. p. 418. This is\nentitled \"Wordsworth's Country.\"\n\n3\n\n1880. CRANCH, C. P. _The Atlantic Monthly._ Vol. xlv. p. 241. Entitled\n\"Wordsworth.\" A review of the 1880 Poetical Works (Boston). The writer\nnotes what he considers the chief excellency as well as defects of\nWordsworth's poetry.\n\n4\n\n1888. MURRAY, J. O. _The Homiletic Review._ Vol. xvi. pp. 295-304.\nTitle, \"The Study of Wordsworth's Poetry.\"\n\n5\n\n1890. PATTISON, T. H. _The Baptist Review._ Vol. xii. p. 265. \"The\nReligious Influence of Wordsworth.\"\n\n6\n\n1889. HUTTON, LAWRENCE. _Harper's Monthly Magazine._ Vol. lxxviii.[569]\n(in Literary Notes).\n\n7\n\n1880-1. CONWAY, MONCURE D. _Harper's Monthly Magazine._ \"The English\nLakes and their Genii.\" Vol. lxii. pp. 7, 161, 339.\n\n8\n\n1883. PEDDER, H. C. _The Manhattan._ Vol. ii. pp. 418-433.[570]\n\n9\n\n1876. YARNALL, ELLIS. _Lippincott's Magazine._ Vol. xviii. pp. 543-554,\n669-683. \"Walks and Visits in Wordsworth's Country.\" Written in the\nsummer of 1855 and 1857.\n\n10\n\n1871. FIELDS, J. T. _The Atlantic Monthly._ Vol. xxviii. p. 750. On\nWordsworth, in an article entitled \"Our Whispering Gallery.\" The same\narticle is cut down in _Yesterdays with Authors_.[571]\n\n11\n\n1892. PARSONS, EUGENE. _The Examiner._ Vol. lxx. p. 1. On \"Tennyson and\nWordsworth.\"\n\n12\n\n1888. WILLIAMS, T. C. _Andover Review._ Vol. ix. p. 30.\n\n13\n\n1889. NOBLE, FRED PERRY. _The Homiletic Review._ Vol. xviii. p. 306.\n\"The Value of Wordsworth to the Preacher.\"\n\n14\n\n1873. HIMES, JOHN A. _Lutheran Quarterly Review._ Vol. iii. p. 252.\n\"The Religious Faith of Wordsworth and Tennyson as shown in their\nPoems.\"\n\n15\n\n1881. JOHNSON, E. E. _American Church Review._ Vol. xxxiii. p. 139.\n\"Influence of Wordsworth's Poetry.\"\n\n16\n\n1886. COAN, T. M. _The New Princeton Review._ Vol. i. pp. 297-319.\n\"Wordsworth's Passion.\"\n\n17\n\n1889. VEDDER, H. C. _The New York Examiner_, August 28. \"The Decline of\nWordsworth.\"[572]\n\n18\n\n1877. COAN, T. M. _The Galaxy._ Vol. xxiii. pp. 322-336. \"Wordsworth's\nCorrections.\"[573]\n\n19\n\n1881. BOWEN, F. F. _The Dial._ Vol. i. p. 21. \"A Review of Myers'\nWordsworth.\"\n\n20\n\n1881. GERHART, R. L. _Reformed Quarterly Review._ Vol. xxviii. p. 344.\n\"Wordsworth and his Art.\"\n\n21\n\n1887. WOODBERRY, G. E. _The Nation._ Vol. xlv. p. 487. \"Wordsworth and\nthe Beaumonts.\"\n\n22\n\n1881. BROWNELL, W. C. _The Nation._ Vol. xxxii. p. 153. \"Myers'\nAccount of Wordsworth.\"\n\n23\n\n1872. CROFFUT, W. A. _Lakeside Monthly._ Vol. viii. pp. 418-425.\n\"Wordsworth.\"\n\n24\n\n1895. THORPE, F. W. _The Philadelphia Call._ \"The Home of Wordsworth.\"\nAutobiographic and critical.\n\n25\n\n1879. _Appleton's Journal._ Vol. xxii. p. 223. \"How to Popularise\nWordsworth.\"\n\n26\n\n1874. DE-VERE, A. _The Catholic World._ Vol. xix. p. 795.\n\"Recollections of Wordsworth.\"\n\n27\n\n1875. DE-VERE, A. _The Catholic World._ Vol. xxii. p. 329.\n\n28\n\n1891. PAGE, H. A. _The Century Magazine._ No. 1. pp. 453-864.\n\"Wordsworth and De Quincey. With hitherto unpublished letters.\"[574]\n\n29\n\n1853. _The National Magazine._ Vol. iii. pp. 36-40.\n\n30\n\n1853. _Brownson's Quarterly Review._ Vol. xii. 525.\n\n31\n\n1896. THEODORE W. HUNT in _Bibliotheca Sacra_. No. 66. \"William\nWordsworth.\"\n\n32\n\n1896. J. W. BRAY. _The Literary Democracy of Wordsworth_ in \"Poet\nLove.\" Vol. iii. No. 6.\n\n[568] On \"The Homiletic Value of Wordsworth's Poetry.\" One of the\nablest papers ever written on Wordsworth. It contains the best reply to\nMatthew Arnold's estimate of his poetry.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[569] This is a review of Rolf's _Wordsworth's Selected Poems_.\nIt contains one of the most appreciative tributes to Wordsworth's\ninfluence which has appeared in America.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[570] On \"Wordsworth and the Modern Age.\" Illustrated by W. St.\nJ. Harper, and other artists. It deals with the especial need of\nWordsworth's \"calming influence in the exacting competition for\nsuccess,\" and gives a comparison between Virgil and Wordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[571] Of interest to Americans.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[572] It aims to give some explanation of the lack of interest in\nWordsworth's poetry in later days.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[573] An attempt, the writer says, to point out the corrections,\nleaving their interpretation to the reader.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n[574] Written by an Englishman, but published first in an American\nmagazine.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n\nVII\n\nVISITS TO WORDSWORTH BY EMINENT AMERICANS\n\nThe following books record visits made by eminent Americans to\nWordsworth.\n\nC. M. ST. JOHN.\n\n1\n\n1863. HAWTHORNE, N. _Our Old Home, and English Note-Books._ Vol. ii.\npp. 24-56, etc.; also,\n\n1883. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. \"A Visit to Wordsworth.\"\n\n2\n\n1856. EMERSON, R. W. _English Traits._ Boston: James Munroe and Co. pp.\n24-31; also,\n\n1881. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. Visit to Wordsworth, in chapter\nentitled \"First Visit to England.\"\n\n3\n\n1876. TICKNOR, GEORGE. _Life, Letters, and Journals._ Boston: James R.\nOsgood and Co. 2 vols. Vol. i. pp. 287, 288, etc. Vol. ii. p. 167, etc.\n\n4\n\n1836. DEWEY, ORVILLE. _The Old World and the New._ Boston: 2 vols. pp.\n89-96.\n\n5\n\n1884. BRYANT, W. C. Prose Works. In a chapter on \"Poets and Poetry of\nthe English Language\" (New York: D. Appleton and Co.) a few pages deal\nwith Wordsworth.\n\n\nVIII\n\nA FEW POEMS ON WORDSWORTH\n\n1\n\n1846. WALLACE, W. _Poem on Wordsworth._ New York: 12mo.\n\n2\n\n1850. FIELD, JAMES T. _Graham Magazine_ (October). \"Wordsworth.\"\n\n3\n\n1850. ALEXANDER, W. _Graham Magazine_ (November), p. 221. \"Wordsworth.\n(A Sonnet.)\"\n\n4\n\n1850. H. M. R. _Harpers Magazine._ \"Sonnet on the Death of Wordsworth.\"\nVol. i. p. 218.\n\n5\n\n1850. E. A. W. _Literary World._ \"Sonnet on Wordsworth.\" Vol. vii. p.\n255.\n\n6\n\n1874. WHITTIER, J. G. Whittier's Works. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and\nCo. \"Poem on Wordsworth. Written on a blank leaf of _Wordsworth's\nMemoirs_, 1851.\" Vol. iv. p. 66.\n\n7\n\n1890. SCOLLARD, CLINTON (?) _Northern Christian Advocate._ \"The Poet's\nSeat. A Sonnet on Wordsworth. Written at Ambleside, 1890.\"\n\n8\n\n1893. \"To Wordsworth, after reading his XXX Ecclesiastical Sonnets\" in\n_The Echo and the Poet_, by William Cushing Bamburgh. N. Y. 1893.\n\n\nIX\n\nUNPUBLISHED LECTURES ON WORDSWORTH\n\nESSAYS OF SPECIAL INTEREST\n\n1\n\n1892. CORSON, HIRAM. \"The Divine Immanence in Nature, and the\nrelationship of the human spirit thereto, as presented in Wordsworth's\nPoetry.\"\n\n2\n\nWINCHESTER, C. T. \"The Lake District and Wordsworth.\"\n\n3\n\nPRENTISS, GEORGE L. \"Hurstmonceaux Rectory and Rydal Mount.\" (Personal\nRecollections.)\n\n4\n\nHOYT, A. S. \"Wordsworth, the Man and the Poet.\" (Imperfectly reported\nin _The Houghton Record_.)\n\n\n\n\nIII.--_FRANCE_\n\nWORDSWORTH IN FRANCE\n\nBy \u00c9MILE LEGOUIS, Professeur \u00e0 la Facult\u00e9 de Lettres, Universit\u00e9 de\nLyon, France\n\n\nI\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nThere is no separate or whole book on Wordsworth that I know of.\n\nARTICLES IN MAGAZINES, OR CHAPTERS IN BOOKS\n\n_Voyage historique et litt\u00e9raire en Angleterre et en \u00c9cosse_, par\nAm\u00e9d\u00e9e Pichot (_passim_). 3 vols. in 8. Paris, 1829.[575] An English\ntranslation was published in London in 1825.\n\n_Revue Britannique._\n\nMai 1827. Wordsworth, Crabbe, and Campbell, pp. 61-79, a criticism\ntranslated from the _New Monthly Magazine_.\n\nF\u00e9vrier 1835. Po\u00e9sie domestique de la grande Bretagne, translated from\nthe _New Monthly Magazine_.\n\nJanvier 1836, p. 190. Compte-rendu de \"Yarrow Revisited and other\nPoems,\" translated from the _Repository of Knowledge_.\n\n_Revue des Deux Mondes._ 1er Ao\u00fbt 1835. William Wordsworth, par A.\nFontaney.[576]\n\n_Revue Contemporaine._ 15 D\u00e9cembre 1853. Po\u00e8tes contemporains de\nl'Angleterre: William Wordsworth et John Wilson, par L. \u00c9tienne.\n\n_Litt\u00e9rature anglaise_ de H. Taine.[577] 1864. Vol. iv. pp. 311-324.\n\n_\u00c9tudes sur la Litt\u00e9rature contemporaine_, par \u00c9d. Sch\u00e9rer.[578]\n\n_Revue critique d'histoire et de litt\u00e9rature._ 16 Janvier 1882. Article\nde James Darmesteter sur la Biographie de Wordsworth, par Myers.[579]\n\n_Essais de Litt\u00e9rature anglaise_, par James Darmesteter. Paris,\n1883.[580]\n\n_Histoire de la Litt\u00e9rature anglaise_, par M. L\u00e9on Boucher. Paris,\n1890. pp. 355-363.\n\n_La Renaissance de la Po\u00e9sie anglaise_, par Gabriel Sarrazin. 1887.\n\n_\u00c9tudes et Portraits_, par Paul Bourget. Vol. ii. \u00c9tudes\nanglaises.[581] 1888.\n\n_\u00c9tude sur la Vie et les \u0152uvres de Robert Burns_, par Auguste\nAngellier. Paris, 1892. (_Passim_, et surtout vol. ii. pp. 362-393,\n\u00c9tude sur le sentiment de la nature dans Wordsworth et autres po\u00e8tes\nanglais contemporains.)\n\n_Le g\u00e9n\u00e9ral Michel Beaupuy_, par Georges Bussi\u00e8re et \u00c9mile Legouis.\nParis, 1891.\n\n[575] Vol. ii. pp. 363-394.--ED.\n\n[576] This was signed Y, which was Fontaney's pseudonym.--E.L.\n\n[577] Wordsworth et la po\u00e9sie moderne de l'Angleterre.--_Histoire de la\nLitt\u00e9rature anglaise_, par H. Taine.--ED.\n\n[578] Vol. vi. pp. 127, 128, and vol. vii. pp. 1-59.--ED.\n\n[579] pp. 227-236.--ED.\n\n[580] pp. 227-236.--ED.\n\n[581] Vol. ii. pp. 83; 126-134.--ED.\n\n\nII\n\nTRANSLATIONS\n\nPas de traduction compl\u00e8te, ni de volume sp\u00e9cial de traductions de\nWordsworth.\n\nUne traduction par Fontaney annonc\u00e9e en 1837 comme devant para\u00eetre dans\nle _Biblioth\u00e8que anglo-fran\u00e7aise_, n'a pas paru.\n\nEn dehors des po\u00e8mes ou parties de po\u00e8mes traduit par les critiques\n\u00e9num\u00e9r\u00e9s plus haut, il n'y a gu\u00e8re de traduction en prose de quelque\nimportance.\n\nTRADUCTIONS EN VERS\n\nMADAME AMABLE TASTU. _We are Seven._\n\nSAINTE-BEUVE. _Joseph Delorme._ 1829.\n\n    \"Le plus long jour de l'ann\u00e9e,\" p. 88.\n    Sonnet, \"Personal Talk,\" p. 123.\n    \"Sonnet sur le Sonnet,\" p. 124.\n\n_Consolations._ 1830.\n\n    Sonnet, \"It is a beauteous evening,\" p. 234.\n    Sonnet, \"Not Love, nor War,\" p. 239.\n    Sonnet, \"Quand le po\u00e8te en pleurs,\" p. 236.\n\n_Pens\u00e9es d'Ao\u00fbt._ Trois sonnets imit\u00e9s de Wordsworth.\n\n      I. \"Reposez-vous et remerciez.\"\n     II. \"La Cabane du Highlander.\"\n    III. \"Le Ch\u00e2teau de Bothwell.\"\n\nSainte-Beuve cite en outre dans ses _Nouveaux Lundis_ des 21 et 22\nAvril 1862, trois sonnets de Wordsworth traduits en vers, par l'Abb\u00e9\nRoussel. Ces traductions assez pauvres de po\u00e9sie sont celles des\nsonnets suivants--\n\n    \"Nuns fret not.\u2026\"\n    \"Dark and more dark.\u2026\"\n    \"These words were uttered as in pensive mood.\"\n\nJEAN AICARD a traduit _We are Seven_ dans _La Chanson de l'Enfant_.\n\nPAUL BOURGET (_\u00c9tudes et Portraits_, vol. ii. _op. cit._) a traduit\nl'un des sonnets au Duddon.\n\n    \"What aspect bore the Man \u2026?\"\n\n\nIII\n\nINFLUENCE\n\nWordsworth's influence on French literature was altogether very slight,\nnor did it make itself felt till about 1830; when, after a very limited\nperiod, it silently died away.\n\nWordsworth was but little known by his contemporary Ch\u00e2teaubriand, who\nmerely names him among other poets in his _Essai sur la Litt\u00e9rature\nanglaise_. Byron, Walter Scott, and in a lesser degree Thomas\nMoore, were the only writers of Great Britain whose works told on\nour literature at that time. Villemain, in his criticism of Byron,\ncontemptuously dismisses all the so-called lake-poets to fix on his\nhero. He calls them: \"Des m\u00e9taphysiciens, raisonneurs sans invention,\nm\u00e9lancoliques sans passion, qui, dans l'\u00e9ternelle r\u00eaverie d'une vie\n\u00e9troite et peu agit\u00e9e, n'avaient produit que des singularit\u00e9s sans\npuissance sur l'imagination des autres hommes. Tel \u00e9tait Woodsworth\n(_sic_) et le subtil mais non touchant Col\u00e9ridge.\"\n\nTo Byron also, and to him alone (Ossian being excepted) among the\npoets of England, was Lamartine indebted. I am not sure that he names\nWordsworth once; but still the striking analogy between the ideas and\nimaginative style of both cannot fail to be noticed by the reader.\nWithout insisting on a parallel that might be drawn between many pages\nof _The Excursion_ and of _Jocelyn_, I will only point out two short\npieces of Lamartine that bear strong resemblance to two poems of\nWordsworth, so much so that they almost read like free imitations--\n\n          Lamartine                       Wordsworth's\n\n    \"A Augusta,\" _Recueillements  |\n    Po\u00e8tiques_, xx.               | _Nightingale and Stock-dove._\n                                  |\n    \"Le Fontaine du Foyard,\"      |\n    _Nouvelles Confidences_.      | _The Fountain._\n\nVictor Hugo, so far as I know, only names Wordsworth once, in _L'\u00c2ne_--\n\n        \u2026Young le pleureur des nuits,\n    Wordsworth l'esprit des lacs \u2026\n\nM. Sully Prudhomme when he wrote _A l'Hirondelle_ (stanzas, la vie\nint\u00e9rieure) appears to have borne in mind _To a Skylark_, \"Ethereal\nminstrel,\" etc.\n\nM. Copp\u00e9e has often been called a French Wordsworth, owing to his\npoetical collection called _Les Humbles_, wherein he shows the same\npartiality as the English Poet does for humble themes and characters,\ntogether with a bold attempt to naturalise trivial or ludicrous\ndetails in serious poetry; but there is no proof, as far as I know, of\nWordsworth's influence having been strong upon him.\n\nIf we except two or three disciples of Wordsworth, neither he, nor\nthe lake-poets taken as a whole, seem to have been much thought of, or\neven read, by our contemporary verse-writers. The word _Lakist_ has\ngenerally been used as a synonym for \"weak and doleful mysticism.\"\nEx.:--\n\n(_a_) _Revue Encyclop\u00e9dique._ 1831. Article de Pierre Leroux, sur la\n\"Po\u00e9sie de notre \u00c9poque.\" \"L'Angleterre a entendu autour de ses lacs\nbourdonner comme des ombres plaintives un essaim de po\u00e8tes ab\u00eem\u00e9s dans\nune mystique contemplation.\"\n\n(_b_) _Journal d'un Po\u00e8te_, par Alfred de Vigny. (Ed. Michel L\u00e9vy.\n1867. p. 80.) \"Barbier vient de publier _Il Pianto_. Les d\u00e9lices de\nCapone ont amolli son caract\u00e8re de po\u00e9sie et Brizeux a d\u00e9teint sur\nlui ses douces couleurs virgiliennes et laquistes (_sic_) d\u00e9rivant de\nSainte-Beuve.\"\n\n(_c_) TH\u00c9OPHILE GAUTIER (_Portraits Contemporains_, p. 174) almost\nseems to derive the word _Lakiste_ from Lamartine's poem called _Le\nLac_. He has just mentioned the poem and goes on: \"Il ne faut pas\ncroire que Lamartine, parce qu'il y a toujours chez lui une vibration\net une r\u00e9sonnance de harpe \u00e9olienne, ne soit qu'un m\u00e9lodieux _lakiste_\net ne sache que soupirer mollement la m\u00e9lancolie et l'amour. S'il a le\nsoupir, il a la parole et le cri \u2026\" (_Journal Officiel_, 8 Mars 1869.)\n\nI now come to the man who, first and foremost among our poets and\ncritics, paid due homage to Wordsworth, _i.e._ Sainte-Beuve. I have\nalready enumerated his several translations in verse from Wordsworth.\nStrange to say, the voluminous critic has no single article with\nWordsworth for its main subject; but, whoever will go through his many\nvolumes will find many judicious and admiring references to the poet.\n\nMoreover, as a poet, Sainte-Beuve has endeavoured to naturalise in\nFrance the poetic style that has been associated with the name of\nWordsworth. He expressly claims Wordsworth as one of his masters in his\n_Consolations_ xviii. \"A Antony Deschamps.\" Among his bosom-poets he\nreckons--\n\n        \u2026Wordsworth peu connu, qui des lacs solitaires\n    Sait t\u00f2us les bleus reflets, les bruits et les myst\u00e8res,\n    Et qui, depuis trente ans vivant au m\u00eame lieu,\n    En contemplation devant le m\u00eame Dieu,\n    A travers les soupirs de la mousse et de l'onde,\n    Distingue, au soir, des chants venus d'un meilleur monde.\n\nThe original attempt of Sainte-Beuve (for he was original in his very\nchoice of Wordsworth as a model at a time when Byron engrossed all\nthe admiration of the French poets) has been ably characterised by\nTh\u00e9ophile Gautier in his \"Portraits Contemporains\" (pp. 208, 209), an\narticle reprinted from _La Gazette de Paris_, 19 Novembre 1871:--\n\n    \"(Sainte-Beuve) avait \u00e9t\u00e9 en po\u00e9sie un inventeur. Il avait\n    donn\u00e9 une note nouvelle et toute moderne, et de tout le c\u00e9nacle\n    c'\u00e9tait \u00e0 coup s\u00fbr le plus r\u00e9ellement romantique. Dans cette\n    humble po\u00e9sie qui rappelle par la sinc\u00e9rit\u00e9 du sentiment et\n    la minutie du d\u00e9tail observ\u00e9 sur nature, les vers de Crabbe,\n    de Wordsworth, et de Cowper, Sainte-Beuve s'est fray\u00e9 de\n    petits sentiers \u00e0 mi-c\u00f4te, bord\u00e9s d'humbles fleurettes, o\u00f9 nul\n    en France n'a pass\u00e9 avant lui. Sa facture un peu laborieuse\n    et compliqu\u00e9e vient de la difficult\u00e9 de r\u00e9duire \u00e0 la forme\n    m\u00e9trique des id\u00e9es et des images non exprim\u00e9es encore ou\n    d\u00e9daign\u00e9es jusque-l\u00e0, mais que de morceaux merveilleusement\n    venus o\u00f9 l'effort n'est plus sensible!\"\n\nSainte-Beuve's admiration of Wordsworth is a well-known fact. Less\ngenerally known is the influence of this admiration on several poets\nof that time (_circa_ 1830-40), who, either through Sainte-Beuve's\nimitations, or with a direct knowledge of Wordsworth's poems, to the\nreading of which they had thus been stimulated, offer great marks of\nresemblance with Wordsworth. I have quoted a judgment of De Vigny that\nconsiders Brizeux and Barbier as having turned _laquistes_ through\nSainte-Beuve. I know no other immediate proof of this influence.\nPerhaps Barbier and Brizeux have consigned it somewhere. Anyhow Brizeux\nwith his glorification of his youthful years and school-time, with\nhis intense love of his native Brittany, his fond attachment to local\ncustoms and habits, his lamentations on the death of the poetical poet\nas embodied in his own province (_\u00c9l\u00e9gie de la Bretagne_), is to all\nextent and purposes the most thoroughly Wordsworthian of all our poets.\nThere may be more of Wordsworth's _philosophy_ in Lamartine, but there\nis more of his _poetry_ proper in Brizeux.\n\nThe influence of Wordsworth on Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin and Hippolyte de la\nMorvonnais, is more easily ascertained than the preceding. Here, again,\nSainte-Beuve appears to have been the intermediate agent.[582]\n\nIn 1832-33 Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin, fresh from the reading of the\n_Consolations_, and De la Morvonnais, who came to be a direct admirer\nof the Lake Poets, and chiefly of Wordsworth, set to write short\npoems which they aspired to make as little different from prose as\npossible, rejecting all traditional ornaments, and making little of\nthe rhythmical improvements of the _Romantiques_ proper. Some of those\npieces were inserted in a local paper as downright prose (no stop\nintervening at the end of the lines), whereas the said paper would\nnot have made room for verse.[583] This looks like trifling, but the\nearnestness of this attempted revolution is shown in the interesting\npoems of Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin. Another outcome of this was an intended\npublication on Wordsworth, of which it is impossible to say whether it\nwas to be a criticism, or a translation, of the English Poet. It is\nthus mentioned in a letter of Gu\u00e9rin to De la Morvonnais of June 30,\n1836: \"Nous avons adress\u00e9 des circulaires \u00e0 un grand nombre d'\u00e9diteurs\npour l'impression Wordsworth. Nous attendons la r\u00e9ponse d'un moment \u00e0\nl'autre.\" The answer must have been unfavourable, as nothing more was\nheard of the intended publication.\n\nThe early death of Gu\u00e9rin left it for De la Morvonnais alone to spread\nthe influence of Wordsworth's poetry in France. Of him we read in\nSainte-Beuve's _\u00c9tude sur Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin_:--\n\n    \"La Morvonnais, vers ce temps m\u00eame (1834), en \u00e9tait fort\n    pr\u00e9occup\u00e9 (des lakistes et de leur po\u00e9sie), au point d'aller\n    visiter Wordsworth \u00e0 sa r\u00e9sidence de Rydal Mount, pr\u00e8s des lacs\n    du Westmoreland, et de rester en correspondance avec ce grand\n    et pacifique esprit, avec ce patriarche de la Muse intime.\n    Gu\u00e9rin, sans tant y songer, ressemblait mieux aux Lakistes en\n    ne visant nullement \u00e0 les imiter.\"\n\nOf the supposed correspondence between Wordsworth and De la Morvonnais\nno trace remains. M. Hippolyte de la Blanchardi\u00e8re, De la Morvonnais'\ngrandson, has informed me that in the collection of his grandfather's\nletters there is no letter of Wordsworth to be found. That at least\na Study of Wordsworth existed at the time is proved by the following\npreface to his poem _La Th\u00e9ba\u00efde des Gr\u00e8ves_, written by his friend A.\nDuquesnel (ed. by Didier, Quai des Augustins. 1864. p. xxvii.)\n\n     \"Nous avons trouv\u00e9 dans les _Reliquiae_ du po\u00e8te de\n    l'Arguenon[584] de pr\u00e9cieuses \u00e9tudes sur les lakistes. Il\n    s'\u00e9tait passionn\u00e9 pour ces hommes dans les dix derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es\n    de sa vie (1843-53).[585] Wordsworth lui semblait plus grand\n    que Byron, qu'il trouvait trop emphatique, trop solennel,\n    pas assez pr\u00e8s de la nature. L'auteur de _l'Excursion_ a\n    exerc\u00e9 une p\u00e9n\u00e9trante influence sur l'esprit et le c\u0153ur de la\n    Morvonnais, nous trouvons dans ses cahiers des traductions\n    en vers de Wordsworth, de Col\u00e9ridge, de Crabbe, qui, lui, ne\n    faisait pas partie de ce groupe. Nous les publierons peut-\u00eatre\n    un jour; elles ont d'autant plus d'int\u00e9r\u00eat que l'on ne conna\u00eet\n    gu\u00e8re les lakistes en France, que par de rares extraits. Il\n    s'\u00e9tait livr\u00e9, comme on le verra, \u00e0 une \u00e9tude approfondie de la\n    litt\u00e9rature anglaise. Son admiration pour Walter Scott \u00e9tait\n    inexprimable.\"\n\nThe study and translations above-mentioned have also been lost, many\nmanuscripts of De la Morvonnais having been destroyed.\n\nIt remains for me to point out some allusions to, or imitations of,\nWordsworth in the existing verse of De la Morvonnais.\n\nIn the _Th\u00e9ba\u00efde des Gr\u00e8ves_ (1838), \"Le Petit Patour\" is a close\nimitation of _We are Seven_, the conclusion being--\n\n    Cet enfant en sait plus que moi sur l'existence;\n    Savoir vivre est savoir souffrir avec constance.\n\n\"Le Vagabond,\" a story of a vagrant by whom the poet is taught\nresignation, is an imitation of _Resolution and Independence_.\n\nIn \"A Sainte-Beuve\" are found these two lines--\n\n    J'ai pos\u00e9 sous mon bras mon penseur solitaire,\n    Mon Wordsworth tant aim\u00e9 de l'amant du myst\u00e8re.\n\nIn \"Dispersion, \u00e0 Mistress Hemans,\" etc., we read this--\n\n    Nous primes un po\u00e8te, une femme ang\u00e9lique\n    Dont peu savent chez nous la voix m\u00e9lancolique,\n    Disciple de Wordsworth, le sublime penseur,\n    Des lakistes ch\u00e9ris je la nomme la s\u0153ur.\n\nIn \"Derni\u00e8res Paroles\" we find this praise of Wordsworth--\n\n    Or, ce soir-l\u00e0, je lus un homme de g\u00e9nie;\n    Celui dont la mystique et profonde harmonie\n    Sonne pour les \u00e9lus des po\u00e9tiques dons,\n    Et soul\u00e8ve notre \u00e2me en ses grands abandons \u2026\n                        \u2026Oh! ne pourrai-je voir\n    Ces lacs du Westmoreland, mon d\u00e9sir, mon espoir?\n    \u2026\n    Cet homme est honor\u00e9 des puissances secr\u00e8tes;\n    Lui mort, \u00e0 ses beaux lacs, romantiques retraites,\n    Des p\u00e8lerins viendront, penseurs religieux.\n    Le monde m\u00e9connut l'homme m\u00e9lodieux.\n\nI pass over many sonnets, and divers other poems, in which the\ninfluence of Wordsworth is unmistakable, and come to a last quotation\nwhich is useful to elucidate an allusion in Wordsworth's _The Poet's\nDream: Sequel to the Norman Boy_. In this poem, written in 1842,\nWordsworth says--\n\n    But oh! that Country-man of thine, whose eye, loved Child, can see\n    A pledge of endless bliss in acts of early piety,\n    In verse, which to thy ear might come, would treat this simple theme,\n    Nor leave untold our happy flight in that adventurous dream.\n\nAs Wordsworth read very little French poetry in his old age, I think he\nhere alludes to a poem of his admirer De la Morvonnais, who very likely\nsent him that _Th\u00e9ba\u00efde des Gr\u00e8ves_ (1838), in which Wordsworth was so\nhighly praised. The passage alluded to is taken from \"Solitude,\" and\nreads thus--\n\n    Enfant, Il (Dieu) te promet le domaine de l'ange\n      Si tu gardes l'amour et la foi des a\u00efeux,\n    Et sa m\u00e8re, aujourd'hui loin de l'humaine fange,\n      Que tu n'as pas connue et qui t'attend aux cieux.\n\nAs a whole, De la Morvonnais, though he imitates Wordsworth, is very\nunlike him. Of course I do not mean to compare the two, but even\nin like subjects he differs from Wordsworth, owing to a sort of\nconstitutional nervousness and brooding melancholy.[586]\n\n[582] Voir Maurice de Gu\u00e9rin, _Journal, Lettres et Po\u00e8mes_, publi\u00e9s par\nJ. S. Tr\u00e9butien avec Pr\u00e9face de Sainte-Beuve (1860).--E.L.\n\n[583] In the above work--_S\u00e9jour de M. de Gu\u00e9rin en Bretagne;\nImpressions et Souvenirs de M. Fran\u00e7ois du Breil de Marzan_, pp.\n434-441.--E.L.\n\n[584] H. de la Morvonnais.--E.L.\n\n[585] A mistake: his admiration of Wordsworth began before 1832.--E.L.\n\n[586] In _Voyage historique et litt\u00e9raire en Angleterre et en \u00c9cosse_,\npar Am\u00e9d\u00e9e Puchot, Lettre XXIV. there are numerous references to\nWordsworth. It begins with a quotation from _Tintern Abbey_. In\nLettre LXV. there is additional critical reference to Wordsworth and\nColeridge. In the _Album po\u00e9tique des jeunes personnes_, par Mme.\nTastu, there is a \"Sonnet imit\u00e9 de Wordsworth,\" by St. Beuve, pp. 101,\n102.\n\n    C'est un beau soir, un soir paisible et solennel,\n    A la fin du saint jour la nature en pri\u00e8re\n    Le tait, comme Marie \u00e0 genoux sur la pierre, etc.--ED.\n\nSee also the _Nouveaux Lundis_ of St. Beuve, 21 and 22 Avril 1862,\nwhere there are \"trois sonnets traduits en vers par l'Abb\u00e9 Roussel\"\nfrom Wordsworth.\n\n\n\n\nERRATA AND ADDENDA LIST\n\nREFERRING TO VOLUMES I. TO VIII.\n\n\n1. _Inistar omnium._--I wish to explain the accidental omission of Mr.\nT. Hutchinson's name amongst those who helped me in Volumes I. and II.\n(see the prefatory note to this volume), and also that of Mr. Hill. It\nwas due to my returning, \"for press,\" an uncorrected copy of my Preface.\n\n2. Vol. ii. p. 106, _Ruth_, l. 54--The following extract from Bartram's\n_Travels_, etc., illustrates Wordsworth's debt to him:--\n\n    Proceeding on our return to town in the cool of the evening\n    \u2026 we enjoyed a most enchanting view; \u2026 companies of young\n    innocent Cherokee virgins, some busy gathering the rich\n    fragrant fruit, others having already filled their baskets, lay\n    reclined under the shade of floriferous and fragrant native\n    bowers \u2026 disclosing their beauties to the fluttering breeze\n    \u2026 whilst other parties, more gay and libertine, were yet\n    collecting strawberries, or wantonly chasing their companions,\n    tantalising them, staining their lips and cheeks with the ripe\n    fruit.\n\n3. In vol. ii. p. 348, the date of publication should be Sept. 17,\n1802, not 1803.\n\n4. In _The Prelude_ (vol. iii. p. 202, book v. l. 26) the quotation\nwhich I could not trace is from Shakespeare, Sonnet No. 64--\n\n    This thought is as a death, which cannot choose\n    But weep to have that which it fears to lose.\n\n5. Vol. v. p. 113 (_The Excursion_, book iii. l. 187).--Mr. William\nE. Walcott--Laurence, Mass. U.S.A.--sends me the following variant\nreadings, which he has found in a copy of the edition of 1814--\n\n                      \u2026 crystal tube\n    Be lodged therein \u2026\n\nP. 151, book iv. l. 187--\n\n    Nor sleep, nor \u2026\n\n6. Vol. vii. p. 276.--This sonnet first appeared in the _New Monthly\nMagazine_, part ii. p. 26, under the title, _To B. R. Haydon. Composed\non seeing his Picture of Napoleon, musing at St. Helena_; and it is\ndated \"Saturday, June 11th, 1831.\"\n\n7. Vol. vii. p. 336.--This poem was published in the _Saturday\nMagazine_, May 18, 1844, in which the fifth line is--\n\n    Woe to the purblind men who fill.\n\n8. It may be worth mentioning (1) that the quotation (not noted,\nunfortunately, where it occurs)--\n\n    Some natural tears she drops, but wipes them soon,\n\nis from _Paradise Lost_, book xii. l. 645. See also _An Elegy delivered\nat the Hot Wells_, Bristol, July 1789. (2) That the phrase \"numerous\nverse\" is from _Paradise Lost_, book v. l. 150; and (3) that \"lenient\nhand of Time\" is from Bowles' sonnet--\n\n    O Time, who know'st a lenient hand to lay\n    Softest on sorrow's wound.\n\nAmongst those which I have failed to trace are the following:\n\n    _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, II. xxxiv.--\n\n                \u2026 murtherer's chain partake,\n    Corded, and burning at the social stake.\n\n    xlv.--\n\n      \u2026 in the painful art of dying\n\n    _The Russian Fugitive_, Part II. l. 51--\n\n      \u2026 if house it be or bower.\n\n    _Elegiac Musings_, l. 41--\n\n    Let praise be mute where I am laid.\n\n    _Stanzas suggested in a Steamboat off Saint Bees' Heads_, l. 37--\n\n    Cruel of heart were they, bloody of hand.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX TO THE POEMS\n\n\n                                                            VOL.    PAGE\n\n  Aar, The Fall of the                                           vi  308\n\n  Abbeys, Old                                                   vii  100\n\n  Address from the Spirit of Cockermouth Castle                 vii  347\n\n  Address to a Child                                             iv   50\n\n  Address to Kilchurn Castle                                     ii  400\n\n  Address to my Infant Daughter, Dora                           iii   14\n\n  Address to the Scholars of the Village School of ----          ii   84\n\n  Admonition                                                     iv   34\n\n  \u00c6neid, Translation of Part of the First Book of the          viii  276\n\n  \"Aerial Rock--whose solitary brow\"                             vi  187\n\n  Affliction of Margaret--, The                                 iii    7\n\n  Afflictions of England                                        vii   72\n\n  After-Thought (Duddon)                                         vi  263\n\n  After-Thought (Tour on the Continent)                          vi  315\n\n  Airey-Force Valley                                           viii  146\n\n  Aix-la-Chapelle                                                vi  295\n\n  \"Alas! what boots the long laborious quest\"                    iv  216\n\n  Alban Hills, From the                                        viii   65\n\n  Albano, At                                                   viii   64\n\n  Alfred                                                        vii   24\n\n  Alfred, His Descendants                                       vii   25\n\n  Alice Fell; or, Poverty                                        ii  272\n\n  Aloys Reding                                                   vi  310\n\n  Ambleside                                                    viii  156\n\n  America, Aspects of Christianity in (Three Sonnets)           vii   84\n\n  American Episcopacy                                           vii   85\n\n  American Tradition                                             vi  246\n\n  Ancient History, On a celebrated Event in (Two Sonnets)        iv  242\n\n  Andrew Jones                                                 viii  221\n\n  Anecdote for Fathers                                            i  234\n\n  Animal Tranquillity and Decay                                   i  307\n\n  Anticipation (October 1803)                                    ii  436\n\n  Anticipation of leaving School, Composed in                     i    1\n\n  Apennines, Among the Ruins of a Convent in the               viii   82\n\n  Apology (Ecclesiastical Sonnets, 1st part)                    vii   18\n\n  Apology (Ecclesiastical Sonnets, 2nd part)                    vii   55\n\n  Apology (Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death)               viii  112\n\n  Apology (Yarrow Revisited)                                    vii  309\n\n  Applethwaite, At                                              iii   23\n\n  Aquapendente, Musings near                                   viii   42\n\n  Armenian Lady's Love, The                                     vii  232\n\n  Artegal and Elidure                                            vi   45\n\n  Authors, A plea for,                                         viii   99\n\n  Author's Portrait, To the                                     vii  318\n\n  Autumn (September)                                             vi   64\n\n  Autumn (Two Poems)                                             vi  201\n\n  Avarice, The last Stage of                                     ii   60\n\n  Avon, The (Annan)                                             vii  303\n\n  Bala-Sala, At                                                 vii  365\n\n  Balbi                                                          iv  237\n\n  Ballot, Protest against the                                  viii  304\n\n  Bangor, Monastery of Old                                      vii   13\n\n  Baptism                                                       vii   89\n\n  Barbara                                                        ii  178\n\n  Beaumont, Sir George, Epistle to                               iv  256\n\n  Beaumont, Sir George, Upon perusing the foregoing Epistle to   iv  267\n\n  Beaumont, Sir George, Picture of Peele Castle, painted by     iii   54\n\n  Beaumont, Sir George, Beautiful Picture, painted by            iv  271\n\n  Beaumont, Sir George, Elegiac Stanzas addressed to            vii  132\n\n  Beaumont, To Lady                                              iv   57\n\n  Beggar, The Old Cumberland                                      i  299\n\n  Beggars (Two Poems)                                            ii  276\n\n  \"'Beloved Vale!' I said, 'when I shall con'\"                   iv   35\n\n  Benefits, Other (Two Sonnets)                                 vii   40\n\n  Bible, Translation of the                                     vii   58\n\n  Binnorie, The Solitude of                                      ii  204\n\n  Bird of Paradise,  Drawing of the                    viii   29\n\n  Bird of Paradise, Suggested by a Picture of                  viii  140\n\n  Biscayan Rite (Two Sonnets)                                    iv  241\n\n  Bishops, Acquittal of the                                     vii   79\n\n  Bishops and Priests                                           vii   86\n\n  Black Comb, Inscription on a Stone on the side of              iv  281\n\n  Black Comb, View from the top of                               iv  279\n\n  \"Blest Statesman He, whose Mind's unselfish will\"            viii  101\n\n  Bologna, At (Three Sonnets)                                  viii   85\n\n  Bolton Priory, The Founding of                                 iv  204\n\n  Books and Newspapers, Illustrated                            viii  184\n\n  Borderers, The                                                  i  112\n\n  Bothwell Castle                                               vii  299\n\n  Boulogne, On being stranded near the Harbour of                vi  378\n\n  Bran, Effusion on the Banks of the                             vi   28\n\n  Breadalbane, Ruined Mansion of the Earl of                    vii  295\n\n  Brientz, Scene on the Lake of                                  vi  315\n\n  Brigham, Nun's Well                                           vii  347\n\n  Britons, Struggle of the                                      vii   11\n\n  Brothers, The                                                  ii  184\n\n  Brothers Water, Bridge at the foot of                          ii  293\n\n  Brougham Castle, Song at the Feast of                          iv   82\n\n  Brownie's Cell                                                 vi   16\n\n  Brownie, The                                                  vii  297\n\n  Brug\u00e8s (Two Poems)                                             vi  288\n\n  Brug\u00e8s, Incident at                                           vii  198\n\n  Buonapart\u00e9                                                     ii  323\n\n  Buonapart\u00e9                                                     ii  331\n\n  Buonapart\u00e9                                                     iv  228\n\n  Burial in the South of Scotland, A Place of                   vii  285\n\n  Burns, At the Grave of                                         ii  379\n\n  Burns, Thoughts suggested near the Residence of                ii  383\n\n  Burns, To the Sons of                                          ii  386\n\n  Butterfly, To a                                                ii  383\n\n  Butterfly, To a                                                ii  297\n\n  Calais, August 1802                                            ii  331\n\n  Calais, August 15, 1802                                        ii  334\n\n  Calais, Composed by the Seaside, near                          ii  330\n\n  Calais, Composed near                                          ii  332\n\n  Calais, Composed on the Beach, near                            ii  335\n\n  Calais, Fish-women at                                          vi  286\n\n  Calvert, Raisley                                               iv   44\n\n  Camaldoli, At the Convent of (Three Sonnets)                 viii   72\n\n  Canute                                                        vii   27\n\n  Canute and Alfred                                              vi  130\n\n  Castle, Composed at ----                                       ii  410\n\n  \"Castle of Indolence,\" Written in my Pocket Copy of\n      Thomson's                                                  ii  305\n\n  Casual Incitement                                             vii   14\n\n  Catechising                                                   vii   91\n\n  Cathedrals, etc.                                              vii  105\n\n  Catholic Cantons, Composed in one of the (Two Poems)           vi  312\n\n  Celandine, The Small                                          iii   21\n\n  Celandine, To the Small (Two Poems)                            ii  300\n\n  Cenotaph (Mrs. Fermor)                                        vii  135\n\n  Chamouny, Processions in the Vale of                           vi  363\n\n  Character, A                                                   ii  208\n\n  Charles the First, Troubles of                                vii   71\n\n  Charles the Second                                            vii   75\n\n  Chatsworth                                                    vii  272\n\n  Chaucer, Selections from (Three Poems)                         ii  238\n\n  Chiabrera, Epitaphs translated from                            iv  229\n\n  Chichely, Archbishop, to Henry V.                             vii   47\n\n  Child, Address to a                                            iv   50\n\n  Child, Characteristics of a, three years old                   iv  252\n\n  Child, To a (Written in her Album)                            viii   7\n\n  Childless Father, The                                          ii  181\n\n  Christianity in America, Aspects of (Three Sonnets)           vii   84\n\n  Churches, New                                                 vii  102\n\n  Church to be erected (Two Sonnets)                            vii  103\n\n  Churchyard, New                                               vii  104\n\n  Cintra, Convention of (Two Sonnets)                            iv  210\n\n  Cistertian Monastery                                          vii   37\n\n  Clarkson, Thomas, To                                           iv   62\n\n  Clergy, Corruptions of the Higher                             vii   49\n\n  Clergy, Emigrant French                                       vii  101\n\n  Clerical Integrity                                            vii   78\n\n  Clermont, The Council of                                      vii   30\n\n  Clifford, Lord                                                 iv   82\n\n  Clouds, To the                                               viii  142\n\n  Clyde, In the Frith of, Ailsa Crag                            vii  369\n\n  Clyde, On the Frith of                                        vii  370\n\n  Cockermouth Castle, Address from the Spirit of                vii  347\n\n  Cockermouth, In sight of                                      vii  346\n\n  Coleorton, Elegiac Musings in the grounds of                  vii  269\n\n  Coleorton, A Flower Garden at                                 vii  125\n\n  Coleorton, Inscription for an Urn in the grounds of            iv   78\n\n  Coleorton, Inscription for a Seat in the groves of             iv   80\n\n  Coleorton, Inscription in a garden of                          iv   76\n\n  Coleorton, Inscription in the grounds of                       iv   74\n\n  Coleridge, Hartley, To                                         ii  351\n\n  Collins, Remembrance of                                         i   33\n\n  Cologne, In the Cathedral at                                   vi  297\n\n  Commination Service                                           vii   96\n\n  Complaint, A                                                   iv   17\n\n  \"Complete Angler,\" Written on a blank leaf in the              vi  190\n\n  Conclusion (Duddon)                                            vi  262\n\n  Conclusion (Ecclesiastical Sonnets)                           vii  108\n\n  Conclusion (Miscellaneous Sonnets)                            vii  177\n\n  Conclusion (Prelude)                                          iii  367\n\n  Conclusion (Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death)            viii  111\n\n  Confirmation (Two Sonnets)                                    vii   92\n\n  Congratulation                                                vii  102\n\n  Conjectures                                                   vii    5\n\n  Contrast, The. The Parrot and the Wren                        vii  141\n\n  Convent in the Apennines                                     viii   82\n\n  Convention of Cintra, Composed while writing a Tract\n      occasioned by the (Two Sonnets)                            iv  210\n\n  Conversion                                                    vii   17\n\n  Convict, The                                                 viii  217\n\n  Cora Linn, Composed at                                         vi   26\n\n  Cordelia M----, To                                            vii  400\n\n  Cottage Girls, The Three                                       vi  351\n\n  Cottager to her Infant, The                                   iii   74\n\n  Council of Clermont, The                                      vii   30\n\n  Countess' Pillar                                              vii  307\n\n  Covenanters, Persecution of the Scottish                      vii   79\n\n  Cranmer                                                       vii   62\n\n  Crosthwaite Church                                           viii  157\n\n  Crusaders                                                     vii   41\n\n  Crusades                                                      vii   31\n\n  Cuckoo and the Nightingale, The                                ii  250\n\n  Cuckoo at Laverna, The                                       viii   67\n\n  Cuckoo Clock, The                                            viii  151\n\n  Cuckoo, To the                                                 ii  289\n\n  Cuckoo, To the                                                vii  169\n\n  Cumberland Beggar, The Old                                      i  299\n\n  Cumberland Beggar, The Old, MS. Variants                     viii  220\n\n  Cumberland, Coast of (In the Channel)                         vii  358\n\n  Cumberland, On a high part of the coast of                    vii  337\n\n  Daffodils, The                                                iii    4\n\n  Daisy, To the (Two Poems)                                      ii  353\n\n  Daisy, To the                                                  ii  360\n\n  Daisy, To the                                                 iii   51\n\n  Daniel, Picture of (Hamilton Palace)                          vii  303\n\n  Danish Boy, The                                                ii   96\n\n  Danish Conquests                                              vii   27\n\n  Danube, The Source of the                                      vi  303\n\n  Dati, Roberto                                                  iv  234\n\n  Dedication (Miscellaneous Sonnets)                            vii  159\n\n  Dedication (Tour on the Continent)                             vi  285\n\n  Dedication (White Doe of Rylstone)                             iv  102\n\n  Dedication (White Doe of Rylstone)                             vi   42\n\n  Departure from the Vale of Grasmere                            ii  377\n\n  \"Deplorable his lot who tills the ground\"                     vii   38\n\n  Derwent, To the River                                          vi  193\n\n  Derwent, To the River                                         vii  345\n\n  Descriptive Sketches                                            i   35\n\n  Descriptive Sketches                                            i  309\n\n  Desultory Stanzas                                              vi  382\n\n  Detraction which followed the Publication of a certain\n      Poem, On the                                               vi  212\n\n  Devil's Bridge, To the Torrent at the                         vii  129\n\n  Devotional Incitements                                        vii  314\n\n  Dion                                                           vi  116\n\n  Dissensions                                                   vii   10\n\n  Distractions                                                  vii   68\n\n  Dog, Incident characteristic of a favourite                   iii   48\n\n  Dog, Tribute to the Memory of the same                        iii   49\n\n  Donnerdale, The Plain of                                       vi  251\n\n  Dora, To (A little onward)                                     vi  132\n\n  Dora, To my Niece                                            viii  297\n\n  Douglas Bay, Isle of Man, On entering                         vii  360\n\n  Dover, Composed in the Valley near                             ii  341\n\n  Dover, Near                                                    ii  343\n\n  Dover, The Valley of (Two Sonnets)                             vi  380\n\n  Druidical Excommunication                                     vii    7\n\n  Druids, Trepidation of the                                    vii    6\n\n  Duddon, The River                                              vi  225\n\n  Dungeon-Ghyll Force                                            ii  138\n\n  Dunollie Castle (Eagles)                                      vii  292\n\n  Dunolly Castle, On Revisiting                                 vii  371\n\n  Dunolly Eagle, The                                            vii  372\n\n  Duty, Ode to                                                  iii   37\n\n  Dyer, To the Poet John                                         iv  273\n\n  Eagle and the Dove, The                                      viii  309\n\n  Eagles (Dunollie Castle)                                      vii  292\n\n  Eagle, The Dunolly                                            vii  372\n\n  Easter Sunday, Composed on                                     vi  194\n\n  Ecclesiastical Sonnets                                        vii    2\n\n  Echo, The Mountain                                             iv   25\n\n  Echo upon the Gemmi                                            vi  360\n\n  Eclipse of the Sun, The                                        vi  345\n\n  Eden, The River (Cumberland)                                  vii  385\n\n  Edward VI.                                                    vii   59\n\n  Edward VI. signing the Warrant                                vii   60\n\n  Egremont Castle, The Horn of                                   iv   12\n\n  Egyptian Maid, The                                            vii  252\n\n  Ejaculation                                                   vii  107\n\n  Elegiac Musings (Coleorton Hall)                              vii  269\n\n  Elegiac Stanzas (Goddard)                                      vi  371\n\n  Elegiac Stanzas (Mrs. Fermor)                                 vii  132\n\n  Elegiac Stanzas (Peele Castle)                                iii   54\n\n  Elegiac Verses (John Wordsworth)                              iii   58\n\n  Elizabeth                                                     vii   65\n\n  Ellen Irwin                                                    ii  124\n\n  Emigrant French Clergy                                        vii  101\n\n  Emigrant Mother, The                                           ii  284\n\n  Eminent Reformers (Two Sonnets)                               vii   66\n\n  Emma's Dell                                                    ii  153\n\n  Engelberg                                                      vi  316\n\n  Enghien, Duke d'                                               vi  114\n\n  \"England! the time is come when thou should'st wean\"           ii  432\n\n  England, Afflictions of                                       vii   72\n\n  Enterprise, To                                                 vi  218\n\n  Episcopacy, American                                          vii   85\n\n  Epistle to Sir George Beaumont                                 iv  256\n\n  Epistle to Sir George Beaumont, Upon perusing the foregoing    iv  267\n\n  Epitaph, A Poet's                                              ii   75\n\n  Epitaph in the Chapel-yard of Langdale                       viii  120\n\n  Epitaphs translated from Chiabrera                             iv  229\n\n  \"Ere with cold beads of midnight dew\"                         vii  145\n\n  \"Even as a dragon's eye that feels the stress\"                 vi   69\n\n  Evening of extraordinary splendour, Composed upon an           vi  176\n\n  Evening Star over Grasmere Water, To the                     viii  263\n\n  Evening Walk, An                                                i    4\n\n  Event in Ancient History, On a celebrated (Two Sonnets)        iv  242\n\n  Excursion, The                                                  v    1\n\n  Expostulation and Reply                                         i  272\n\n  Fact, A, and an Imagination                                    vi  130\n\n  Faery Chasm, The                                               vi  241\n\n  Fancy                                                          iv   36\n\n  Fancy and Tradition                                           vii  306\n\n  Fancy, Hints for the                                           vi  242\n\n  Farewell, A                                                    ii  324\n\n  Farewell Lines                                                vii  155\n\n  Farewell (Tour, 1833)                                         vii  341\n\n  Farmer of Tilsbury Vale, The                                   ii  147\n\n  Far-Terrace, The                                              vii  154\n\n  Father, The Childless                                          ii  181\n\n  Fathers, Anecdote for                                           i  234\n\n  Fermor, Mrs. (Cenotaph)                                       vii  135\n\n  Fermor, Mrs. (Elegiac Stanzas)                                vii  132\n\n  Fidelity                                                      iii   44\n\n  Filial Piety                                                  vii  231\n\n  Fir Grove (John Wordsworth)                                   iii   66\n\n  Fishes in a Vase, Gold and Silver                             vii  214\n\n  Fish-women                                                     vi  286\n\n  Flamininus, T. Quintius (Two Sonnets)                          iv  242\n\n  Fleming, To the Lady (Rydal Chapel), (Two Poems)              vii  109\n\n  Floating Island (D. W.)                                      viii  125\n\n  Florence (Four Sonnets)                                      viii   78\n\n  Flower Garden, A (Coleorton)                                  vii  125\n\n  Flowers                                                        vi  235\n\n  Flowers (Cave of Staffa)                                      vii  378\n\n  Flowers in the Island of Madeira                             viii  177\n\n  \"Fly, some kind Harbinger, to Grasmere-dale!\"                  ii  419\n\n  Foresight, or Children gathering Flowers                       ii  298\n\n  Forms of Prayer at Sea                                        vii   97\n\n  Forsaken Indian Woman, Complaint of a                           i  275\n\n  Forsaken, The                                                 iii   10\n\n  Fort Fuentes                                                   vi  328\n\n  Fountain, The                                                  ii   91\n\n  Fox, Mr., Lines composed on the expected death of              iv   47\n\n  France, Sky-prospect from the Plain of                         vi  377\n\n  Francesco Pozzobonnelli                                        iv  236\n\n  French Army in Russia (Two Poems)                              vi  107\n\n  French Clergy, Emigrant                                       vii  101\n\n  French Revolution                                              ii   34\n\n  French Revolution, In allusion to Histories of the\n      (Three Sonnets)                                          viii  130\n\n  French Royalist, Feelings of a                                 vi  114\n\n  Friend, To a (Banks of the Derwent)                           vii  348\n\n  Funeral Service                                                vi   97\n\n  Furness Abbey, At                                            viii  168\n\n  Furness Abbey, At                                            viii  176\n\n  Gemmi, Echo upon the                                           vi  360\n\n  General Fast, Upon the late (1832)                            vii  323\n\n  George the Third (November, 1813)                              iv  282\n\n  George the Third, On the death of                              vi  209\n\n  Germans on the Heights of Hockheim, The                        vi  216\n\n  Germany, Written in                                            ii   73\n\n  Gillies, Margaret, To (Two Poems)                            viii  114\n\n  Gillies, Margaret                                            viii  306\n\n  Gillies, Robert Pearce                                         vi   33\n\n  Gipsies                                                        iv   65\n\n  Glad Tidings                                                  vii   15\n\n  Gleaner, The                                                  vii  202\n\n  Glen-Almain, or, The Narrow Glen                               ii  393\n\n  Glencroe, At the Head of                                      vii  295\n\n  Glowworm, The                                                viii  231\n\n  Goddard, Elegiac Stanzas                                       vi  371\n\n  Gold and Silver Fishes in a Vase (Two Poems)                  vii  214\n\n  Goody Blake and Harry Gill                                      i  253\n\n  Gordale                                                        vi  185\n\n  Grace Darling                                                viii  310\n\n  Grasmere, Departure from the Vale of (August 1803)             ii  377\n\n  Grasmere, Home at                                            viii  235\n\n  Grasmere, Inscription on the Island at                         ii  213\n\n  Grasmere, Return to                                            ii  419\n\n  Grasmere Lake, Composed by the side of                         iv   73\n\n  Grave-stone, A (Worcester Cathedral)                          vii  201\n\n  \"Great men have been among us; hands that penned\"              ii  346\n\n  Green, George and Sarah                                      viii  266\n\n  Green Linnet, The                                              ii  367\n\n  Greenock                                                      vii  383\n\n  Greta, To the River                                           vii  344\n\n  \"Grief, thou hast lost an ever ready friend\"                   vi  195\n\n  Grotto, Written in a                                         viii  234\n\n  Guernica, Oak of                                               iv  245\n\n  Guilt and Sorrow                                                i   77\n\n  Gunpowder Plot                                                vii   69\n\n  Gustavus IV                                                    iv  227\n\n  Gwerndwffnant, Holiday at                                    viii  284\n\n  H. C., Six years old, To                                       ii  351\n\n  Hambleton Hills, After a journey across the                    ii  349\n\n  Happy Warrior, Character of the                                iv    7\n\n  Hart-Leap Well                                                 ii  128\n\n  Hart's-Horn Tree                                              vii  305\n\n  Haunted Tree, The                                              vi  199\n\n  Hawkshead, Written as a School Exercise at                   viii  211\n\n  Hawkshead School, In anticipation of leaving                    i    1\n\n  Hawkshead School, Address to the Scholars of                   ii   84\n\n  Haydon, To B. R.                                               vi   61\n\n  Haydon, To B. R. (Picture of Napoleon Buonaparte)             vii  276\n\n  Heidelberg, Castle of (Hymn for Boatmen)                       vi  301\n\n  Helvellyn, To ----, on her first ascent of                     vi  135\n\n  Henry Eighth, Portrait of                                     vii  166\n\n  Her eyes are wild                                               i  258\n\n  Hermitage (St. Herbert's Island)                               ii  210\n\n  Hermitage, Near the Spring of the                              vi  175\n\n  Hermit's Cell, Inscriptions in and near                        vi  170\n\n  Highland Boy, The Blind                                        ii  420\n\n  Highland Broach, The                                          vii  310\n\n  Highland Girl, To a                                            ii  389\n\n  Highland Hut                                                  vii  296\n\n  Hint from the Mountains                                        vi  156\n\n  Hints for the Fancy                                            vi  242\n\n  Historian, Plea for the                                      viii   61\n\n  Hoffer                                                         iv  213\n\n  Hogg, James, Extempore Effusion upon the death of            viii   24\n\n  Holiday at Gwerndwffnant                                     viii  284\n\n  Home at Grasmere                                             viii  235\n\n  Horn of Egremont Castle, The                                   iv   12\n\n  Howard, Mrs., Monument of (Wetheral), (Two Sonnets)           vii  386\n\n  Humanity                                                      vii  222\n\n  Hutchinson, Sarah, To                                         vii  162\n\n  Hymn for Boatmen (Heidelberg)                                  vi  301\n\n  Hymn, The Labourer's Noon-day                                 vii  408\n\n  I.F., To                                                     viii  307\n\n  Idiot Boy, The                                                  i  283\n\n  Illustrated Books and Newspapers                             viii  184\n\n  Illustration (The Jung-Frau)                                  vii   70\n\n  Imagination                                                    vi   67\n\n  Immortality, Ode, Intimations of                             viii  189\n\n  Indian Woman, Complaint of a Forsaken                           i  275\n\n  Infant Daughter, Address to my                                iii   14\n\n  Infant M---- M----, To the                                    vii  170\n\n  Infant, The Cottager to her                                   iii   74\n\n  Influence Abused                                              vii   26\n\n  Influence of Natural Objects                                   ii   66\n\n  Influences, Other                                             vii   19\n\n  Inglewood Forest, Suggested by a View in                      vii  304\n\n  Inscription for a Monument in Crosthwaite Church (Southey)   viii  157\n\n  Inscription for a Stone (Rydal Mount)                         vii  269\n\n  Inscriptions (Coleorton)                                       iv   74\n\n  Inscriptions (Hermit's Cell)                                   vi  170\n\n  Installation Ode                                             viii  320\n\n  Interdict, An                                                 vii   32\n\n  Introduction (Ecclesiastical Sonnets)                         vii    4\n\n  Introduction (Prelude)                                        iii  132\n\n  Invasion, Lines on the expected                                ii  437\n\n  Inversneyde                                                    ii  389\n\n  Invocation to the Earth                                        vi   95\n\n  Iona (Two Sonnets)                                            vii  379\n\n  Iona, The Black Stones of                                     vii  381\n\n  Isle of Man (Two Sonnets)                                     vii  362\n\n  Isle of Man, At Bala-Sala                                     vii  365\n\n  Isle of Man, At Sea off the                                   vii  359\n\n  Isle of Man, By the Sea-shore                                 vii  361\n\n  Isle of Man (Douglas Bay)                                     vii  360\n\n  Italian Itinerant, The                                         vi  338\n\n  Italy, After leaving (Two Sonnets)                           viii   84\n\n  \"It is no Spirit who from heaven hath flown\"                   ii  375\n\n  \"I watch, and long have watched, with calm regret\"             vi  197\n\n  Jedborough, The Matron of                                      ii  414\n\n  Jewish Family, A                                              vii  195\n\n  Joanna, To                                                     ii  157\n\n  Joanna H., Lines addressed to                                viii  282\n\n  Joan of Kent, Warrant for Execution of                        vii   60\n\n  Jones, Rev. Robert                                             vi  257\n\n  Journey Renewed                                                vi  257\n\n  June, 1820                                                     vi  214\n\n  Jung-Frau, The, and the Fall of the Rhine                     vii   70\n\n  Kendal, Upon hearing of the death of the Vicar of              vi   40\n\n  Kendal and Windermere Railway, On the projected              viii  166\n\n  Kent, To the Men of (October, 1803)                            ii  434\n\n  Kilchurn Castle, Address to                                    ii  400\n\n  Killicranky, In the Pass of                                    ii  435\n\n  King's College Chapel, Cambridge, Inside of (Three Sonnets)   vii  106\n\n  Kirkstone, The Pass of                                         vi  158\n\n  Kirtle, The Braes of                                           ii  124\n\n  Kitten and Falling Leaves, The                                iii   16\n\n  Laborer's Noon-day Hymn, The                                  vii  408\n\n  Lady, To a, upon Drawings she had made of Flowers in\n      Madeira                                                  viii  177\n\n  Lady E. B., and the Hon. Miss P., To the                      vii  128\n\n  Lamb, Charles, Written after the death of                    viii   17\n\n  Lancaster Castle, Suggested by the view of                   viii  103\n\n  Langdale, Epitaph in the Chapel-yard of                      viii  120\n\n  Laodamia                                                       vi    1\n\n  Last of the Flock, The                                          i  279\n\n  Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci, The                         vi  343\n\n  Latimer and Ridley                                            vii   61\n\n  Latitudinarianism                                             vii   76\n\n  Laud                                                          vii   71\n\n  Leonardo da Vinci, The Last Supper                             vi  343\n\n  Lesbia                                                       viii   32\n\n  Liberty (Gold and Silver Fishes)                              vii  216\n\n  Liberty (Tyrolese Sonnets)                                     iv  214\n\n  Liberty, Obligations of Civil to Religious                    vii   81\n\n  Liege, Between Namur and                                       vi  293\n\n  Lines, composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey                ii   51\n\n  Lines composed on the expected death of Mr. Fox                iv   47\n\n  Lines, Farewell                                               vii  155\n\n  Lines left upon a Seat in a Yew-tree                            i  108\n\n  Lines on the expected Invasion, 1803                           ii  437\n\n  Lines suggested by a Portrait from the Pencil of F. Stone\n     (Two Poems)                                               viii    1\n\n  Lines written as a School Exercise at Hawkshead              viii  211\n\n  Lines written in Early Spring                                   i  268\n\n  Lines written in the Album of the Countess of Lonsdale       viii    8\n\n  Lines written upon a Stone, upon one of the Islands at Rydal   ii   63\n\n  Lines written upon hearing of the death of the late Vicar\n      of Kendal                                                  vi   40\n\n  Lines written while sailing in a Boat at Evening                i   32\n\n  Liturgy, The                                                  vii   88\n\n  Loch Etive, Composed in the Glen of                           vii  291\n\n  Lombardy, In                                                 viii   83\n\n  London, Written in (1802), (Two Sonnets)                       ii  344\n\n  Longest Day, The                                               vi  153\n\n  Long Meg and her Daughters                                    vii  390\n\n  Lonsdale, The Countess of (Album)                            viii    8\n\n  Lonsdale, To the Earl of                                        v   20\n\n  Lonsdale, To the Earl of                                      vii  392\n\n  Louisa                                                         ii  362\n\n  Love, The Birth of                                           viii  215\n\n  Love lies bleeding (Two Poems)                               viii  148\n\n  Loving and Liking                                             vii  320\n\n  Lowther                                                       vii  391\n\n  Lowther, To the Lady Mary                                      vi  211\n\n  Lucca Giordano                                               viii  183\n\n  Lucy Gray; or, Solitude                                        ii   99\n\n  Lucy (Three Poems)                                             ii   78\n\n  Lucy (Three years she grew)                                    ii   81\n\n  Lycoris, Ode to (Two Poems)                                    vi  145\n\n  M. H., To                                                      ii  167\n\n  Madeira, Flowers in the Island of                            viii  177\n\n  Malham Cove                                                    vi  184\n\n  Manse, On the sight of a (Scotland)                           vii  286\n\n  March, Written in                                              ii  293\n\n  Margaret ----, The Affliction of                              iii    7\n\n  Mariner, By a Retired                                         vii  364\n\n  \"Mark the concentred hazels that enclose\"                      vi   71\n\n  Marriage Ceremony                                             vii   94\n\n  Marriage of a Friend, Composed on the Eve of the               iv  276\n\n  Marshall, To Cordelia                                         vii  400\n\n  Mary Queen of Scots, Captivity of                              vi  191\n\n  Mary Queen of Scots, Lament of                                 vi  162\n\n  Mary Queen of Scots (Workington)                              vii  349\n\n  Maternal Grief                                                 iv  248\n\n  Matron of Jedborough, The                                      ii  414\n\n  Matthew                                                        ii   87\n\n  May Morning, Composed on (1838)                              viii   97\n\n  May Morning, Ode composed on                                  vii  146\n\n  May, To                                                       vii  148\n\n  Meditation                                                    vii  401\n\n  Memory                                                        vii  117\n\n  \"Men of the Western World!\"                                  viii  112\n\n  Mental Affliction                                            viii   36\n\n  Merry England                                                 vii  343\n\n  Michael                                                        ii  215\n\n  Michael Angelo, From the Italian of (Three Sonnets)           iii  380\n\n  Michael Angelo, Translation from                             viii  265\n\n  \"Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour\"                ii  346\n\n  Missions and Travels                                          vii   23\n\n  Monasteries, Dissolution of the (Three Sonnets)               vii   52\n\n  Monasteries, Saxon                                            vii   22\n\n  Monastery, Cistertian                                         vii   37\n\n  Monastery of Old Bangor                                       vii   13\n\n  Monastic Power, Abuse of                                      vii   50\n\n  Monastic Voluptuousness                                       vii   51\n\n  Monkhouse, Mary                                               vii  170\n\n  Monks and Schoolmen                                           vii   39\n\n  Monument of Mrs. Howard (Two Sonnets)                         vii  386\n\n  Monument (Long Meg and her Daughters)                         vii  390\n\n  Moon, The (The Shepherd, looking eastward)                     vi   68\n\n  Moon, The (With how sad steps, O Moon)                         iv   38\n\n  Moon (The Crescent-moon, the Star of Love)                   viii  127\n\n  Moon, The (Sea-side)                                         viii   13\n\n  Moon, The (Rydal)                                            viii   15\n\n  Moon, The (Who but is pleased to watch)                      viii  184\n\n  Moon, The (How beautiful the Queen of Night)                 viii  188\n\n  Moon, The (Once I could hail)                                 vii  152\n\n  Morning Exercise, A                                           vii  178\n\n  Mosgiel Farm (Burns)                                          vii  383\n\n  Mother, The Mad                                                 i  258\n\n  Mother's Return, The                                           iv   63\n\n  Mountains, Hint from the                                       vi  156\n\n  Mull, In the Sound of                                         vii  293\n\n  Music, Power of                                                iv   20\n\n  Mutability                                                    vii  100\n\n  Naming of Places, Poems on the                                 ii  153\n\n  Namur and Liege, Between                                       vi  293\n\n  Natural Objects, Influence of                                  ii   66\n\n  \"Near Anio's stream, I spied a gentle Dove\"                  viii   65\n\n  Needlecase in the form of a Harp, On seeing a                 vii  157\n\n  <DW64> Woman                                                    ii  342\n\n  Newspaper, Composed after reading a                           vii  290\n\n  Nightingale, The                                               vi  214\n\n  Nightingale, The Cuckoo and the                                ii  250\n\n  Night Piece, A                                                  i  227\n\n  Night-thought, A                                             viii   88\n\n  Nith, On the Banks of                                          ii  383\n\n  Norman Boy, The                                              viii  132\n\n  Norman Conquest, The                                          vii   28\n\n  North Wales, Composed among the Ruins of a Castle in          vii  131\n\n  Nortons, The Fate of the                                       iv  100\n\n  November, 1806                                                 iv   49\n\n  November, 1813                                                 iv  282\n\n  November 1 (1815)                                              vi   63\n\n  Nunnery                                                       vii  388\n\n  Nun's Well, Brigham                                           vii  347\n\n  Nutting                                                        ii   70\n\n  Oak and the Broom, The                                         ii  174\n\n  Oak of Guernica                                                iv  245\n\n  Octogenarian, To an                                          viii  185\n\n  Ode, Installation                                            viii  320\n\n  Ode, Vernal                                                    vi  138\n\n  Ode (Who rises on the Banks of Seine)                          vi  104\n\n  Ode (1814) (When the soft hand)                                vi   96\n\n  Ode (1815) (Imagination--ne'er before content)                 vi   88\n\n  Ode, The Morning of the Day of Thanksgiving                    vi   74\n\n  Ode to Duty                                                   iii   37\n\n  Ode to Lycoris (Two Poems)                                     vi  145\n\n  Ode composed on May Morning                                   vii  146\n\n  Ode, Intimations of Immortality                              viii  189\n\n  Oker Hill in Darley Dale, A Tradition of                      vii  230\n\n  \"O Nightingale! thou surely art\"                               iv   67\n\n  \"On Nature's invitation do I come\"                             ii  118\n\n  Open Prospect                                                  vi  243\n\n  Ossian, Written in a blank leaf of Macpherson's               vii  373\n\n  Our Lady of the Snow                                           vi  318\n\n  Oxford, May 30, 1820 (Two Sonnets)                             vi  213\n\n  Painter, To a (Two Sonnets)                                  viii  114\n\n  Palafox                                                        iv  222\n\n  Palafox                                                        iv  228\n\n  Palafox                                                        iv  240\n\n  Papal Abuses                                                  vii   33\n\n  Papal Dominion                                                vii   34\n\n  Papal Power                                                   vii   36\n\n  Papal Unity                                                   vii   42\n\n  Parrot and the Wren, The                                      vii  141\n\n  Parsonage in Oxfordshire, A                                    vi  217\n\n  Pastoral Character                                            vii   87\n\n  Patriotic Sympathies                                          vii   74\n\n  Paulinus                                                      vii   15\n\n  Peele Castle, Suggested by a Picture of                       iii   54\n\n  Pelion and Ossa                                                ii  238\n\n  Pennsylvanians, To the                                       viii  179\n\n  Persecution                                                   vii    8\n\n  Personal Talk                                                  iv   30\n\n  Persuasion                                                    vii   16\n\n  Peter Bell                                                     ii    1\n\n  Peter Bell, On the detraction which followed                   vi  212\n\n  Pet-Lamb, The                                                  ii  142\n\n  Philoctetes                                                   vii  167\n\n  Picture, Upon the sight of a beautiful                         iv  271\n\n  Piety, Decay of                                               vii  163\n\n  Piety, Filial                                                 vii  231\n\n  Pilgrim Fathers (Two Sonnets)                                 vii   84\n\n  Pilgrim's Dream, The                                           vi  167\n\n  Pillar of Trajan, The                                         vii  137\n\n  Places of Worship                                             vii   87\n\n  Plea for Authors, A                                          viii   99\n\n  Plea for the Historian                                       viii   61\n\n  Poet and the Caged Turtledove, The                            vii  265\n\n  Poet's Dream, The                                            viii  135\n\n  Poet's Epitaph, A                                              ii   75\n\n  Poet to his Grandchild, A                                    viii  305\n\n  Point at issue, The                                           vii   58\n\n  Point Rash Judgment                                            ii  163\n\n  Poor Robin                                                   viii  116\n\n  Poor Susan, The Reverie of                                      i  226\n\n  Popery, Revival of                                            vii   61\n\n  Portrait, Lines suggested by a (Two Poems)                   viii    1\n\n  Portrait of I.F., On a                                       viii  306\n\n  Portrait of the Duke of Wellington, On a                     viii  118\n\n  Portrait, To the Author's                                     vii  318\n\n  Postscript (John Dyer)                                         vi  264\n\n  Power of Music                                                 iv   20\n\n  Power of Sound, On the                                        vii  203\n\n  Prayer at Sea, Forms of                                       vii   97\n\n  Prayer, The Force of                                           iv  204\n\n  Prelude, Prefixed to \"Poems of Early and Late Years\"         viii  123\n\n  Prelude, The                                                  iii  121\n\n  Presentiments                                                 vii  266\n\n  Primrose of the Rock, The                                     vii  274\n\n  Prioress' Tale, The                                            ii  240\n\n  Processions (Chamouny)                                         vi  363\n\n  Prophecy, A. February, 1807                                    iv   59\n\n  Punishment of Death, Sonnets upon the                        viii  103\n\n  Queen, To the                                                viii  319\n\n  Quillinan, To Rothay                                          vii  171\n\n  Railway, On the projected Kendal and Windermere              viii  166\n\n  Railways, etc.                                                vii  389\n\n  Rainbow, The                                                   ii  291\n\n  Ranz des Vaches, On hearing the                                vi  326\n\n  Recovery                                                      vii    9\n\n  Redbreast chasing the Butterfly, The                           ii  295\n\n  Redbreast, The                                                vii  410\n\n  Redbreast, To a                                              viii   38\n\n  Reflections                                                   vii   57\n\n  Reformation, General view of the Troubles of the              vii   64\n\n  Reformers, Eminent (Two Sonnets)                              vii   66\n\n  Reformers in Exile, English                                   vii   64\n\n  Regrets                                                       vii   99\n\n  Regrets, Imaginative                                          vii   56\n\n  Repentance                                                    iii   11\n\n  Reproof                                                       vii   21\n\n  Resolution and Independence                                    ii  312\n\n  Rest and be thankful                                          vii  295\n\n  Resting-place, The (Two Sonnets)                               vi  254\n\n  Retirement                                                    vii  165\n\n  Return                                                         vi  248\n\n  Return, The Mother's                                           iv   63\n\n  Reverie of Poor Susan                                           i  226\n\n  Rhine, Author's Voyage down the                              viii  273\n\n  Rhine, Upon the Banks of the                                   vi  299\n\n  Richard I                                                     vii   31\n\n  Richmond Hill (Thomson)                                        vi  214\n\n  Ridley, Latimer and                                           vii   61\n\n  Robinson, To Henry Crabb (Tour in Italy, 1837)               viii   41\n\n  Rob Roy's Grave                                                ii  403\n\n  Rock, Inscribed upon a                                         vi  173\n\n  Rocks, Two heath-clad                                        viii  170\n\n  Rocky Stream, Composed on the Banks of a                       vi  208\n\n  Rocky Stream, On the Banks of a                              viii  188\n\n  Rogers, Samuel, To                                            vii  280\n\n  Roman Antiquities                                            viii   33\n\n  Roman Antiquities (Old Penrith)                               vii  308\n\n  Roman Refinements, Temptations from                           vii   10\n\n  Romance of the Water Lily                                     vii  252\n\n  Rome (Two Sonnets)                                           viii   62\n\n  Rome, At (Three Sonnets)                                     viii   59\n\n  Rome, The Pine of Monte Mario at                             viii   58\n\n  Roslin Chapel, Composed in                                    vii  287\n\n  Rotha Q----, To                                               vii  171\n\n  Ruins of a Castle in North Wales                              vii  131\n\n  Rural Architecture                                             ii  206\n\n  Rural Ceremony                                                vii   98\n\n  Rural Illusions                                               vii  319\n\n  Russian Fugitive, The                                         vii  239\n\n  Ruth                                                           ii  104\n\n  Rydal, At, on May Morning (1838)                             viii   94\n\n  Rydal Chapel                                                  vii  109\n\n  Rydal, Written upon a Stone at                                 ii   63\n\n  Rydal, In the woods of                                        vii  176\n\n  Rydal Mere, By the side of                                    vii  403\n\n  Rydal Mount, Inscription for a Stone in the Grounds of        vii  269\n\n  S. H., To                                                     vii  162\n\n  Sacheverel                                                    vii   82\n\n  Sacrament                                                     vii   93\n\n  Sailor's Mother, The                                           ii  270\n\n  Saint Bees' Head, In a Steam-boat off                         vii  351\n\n  Saint Catherine of Ledbury                                   viii   34\n\n  Saint Gothard (Ranz des Vaches on the Pass of)                 vi  326\n\n  Saint Herbert's Island, Derwent-water (Hermitage)              ii  210\n\n  Saints                                                        vii   54\n\n  Salinero, Ambrosio                                             iv  233\n\n  Salisbury Plain, Incidents upon                                 i   77\n\n  San Salvador, The Church of                                    vi  332\n\n  Saxon Clergy, Primitive                                       vii   19\n\n  Saxon Conquest                                                vii   12\n\n  Saxon Monasteries                                             vii   22\n\n  Saxons                                                        vii   29\n\n  \"Say, what is Honour?--'Tis the finest sense\"                  iv  225\n\n  Schill                                                         iv  226\n\n  Scholars of the Village School of ----, Address to the         ii   84\n\n  School, Composed in anticipation of leaving                     i    1\n\n  School Exercise at Hawkshead, Written As a                   viii  211\n\n  Schwytz                                                        vi  324\n\n  Scottish Covenanters, Persecution of the                      vii   79\n\n  Scott, Sir Walter, Departure of                               vii  284\n\n  Sea-shore, Composed by the                                    vii  340\n\n  Sea-side, Composed by the                                      ii  330\n\n  Sea-side, By the                                              vii  338\n\n  Seasons, Thoughts on the                                      vii  229\n\n  Seathwaite Chapel                                              vi  249\n\n  Seclusion (Two Sonnets)                                       vii   20\n\n  Sellon, To Miss                                              viii  325\n\n  September 1, 1802                                              ii  342\n\n  September, 1815                                                vi   64\n\n  September, 1819                                                vi  201\n\n  Seven Sisters, The                                             ii  204\n\n  Sexton, To a                                                   ii   95\n\n  Sheep-washing                                                  vi  253\n\n  Shepherd-Boys, The Idle                                        ii  138\n\n  \"She was a Phantom of delight\"                                iii    1\n\n  Simon Lee                                                       i  262\n\n  Simplon Pass, Column lying in the                              vi  356\n\n  Simplon Pass, Stanza's composed in the                         vi  357\n\n  Simplon Pass, The                                              ii   69\n\n  Sister, To my                                                   i  270\n\n  Skiddaw                                                        ii  238\n\n  Sky-lark, To a                                                iii   42\n\n  Sky-lark, To a                                                vii  143\n\n  Sky-prospect--From the Plain of France                         vi  377\n\n  Sleep, To (Three Sonnets)                                      iv   42\n\n  Snow-drop, To a                                                vi  191\n\n  Sobieski, John                                                 vi  110\n\n  Solitary Reaper, The                                           ii  397\n\n  Solitude (The Duddon)                                          vi  245\n\n  Somnambulist, The                                             vii  393\n\n  Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle                           iv   82\n\n  Song for the Spinning Wheel                                    iv  275\n\n  Song for the Wandering Jew                                     ii  182\n\n  Sonnet, The                                                   vii  163\n\n  Sonnet, June, 1820 (Fame tells of groves)                      vi  214\n\n  Sonnet, September 1, 1802 (We had a female Passenger)          ii  342\n\n  Sonnet, September, 1802 (Inland, within a hollow vale)         ii  343\n\n  Sonnet, September, 1815 (While not a leaf seems faded)         vi   64\n\n  Sonnet, October, 1803 (One might believe)                      ii  430\n\n  Sonnet, October, 1803 (These times strike monied worldlings)   ii  432\n\n  Sonnet, October, 1803 (When, looking on the present face\n      of things)                                                 ii  433\n\n  Sonnet, November, 1806 (Another year!)                         iv   49\n\n  Sonnet, November, 1813 (Now that all hearts are glad)          iv  282\n\n  Sonnet, November 1, 1815 (How clear, how keen)                 vi   63\n\n  Sonnet, November, 1836 (Even so for me a Vision)             viii   37\n\n  Sound of Mull, In the                                         vii  293\n\n  Sound, The Power of                                           vii  203\n\n  Southey, Edith May                                            vii  157\n\n  Southey, (Inscription for monument)                          viii  157\n\n  Spade of a Friend, To the                                      iv    2\n\n  Spaniards (Three Sonnets)                                      iv  246\n\n  Spanish Guerillas, The French and the                          iv  248\n\n  Spanish Guerillas                                              iv  253\n\n  Sparrow's Nest, The                                            ii  236\n\n  Spinning Wheel, Song for the                                   iv  275\n\n  Sponsors                                                      vii   90\n\n  Spring, Lines written in Early                                  i  268\n\n  Staffa, Cave of (Four Sonnets)                                vii  376\n\n  Star and the Glow-worm, The                                    vi  167\n\n  Star-gazers                                                    iv   22\n\n  Staubbach, On approaching the                                  vi  306\n\n  Steamboats, Viaducts, and Railways                            vii  389\n\n  Stepping-stones, The (Two Sonnets)                             vi  239\n\n  Stepping Westward                                              ii  396\n\n  Stone, F., Lines suggested by a Portrait from the Pencil\n      of (Two Poems)                                           viii    1\n\n  Storm, Composed during a                                       vi  187\n\n  Stray Pleasures                                                iv   18\n\n  Stream, Composed on the Banks of a Rocky                       vi  208\n\n  Stream, On the Banks of a Rocky                              viii  188\n\n  Stream, Tributary                                              vi  250\n\n  Streams (The Duddon)                                           vi  255\n\n  Streams, The unremitting voice of nightly                    viii  187\n\n  Swan, The                                                      vi  198\n\n  Sweden, The King of                                            ii  338\n\n  Sweden, The King of                                            iv  227\n\n  Switzerland, Subjugation of                                    iv   60\n\n  Tables Turned, The                                              i  274\n\n  Tell, Effusion in presence of the Tower of                     vi  321\n\n  Temptations from Roman Refinements                            vii   10\n\n  Thanksgiving after Childbirth                                 vii   95\n\n  Thanksgiving Ode                                               vi   74\n\n  \"The leaves that rustled on this oak-crowned hill\"            vii  406\n\n  \"There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear\"                 ii  431\n\n  \"There is a little unpretending Rill\"                          iv   53\n\n  There was a Boy                                                ii   57\n\n  \"The Stars are mansions built by Nature's hand\"                vi  210\n\n  \"This Lawn, a carpet all alive\"                               vii  228\n\n  Thomson's \"Castle of Indolence,\" Stanzas written in            ii  305\n\n  Thorn, The                                                      i  239\n\n  Thrasymene, Near the Lake of (Two Sonnets)                   viii   66\n\n  Thrush, The (Two Sonnets)                                    viii   93\n\n  Thun, Memorial near the Lake of                                vi  310\n\n  Tillbrook, Rev. Samuel                                         vi   65\n\n  Tilsbury Vale, The Farmer of                                   ii  147\n\n  Tintern Abbey, Lines, composed a few miles above               ii   51\n\n  To ---- in her seventieth year                                vii  172\n\n  To ---- Upon the birth of her First-born Child                vii  328\n\n  To ---- (Mrs. Wordsworth), (Two Poems)                        vii  121\n\n  To ---- (Look at the fate of summer flowers)                  vii  124\n\n  To ---- (Miscellaneous Sonnets--Dedication)                   vii  159\n\n  To ---- (Miscellaneous Sonnets--Conclusion)                   vii  177\n\n  To ---- (Wait, prithee, wait!)                               viii   32\n\n  To ---- on her First Ascent of Helvellyn                       vi  135\n\n  To ---- (The Haunted Tree)                                     vi  199\n\n  Torrent at Devil's Bridge                                     vii  129\n\n  Tour among the Alps (1791-2), (Descriptive Sketches)            i   35\n\n  Tour among the Alps (1791-2), (Descriptive Sketches)            i  309\n\n  Tour in Italy (1837), Memorials of a                         viii   39\n\n  Tour in Scotland (1803), Memorials of a                        ii  377\n\n  Tour in Scotland (1814), Memorials of a                        vi   15\n\n  Tour in Scotland (1831)                                       vii  278\n\n  Tour in the Summer of 1833                                    vii  341\n\n  Tour on the Continent (1820), Memorials of a                   vi  285\n\n  Toussaint L'Ouverture, To                                      ii  339\n\n  Tradition                                                      vi  253\n\n  Tradition, American                                            vi  246\n\n  Tradition, Fancy and                                          vii  306\n\n  Tradition of Oker Hill                                        vii  230\n\n  Trajan, The Pillar of                                         vii  137\n\n  Translation of the Bible                                      vii   58\n\n  Transubstantiation                                            vii   44\n\n  Triad, The                                                    vii  181\n\n  Tributary Stream                                               vi  250\n\n  Troilus and Cresida                                            ii  264\n\n  Trosachs, The                                                 vii  288\n\n  Turtledove, The Poet and the Caged                            vii  265\n\n  Twilight                                                       vi   67\n\n  Two April Mornings, The                                        ii   89\n\n  Two Thieves, The                                               ii   60\n\n  Tyndrum, Suggested at                                         vii  294\n\n  Tynwald Hill                                                  vii  366\n\n  Tyrolese, Feelings of the                                      iv  215\n\n  Tyrolese, On the final submission of the                       iv  217\n\n  Tyrolese Sonnets                                               iv  213\n\n  Ulpha, Kirk of                                                 vi  260\n\n  Uncertainty                                                   vii    7\n\n  Utilitarians, To the                                         viii  299\n\n  Valedictory Sonnet (Miscellaneous Sonnets)                   viii  102\n\n  Vallombrosa, At                                              viii   75\n\n  Vaudois, The (Two Sonnets)                                    vii   44\n\n  Vaudracour and Julia                                          iii   24\n\n  Venetian Republic, On the Extinction of                        ii  336\n\n  Venice, Scene in                                              vii   34\n\n  Venus, To the Planet (January 1838)                          viii   92\n\n  Venus, To the Planet (Loch Lomond)                            vii  299\n\n  Vernal Ode                                                     vi  138\n\n  Vienna, Siege of, raised by John Sobieski                      vi  110\n\n  Virgin, The                                                   vii   54\n\n  Visitation of the Sick                                        vii   96\n\n  Waggoner, The                                                 iii   76\n\n  Waldenses                                                     vii   46\n\n  Wallace's Tower                                                vi   26\n\n  Walton, Isaac                                                  vi  190\n\n  Walton's Book of Lives                                        vii   77\n\n  Wandering Jew, Song for the                                    ii  182\n\n  Wansfell                                                     viii  153\n\n  Warning, The                                                  vii  330\n\n  Wars of York and Lancaster                                    vii   48\n\n  Waterfall and the Eglantine, The                               ii  170\n\n  Water-fowl                                                     iv  277\n\n  Waterloo, After visiting the Field of                          vi  292\n\n  Waterloo, Occasioned by the Battle of (Three Sonnets)          vi  111\n\n  We are Seven                                                    i  228\n\n  Wellington, On a Portrait of the Duke of                     viii  118\n\n  Westall, Mr. W., Views of the Caves, etc., in Yorkshire, by\n      (Three Poems)                                              vi  183\n\n  Westminster Bridge, Composed upon                              ii  328\n\n  Westmoreland Girl, The                                       viii  172\n\n  \"Whence that low voice?--A whisper from the heart\"             vi  252\n\n  \"Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom's creed\"           viii  182\n\n  \"While Anna's peers and early playmates tread\"                vii  169\n\n  Whirl-blast, The                                                i  238\n\n  Whistlers, The Seven                                           iv   68\n\n  White Doe of Rylstone                                          iv  100\n\n  \"Who fancied what a pretty sight?\"                             ii  374\n\n  \"Why, Minstrel, these untuneful murmurings\"                   vii  161\n\n  Wicliffe                                                      vii   49\n\n  Widow on Windermere Side, The                                viii   89\n\n  Wild Duck's Nest, The                                          vi  189\n\n  Wild-Fowl                                                    viii  234\n\n  William the Third                                             vii   80\n\n  Winter (French Army), (Two Poems)                              vi  107\n\n  Wishing-gate, The                                             vii  189\n\n  Wishing-gate Destroyed, The                                   vii  192\n\n  Worcester Cathedral, A Grave-Stone in                         vii  201\n\n  Wordsworth, Catherine                                          vi   72\n\n  Wordsworth, Dora                                               vi  132\n\n  Wordsworth, John, Elegiac Verses in memory of                 iii   58\n\n  Wordsworth, John (Fir Grove)                                  iii   66\n\n  Wordsworth, To the Rev. Christopher                          viii  162\n\n  Wordsworth, To the Rev. Dr. (Duddon)                           vi  227\n\n  Wordsworth, Thomas                                           viii   39\n\n  Wren's Nest, A                                                vii  325\n\n  Yarrow Unvisited                                               ii  411\n\n  Yarrow Visited                                                 vi   35\n\n  Yarrow Revisited                                              vii  278\n\n  Yew-trees                                                      ii  369\n\n  Yew-tree Seat                                                   i  108\n\n  York and Lancaster, Wars of                                   vii   48\n\n  Young England                                                viii  180\n\n  Young Lady, To a                                               ii  365\n\n  Youth, Written in very early                                    i    3\n\n  Zaragoza                                                       iv  224\n\n\n\n\nINDEX TO FIRST LINES\n\n\n  VOL.  PAGE\n\n  A barking sound the Shepherd hears,                           iii   44\n\n  A Book came forth of late, called PETER BELL;                  vi  212\n\n  A bright-haired company of youthful slaves,                   vii   14\n\n  Abruptly paused the strife;--the field throughout              vi  216\n\n  A dark plume fetch me from yon blasted yew,                    vi  248\n\n  Adieu, Rydalian Laurels! that have grown                      vii  342\n\n  Advance--come forth from thy Tyrolean ground,                  iv  214\n\n  Aerial Rock--whose solitary brow                               vi  188\n\n  A famous man is Robin Hood,                                    ii  403\n\n  Affections lose their object; Time brings forth,             viii  185\n\n  A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by,                       iv   43\n\n  A genial hearth, a hospitable board,                          vii   87\n\n  A German Haggis from receipt                                 viii  272\n\n  Age! twine thy brows with fresh spring flowers,                ii  414\n\n  Ah! if I were a lady gay                                     viii  262\n\n  Ah, think how one compelled for life to abide,               viii  110\n\n  A humming Bee--a little tinkling rill--                         v  106\n\n  Ah, when the Body, round which in love we clung,              vii   19\n\n  Ah! where is Palafox? Nor tongue nor pen                       iv  240\n\n  Ah why deceive ourselves! by no mere fit,                    viii   86\n\n  Aid, glorious Martyrs, from your fields of light,             vii   64\n\n  Alas! what boots the long laborious quest                      iv  216\n\n  \"_A little onward lend thy guiding hand_\"                      vi  133\n\n  All praise the Likeness by thy skill portrayed,              viii  114\n\n  Along the mazes of this song I go,                           viii  233\n\n  A love-lorn Maid, at some far-distant time,                    vi  253\n\n  Ambition--following down this far-famed <DW72>                  vi  356\n\n  Amid a fertile region green with wood                         vii  301\n\n  Amid the smoke of cities did you pass                          ii  157\n\n  Amid this dance of objects sadness steals                      vi  299\n\n  Among a grave fraternity of Monks,                           viii    6\n\n  Among all lovely things my Love had been,                    viii  232\n\n  Among the dwellers in the silent fields,                     viii  310\n\n  Among the dwellings framed by birds                           vii  325\n\n  Among the mountains were we nursed, loved Stream!              vi  193\n\n  Among the mountains were we nursed, loved Stream!             vii  345\n\n  A month, sweet Little-ones, is past                            iv   63\n\n  An age hath been when Earth was proud                          vi  146\n\n  A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags,                     ii  164\n\n  And has the Sun his flaming chariot driven,                  viii  211\n\n  And is it among rude untutored Dales,                          iv  222\n\n  And is this--Yarrow?--_This_ the Stream                        vi   36\n\n  And, not in vain embodied to the sight,                       vii   40\n\n  \"And shall,\" the Pontiff asks, \"profaneness flow\"             vii   30\n\n  And what is Penance with her knotted thong;                   vii   50\n\n  And what melodious sounds at times prevail!                   vii   40\n\n  An Orpheus! an Orpheus! yes, Faith may grow bold,              iv   20\n\n  Another year!--another deadly blow!                            iv   49\n\n  A pen--to register; a key--                                   vii  117\n\n  A Pilgrim, when the summer day                                 vi  167\n\n  A plague on your languages, German and Norse!                  ii   73\n\n  A pleasant music floats along the Mere,                       vii   27\n\n  _A Poet!_--He hath put his heart to school,                  viii  128\n\n  A point of life between my Parents' dust,                     vii  346\n\n  Arms and the Man I sing, the first who bore                  viii  281\n\n  Army of Clouds! ye wing\u00e8d Host in troops,                    viii  142\n\n  A Rock there is whose homely front                            vii  274\n\n  A Roman Master stands on Grecian ground,                       iv  242\n\n  Around a wild and woody hill                                   vi  310\n\n  Arran! a single-crested Teneriffe,                            vii  370\n\n  Art thou a Statist in the van                                  ii   75\n\n  Art thou the bird whom Man loves best,                         ii  295\n\n  As faith thus sanctified the warrior's crest                  vii   42\n\n  A simple Child,                                                 i  231\n\n  As indignation mastered grief, my tongue,                    viii   85\n\n  As leaves are to the tree whereon they grow,                 viii   87\n\n  A slumber did my spirit seal;                                  ii   83\n\n  As often as I murmur here                                     vii  265\n\n  As star that shines dependent upon star                       vii   87\n\n  \"As the cold aspect of a sunless way\"                          vi  191\n\n  A Stream, to mingle with your favourite Dee,                  vii  129\n\n  A sudden conflict rises from the swell                        vii   82\n\n  As, when a storm hath ceased, the birds regain                vii    9\n\n  As with the Stream our voyage we pursue,                      vii   33\n\n  At early dawn, or rather when the air                          vi  185\n\n  A Traveller on the skirt of Sarum's Plain                       i   79\n\n  A trouble, not of clouds, or weeping rain,                    vii  284\n\n  At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,            i  226\n\n  A twofold harmony is here                                    viii  282\n\n  Avaunt all specious pliancy of mind                            iv  247\n\n  Avaunt this \u0153conomic rage!                                   viii  299\n\n  A voice, from long-expecting thousands sent                   vii   79\n\n  A volant Tribe of Bards on earth are found,                   vii  119\n\n  Avon--a precious, an immortal name!                           vii  303\n\n  A weight of awe, not easy to be borne,                        vii  390\n\n  A whirl-blast from behind the hill                              i  238\n\n  A wing\u00e8d Goddess--clothed in vesture wrought                   vi  292\n\n  A Youth too certain of his power to wade                      vii  362\n\n  Bard of the Fleece, whose skilful genius made                  iv  273\n\n  Beaumont! it was thy wish that I should rear                  iii   23\n\n  Before I see another day,                                       i  276\n\n  Before the world had past her time of youth,                 viii  107\n\n  \"Begone, thou fond presumptuous Elf,\"                          ii  170\n\n  Beguiled into forgetfulness of care,                         viii    2\n\n  Behold an emblem of our human mind,                          viii  188\n\n  Behold a pupil of the monkish gown,                           vii   24\n\n  Behold her, single in the field,                               ii  397\n\n  Behold, within the leafy shade,                                ii  237\n\n  \"Beloved Vale!\" I said, \"when I shall con\"                     iv   35\n\n  Beneath the concave of an April sky,                           vi  138\n\n  Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed                      ii  367\n\n  Beneath yon eastern ridge, the craggy bound,                   iv   80\n\n  Be this the chosen site; the virgin sod,                      vii  103\n\n  Between two sister moorland rills                              ii   96\n\n  Bishops and Priests, blessed are ye, if deep                  vii   86\n\n  Black Demons hovering o'er his mitred head,                   vii   34\n\n  Bleak season was it, turbulent and bleak,                      ii  121\n\n  Blest is this Isle--our native Land;                          vii  109\n\n  Blest Statesman He, whose Mind's unselfish will,             viii  101\n\n  Bold words affirmed, in days when faith was strong            vii  359\n\n  Brave Schill! by death delivered, take thy flight              iv  226\n\n  Bright Flower! whose home is everywhere,                       ii  360\n\n  Bright was the summer's noon when quickening steps            iii  186\n\n  Broken in fortune, but in mind entire                         vii  365\n\n  Brook and road                                                 ii   69\n\n  Brook, that hast been my solace days and weeks,              viii  265\n\n  Brook! whose society the Poet seeks,                           iv   52\n\n  Brug\u00e8s I saw attired with golden light                         vi  288\n\n  But Cytherea, studious to invent,                            viii  277\n\n  But here no cannon thunders to the gale;                       vi  262\n\n  But liberty, and triumphs on the Main,                        vii  102\n\n  But, to outweigh all harm, the sacred Book,                   vii   58\n\n  But, to remote Northumbria's royal Hall,                      vii   15\n\n  But what if One, through grove or flowery mead,               vii   21\n\n  But whence came they who for the Saviour Lord                 vii   44\n\n  By a blest Husband guided, Mary came,                        viii   35\n\n  By antique Fancy trimmed--though lowly, bred                   vi  324\n\n  By Art's bold privilege Warrior and War-Horse stand,         viii  118\n\n  By chain yet stronger must the Soul be tied:                  vii   93\n\n  By playful smiles, (alas, too oft,                           viii  120\n\n  By such examples moved to unbought pains,                     vii   22\n\n  By their floating mill,                                        iv   18\n\n  By vain affections unenthralled,                              vii  135\n\n  Call not the royal Swede unfortunate,                          iv  227\n\n  Calm as an under-current, strong to draw,                     vii   80\n\n  Calm is all nature as a resting wheel                           i    4\n\n  Calm is the fragrant air, and loth to lose                    vii  317\n\n  Calvert! it must not be unheard by them                        iv   44\n\n  \"Change me, some God, into that breathing rose!\"               vi  237\n\n  Chatsworth! thy stately mansion, and the pride                vii  273\n\n  Child of loud-throated War! the mountain Stream                ii  401\n\n  Child of the clouds! remote from every taint                   vi  231\n\n  Clarkson! it was an obstinate hill to climb:                   iv   62\n\n  Closing the sacred Book which long has fed                    vii   98\n\n  Clouds, lingering yet, extend in solid bars                    iv   73\n\n  Coldly we spake. The Saxons, overpowered                      vii   29\n\n  Come, gentle Sleep, Death's image tho' thou art,             viii  264\n\n  Come ye--who, if (which Heaven avert!) the Land                ii  437\n\n  Companion! by whose buoyant Spirit cheered,                  viii   41\n\n  Complacent Fictions were they, yet the same,                 viii   61\n\n  Confiding hopes of youthful hearts,                          viii  297\n\n  Critics, right honourable Bard, decree                       viii  272\n\n  Dark and more dark the shades of evening fell;                 ii  349\n\n  Darkness surrounds us: seeking, we are lost                   vii    7\n\n  Days passed--and Monte Calvo would not clear,                viii   64\n\n  Days undefiled by luxury or sloth,                           viii  179\n\n  Dear be the Church, that, watching o'er the needs             vii   89\n\n  Dear Child of Nature, let them rail!                           ii  366\n\n  Dear Fellow-travellers! think not that the Muse,               vi  285\n\n  Dear native regions, I foretell,                                i    2\n\n  Dear Reliques! from a pit of vilest mould                      vi  114\n\n  Dear to the Loves, and to the Graces vowed,                   vii  350\n\n  Deep is the lamentation! Not alone                            vii   56\n\n  Degenerate Douglas! oh, the unworthy Lord!                     ii  410\n\n  Deign, Sovereign Mistress, to accept a lay,                  viii  319\n\n  Departed Child! I could forget thee once                       iv  249\n\n  Departing summer hath assumed                                  vi  202\n\n  Deplorable his lot who tills the ground,                      vii   38\n\n  Desire we past illusions to recal?                           vvii  360\n\n  Desponding Father! mark this altered bough                   viii   31\n\n  Despond who will--_I_ heard a voice exclaim,                  vii  368\n\n  Destined to war from very infancy                              iv  234\n\n  Did pangs of grief for lenient time too keen,                 vii  363\n\n  Discourse was deemed Man's noblest attribute,                viii  184\n\n  Dishonoured Rock and Ruin! that, by law,                      vii  292\n\n  Dogmatic Teachers, of the snow-white fur!                      vi  208\n\n  Doomed as we are our native dust                               vi  312\n\n  Doubling and doubling with laborious walk,                    vii  295\n\n  Down a swift Stream, thus far, a bold design                  vii   83\n\n  Dread hour! when, upheaved by war's sulphurous blast,          vi  329\n\n  Driven in by Autumn's sharpening air                          vii  410\n\n  Earth has not any thing to show more fair:                     ii  328\n\n  Eden! till now thy beauty had I viewed                        vii  385\n\n  Emperors and Kings, how oft have temples rung                  vi  113\n\n  England! the time is come when thou should'st wean             ii  433\n\n  Enlightened Teacher, gladly from thy hand                    viii  162\n\n  Enough! for see, with dim association                         vii   44\n\n  Enough of climbing toil!--Ambition treads                      vi  149\n\n  Enough of garlands, of the Arcadian crook,                    vii  294\n\n  Enough of rose-bud lips, and eyes                             vii  239\n\n  Ere the Brothers through the gateway                           iv   12\n\n  Erewhile to celebrate this glorious morn                       vi  195\n\n  Ere with cold beads of midnight dew                           vii  145\n\n  Ere yet our course was graced with social trees                vi  235\n\n  Eternal Lord! eased of a cumbrous load,                      viii   81\n\n  Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky!                        vii  143\n\n  Even as a dragon's eye that feels the stress                   vi   69\n\n  Even as a river,--partly (it might seem)                      iii  293\n\n  Even so for me a Vision sanctified                           viii   37\n\n  Even such the contrast that, where'er we move,                vii   71\n\n  Even while I speak, the sacred roofs of France                vii  101\n\n  Excuse is needless when with love sincere                     vii  162\n\n  Failing impartial measure to dispense                        viii   99\n\n  Fair Ellen Irwin, when she sate                                ii  124\n\n  Fair is the Swan, whose majesty, prevailing                    vi  116\n\n  Fair Lady! can I sing of flowers                             viii  177\n\n  Fair Land! Thee all men greet with joy; bow few,             viii   84\n\n  Fair Prime of life! were it enough to gild                    vii  165\n\n  Fair Star of evening, Splendour of the west,                   ii  330\n\n  Fallen, and diffused into a shapeless heap,                    vi  256\n\n  Fame tells of groves--from England far away--                  vi  214\n\n  Fancy, who leads the pastimes of the glad,                    vii  178\n\n  \"Farewell, deep Valley, with thy one rude House,\"               v  196\n\n  Farewell, thou little Nook of mountain-ground,                 ii  324\n\n  Far from my dearest Friend, 'tis mine to rove                   i    6\n\n  Far from our home by Grasmere's quiet Lake,                    iv  259\n\n  Father! to God himself we cannot give                         vii   90\n\n  Fear hath a hundred eyes that all agree                       vii   69\n\n  Feel for the wrongs to universal ken                         viii  129\n\n  Festivals have I seen that were not names:                     ii  334\n\n  Fit retribution, by the moral code                           viii  108\n\n  Five years have past; five summers, with the length            ii   51\n\n  Flattered with promise of escape                              vii  229\n\n  Fly, some kind Harbinger, to Grasmere-dale!                    ii  419\n\n  Fond words have oft been spoken to thee, Sleep!                iv   43\n\n  For action born, existing to be tried,                       viii   67\n\n  Forbear to deem the Chronicler unwise,                       viii   61\n\n  For ever hallowed be this morning fair,                       vii   15\n\n  For gentlest uses, oft-times Nature takes                      vi  316\n\n  Forgive, illustrious Country! these deep sighs,              viii   65\n\n  Forth from a jutting ridge, around whose base                viii  170\n\n  For thirst of power that Heaven disowns,                     viii  320\n\n  Forth rushed from Envy sprung and Self-conceit,              viii  304\n\n  For what contend the wise?--for nothing less                  vii   58\n\n  Four fiery steeds impatient of the rein                      viii   32\n\n  From Bolton's old monastic tower                               iv  106\n\n  From early youth I ploughed the restless Main,                vii  364\n\n  From false assumption rose, and fondly hail'd                 vii   36\n\n  From Little down to Least, in due degree,                     vii   91\n\n  From low to high doth dissolution climb,                      vii  100\n\n  From Nature doth emotion come, and moods                      iii  355\n\n  From Rite and Ordinance abused they fled                      vii   85\n\n  From Stirling castle we had seen                               ii  411\n\n  From that time forth, Authority in France                     iii  330\n\n  From the Baptismal hour, thro' weal and woe,                  vii   97\n\n  From the dark chambers of dejection freed,                     vi   34\n\n  From the fierce aspect of this River, throwing                 vi  308\n\n  From the Pier's head, musing, and with increase                vi  381\n\n  From this deep chasm, where quivering sunbeams play            vi  245\n\n  Frowns are on every Muse's face,                              vii  157\n\n  Furl we the sails, and pass with tardy oars                   vii   41\n\n  Genius of Raphael! if thy wings                               vii  195\n\n  Giordano, verily thy Pencil's skill                          viii  183\n\n  Glad sight wherever new with old                             viii  154\n\n  Glide gently, thus for ever glide,                              i   33\n\n  Glory to God! and to the Power who came                       vii  107\n\n  Go back to antique ages, if thine eyes                        vii  174\n\n  Go, faithful Portrait! and where long hath knelt              vii  318\n\n  Grant, that by this unsparing hurricane                       vii   57\n\n  Grateful is Sleep, my life, in stone bound fast,             viii  264\n\n  Great men have been among us; hands that penned                ii  346\n\n  Greta, what fearful listening! when huge stones               vii  344\n\n  Grief, thou hast lost an ever-ready friend                     vi  196\n\n  Grieve for the Man who hither came bereft,                   viii   72\n\n  Had this effulgence disappeared                                vi  177\n\n  Hail, orient Conqueror of gloomy Night!                        vi   78\n\n  Hail to the crown by Freedom shaped--to gird                    v  235\n\n  Hail to the fields--with Dwellings sprinkled o'er              vi  243\n\n  Hail, Twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour!                vi   67\n\n  Hail, Virgin Queen! o'er many an envious bar                  vii   65\n\n  Hail, Zaragoza! If with unwet eye                              iv  224\n\n  Happy the feeling from the bosom thrown                       vii  159\n\n  Hard task! exclaim the undisciplined, to lean                viii   86\n\n  Hark! 'tis the Thrush, undaunted, undeprest,                 viii   93\n\n  Harmonious Powers with Nature work                           viii  125\n\n  Harp! could'st thou venture, on thy boldest string            vii   72\n\n  Hast thou seen, with flash incessant,                          vi  174\n\n  Hast thou then survived--                                     iii   14\n\n  Haydon! let worthier judges praise the skill                  vii  277\n\n  Here closed the Tenant of that lonely vale                      v  145\n\n  _Here Man more purely lives, less oft doth fall_,             vii   37\n\n  Here, on our native soil, we breathe once more                 ii  341\n\n  Here on their knees men swore; the stones were black,         vii  381\n\n  Here pause: the poet claims at least this praise,              iv  255\n\n  Here stood an Oak, that long had borne affixed                vii  305\n\n  Here, where, of havoc tired and rash undoing,                viii  168\n\n  Her eyes are wild, her head is bare,                            i  258\n\n  Her only pilot the soft breeze, the boat                      vii  160\n\n  \"High bliss is only for a higher state,\"                      vii  156\n\n  High deeds, O Germans, are to come from you!                   iv   59\n\n  High in the breathless Hall the Minstrel sate,                 iv   83\n\n  High is our calling, Friend!--Creative Art                     vi   61\n\n  High on a broad unfertile tract of forest-skirted Down,      viii  133\n\n  High on her speculative tower                                  vi  345\n\n  His simple truths did Andrew glean                             ii  174\n\n  Holy and heavenly Spirits as they are,                        vii   67\n\n  Homeward we turn. Isle of Columba's Cell,                     vii  382\n\n  Hope rules a land for ever green:                             vii  190\n\n  Hope smiled when your nativity was cast,                      vii  378\n\n  Hopes, what are they?--Beads of morning                        vi  170\n\n  How art thou named? In search of what strange land,           vii  129\n\n  How beautiful the Queen of Night, on high                    viii  188\n\n  How beautiful, when up a lofty height                        viii   90\n\n  How beautiful your presence, how benign,                      vii   19\n\n  How blest the Maid whose heart--yet free                       vi  351\n\n  How clear, how keen, how marvellously bright                   vi   63\n\n  \"How disappeared he?\" Ask the newt and toad;                  vii  297\n\n  How fast the Marian death-list is unrolled!                   vii   61\n\n  How profitless the relics that we cull,                       vii  308\n\n  How richly glows the water's breast                             i   32\n\n  How rich that forehead's calm expanse!                        vii  123\n\n  How sad a welcome! To each voyager                            vii  380\n\n  How shall I paint thee?--Be this naked stone,                  vi  232\n\n  How soon--alas! did Man, created pure--                       vii   35\n\n  How sweet it is, when mother Fancy rocks                       iv   36\n\n  Humanity, delighting to behold                                 vi  107\n\n  Hunger, and sultry heat, and nipping blast                     iv  248\n\n  I am not One who much or oft delight                           iv   31\n\n  I come, ye little noisy Crew,                                  ii   84\n\n  I dropped my pen; and listened to the Wind                     iv  211\n\n  I find it written of Simonides,                              viii  258\n\n  If from the public way you turn your steps                     ii  215\n\n  If Life were slumber on a bed of down,                        vii  351\n\n  If money's slack,                                            viii  271\n\n  If Nature, for a favourite child,                              ii   88\n\n  If there be prophets on whose spirits rest                    vii    5\n\n  If these brief Records, by the Muses' art                     vii  177\n\n  If the whole weight of what we think and feel,                vii  165\n\n  If this great world of joy and pain                           vii  336\n\n  If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,                  vii  175\n\n  If thou in the dear love of some one Friend                    ii  210\n\n  If to Tradition faith be due                                  vii  311\n\n  If with old love of you, dear Hills! I share                 viii   95\n\n  I grieved for Buonapart\u00e9, with a vain                          ii  323\n\n  I hate that Andrew Jones; he'll breed                        viii  221\n\n  I have a boy of five years old;                                 i  234\n\n  I heard (alas! 'twas only in a dream)                          vi  198\n\n  I heard a thousand blended notes,                               i  269\n\n  I know an aged Man constrained to dwell                      viii  186\n\n  I listen--but no faculty of mine,                              vi  326\n\n  Imagination--ne'er before content,                             vi   88\n\n  I marvel how Nature could ever find space                      ii  208\n\n  I met Louisa in the shade,                                     ii  362\n\n  Immured in Bothwell's Towers, at times the Brave              vii  299\n\n  In Brug\u00e8s town is many a street                               vii  198\n\n  In days of yore how fortunately fared                           v   67\n\n  In desultory walk through orchard grounds,                   viii  123\n\n  In distant countries have I been,                               i  279\n\n  In due observance of an ancient rite,                          iv  241\n\n  Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood;                         ii  343\n\n  Inmate of a mountain-dwelling,                                 vi  135\n\n  In my mind's eye a Temple, like a cloud                       vii  173\n\n  In one of those excursions (may they ne'er                    iii  367\n\n  Intent on gathering wool from hedge and brake                viii  122\n\n  In these fair vales hath many a Tree                          vii  269\n\n  In the sweet shire of Cardigan,                                 i  262\n\n  In this still place, remote from men,                          ii  393\n\n  In trellised shed with clustering roses gay,                   iv  102\n\n  Intrepid sons of Albion! not by you                            vi  111\n\n  In youth from rock to rock I went,                             ii  353\n\n  I rose while yet the cattle, heat-opprest,                     vi  257\n\n  I saw a Mother's eye intensely bent                           vii   92\n\n  I saw an aged Beggar in my walk;                                i  300\n\n  I saw far off the dark top of a Pine,                        viii   58\n\n  I saw the figure of a lovely Maid                             vii   74\n\n  Is _Death_, when evil against good has fought,               viii  106\n\n  I shiver, Spirit fierce and bold,                              ii  379\n\n  Is it a reed that's shaken by the wind,                        ii  331\n\n  Is then no nook of English ground secure,                    viii  166\n\n  Is then the final page before me spread,                       vi  382\n\n  Is there a power that can sustain and cheer                    iv  228\n\n  Is this, ye Gods, the Capitolian Hill,                       viii   59\n\n  _I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide_,                  vi  263\n\n  It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,                      ii  335\n\n  It is no Spirit who from heaven hath flown,                    ii  376\n\n  It is not to be thought of that the Flood                      ii  347\n\n  It is the first mild day of March:                              i  271\n\n  I travelled among unknown men,                                 ii   80\n\n  It seems a day                                                 ii   70\n\n  It was a beautiful and silent day                             iii  311\n\n  It was a dreary morning when the wheels                       iii  168\n\n  It was a _moral_ end for which they fought;                    iv  217\n\n  It was an April morning: fresh and clear                       ii  154\n\n  I've watched you now a full half-hour,                         ii  297\n\n  I wandered lonely as a cloud                                  iii    4\n\n  I was thy neighbour once, thou rugged Pile!                   iii   54\n\n  I watch, and long have watched, with calm regret               vi  197\n\n  I, who accompanied with faithful pace                         vii    4\n\n  I, whose pretty Voice you hear,                              viii  295\n\n  I will relate a tale for those who love                      viii  224\n\n  Jesu! bless our slender Boat,                                  vi  301\n\n  Jones! I as from Calais southward you and I                    ii  332\n\n  Just as those final words were penned, the sun broke out\n      in power,                                                viii  135\n\n  Keep for the Young the Impassioned smile                       vi  218\n\n  Lady! a Pen (perhaps with thy regard,                        viii    8\n\n  Lady! I rifled a Parnassian cave                               vi  211\n\n  Lady! the songs of Spring were in the grove                    iv   58\n\n  Lament! for Diocletian's fiery sword                          vii    8\n\n  Lance, shield, and sword relinquished--at his side            vii   20\n\n  Last night, without a voice, that Vision spake                vii   74\n\n  Let other bards of angels sing,                               vii  121\n\n  Let thy wheel-barrow alone                                     ii   95\n\n  Let us quit the leafy arbour,                                  vi  153\n\n  Lie here, without a record of thy worth,                      iii   50\n\n  Life with yon Lambs, like day, is just begun,                viii   97\n\n  Like a shipwreck'd Sailor tost                                vii  328\n\n  List, the winds of March are blowing;                         vii  331\n\n  List--'twas the Cuckoo.--O with what delight,                viii   68\n\n  List, ye who pass by Lyulph's Tower                           vii  394\n\n  Lo! in the burning west, the craggy nape                       vi  377\n\n  Lone Flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they            vi  191\n\n  Long-favoured England! be not thou misled,                   viii  131\n\n  Long has the dew been dried on tree and lawn,                viii   63\n\n  Long time have human ignorance and guilt                      iii  345\n\n  Lonsdale! it were unworthy of a Guest,                        vii  392\n\n  Look at the fate of summer flowers,                           vii  124\n\n  Look now on that Adventurer who hath paid                      iv  228\n\n  Lord of the vale! astounding Flood;                            vi   26\n\n  Loud is the Vale! the Voice is up                              iv   47\n\n  Loving she is, and tractable, though wild;                     iv  252\n\n  Lo! where she stands fixed in a saint-like trance,           viii  132\n\n  Lo! where the Moon along the sky,                            viii   88\n\n  Lowther! in thy majestic Pile are seen                        vii  392\n\n  Lulled by the sound of pastoral bells,                         vi  372\n\n  Lyre! though such power do in thy magic live,                viii  147\n\n  \"Man's life is like a Sparrow, mighty King!\"                  vii   16\n\n  Mark how the feathered tenants of the flood,                   iv  278\n\n  Mark the concentred hazels that enclose                        vi   71\n\n  Meek Virgin Mother, more benign                                vi  318\n\n  Men of the Western World! in Fate's dark book,               viii  112\n\n  Men, who have ceased to reverence, soon defy                  vii   68\n\n  Mercy and Love have met thee on thy road,                     vii    7\n\n  Methinks that I could trip o'er heaviest soil,                vii   66\n\n  Methinks that to some vacant hermitage                        vii   21\n\n  Methinks 'twere no unprecedented feat                          vi  255\n\n  Methought I saw the footsteps of a throne                      iv   46\n\n  'Mid crowded obelisks and urns                                 ii  387\n\n  Mid-noon is past;--upon the sultry mead                        vi  254\n\n  Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour:                 ii  346\n\n  Mine ear has wrung, my spirit sunk subdued,                   vii  104\n\n  \"_Miserrimus!_\" and neither name nor date,                    vii  201\n\n  Monastic Domes! following my downward way,                    vii  100\n\n  Most sweet it is with unuplifted eyes                         vii  401\n\n  Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost,                       vii   54\n\n  Motions and Means, on land and sea at war,                    vii  389\n\n  My frame hath often trembled with delight                      vi  250\n\n  My heart leaps up when I behold                                ii  292\n\n  My Lord and Lady Darlington                                  viii  298\n\n  My Son! behold the tide already spent,                       viii  273\n\n  Nay, Traveller! rest. This lonely Yew-tree stands               i  109\n\n  Near Anio's stream, I spied a gentle Dove,                   viii   65\n\n  Never enlivened with the liveliest ray,                      viii  150\n\n  Next morning Troilus began to clear                            ii  264\n\n  No fiction was it of the antique age:                          vi  241\n\n  No more: the end is sudden and abrupt,                        vii  309\n\n  No mortal object did these eyes behold                        iii  381\n\n  No record tells of lance opposed to lance,                     vi  258\n\n  Nor scorn the aid which Fancy oft doth lend                   vii   18\n\n  Nor shall the eternal roll of praise reject                   vii   78\n\n  Nor wants the cause the panic-striking aid                    vii   12\n\n  Not a breath of air,                                         viii  146\n\n  Not envying Latian shades--if yet they throw                   vi  230\n\n  Not hurled precipitous from steep to steep;                    vi  261\n\n  Not in the lucid intervals of life                            vii  402\n\n  Not in the mines beyond the western main,                     vii  400\n\n  Not, like his great Compeers, indignantly                      vi  303\n\n  Not Love, not War, nor the tumultuous swell                   vii  118\n\n  Not 'mid the World's vain objects that enslave                 iv  210\n\n  Not sedentary all: there are who roam                         vii   23\n\n  Not seldom, clad in radiant vest,                              vi  175\n\n  Not so that Pair whose youthful spirits dance                  vi  240\n\n  Not the whole warbling grove in concert heard                 vii  169\n\n  Not to the clouds, not to the cliff, he flew;                 vii  372\n\n  Not to the object specially designed,                        viii  106\n\n  Not utterly unworthy to endure                                vii   55\n\n  Not without heavy grief of heart did He                        iv  236\n\n  No whimsey of the purse is here,                             viii  259\n\n  Now that all hearts are glad, all faces bright,                iv  282\n\n  Now that the farewell tear is dried,                           vi  338\n\n  Now we are tired of boisterous joy,                            ii  420\n\n  Now when the primrose makes a splendid show,                 viii  116\n\n  Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;                  iv   28\n\n  Oak of Guernica! Tree of holier power                          iv  245\n\n  O blithe New-comer! I have heard,                              ii  289\n\n  O dearer far than light and life are dear,                    vii  122\n\n  O'er the wide earth, on mountain and on plain,                 iv  223\n\n  O'erweening Statesmen have full long relied                    iv  247\n\n  O Flower of all that springs from gentle blood,                iv  235\n\n  Of mortal parents is the Hero born                             iv  214\n\n  O for a dirge! But why complain?                              vii  132\n\n  O, for a kindling touch from that pure flame,                  vi  110\n\n  O for the help of Angels to complete                           vi  297\n\n  O Friend! I know not which way I must look                     ii  345\n\n  Oft have I caught, upon a fitful breeze,                      vii  373\n\n  Oft have I seen, ere Time had ploughed my cheek,              vii  163\n\n  Oft I had heard of Lucy Gray:                                  ii   99\n\n  Oft is the medal faithful to its trust                         iv   77\n\n  Oft, through thy fair domains, illustrious Peer!                v   20\n\n  O gentle Sleep! do they belong to thee,                        iv   42\n\n  O happy time of youthful lovers (thus                         iii   24\n\n  Oh Bounty without measure, while the Grace                   viii  308\n\n  Oh Life! without thy chequered scene                           vi  315\n\n  Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!                        iii   35\n\n  Oh what a Wreck! how changed in mien and speech,             viii   36\n\n  Oh! what's the matter? what's the matter?                       i  254\n\n  \"O Lord, our Lord! how wondrously,\" (quoth she)                ii  240\n\n  O Moon! if e'er I joyed when thy soft light                  viii  235\n\n  O mountain Stream! the Shepherd and his Cot                    vi  245\n\n  Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;                    ii  336\n\n  Once I could hail (howe'er serene the sky)                    vii  152\n\n  Once in a lonely hamlet I sojourned                            ii  285\n\n  Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear,              vii   49\n\n  Once on the top of Tynwald's formal mound                     vii  366\n\n  Once to the verge of yon steep barrier came                  viii  236\n\n  One might believe that natural miseries                        ii  431\n\n  One morning (raw it was and wet--                              ii  270\n\n  One who was suffering tumult in his soul                       vi  187\n\n  On his morning rounds the Master                              iii   48\n\n  O Nightingale! thou surely art                                 iv   67\n\n  On, loitering Muse--the swift Stream chides us--on!            vi  242\n\n  \"On Man, on Nature, and on Human Life,\"                         v   23\n\n  On Nature's invitation do I come,                              ii  118\n\n  O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,                     ii   60\n\n  On to Iona!--What can she afford                              vii  379\n\n  Open your gates, ye everlasting Piles!                        vii  105\n\n  O there is blessing in this gentle breeze,                    iii  132\n\n  O thou who movest onward with a mind                           iv  231\n\n  O thou! whose fancies from afar are brought;                   ii  351\n\n  Our bodily life, some plead, that life the shrine,           viii  109\n\n  Our walk was far among the ancient trees:                      ii  167\n\n  Outstretching flame-ward his upbraided hand                   vii   62\n\n  <DW29>s, lilies, kingcups, daisies,                            ii  301\n\n  Part fenced by man, part by a rugged steep                    vii  286\n\n  Pastor and Patriot!--at whose bidding rise                    vii  349\n\n  Patriots informed with Apostolic light                        vii   85\n\n  Pause, courteous Spirit!--Balbi supplicates                    iv  237\n\n  Pause, Traveller! whosoe'er thou be                            vi  173\n\n  Peaceful our valley, fair and green;                         viii  259\n\n  Pelion and Ossa flourish side by side,                         ii  238\n\n  \"People! your chains are severing link by link;\"              vii  290\n\n  Perhaps some needful service of the State                      iv  230\n\n  Pleasures newly found are sweet                                ii  303\n\n  Portentous change when History can appear,                   viii  130\n\n  Praised be the Art whose subtle power could stay               iv  272\n\n  Praised be the Rivers, from their mountain springs            vii   45\n\n  Prejudged by foes determined not to spare,                    vii   71\n\n  Presentiments! they judge not right                           vii  266\n\n  Prompt transformation works the novel Lore;                   vii   17\n\n  Proud were ye, Mountains, when, in times of old,             viii  167\n\n  Pure element of waters! wheresoe'er                            vi  184\n\n  Queen of the Stars!--so gentle, so benign,                   viii   15\n\n  Ranging the heights of Scawfell or Black-Comb,                vii  358\n\n  Rapt above earth by power of one fair face,                  viii   81\n\n  Realms quake by turns: proud Arbitress of grace,              vii   32\n\n  Record we too, with just and faithful pen,                    vii   39\n\n  Redoubted King, of courage leonine,                           vii   31\n\n  Reluctant call it was; the rite delayed;                      vii  323\n\n  \"Rest, rest, perturb\u00e8d Earth!\"                                 vi   95\n\n  Return, Content! for fondly I pursued,                         vi  255\n\n  Rid of a vexing and a heavy load,                            viii  265\n\n  Rise!--they _have_ risen: of brave Aneurin ask                vii   11\n\n  Rotha, my Spiritual Child! this head was grey                 vii  171\n\n  Rude is this Edifice, and Thou hast seen                       ii  213\n\n  Sacred Religion! \"mother of form and fear,\"                    vi  249\n\n  Sad thoughts, avaunt!--partake we their blithe cheer           vi  253\n\n  Said red-ribboned Evans:                                     viii  302\n\n  Said Secrecy to Cowardice and Fraud,                         viii  304\n\n  Say, what is Honour?--'Tis the finest sense                    iv  225\n\n  Say, ye far-travelled clouds, far-seeing hills--              vii  287\n\n  Scattering, like birds escaped the fowler's net,              vii   64\n\n  Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,               vii  163\n\n  Screams round the Arch-druid's brow the seamew--white         vii    6\n\n  Seek who will delight in fable,                              viii  172\n\n  See the Condemned alone within his cell,                     viii  110\n\n  See what gay wild flowers deck this earth-built Cot,          vii  296\n\n  See, where his difficult way that Old Man wins,              viii   83\n\n  Serene, and fitted to embrace,                                 vi  117\n\n  Serving no haughty Muse, my hands have here,                 viii  102\n\n  Seven Daughters had Lord Archibald,                            ii  204\n\n  Shade of Caractacus, if spirits love,                        viii  309\n\n  Shall he who gives his days to low pursuits                  viii  257\n\n  Shame on this faithless heart! that could allow                vi  214\n\n  She dwelt among the untrodden ways                             ii   79\n\n  She had a tall man's height or more;                           ii  278\n\n  She was a Phantom of delight                                  iii    2\n\n  She wept.--Life's purple tide began to flow                  viii  209\n\n  Shout, for a mighty Victory is won!                            ii  436\n\n  Show me the noblest Youth of present time,                    vii  181\n\n  Shun not this rite, neglected, yea abhorred,                  vii   96\n\n  Since risen from ocean, ocean to defy,                        vii  369\n\n  Six changeful years have vanished since I first               iii  247\n\n  Six months to six years added he remained,                   viii   39\n\n  Six thousand veterans practised in war's game,                 ii  435\n\n  Small service is true service while it lasts,                viii    8\n\n  Smile of the Moon!--for so I name                              vi  163\n\n  So fair, so sweet, withal so sensitive,                      viii  164\n\n  Soft as a cloud is yon blue Ridge--the Mere                   vii  405\n\n  Sole listener, Duddon! to the breeze that played               vi  234\n\n  Son of my buried Son, while thus thy hand,                   viii  305\n\n  Soon did the Almighty Giver of all rest                        iv  267\n\n  Spade! with which Wilkinson hath tilled his lands,             iv    3\n\n  Stay, bold Adventurer; rest awhile thy limbs                   iv  281\n\n  Stay, little cheerful Robin! stay,                           viii   38\n\n  Stay near me--do not take thy flight!                          ii  283\n\n  Stern Daughter of the Voice of God!                           iii   38\n\n  Strange fits of passion have I known:                          ii   78\n\n  Stranger! this hillock of mis-shapen stones                    ii   63\n\n  Stretched on the dying Mother's lap, lies dead                vii  387\n\n  Such age how beautiful! O Lady bright,                        vii  172\n\n  Such fruitless questions may not long beguile                  vi  246\n\n  Surprised by joy--impatient as the Wind                        vi   72\n\n  Sweet Flower, belike one day to have                          iii   51\n\n  Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower                             ii  390\n\n  \"Sweet is the holiness of Youth\"--so felt                     vii   59\n\n  Sweet was the walk along the narrow lane,                    viii  215\n\n  Swiftly turn the murmuring wheel!                              iv  275\n\n  Sylph was it? or a Bird more bright                           vii  319\n\n  Take, cradled Nursling of the mountain, take                   vi  233\n\n  Tax not the royal Saint with vain expense,                    vii  106\n\n  Tell me, ye Zephyrs! that unfold,                             vii  125\n\n  Tenderly do we feel by Nature's law,                         viii  104\n\n  Thanks for the lessons of this Spot--fit school               vii  377\n\n  That happy gleam of vernal eyes,                              vii  202\n\n  That heresies should strike (if truth be scanned              vii   10\n\n  That is work of waste and ruin--                               ii  298\n\n  That way look, my Infant, lo!                                 iii   16\n\n  The Baptist might have been ordained to cry,                 viii   80\n\n  The Bard--whose soul is meek as dawning day,                   vi  112\n\n  The captive Bird was gone;--to cliff or moor                  vii  371\n\n  The cattle crowding round this beverage clear                 vii  348\n\n  The Cock is crowing,                                           ii  293\n\n  The confidence of Youth our only Art,                        viii  273\n\n  The Crescent-moon, the Star of Love,                         viii  127\n\n  The Danish Conqueror, on his royal chair,                      vi  130\n\n  The days are cold, the nights are long,                       iii   74\n\n  The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink;            ii  143\n\n  The doubt to which a wavering hope had clung                 viii  289\n\n  The embowering rose, the acacia, and the pine,                 iv   74\n\n  The encircling ground, in native turf arrayed,                vii  104\n\n  The fairest, brightest, hues of ether fade;                    vi   66\n\n  The feudal Keep, the bastions of Cohorn,                      vii  360\n\n  The fields which with covetous spirit we sold,                iii   12\n\n  The floods are roused, and will not soon be weary;            vii  388\n\n  The forest huge of ancient Caledon                            vii  304\n\n  The formal World relaxes her cold chain,                     viii  112\n\n  The gallant Youth, who may have gained,                       vii  281\n\n  The gentlest Poet, with free thoughts endowed,               viii  141\n\n  The gentlest Shade that walked Elysian plains                  ii  378\n\n  The glory of evening was spread through the west;            viii  217\n\n  The God of Love--_ah, benedicite!_                             ii  250\n\n  The imperial Consort of the Fairy-king                         vi  189\n\n  The imperial Stature, the colossal stride,                    vii  166\n\n  The Kirk of Ulpha to the pilgrim's eye                         vi  260\n\n  The Knight had ridden down from Wensley Moor                   ii  129\n\n  The Lake is thine,                                           viii  263\n\n  The Land we from our fathers had in trust,                     iv  215\n\n  The leaves that rustled on this oak-crowned hill,             vii  407\n\n  The leaves were fading when to Esthwaite's banks              iii  222\n\n  The linnet's warble, sinking towards a close,                 vii  403\n\n  The little hedgerow birds,                                      i  307\n\n  The lovely Nun (submissive, but more meek                     vii   52\n\n  The Lovers took within this ancient grove                     vii  306\n\n  The martial courage of a day is vain,                          iv  217\n\n  The massy Ways, carried across these heights                  vii  154\n\n  The Minstrels played their Christmas tune                      vi  227\n\n  The most alluring clouds that mount the sky,                 viii  128\n\n  The old inventive Poets, had they seen,                        vi  251\n\n  _The oppression of the tumult--wrath and scorn--_             vii   13\n\n  The order'd troops                                           viii  234\n\n  The peace which others seek they find;                        iii   11\n\n  The pensive Sceptic of the lonely vale                          v  327\n\n  The pibroch's note, discountenanced or mute;                  vii  290\n\n  The post-boy drove with fierce career,                         ii  273\n\n  The power of Armies is a visible thing,                        iv  254\n\n  The prayers I make will then be sweet indeed                  iii  382\n\n  The rains at length have ceas'd, the winds are still'd,      viii  233\n\n  There are no colours in the fairest sky                       vii   77\n\n  There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear                   ii  431\n\n  There is a change--and I am poor;                              iv   17\n\n  There is a Flower, the lesser Celandine,                      iii   21\n\n  There is a little unpretending Rill                            iv   53\n\n  There is an Eminence,--of these our hills                      ii  162\n\n  _There is a pleasure in poetic pains_                         vii  166\n\n  There is a shapeless crowd of unhewn stones                  viii  223\n\n  There is a Thorn--it looks so old,                              i  242\n\n  There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,                     ii  370\n\n  There never breathed a man who, when his life                  iv  232\n\n  \"There!\" said a Stripling, pointing with meet pride           vii  384\n\n  There's George Fisher, Charles Fleming, and Reginald Shore,    ii  207\n\n  There's more in words than I can teach:                       vii  321\n\n  There's not a nook within this solemn Pass,                   vii  289\n\n  There's something in a flying horse,                           ii    3\n\n  There was a Boy; ye knew him well, ye cliffs                   ii   57\n\n  There was a roaring in the wind all night;                     ii  314\n\n  There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,             viii  190\n\n  The Roman Consul doomed his sons to die,                     viii  105\n\n  The Sabbath bells renew the inviting peal;                    vii   96\n\n  The saintly Youth has ceased to rule, discrowned              vii   61\n\n  The Scottish Broom on Bird-nest brae                         viii  270\n\n  These times strike monied worldlings with dismay:              ii  432\n\n  These Tourists, heaven preserve us! needs must live            ii  184\n\n  These vales were saddened with no common gloom               viii  275\n\n  The Sheep-boy whistled loud, and lo!                          iii   58\n\n  The Shepherd, looking eastward, softly said,                   vi   68\n\n  The sky is overcast                                             i  227\n\n  The snow-tracks of my friends I see,                         viii  219\n\n  The soaring lark is blest as proud                            vii  214\n\n  The Spirit of Antiquity--enshrined                             vi  290\n\n  The stars are mansions built by Nature's hand,                 vi  210\n\n  The star which comes at close of day to shine,               viii  307\n\n  The struggling Rill insensibly is grown                        vi  239\n\n  The sun has long been set,                                     ii  327\n\n  The sun is couched, the sea-fowl gone to rest;                vii  338\n\n  The Sun, that seemed so mildly to retire,                     vii  337\n\n  The sylvan <DW72>s with corn-clad fields                        vi  201\n\n  The tears of man in various measure gush                      vii   60\n\n  The Troop will be impatient; let us hie                         i  114\n\n  The turbaned Race are poured in thickening swarms             vii   31\n\n  The unremitting voice of nightly streams,                    viii  187\n\n  The valley rings with mirth and joy;                           ii  138\n\n  The vestal priestess of a sisterhood who knows               viii  325\n\n  The Vested Priest before the Altar stands;                    vii   94\n\n  The Virgin Mountain, wearing like a Queen                     vii   70\n\n  The Voice of song from distant lands shall call                ii  338\n\n  The wind is now thy organist;--a clank                        vii  288\n\n  The woman-hearted Confessor prepares                          vii   28\n\n  The world forsaken, all its busy cares,                      viii   73\n\n  The world is too much with us; late and soon,                  iv   39\n\n  The worship of this Sabbath morn,                            viii  326\n\n  They called Thee MERRY ENGLAND, in old time;                  vii  343\n\n  They call it Love lies bleeding! rather say,                 viii  150\n\n  They dreamt not of a perishable home                          vii  107\n\n  The Young-ones gathered in from hill and dale,                vii   92\n\n  They seek, are sought; to daily battle led,                    iv  253\n\n  They--who have seen the noble Roman's scorn,                 viii   62\n\n  This Height a ministering Angel might select:                  iv  271\n\n  \"This Land of Rainbows spanning glens whose walls,\"           vii  299\n\n  This Lawn, a carpet all alive                                 vii  228\n\n  This Spot--at once unfolding sight so fair,                  viii  103\n\n  Those breathing Tokens of your kind regard,                   vii  217\n\n  Those had given earliest notice, as the lark                  vii   46\n\n  Those old credulities, to nature dear,                       viii   60\n\n  Those silver clouds collected round the sun                    vi  199\n\n  Those words were uttered as in pensive mood                    iv   37\n\n  Though I beheld at first with blank surprise                 viii  115\n\n  Though joy attend Thee orient at the birth                    vii  299\n\n  Though many suns have risen and set                           vii  148\n\n  Though narrow be that old Man's cares, and near,               iv   69\n\n  Tho' searching damps and many an envious flaw                  vi  343\n\n  Though the bold wings of Poesy affect                        viii  154\n\n  Though the torrents from their fountains                       ii  182\n\n  Though to give timely warning and deter                      viii  109\n\n  \"Thou look'st upon me, and dost fondly think,\"                vii  347\n\n  Thou sacred Pile! whose turrets rise                           vi  333\n\n  Threats come which no submission may assuage,                 vii   52\n\n  Three years she grew in sun and shower,                        ii   81\n\n  Throned in the Sun's descending Car                          viii  300\n\n  Through Cumbrian wilds, in many a mountain cove,             viii  272\n\n  Through shattered galleries, 'mid roofless halls,             vii  131\n\n  Thus all things lead to Charity, secured                      vii  102\n\n  Thus far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much              iii  153\n\n  Thus is the storm abated by the craft                         vii   48\n\n  Thy functions are ethereal,                                   vii  204\n\n  'Tis eight o'clock,--a clear March night,                       i  283\n\n  'Tis gone--with old belief and dream                          vii  192\n\n  'Tis He whose yester-evening's high disdain                  viii   94\n\n  'Tis not for the unfeeling, the falsely refined,               ii  147\n\n  'Tis said, fantastic ocean doth enfold                         vi  286\n\n  'Tis said, that some have died for love:                       ii  178\n\n  'Tis said that to the brow of yon fair hill                   vii  230\n\n  'Tis spent--this burning day of June!                         iii   76\n\n  To a good Man of most dear memory                            viii   18\n\n  To appease the Gods; or public thanks to yield;                vi  363\n\n  To barren heath, bleak moor, and quaking fen,                  vi   16\n\n  \"To every Form of being is assigned,\"                           v  353\n\n  To kneeling Worshippers no earthly floor                      vii   97\n\n  Too frail to keep the lofty vow                                ii  383\n\n  To public notice, with reluctance strong,                      vi   40\n\n  Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men!                        ii  339\n\n  Tradition, be thou mute! Oblivion, throw                      vii  293\n\n  Tranquillity! the sovereign aim wert thou                     vii  387\n\n  Troubled long with warring notions                             vi  175\n\n  True is it that Ambrosio Salinero                              iv  233\n\n  'Twas summer, and the sun had mounted high:                     v   26\n\n  Two Voices are there; one is of the sea,                       iv   61\n\n  Under the shadow of a stately Pile,                          viii   78\n\n  Ungrateful Country, if thou e'er forget                       vii   81\n\n  Unless to Peter's Chair the viewless wind                     vii   34\n\n  Unquiet Childhood here by special grace                       vii  170\n\n  Untouched through all severity of cold;                       vii  231\n\n  \"Up, Timothy, up with your staff and away!\"                    ii  181\n\n  Up to the throne of God is borne                              vii  408\n\n  Up! up! my Friend, and quit your books;                         i  274\n\n  Up with me! up with me into the clouds!                       iii   42\n\n  Urged by Ambition, who with subtlest skill                    vii   26\n\n  Uttered by whom, or how inspired--designed                     vi  306\n\n  Vallombrosa! I longed in thy shadiest wood                     vi  357\n\n  \"Vallombrosa--I longed in thy shadiest wood\"                 viii   76\n\n  Vanguard of Liberty, ye men of Kent,                           ii  434\n\n  \"Wait, prithee, wait!\" this answer Lesbia threw              viii   32\n\n  Wanderer! that stoop'st so low, and com'st so near           viii   13\n\n  Wansfell! this Household has a favoured lot,                 viii  153\n\n  Ward of the Law!--dread Shadow of a King!                      vi  209\n\n  Was it to disenchant, and to undo,                             vi  295\n\n  Was the aim frustrated by force or guile,                      vi  184\n\n  Watch, and be firm! for, soul-subduing vice,                  vii   10\n\n  \"Weak is the will of Man, his judgment blind;\"                 vi   67\n\n  We can endure that He should waste our lands,                  iv  246\n\n  Weep not, belov\u00e8d Friends! nor let the air                     iv  230\n\n  We gaze--nor grieve to think that we must die,               viii  306\n\n  We had a female Passenger who came                             ii  342\n\n  _We_ have not passed into a doleful City,                     vii  383\n\n  Well have yon Railway Labourers to THIS ground               viii  176\n\n  Well may'st thou halt--and gaze with brightening eye!          iv   34\n\n  Well sang the Bard who called the grave, in strains           vii  295\n\n  Well worthy to be magnified are they                          vii   84\n\n  Were there, below, a spot of holy ground                        i   37\n\n  Were there, below, a spot of holy ground,                       i  310\n\n  We saw, but surely, in the motley crowd,                      vii  376\n\n  We talked with open heart, and tongue                          ii   91\n\n  We walked along, while bright and red                          ii   89\n\n  What aim had they, the Pair of Monks, in size                viii   74\n\n  What aspect bore the Man who roved or fled,                    vi  237\n\n  What awful p\u00e9rspective! while from our sight                  vii  106\n\n  \"What beast in wilderness or cultured field\"                  vii   47\n\n  What beast of chase hath broken from the cover?                vi  360\n\n  What crowd is this? what have we here! we must not\n      pass it by                                                 iv   22\n\n  What heavenly smiles! O Lady mine                            viii  177\n\n  What He--who, mid the kindred throng                           vi   29\n\n  What if our numbers barely could defy                        viii   87\n\n  \"What is good for a bootless bene?\"                            iv  205\n\n  \"What know we of the Blest above\"                              vi  315\n\n  What lovelier home could gentle Fancy choose?                  vi  294\n\n  What mischief cleaves to unsubdued regret,                    vii  340\n\n  What need of clamorous bells, or ribands gay,                  iv  276\n\n  What sounds are those, Helvellyn, that are heard              iii  270\n\n  What strong allurement draws, what spirit guides,            viii   92\n\n  What though the Accused, upon his own appeal                  vii  223\n\n  What though the Italian pencil wrought not here,               vi  321\n\n  What way does the Wind come? What way does he go?              iv   50\n\n  \"_What, you are stepping westward?_\"--\"_Yea._\"                 ii  396\n\n  When Alpine Vales threw forth a suppliant cry,                vii   79\n\n  Whence that low voice?--A whisper from the heart,              vi  252\n\n  When Contemplation, like the night-calm felt                  iii  201\n\n  When, far and wide, swift as the beams of morn                 iv  244\n\n  When first descending from the moorlands,                    viii   27\n\n  When haughty expectations prostrate lie,                       vi  192\n\n  When here with Carthage Rome to conflict came,               viii   66\n\n  When human touch (as monkish books attest),                  viii   34\n\n  When I have borne in memory what has tamed                     ii  348\n\n  When in the antique age of bow and spear                      vii  115\n\n  When, looking on the present face of things,                   ii  433\n\n  When Love was born of heavenly line,                         viii  216\n\n  When Philoctetes in the Lemnian isle                          vii  167\n\n  When Ruth was left half desolate,                              ii  104\n\n  When Severn's sweeping flood had overthrown,                 viii  314\n\n  When the soft hand of sleep had closed the latch               vi   97\n\n  When thy great soul was freed from mortal chains,             vii   25\n\n  When, to the attractions of the busy world,                   iii   66\n\n  When years of wedded life were as a day                        vi   43\n\n  Where are they now, those wanton Boys?                         ii  281\n\n  Where art thou, my beloved Son,                               iii    7\n\n  Where be the noisy followers of the game                       vi  380\n\n  Where be the temples which, in Britain's Isle,                 vi   45\n\n  Where holy ground begins, unhallowed ends,                     vi  217\n\n  Where lies the Land to which yon Ship must go?                 iv   41\n\n  Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom's creed,            viii  182\n\n  Where long and deeply hath been fixed the root                vii   43\n\n  Where towers are crushed, and unforbidden weeds               vii  137\n\n  Where will they stop, those breathing Powers,                 vii  314\n\n  While Anna's peers and early playmates tread,                 vii  169\n\n  While beams of orient light shoot wide and high,             viii  156\n\n  While flowing rivers yield a blameless sport,                  vi  190\n\n  While from the purpling east departs                          vii  146\n\n  While Merlin paced the Cornish sands,                         vii  252\n\n  While not a leaf seems faded; while the fields,                vi   65\n\n  While poring Antiquarians search the ground,                 viii   33\n\n  While the Poor gather round, till the end of time             vii  307\n\n  While thus from theme to theme the Historian passed,            v  283\n\n  \"Who but hails the sight with pleasure\"                        vi  156\n\n  Who but is pleased to watch the moon on high,                viii  184\n\n  Who comes--with rapture greeted, and caress'd                 vii   75\n\n  Who fancied what a pretty sight                                ii  374\n\n  Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he                            iv    8\n\n  Who ponders National events shall find,                      viii  131\n\n  Who rashly strove thy Image to portray,                      viii   29\n\n  Who rises on the banks of Seine,                               vi  104\n\n  Who swerves from innocence, who makes divorce                  vi  260\n\n  Who weeps for strangers? Many wept,                          viii  267\n\n  Why art thou silent! Is thy love a plant,                    viii   12\n\n  Why cast ye back upon the Gallic shore,                        vi  378\n\n  \"Why, Minstrel, these untuneful murmurings--\"                 vii  161\n\n  Why should the Enthusiast, journeying through this Isle,      vii  343\n\n  Why should we weep or mourn, Angelic boy,                    viii  181\n\n  Why sleeps the future, as a snake enrolled,                   vii  108\n\n  Why stand we gazing on the sparkling Brine,                   vii  361\n\n  \"Why, William, on that old grey stone,\"                         i  272\n\n  Wild Redbreast! hadst thou at Jemima's lip                    vii  176\n\n  Wisdom and Spirit of the universe!                             ii   66\n\n  With copious eulogy in prose or rhyme                         vii  270\n\n  With each recurrence of this glorious morn                     vi  194\n\n  With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the sky,             iv   38\n\n  Within her gilded cage confined,                              vii  142\n\n  Within our happy Castle there dwelt One                        ii  306\n\n  Within the mind strong fancies work,                           vi  158\n\n  With little here to do or see                                  ii  358\n\n  \"With sacrifice before the rising morn\"                        vi    2\n\n  With Ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,                 iv   40\n\n  Witness thou,                                                viii  234\n\n  Woe to the Crown that doth the Cowl obey!                     vii   27\n\n  \"Woe to you, Prelates! rioting in ease\"                       vii   49\n\n  Woman! the Power who left his throne on high,                 vii   95\n\n  Wouldst thou be gathered to Christ's chosen flock,           viii  303\n\n  Wouldst thou be taught, when sleep has taken flight,         viii  151\n\n  Would that our scrupulous Sires had dared to leave            vii   99\n\n  Ye Apennines! with all your fertile vales,                   viii   45\n\n  Ye brood of conscience--Spectres! that frequent,             viii  107\n\n  Ye Lime-trees, ranged before this hallowed Urn,                iv   78\n\n  Ye sacred Nurseries of blooming Youth!                         vi  213\n\n  Ye shadowy Beings, that have rights and claims                vii  377\n\n  Yes! hope may with my strong desire keep pace,                iii  381\n\n  Yes, if the intensities of hope and fear                      vii   88\n\n  Yes, it was the mountain Echo,                                 iv   25\n\n  Yes! thou art fair, yet be not moved,                        viii  176\n\n  Yes, though He well may tremble at the sound,                viii  111\n\n  Ye Storms, resound the praises of your King!                   vi  109\n\n  Yet are they here the same unbroken knot                       iv   65\n\n  Yet many a Novice of the cloistral shade,                     vii   53\n\n  Yet more,--round many a Convent's blazing fire                vii   51\n\n  Ye, too, must fly before a chasing hand,                      vii   54\n\n  Ye torrents, foaming down the rocky steeps,                  viii  161\n\n  Ye Trees! whose slender roots entwine,                       viii   82\n\n  Yet Truth is keenly sought for, and the wind                  vii   76\n\n  Yet, yet, Biscayans! we must meet our Foes                     iv  242\n\n  Ye vales and hills whose beauty hither drew,                 viii  157\n\n  You call it, \"Love lies bleeding,\"--so you may,              viii  149\n\n  You have heard \"a Spanish Lady\"                               vii  232\n\n  YOUNG ENGLAND--what is then become of Old,                   viii  180\n\n  You're here for one long vernal day;                         viii  284\n\n                           END OF VOL. VIII\n\n           _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.\n\n\n\n\n\nEnd of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poetical Works of William\nWordsworth -- Volume 8 (of 8), by William Wordsworth\n\n*** ","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":" \n# Praise for Paul Lisicky's Lawnboy:\n\n\"The sexual awakening of a gay teenager leads to a peculiar, short-ranged rebellion in Paul Lisicky's moody, thoughtful first novel.... Lawnboy recalls standouts of the genre.\"\u2014SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE\n\n\"Lawnboy is, quite simply, the real thing, a novel of mystery and great beauty. The appearance of a writer like Paul Lisicky\u2014a writer who deeply respects the complexities of love and desire, who can find tragedy and transcendence almost everywhere he looks\u2014is a rare event. I read this book increasingly slowly, dreading the moment when I would have no more of it to read. Now that I've finished, all I can say is that I hope Paul Lisicky is hard at work on another one.\"\u2014MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM\n\n\"This novel is to young gay men growing up in the 1980s and 1990s what Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story was for gay men who grew up in the 1950s and 60s. It's the best gay coming-of-age novel I've read in a decade, written with a wonderfully crisp prose. This story concerns a young man trying to find a family anywhere he can; he drifts from situation to situation in South Florida until he finally makes peace with himself. This writer could be the next David Leavitt or Michael Cunningham.\"\u2014BOOKSENSE 76 NEWSLETTER\n\n\"Nobody writes about hilarious longing the way Paul Lisicky does. Some writers manage to be funny and sad in turn; in Lawnboy, Lisicky manages to be both at the same time. His characters are lovable and fallible; his prose is gorgeous. Lawnboy is a tribute to the endless series of life's first loves: your parents, your siblings, your best friends, your childhood fears. It's beautifully written, it's beautiful.\"\u2014ELIZABETH McCRACKEN\n\n\"Savvy enough to recognize the importance of buzz cuts and sleeveless shirts in gay identity formation, Lisicky is also smart enough not to rely on hackneyed consumer-culture signifiers, resulting in a lushly emotional, romantic and tragic pursuit.\"\u2014PAPER\n\n\"Lisicky's prose shines, at times hilarious, at others entrenched in sorrow and longing, but always gorgeous to read.... The reconciliations between the characters are moving and earned, graced with compassion and vitality.\"\u2014BRET ANTHONY JOHNSON, BOOK\n\n\"What distinguishes [Lawnboy] is the depth of humanity that flows into Lisicky's cascade of crisp, fresh sentences.... Lisicky never ceases to be funny, ironic, and surprising.... Lawnboy scythes a remarkably touching journey.\"\u2014LAMBDA BOOK REPORT\n\n\"This adventure-of-the-heart takes place in as evocative a landscape as any you'll find in fiction, its Floridian decay and lushness the perfect setting for a story dense with eroticism, disillusionment, and the surprising grace notes of renewal.\"\u2014BERNARD COOPER\n\n\"Lawnboy re-landscapes the front yard of American fiction.\"\u2014CAROL MUSKE DUKES\n\n\"The power of this book is its ability to touch you on so many different levels.\"\u2014HOUSTON VOICE\n\n\"Lisicky charts Evan's conflicting emotions deftly.... Humorous and moving... hitting musical notes of insight and wit.\"\u2014AUSTIN CHRONICLE\n\n\"Reading this often brilliant novel makes a critic want to apply the clich\u00e9 'promising,' which doesn't do justice to this accomplished and highly readable excursion into human emotions and the choices that we make, or have made for us.\"\u2014SUITE 101.COM\n\n# Lawnboy\n\nAlso by Paul Lisicky\n\nFamous Builder\n\nThe Burning House\n\nUnbuilt Projects\n\nThe Narrow Door\n\n# Lawnboy\n\n## a novel\n\n## Paul Lisicky\n\nGraywolf Press\nCopyright \u00a9 1998 by Paul Lisicky\n\nFirst published by Turtle Point Press\n\nPublication of this volume is made possible in part by a grant provided by the Minnesota State Arts Board, through an appropriation by the Minnesota State Legislature; a grant from the Wells Fargo Foundation Minnesota; and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. Significant support has also been provided by the Bush Foundation; the McKnight Foundation; and other generous contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. To these organizations and individuals we offer our heartfelt thanks.\n\nSupported by the Jerome Foundation in celebration of the Jerome Hill Centennial and in recognition of the valuable cultural contributions of artists to society\n\nPublished by Graywolf Press\n\n250 Third Avenue North, Suite 600\n\nMinneapolis, Minnesota 55401\n\nAll rights reserved.\n\nwww.graywolfpress.org\n\nPublished in the United States of America\n\nISBN-13 978-1-55597-448-0\n\nEbook ISBN 978-1-55597-931-7\n\n2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3\n\nLibrary of Congress Control Number: 2005938154\n\nCover design: Kyle G. Hunter\n\nCover photograph: \u00a9 Corbis\nfor Mark\nAnd so it was I entered the broken world\n\nTo trace the visionary company of love, its voice\n\nAn instant in the wind (I know not whither hurled)\n\nBut not for long to hold each desperate choice.\n\nHART CRANE, \"The Broken Tower\"\n\n***\n\nChing-a-ling-a-ling\n\nChing-a-ling-a-loo...\n\nIf you love me like\n\nI love you\n\nNo one can cut our\n\nlove in two.\n\nCHARLES LUDLAM, \"Eunuchs of the Forbidden City\"\n\n# Prologue\n\nWe stared up into the dark, flamboyant branches, waiting for the wind to pick up. All it took was the slightest push, and there it was: crimson blossoms swaying above us like bells. We stood beneath its heavy canopy, gazing up its trunk, quiet, motionless. The air thickened with its fragrance. And then, as if in gratitude, the tree released itself, little red pieces falling now, coating us, sticking in our hair like blessings.\n\nWe walked further into the park. Peter grasped my hand, reading aloud the names on the signs. Soursop. Gumbo-limbo. Frangipani. Sugar apple. He spoke these words precisely, with the slightest thrill, as if they tasted dangerous. Could we be any happier? Our parents, to our surprise, had encouraged us to come here by ourselves, and it was that dry October morning when the heat finally breaks, when people tired of humidity and air-conditioning finally throw open their windows.\n\nI pointed to a flower. It faltered between a lamppost and a ditch, nameless, forlorn. \"Look,\" I said.\n\nPeter smiled, crouching down beside it. \"Pretty.\"\n\nI knelt next to him. I pulled in a breath: he'd always be older. I was five then, an age I'd resisted, while he was thirteen. How I wanted to grow like that, to go through three different shoe sizes within a year.\n\nI drew closer to the flower. I touched its leaves\u2014crenellated, yellow\u2014its dusky muscular stem. I squeezed shut my eyes. I saw it growing somewhere else, someplace better, in silence and beauty, craning its face toward the light.\n\nI picked it. I twirled its stem between my fingers, listening. Do it. Don't do it. Do it. Don't. No. Then stuffed the whole thing, root and all, in my mouth.\n\nPeter's face tightened. He jerked me up by the arm. \"Evan\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Spit it out!\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"You heard me.\"\n\nI turned my head away, holding my flower inside. The petals tickled the back of my throat; my tongue contracted. The earth blurred, warped. Grapefruit, I thought. My flower tastes like grapefruit. I swallowed, smiled, looked up at my brother through hot, hot tears.\n\n\"What if it's poison?\" He nodded, once, twice, tensing his bottom lip. \"Think about poison.\"\n\nI curled tighter into myself. The woods smelled cold. My forehead burned. Skull and crossbones: would that be me? Bottle of iodine? Alive, I was alive.\n\n# Part  \nOne\n\n# Chapter 1\n\nThere were things nobody knew about me. They didn't know about my old train set in my bedroom, complete with Cape Cods, hotels, signal crossings, and papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 palms, a set that I tinkered with until the ninth grade, then smashed\u2014to my uttermost sorrow\u2014after a fight with my father. They didn't know I could recite a handful of psalms\u2014the 13th, the 23rd, the 42nd, and the 53rd\u2014completely by heart. They didn't know about my deep interest in Greek myth, my faith in the shifting weather, my fascination with Saturn and the outer planets. They didn't know that I spent hours at a time inside a concrete pipe, a cool, cramped cylinder in the middle of a field, whenever I needed to get away. They didn't know about the morning in my thirteenth year when out of sheer boredom, I stitched my fingertips together with needle and thread, making an intricate basket of my hand and giving myself a tremendous infection. They all thought I was good-natured, upright and responsible, generous, affectionate, and kind, and of course I could be those things, but there was much more to me than that, a side that unnerved even myself, and this side included William.\n\nWilliam. William the pigeon-toed, William the conqueror. His name, though banal, still conjures up an otherworldly thing, not a being of flesh and blood. For a while I kept him hidden from everyone\u2014my mother, my father, Peter. It even took me months to tell my best friend Jane about him, though she thought she knew me. Well, she didn't.\n\nI liked to keep him that way: my secret path, my own private joy.\n\nI was mowing my parents' lawn. He was standing in our yard between the joewood and the carambola, mopping his tanned forehead with a blue rag. He was watching me, hard, and I made an effort not to notice. He'd been around forever; he had to be almost as old as my parents: forty, forty-two. I'd never even given him a thought. I only knew that he worked the camera for Channel 7 News, had a gentle greeting for my folks whenever he walked his Dobermans, and had the most profound and beautiful travelers tree I'd ever seen (like me, he loved plants). That was it. He meant absolutely nothing to me, until he stepped forward, then I started noticing: jaw, eyes, hair, smell, hands, feet, mouth. There was a kind of buzz about him, a field of hissing electricity that jerked with my ions and electrons. I felt myself getting hard. I thought: now you've really gotten yourself into trouble.\n\n\"Lawnboy,\" he said, mocking me. \"Lawnboy, Lawnboy.\"\n\nI pulled back on the lever. The motor silenced. \"Is there a problem?\" I said, with some irritation.\n\nThe hush overwhelmed. Above, dry palm fronds clattered in the heat.\n\n\"Can I help you?\"\n\nHe nodded, shyly. He tucked in his shirt, a striped Haitian thing patterned with yellow parrots. \"My lawn mower's broken. My place is a mess. Would you be interested in cutting my lawn?\"\n\nMy expression dulled. I reacted as if he'd been asking to tap my spine.\n\n\"I'll give you twenty bucks. Twenty bucks, an hour a week. No weeding or mulching.\"\n\nI frowned. I felt simple, my tongue swelling fatly in my mouth. Befuddled. I glanced up at the shocked treetops and saw a sun shivering in a glazed sky. When I looked back at him, his eyes, blue with sprinklings of gold, were watching mine. I thought I detected some fear in them.\n\n\"I have to ask my parents,\" I announced.\n\nI loped through the side door. I crouched in the living room, pressed my nose right down into the quarry tile so I could almost breathe in the dust. I was seventeen years old. Of course my parents didn't need to know. If anything, they'd be thrilled that I'd finally stopped moping around the house, dreading the resumption of school. I stood, watching the second hand of the clock make three complete rotations. I peered through the slats of the Bermuda shutter. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot. I reached into my pants, gave myself a firm and brutal yank. When I looked down, I noticed the trembling of my hands.\n\n\"What did they say?\" William called out to me.\n\nI bounded down the walk. I tried to seem matter-of-fact, reckless. \"They said fine. Fine. When do you want me to start?\"\n\n\"Tomorrow.\" He grinned, his shoulders drawing imperceptibly backward. \"So we have a deal then.\"\n\n\"Deal.\" I extended my hand to him.\n\nBut he didn't take the hand. Instead, he placed his palm flat over my face, then pushed up, and as I started the mower, I decided he was probably the creepiest, most disgusting individual I'd ever met in my life.\n\n***\n\nThat night I lay in bed, listening to the house. Ice maker, pool motor, air conditioner, computer, oven cleaner. Everything but voices. It was the fourth day in a row that my parents, Ursula and Sid, hadn't spoken. I should have been used to it by now, but their silence only seemed to have gotten noisier, so shrill I pictured it puncturing a hole, the size of a meteorite, through the ceiling. I couldn't be safe from it, not outside, not in my room. I suspected it would follow me everywhere, even after their deaths, till my own death. I glanced at the digits of my clock radio. 10:04. Boy, am I seeing the world.\n\nThey shouldn't have gotten married. They couldn't stand each other. Anyone could see it in their eyes and their clipped, joyless mouths. Once, seeing intimations of these same expressions in their wedding photos, I thought, with relief\u2014ah\u2014so it isn't my doing. Still, it maddened me that they kept holding on like this. They never dealt with anything. The same way they couldn't deal with me. I mean, I didn't mince or prance. I didn't weave, I didn't dot my \"i's\" with circles or curlicues, but my eminent faggotry should have been obvious to them. Hello, Ursula. Hello, Sid. Knock, knock. Anybody home?\n\nI fooled with my armpit hair. I thought of his face: the mussed-up brows, the deeply cut eyes. He carried a smoky smell about him, as if he were burning deep from inside.\n\n\"So where are you going?\" Ursula said the following morning. Her voice sounded upbeat, despite the goings-on with my father. At least she'd gotten herself dressed today.\n\nI stuffed a banana muffin in my mouth. \"Beach. I'm going with Jane. I'll be back before dinner.\"\n\nShe pressed the small of her back into the countertop. She held her pale, slender arms tightly over her chest. \"You're not going to the beach,\" she said with a knowing grin.\n\nCrumbs caught in my throat. Did she know? She couldn't know. \"Why do you always have to accuse? You never believe me. You always think I'm plotting, Mom. I think you despise me.\"\n\n\"Are you going to start with me again? I made a simple psychic assertion. You're a lousy liar. You can't hide a damn thing from me.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah?\" I laughed, and slammed out the door.\n\nI stood outside William's at 8:54 a.m. I was early, but wanted to get it over with. The door opened, and he stood there in a robe patterned with marine flags, a mud masque on his face.\n\n\"Lawn mower's in the garage,\" he said with a husky rasp.\n\nI pulled up on the door handle. The mower hunkered beside the pool chemicals\u2014a nice one actually, with pretty green paint and detachable grass catcher. Unlike our lawn mower, a piece of shit that was constantly leaking gas, this one started first try.\n\nI bent over, stretched. The grass, a high-quality Floratam, was pleasantly spongy. I worked up and down, sidestepping sprinkler heads, guarding the tender young trunks of the palms. I started making up a song. I frequently made up songs and sang them aloud, almost yelling them up to the trees.\n\nLenny, the lusty Lawnboy,\n\nCuts the yards and makes them sizzle.\n\nEveryone who sees him needs\n\nHis moisture-seeking love-hard missile.\n\nI studied the sliding windows of the house and realized I wasn't going to have sex with him. I didn't know where the warped idea had popped into my head anyway. Once again, I'd allowed myself to get all worked up about someone who was unavailable to me, foreign as the workings of a nuclear power plant. I looked up at the window again. He was just a regular fellow. Lonely. Dumb. A little fun.\n\nI finished up in record time, forty-three minutes. The yard was smaller than I'd expected. I stepped through the gate, sat, and took in the reeking trees: flame vine, soursop, wild cinnamon. My fingers smelled of gasoline, fertilizer. The lawn, green as mouthwash, glittered in the morning heat. Above me, the sky bubbled and fried.\n\n\"Nice tune,\" William said, stepping outside.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I said I liked your song.\"\n\nMy stomach folded in on itself. \"I wasn't singing.\"\n\nHe cuffed the top of my head and laughed. \"Do you want to come inside for breakfast?\"\n\nMy words came out sludgy, like juice squeezed from a freeze-damaged orange. I told him that I had to leave, that I needed my payment, please, but he kept scrutinizing me. I tasted a fresh filling deep in the corner of my mouth. Finally, he reached into his rear pocket and pulled out three ten-dollar bills.\n\n\"But this is ten dollars too much.\"\n\n\"Take it.\"\n\n\"It's too much.\"\n\n\"Just take it. Buy yourself some candy.\"\n\n\"I don't need any candy.\".\n\n\"Whatever.\"\n\nI shrugged. For some reason I felt myself welcoming, letting down the defenses, when I noticed the fractures of light in his eye. I went off. I imagined him capable of all sorts of things. Hangings, slayings, snuff films. Whole freezers filled with kidnapped boys in body bags stacked according to height, weight, race, creed.\n\n\"So would you like to come in?\" he asked again.\n\n\"Sure,\" I said, and followed.\n\n***\n\nSomething disturbing and immature in my nature wanted to startle people. Perhaps it was because I was essentially unstartling in appearance. I slumped through the corridors of my school, Coral Gables High, a quiet, mealy kid with Dumbolike ears, in flannel shirts, racking up B after B, even though I was most likely a genius. My fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Edge, had extracted me from the class and said, \"You're too good for us. I'm going to recommend to the principal that you be passed on to the sixth grade.\" And she did it, easy as the snap of a finger. These achievements continued until Peter\u2014crying, stoned\u2014left the house for good after an all-night fight with my father. I'm not sure what happened after that.\n\nWilliam and I sat at the kitchen counter. He told me about his ex-wife, Lorna, his daughter, Poppy, at Rollins College, his years in the Episcopal seminary, and his preparations for the priesthood. I was bored out of my skull. I picked up an empty mayonnaise jar. The same image kept drifting across my tired eyelids: a hole in the clouds, torn like a bullet wound, with the sky on fire behind it.\n\nThen I thought about Jane. We were supposed to have gone to the beach. She had to be pissed by now. Or worried. She was always worried about me. Sometimes she told me that if I wasn't careful, I'd be one of those people you read about in papers, carved up like a Christmas turkey, lying in a ditch. She could think what she wanted. But I knew I was protected. Something, somewhere, was watching, keeping me. God. An angel. I could walk through fire, thrive through sickness, pass through the harshest danger, and come out alive.\n\nI looked up. William was smiling. \"You haven't listened to a word I said.\"\n\n\"What?\" I put the jar down. The tabletop was littered with the scraps of the peeled label.\n\n\"Tell me about yourself. How's school?\"\n\nI shrugged. I wasn't going to give in to him. He thought he had something. He thought I was innocent, powerless, that I was going to lie down and take it. He was wrong. I pictured him lying on his stomach in a warm dark cave. A bowl full of liquid beside his head. How easy it would be to lift the bowl in his moment of peace and kill him.\n\nWe were in his room. He sat on the bed while I swayed above him. He unzipped my pants and felt for my dick\u2014a hard, red, glistening muscle. He gripped it, cranked it around. \"Beautiful,\" he rasped, gazing up into my face.\n\nHe started sucking me off. It wasn't like I'd expected. I mean, I'd fooled around before, but it wasn't serious sex\u2014not in a bed or anything\u2014and this, I supposed, was serious sex. I wasn't particularly excited. Maybe I was bored, even disgusted. I concentrated on the motions, trying to pinpoint the smells in the room. I thought: bleach, weeds, sweat, funk, hair.\n\n\"Good?\" he asked, taking a breather.\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nWe continued. We rolled around on the bed, when a thought, a full sentence, occurred to me: He is getting younger, while I am getting older. I didn't know what it meant. I thrust out my leg, kicked over the lamp, then rolled him over on his back, even though he was the stronger. I hiked his legs onto my shoulders, and to my astonishment, started fucking him.\n\n\"That's it,\" he muttered. \"Fuck your old man, boy. That's it. Keep fucking your daddy.\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" I whispered. \"Just please shut the hell up.\"\n\nA thin cord of electricity quavered up my spine. I realized: this is what I'd always wanted. All at once I departed from myself, turning above the bed like a huge ticking wheel, watching us pushing against each other. My breath was sticking in my throat. I leaned over and kissed the harsh sandpaper of his face. I returned to myself, felt him clenching and relaxing around me, then pulled out, coming across his heaving stomach.\n\nI stood before the bathroom mirror. I stuck a coated finger in my mouth, pushing it around my gums, feeding myself. My body felt new: the blood enriching my face, the muscles sharper as if dug by fine tools. I had something. I had a power all along and hadn't even known it.\n\nBut when I walked into his bedroom, I was only the mealy high school boy again. I eased under the covers, punching him softly on his broad freckled back, waiting for encouragement, or something returned, when he only swung away and rolled on some basketball socks with holes in them. His head appeared to be swimming with thoughts. His Dobermans jumped up on the bed, panting, licking at my bare skin.\n\n\"Get dressed, kiddo,\" he said. \"Your parents are going to be worried.\"\n\n\"But can't we do it again?\"\n\n\"No, that's enough for me.\" He laughed softly. \"Get dressed. It's time for you to go.\"\n\n\"You sure?\"\n\nHe nodded.\n\nSo that's it, I thought. That's what you do. I picked up my clothes from the sweaty heap on the floor. He kissed me dryly on the mouth. I left. On the way home I kept repeating: I went to the beach. I went to the big beach with my friend Jane and saw palms and sand and girls carrying buckets full of tulip shells. I took a swim and ate a snow cone.\n\n# Chapter 2\n\nYears ago, Jane had wanted me to be someone else. Or at least myself with one big difference.\n\nWe were sitting inside the South Miami house of Gwen Marino, the upper-level art teacher. We loved Gwen Marino, her tangle of hair and trailing black scarves and the many Bakelite bracelets she wore on each arm. Not only because she talked openly about the possibility of sex in our paintings (\"What these beach roses need\"\u2014she'd step back, pulling at her lip, clenching her brow\u2014\"is more foreplay\"), but because she invited us\u2014only us\u2014to babysit her daughter Saga, and that very opportunity bestowed on us a stature that all the other lowly worshipers in her cult could only dream of.\n\nJane was wearing a chopstick through her hair, her deep red lipstick setting off her pale skin. Gwen was out for the evening, on a date with Roy Panner, the industrial arts teacher whom we'd decided was not good enough for her. Saga had long been put to bed, and we sat on the couch, staring occasionally at the film canister of pot and the aqua bong on the end table. Something told us that this had been deliberately left out for our partaking and pleasure, and soon enough we were taking hit after hit, giggling hysterically, staring at the homemade pole lamp as its beautiful pieces revealed themselves to us: discrete, then whole again.\n\n\"God, I'm horny,\" I laughed. \"What the hell's in this stuff?\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" she said, biting into her lip. \"It's funny. I was just thinking the same thing.\"\n\nInstantly I regretted my admission. Casually, Jane pushed the tips of her fingers into the waistband of her jeans.\n\n\"What are you thinking?\" she said, smiling.\n\n\"Nothing.\" Then my laughter broke apart as if shattered by a BB.\n\n\"You want to fuck me, don't you?\"\n\n\"No!\" I said, still laughing.\n\n\"Yes, you do. You want to throw me on my back, you little beast, and fuck the living shit out of me.\"\n\nIf at that moment we'd been distracted by a ringing phone or a distant radio, the urge would have passed and our friendship would have remained just that\u2014something effortless and self-contained. Instead, I leaned over and kissed her wetly on the mouth. Her tongue felt slippery and hot, like my own. I needed to see whether I could pull this off\u2014that is, sex with someone of the other gender. I thought, why not? Why the hell not? She's my friend, and we care about each other. No one's going to get hurt here. Why not?\n\nI lay my weight on top of Jane. I unbuttoned the top two buttons of her shirt, then started kissing her, reaching inside for her breasts. Was I doing this right? Was I giving her what she wanted, the reassurance and the strength? I looked down into her face, her open shocked face, and she back at me, and before I could assess, something had changed: I felt foreign to myself, more remote than I'd ever felt before. I was nothing short of a liar. I hadn't yet told her the truth about myself, for the secret seemed to be enormous. She'd walk away, I knew it. I'd be telling her I wasn't the person she thought I was, and didn't we tell each other everything? Didn't I know about her cramps and her lies and her fights with her parents? Didn't I know about her doubts, her rages, her fleeting depressions concerning her little sister, Anna, who'd fallen back, thrown up, and died to the dread of her kindergarten as she scissored through a sheet of blue construction paper and constructed a George Washington hat? And didn't everyone\u2014Gwen Marino included\u2014assume we were a couple just waiting to happen if they didn't think we were already together?\n\nShe reached into my fly. I felt a quick high panic, thinking that she'd think my dick was mediocre, when it wasn't mediocre, not when I had an erection at least. I pulled back and folded my arms. Even when I'd imagined this scene, it had never been so clumsy.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" I said.\n\n\"You think I'm fat.\"\n\n\"No,\" I insisted. \"I don't think you're fat.\"\n\n\"You're not attracted to me. You think I'm disgusting.\" She pulled at the excess skin of her thigh.\n\n\"Stop,\" I said, reaching for her shoulder.\n\n\"Don't touch,\" she said, and curled up with a pillow. \"Go away. I feel like being alone now.\"\n\nI waited a week to explain the truth about myself. When I told her, though, in the school cafeteria, within earshot of the entire girls' ensemble (who were working out the kinks in Benjamin Britten's Ceremony of Carols), she reacted with the slightest hint of condescension, as if it weren't news to her, before walking to the ice cream machine to buy a Buddy bar.\n\nWhat happened next was more complicated. In the latter months of spring, she began dating a sophomore, DeMarco Huff, who'd been transferred to our school from the suburbs of Memphis. If you could call it dating\u2014what it essentially amounted to was a series of quick trysts behind the Dumpsters of the Coral Sea Garden Apartments, where DeMarco lived in a two-bedroom with his mother. In any case, Jane had never been crazy about him. He wouldn't talk to her, and they had not one single thing in common, but he was black, and she loved black men, and he had the loveliest, tiniest waist, with the prettiest belly button she'd ever seen.\n\n\"Are you sure this is a good thing?\" I asked her one day.\n\n\"Sure.\" She tried out a grin, looking not entirely convinced.\n\n\"Is he nice to you? Does he treat you well?\"\n\n\"Of course. He's the sweetest little piece on the planet. He's just horny is all, and that's all I want right now.\" Her eyes were dried out, miserable. \"God, I love to get fucked.\"\n\nJane and I still managed to call each other from time to time, though we saw each other less and less. An occasional wave in the hall outside Gwen's ceramics class\u2014that seemed to suffice. We were always running somewhere. Then one day I received a call from her, not three seconds after I'd arrived home from school.\n\n\"I need you to go somewhere with me.\"\n\n\"Go where?\" I wasn't in the mood. I spread a thin, gritty layer of peanut butter on my sandwich bread.\n\n\"Don't ask. I'll tell you later.\"\n\nShe picked me up in her parents' Vista Cruiser, a faded green station wagon from 1968, which we'd nicknamed the Flintstone-mobile due to its salt-corroded floor. It was amazing that her father had kept the car running, keeping a place for it beneath the palms, refusing to give it up while it still had some life left in it. The thing had embarrassed the hell out of Jane, and she'd never driven it alone before, but her face looked urgent and necessary as if its ramshackle appearance were the least of her worries.\n\n\"I'm getting an abortion.\"\n\n\"You're what?\"\n\n\"Shut up. I'm getting an abortion, and I don't want you to stop me. You're my assistant here. Your job is to keep me safe and protected and calm.\"\n\n\"Are you scared?\"\n\n\"Of course I'm scared. What do you think this is, some kind of party?\"\n\n\"Don't yell at me!\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she said quietly. She raked her fingertips once down her forehead. \"Why am I so mean to you?\" she asked. \"You who I love so much. Tell me why I'm so mean to you.\"\n\nI gazed out the window at the sand pit, the lawn-ornament yard with its Marys and Buddhas. Beneath my feet Route 1 scrolled through a hole the size of a pie plate.\n\n\"You didn't tell your parents?\" I said.\n\n\"Are you kidding?\"\n\n\"You really think it'd bother them?\"\n\n\"They'd kill me. Especially if they found out about DeMarco.\"\n\nI squinted. \"Are you saying your parents are prejudiced?\"\n\n\"No. Not in the conventional sense. Let's just say they'd do everything in their power to stop a KKK rally from happening on their street. But they'd be funny about DeMarco. They'd just think I was trying to get back at them.\"\n\nShe parked outside the clinic, a yellow, stucco-coated building near a microwave tower topped with a strobe light.\n\n\"Do you see any picketers?\" she said, glancing around.\n\nThe parking lot was vacant. I shook my head.\n\n\"Just wait here for me.\"\n\n\"Can't I come inside? I want to come inside.\"\n\n\"No,\" she insisted. \"Stay right here. It'll be over in an hour.\"\n\nI did what she said. I focused all my attention on the door, awaiting her return. A woman in white stockings came out, regarding me briefly, warily, before hurrying down the block to her hatchback. I wondered whether Jane had been more upset than she'd let on. Two weeks ago, against the advice of Mrs. Wash, the health teacher, she'd given an oral report about the right to safe abortion\u2014admittedly the most hackneyed of topics\u2014but the class had actually listened. Her words were rational and tough-minded, so who could have assumed that getting an abortion would have been a big deal for her?\n\nI stared for five minutes at the door. I hoped they weren't hurting her.\n\nWhen we were at our most inseparable, Jane came up with the notion that she'd one day like to have a child with me. And if we couldn't have that child, we'd have an imaginary child. He'd be a boy. We'd call him Nico, after the Velvet Underground's lead singer. He'd be the perfect child. He'd be fluent in many languages. We'd take him everywhere with us\u2014Paris, Goa, Crete, Amsterdam\u2014where everyone would ask, who is that child? Who is that stylish, witty, extraordinary child? Ours, we'd say humbly. Nico.\n\nGod knows why I was thinking about that now.\n\nA half hour later, according to schedule, the door opened and Jane walked toward the car. She appeared neither relieved nor distraught, a little pale maybe, the hint of raccoon rings beneath her eyes. Her breath smelled faintly of orangeade. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to behave. Was I supposed to hug her, comfort her, speak words of wisdom, or act like she'd just been to the dentist's, like nothing significant had happened? I stared at the blue bruise beneath my fingernail. I felt less assured than I'd felt in a long time.\n\nSo I asked, \"How did it go?\"\n\nThe corners of her mouth were filmed with white. \"I don't want to talk about it, okay? Just don't let me talk about it.\"\n\n\"Do you want me to drive?\"\n\n\"Nn nn.\" She pulled out a Kleenex and wiped off her mouth. \"I'm feeling a little woozy. Did you eat?\"\n\nI shook my head. I was ready to do anything she wanted.\n\n\"Let's go to Burger King. For some reason I'm really in the mood to go to Burger King.\"\n\nIt was the silent time between lunch and dinner, and we seated ourselves away from the windows to keep ourselves out of the direct sun. My skin felt chilled and hot at once. Jane stared down at the tabletop, eating onion rings with one hand, propping up her jaw with the other, twirling a piece of hair between her fingers. She hadn't spoken in a full ten minutes.\n\n\"Poor Nico,\" she mumbled.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nShe smiled, exhausted, a watery glaze in her eyes. \"He would have been the best.\" And as if in slow motion, she pushed over her Coke, watching its contents fizzing on the tile floor.\n\nI tossed down some napkins to cover it up. A uniformed boy walked toward us with a mop, but I waved him away, kneeling down to take care of it myself.\n\nI glanced up at Jane. I said, \"Don't talk like that. We're not kids anymore.\"\n\n\"It was just a joke,\" she said in an exceedingly hurt voice. \"Don't be so hard on me, okay?\"\n\nI held her close to me for the longest time.\n\nWe left. Jane dropped me off, and I went to bed early that night. She came back to herself in the next few days, but our friendship seemed strained and uneasy after that. We'd crossed some line. We knew too much. The thing was, I believed it was possible now to know too much.\n\n***\n\nOnce a week, I went to William's house, mowed the lawn, weeded the garden, and had sex. I gradually began to understand him, his silences and quirks, how he couldn't stand when I nicked the flesh of the century plant or splashed gas near the bird feeders. I learned when to talk, I learned when to be quiet. I also learned not to be resentful whenever he ignored me afterwards. We had a pattern. We knew exactly what to expect from each other. No hurts, no disappointments. Not much talking. Sometimes, if we finished up early, he'd take me to the Speedboat Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale and I'd order exactly what I wanted: hamburger, salad, fries, dessert, soft drink. We might have been any other father and son. No one suspected a thing.\n\nOne afternoon I saw both of my parents sitting across from each other in the living room, silent. It was unlike them to be together in the same room. I couldn't tell whether I was grateful or frightened. Then it occurred to me that one of them, most likely my father, had cancer.\n\n\"Sit down,\" my father said grimly.\n\n\"I already have.\"\n\nMy eyes drifted to the baseboard heaters. It was a murky afternoon, threatening rain, and Ursula flipped on the lamp, which depressed me. Lamps are for night, I wanted to say. Their silence somehow amplified things: the clicking of a palmetto beetle, the pressure of the palms against the window glass. A stray nerve kept pulsing in the small of my back. I knew what was coming. I wanted to pick up and run down the street.\n\nMy mother finally sat forward on the sofa. \"You've been spending a lot of time away from us.\"\n\nSilence from Sid. He slouched low in his seat, curled the edge of his hand over his brow.\n\nI nodded solemnly. \"You want me to help out more?\"\n\nMy mom nodded, then wagged her head. \"I'm surprised.\"\n\nI smiled, because I couldn't contain it any longer, but neither of them smiled back. \"I don't understand.\"\n\n\"People are talking.\"\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\nShe whispered, \"Why are you spending so much time with that man?\"\n\nI raised my chin. Always what the neighbors thought. \"So what?\"\n\nMy father sprang to attention. \"Don't talk to her like that. That's your mother.\"\n\nMy eyes smarted. Did I know them? All my life I'd come and gone as I pleased. All my life I'd taken care of myself. Even when I was younger they'd never asked for report cards, never taken an interest in my hobbies or projects. I was the kind of five-year-old you saw circling the shopping-center parking lot on his bicycle, dodging cars, bewildering the parents, years before the other kids. And I wasn't complaining, okay? But there seemed to be a tacit agreement that they completely stay out of my business.\n\n\"What's this have to do with Mr. Parsons?\" I stood up now.\n\n\"You sit down,\" my father demanded.\n\nI didn't sit. They'd never talked to me this way before, and it wasn't going to start now.\n\n\"Do you see how he listens?\" my father said to my mother. \"Just like his brother.\"\n\n\"What's he have to do with anything?\"\n\nShe ignored the question. Her lips hovered over the rim of her cup. It seemed that I'd frightened her. \"What have you been doing with that man, dear?\" she asked shyly.\n\nI stood. My mother reached into her sundress pocket and showed my a piece of wadded-up paper. The printing was mine. I'd covered the entire page with the same phrase, in columns, using the tiniest of letters: I love to fuck I love to fuck I love to fuck I love to fuck.\n\n\"I found this in your notebook. I know I shouldn't have gone through your things. I know it was wrong, but when you started withdrawing from us, I didn't know what else to do.\"\n\nI wasn't withdrawing from anyone. \"You had no right, Mom.\"\n\n\"Have you been sleeping with that man?\"\n\n\"What makes you keep asking these stupid things?\"\n\nShe nibbled at the corner of her mouth. She recognized the truth in my eyes. \"We're having that bastard arrested.\"\n\n\"Don't talk about him that way.\"\n\nThat did it. My father went for my arm. He didn't punch me; he didn't do what any regular father would do. Instead, he drew me to him, somehow rolled me over his knee like a puppet, and\u2014get this\u2014started spanking my clothed butt for a good half-minute or so. I was seventeen years old. It was such a comic thing that I let him do it until we both filled up with shame.\n\n\"Happy, buddy boy?\" I said.\n\nI laughed all the way up to my room. When I lay facedown on my bed, minutes later, I was still laughing. Fools. I took breaths, many deep breaths, breathing, breathing, calming myself down, then reached for a pen, a red ballpoint, and started punching it in and out of my right palm, deft and precise as a sewing-machine needle, until I was looking down at a smear, a little red star on my hand. It was beautiful to see. The house stilled, and I fell fast asleep holding my beating hand to my face.\n\n# Chapter 3\n\nI wished I'd had more courage. I wished I'd held onto my anger, letting it fuel me, giving me the beauty and strength of the supersonic, but in the weeks that passed something happened. I learned that I was nothing more than a coward. My parents kept looking at me as if I'd crossed a bridge over a steaming fjord and had become a stranger to them. I became flat, an outline, weightless. One afternoon, coming home from school, I overheard my father talking about removing my name from his will. I didn't care about his money. But this erasure from their lives startled me, like an unexpected punch in the neck. I'd thought they'd get over it after a while, that we'd be the family we'd always been, fixed in our silences and resentments.\n\nSo I gave them what they wanted. I avoided William. I stopped picking up the phone and answering the door. I even shirked my gardening duties. I didn't even pass William's house, and imagined his lawn grown mangy and foul without me. On my way somewhere, I'd take the long route, around the park, through the college gates, just so I wouldn't bump into him. I lived in great fear of bumping into him, at the drugstore, at the motor vehicle registry, of seeing the worn-out expression on his face: Why have you done this?\n\nI helped with the garbage, manicured the hedges. I even scrubbed the mold from the side of the house, something that should have been done years ago. I made it quite clear, without saying it, that I no longer had anything to do with William, or with people, for that matter. My parents started treating me with kindness. They actually talked with me, asked my opinions, discussed current events. They'd finally gotten a good son, whoever that was, and he was gradually becoming an exemplary young man. I had only one more year of school, then I'd get out, hungry and loosed upon the world. I watched my soul shrink then shimmer to a tiny point.\n\nI began studying all night long. I began achieving perfect grades, throwing off the curve for the entire class. My teachers were amazed by me. Princeton, Stanford, Swarthmore, Michigan\u2014all of them wanted me by the end of the year. I kept on going. I was giving myself up to the powers. I swam, I ran, I beat off constantly, sometimes so much that it stung to pee. I was burning, a saint, purifying myself in these blaring fires. A dream would often come to me, and I'd force the dream, force myself to watch it, though it made me sick. I'd be standing over my young self, the sweet, boyish, optimistic self, punching his face until his mouth fell open.\n\nWe were eating dinner one Saturday night. My mother stepped out, then back in the kitchen, holding a cake rimmed with candles. My father handed a wrapped present to me. Then I realized it must be my birthday. I'd completely forgotten all about my birthday.\n\n\"We're so proud of you, Evan,\" my mother said blankly. \"You're doing everything right.\"\n\nMy father added: \"I'm so glad you've changed.\"\n\nI nodded, smiled. I unwrapped my present and stared at the watch in the box. It meant nothing to me. I should have broken it right in front of their needy eyes.\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said, and kissed them. Their foreheads were dry. I might have been kissing the brows of the dead.\n\nMonths passed. Jane and I were walking along the bay front. A new high-rise was being thrown up in record time, and we watched the construction workers in their orange hard hats stepping across the open girders. I'd just been offered a full scholarship to Princeton and I suppose we were celebrating that fact. I hadn't even talked to Jane in seven, eight weeks. Somehow I'd learned to live without her in my life.\n\n\"Are you sure you're okay?\" she said out of nowhere.\n\n\"Well, that's a non sequitur.\"\n\n\"I'm serious. Are you sure you're okay?\"\n\n\"Of course I'm okay. I've never been better in my life.\"\n\nA green-eyed man with black hair jogged by us. He looked me up and down, grinned, then trotted ahead.\n\n\"Did you see that?\" Jane said warmly. \"Did you see the way he looked at you?\"\n\n\"Faggot,\" I muttered, and walked ahead of her.\n\n\"Hey!\" Something wet bounced and spread across my back. \"That doesn't sound like you. He was exactly your type. What's with you?\"\n\nShe annoyed me terribly. First her judgment, then her rancor. I watched the people walking by us. I watched their simpering, self-satisfied faces and threw a mental message to each one: Fuck you.\n\n\"You're changing,\" she said quietly.\n\nShe sat down on a slatted bench. \"You used to be so much fun. You used to have such an amazing sense of humor.\"\n\n\"I was never funny.\"\n\n\"Yes you were. And we always talked when things got bad. We buoyed each other.\" She folded her arms over her chest, frowned. \"Fucker,\" she mumbled.\n\n\"Fucker?\"\n\n\"You heard what I said.\"\n\n\"Keep talking like that and I'm going to leave you right here.\"\n\n\"So leave.\"\n\nIt came as unexpectedly as a fish in a flooded street gutter. I glanced to my right and saw William sitting in his parked car, with newspaper and coffee cup. I didn't think he was looking at me. He was simply another office worker spending his break in his car. The intensity of my argument with Jane diminished. I wasn't scared or sick or excited. I'd known this moment would come, but I never thought it would be so dull. My vision went runny; my words sounded stupid in my mouth. I might have been sitting on the mucky bottom of the bay. I glanced again, the car was gone, and I was afraid.\n\nWhy the hell hadn't I said hello?\n\nWe didn't speak for the longest time. A long train of motorcycles paraded past us down the street. When I looked back at Jane, her eyes were fixed upon a dead patch of grass. \"What's up?\" I said finally.\n\n\"I don't know. I was thinking about Mr. Hovnanian.\" She tried to laugh a little, embarrassed. \"Don't ask me why. Remember that stuff about the eclipse?\"\n\n\"Sure.\"\n\nIt wasn't so long ago: our tenth-grade class sitting before the TV, watching the total eclipse sweeping across North America. It was terribly, horribly beautiful, the quality of that darkness\u2014birds falling silent, streetlights trembling on. Liquidy fires jetted around the rim. Then, just when the sky went dark and the corona shivered, Mr. Hovnanian switched off the set. \"What makes you think that wasn't a hoax? How did you know that that wasn't a computer image, fabricated to drum up ratings?\"\n\nFor weeks Jane seemed to take it personally, ineffably sad about the whole matter.\n\nI said, \"Is something wrong? You don't seem like yourself.\"\n\n\"Why am I thinking of tenth grade, for God's sake? What's gotten into me?\"\n\nWe stared at a fallen tangelo while the heat crept into our scalps.\n\n***\n\nI couldn't sleep. I felt something simmering in my body, a slow cooking, spreading up through the stem of my torso, then prickling, exploding in my throat like salad oil. I wanted to molt, I wanted to cut away the baggage of my skin. I kicked the wet covers off the bed, threw on some clothes, and left the house. I was going to walk it off. I was walking through developments, through people's backyards in the dark, over culverts, canals, retention basins. Hours had passed. I passed airport runways with their raucous blue lights, sanitation plants vast as cities, signs fizzing and sparking, arrows pointing in all directions. Two towns over, the boat factory was working overtime, and the junky hot smell of plastic lingered in the atmosphere. A storm threatened from the Everglades, then receded, pushing the humidity even higher. I took off my shirt and roped it around my waist. I decided to walk and walk, possibly to the Keys, possibly to the Card Sound Bridge, until I finally got rid of this feeling.\n\nHours later I was standing in William's front yard. I expected the lawn to be overgrown, ruined, bits of scale and dollarweed eating at the turf. But no. It looked even better than before. Moist, lush. I knew it: William had found another Lawnboy. I had lost him for good. I fumbled for some broken shells and started tossing them, one after another, at the glass of the window: ping ping ping ping.\n\nWas I ready to give myself over to desire?\n\nI knew myself too well: hyped up, charged, I'd lose everything. I saw myself fretting, always looking for something other, something better, something outside myself. I saw myself utterly alone in the world, a gleaming wasp inside a bright orange hive, alone with my anguish and raging hot need, and who'd be there to still me?\n\nWas there anyone else at that moment who knew the pressure and potential of changing everything? I raised my hand and linked myself up with him, the longing, imaginary one, then pressed forward, my fingertip upon the doorbell, standing on William's front porch, waiting.\n\n# Chapter 4\n\nMy childhood suitcase was a rude, bulky thing, its surface marred by chipping decals\u2014Kennedy Space Center, South of the Border, Sunken Gardens\u2014which recalled family travels too heartbreaking to ponder. The packing proved harder than I'd imagined: what to take, what to leave behind. Forever? Was that the way it was going to be? My stomach simmered and groaned. I wanted to get it over with before they knew I was leaving.\n\nDown the hall my mother was cooking pot roast. I thought about the signifying implications of pot roast: convention, structure, clean right living.\n\n\"Get ready for dinner,\" my father said.\n\nHe'd been standing at my door the entire time. I looked to the open window, thinking to toss the suitcase onto the hedge. Don't let him get to you. I turned my back to him, pitching in some socks and shirts. He still had the power to scare me sometimes, and he knew it; it incensed him. Was he going to hit me again?\n\n\"Beautiful night,\" he said, stepping into the room. He picked up a tiny statue of Grover Cleveland from my Hall of Presidents\u2014something he'd given me for my tenth birthday. He'd stared at its bloated gaze as if he'd never seen it before.\n\n\"You're right,\" I replied.\n\n\"Front's sweeping down from the Plains tomorrow.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah?\"\n\n\"Highs in the eighties with a light north breeze.\"\n\nTears burned in my eyes. Outside a Good Humor truck careened down the street. Don't you understand what's happening? I wanted to yell.\n\nA complex expression drifted across his face: defiance, jealousy, regret, fatigue. He left for the kitchen. Seconds later liquid plashed inside a glass. \"On the rocks,\" I said, toasting my wall.\n\nAn ice cube popped, cracked. I waited until they were safely ensconced in their meal before I left through the mud room. Bye, Mom, I whispered. Bye, Dad. I loved you once. I hurried back to my room and shoved Grover Cleveland deep inside my pocket.\n\n***\n\nTraffic roared past me on the street. Palms thrashed in the wind. I felt criminal and delicious, imagining a stocking cap pulled down over my face. I half expected the police to pull up, to ask me questions, to search through my belongings before taking me back home. Dogs barked as I passed. Lights flipped on in the windows. I pictured myself through someone else's eyes: a hushed, hungry boy, feet flying in the dark, switching his leaden suitcase from hand to hand.\n\nI knocked twice on William's door. I watched him through the sidelight, his gestures frantic and distorted through the gold bubbled glass. He hurried from table to table, glancing under papers, feeling behind furniture. To my right, a white wicker chair rotted behind the bushes.\n\n\"Can I help you?\" A lady in a paisley dressing gown hosed off a lavender Mercedes beneath the floodlights next door. She stepped toward me. Somewhere a bird\u2014parakeet?\u2014shrieked.\n\n\"No, I'm just\u2014\"\n\n\"Run along now,\" she gestured. \"He hates solicitors.\"\n\nWilliam's door flew open, almost knocking me off balance. \"Evan,\" he said.\n\n\"I'm taking you up on your offer.\"\n\nHe glanced down at my suitcase, a swab of shaving cream beneath his left ear. What offer? he might have said. He stood there in a pink polo shirt and tight, tight 501s. A splash too much cologne.\n\n\"I know this seems hasty,\" I laughed.\n\n\"Yes, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Didn't you say I always had a place?\"\n\n\"I wish you'd called,\" he said, his eyes vaguely stricken.\n\nMy scalp felt tight. I kissed him. Awkwardly, I missed his mouth, pecking his warm whiskered neck. I tried again, inhaling his shirt this time: crushed plants, limes, beer foam. I turned my cheek against his chest.\n\n\"Listen,\" he said. \"I have to find my keys. I've been looking for a half hour.\"\n\nWe stepped through the front door. \"You'll find them,\" I murmured. I glanced down at a pulled loop in the aqua rug. An emptiness, wide as a body, opened inside me. I saw myself falling inside the body, reeling, tumbling, swallowed up by it.\n\n\"Welcome,\" he said, lips on my mouth. That was it, that was all I needed. Heat saturated my face, trickling down my spine to my groin, toes. I felt larger, warmer. Heaven. My leg muscles glowed.\n\n\"Jesus,\" I mumbled.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" he said suddenly.\n\n\"Mmmm, hallelujah.\"\n\n\"You look a little crazed.\" His forehead creased. He tested the weight of my suitcase. \"God, what's in here?\"\n\nI tried to recover myself. \"Stuff.\"\n\n\"Stuff?\"\n\n\"You know, books, clothes\u2014\" I shrugged. \"Scary, huh?\"\n\n\"Sorry. If only I could find those keys.\"\n\nWe stared at each other until he couldn't hold my gaze.\n\n\"Let's see what you think of this,\" he said finally.\n\nI followed him down the hall. Claws scratched behind a wooden door, and William opened it to let the Dobermans\u2014Pedro and Mrs. Fox\u2014lick wet tracks on my shirt. He gestured to the utility room, a converted laundry, with smelly green carpeting and water-stained magazines along the walls. I glanced at the titles: Bee Culture, Modern Liturgy, Physique Pictorial, Tom of Finland's Loggers. Beside the futon an uncapped pipe jutted through the floor. I stared at him. \"Not here,\" I said.\n\nHis eyes brightened, then dimmed. He rubbed at his forearm, as if warming himself.\n\nI reached out for his shoulder. \"But I wanted to sleep with you.\"\n\nHe wagged his head. \"Listen, we'll talk about it later. I have to leave for a few hours. There's a zoning-board meeting at seven.\"\n\n\"You're leaving now?\"\n\n\"Have to. I don't want to see those condos approved. Once that starts the whole neighborhood goes.\"\n\n\"But what about your keys?\"\n\nHe glanced at his watch. \"I'll walk. Jog,\" he said. \"There's pancake mix in the fridge, sausages on the stove. Be back by ten.\" And then he pressed a fist into my rib cage.\n\nI sat on the futon with my head in my hands. The dogs drooled clear strings upon my sneakers. \"No biscuit,\" I said. \"No biscuit.\"\n\n***\n\nI hurried about the kitchen, opening cabinets, drawers. As my cooking repertoire consisted of sandwiches, spaghetti, and instant chilled puddings, I was in trouble. Still, I gathered what I could find\u2014blue mesquite chips, party dip, cut vegetables\u2014and arranged them on the coffee table. I clipped some ginger lilies from the garden and put on an old-fashioned party hat, a silver cone with an elastic string. It wasn't Joe's Stone Crab, but at least it was something. I sat with my feet up on the coffee table, waiting.\n\nBy ten o'clock my eyes felt the weight of their lids. By ten-forty-five they felt scratchy, hot in their sockets. My week had been wearing, and I stretched myself out on the couch, too rattled for sleep. The next thing I knew the front doorknob was shaking. Burglars? I bolted upright on the couch, panting. 12:45 a.m.\n\n\"What's this?\" he said.\n\nI looked up at him, rubbing the silt from my eyes. The silver cone lay by my side, dented.\n\nHe gave an appreciative smile. \"A little shindig, a little wingding.\"\n\n\"What took you so long?\"\n\n\"Ugh,\" he said. He undid his pink polo shirt and flopped into the sofa beside me. \"Relentless. This woman, some ex-colonel from the military, actually insisted that condos were going to upgrade the neighborhood. She monopolized the floor for twenty minutes. Imagine\u2014cheap townhouses trucked in from Indiana. Forget about mangroves. Forget about roseate spoonbills. 'You can't stop progress,'\" he mimicked.\n\n\"Payoff,\" I mumbled.\n\nHe regarded the clenched skin around my eyes. He glanced away, then looked back at me. \"I'm sorry,\" he said, gripping my left knee. \"Look at all this. How nice of you. You went to so much trouble.\" He stood up suddenly, thrust his hands in his pockets. His head pivoted toward the kitchen. \"So everything's okay with you?\"\n\nMy heart picked up pace. I felt its beating inside my cheeks, teeth, the thickness of my tongue. I tried it again. \"I thought we'd sleep together tonight.\"\n\n\"Not tonight,\" he said, yawning good-naturedly. \"I have to be up at five-thirty tomorrow. Taping.\"\n\nMy face flushed upward from my neck. \"I'm not talking about sex.\"\n\n\"The mattress's broken. I thought I'd sleep out here tonight,\" he said, and gestured at the sofa.\n\nWhat more could I ask for? I stood in the living room while he retrieved a pillow and sheets from the linen closet. My thoughts fractured, as if I'd taken one too many cold tablets in a row. I studied the narrow width of the sofa: no way could we fit together in that space.\n\n\"Nighty night,\" he said, and kissed me.\n\n\"Do you mind if I sleep on the floor?\" I pointed to the carpet alongside the sofa.\n\nHe looked concerned now, his tanned forehead shining. \"Of course not. Are you sure you're going to be comfortable down there?\"\n\nI started stripping down to my jockey shorts. \"No problem.\"\n\n\"Want a pillow?\" he said, offering me his own.\n\n\"No thanks.\"\n\nSoon William was snoring in the dark room. A heaviness settled deep inside my marrow. Aloneness, I said to myself. Aloneness. I reached up and rested my palm against the warm ridges of his stomach, fingers just touching his waistband for energy, some sign of life. My hope, my ring of fire. The earth stood still, frozen. My torch, my song of gladness. I took my hand away, sighed. Headlights flashed on the Toulouse-Lautrecs on the wall.\n\n***\n\nWeeks passed. It was summer. Now that I'd graduated, I had some time on my hands. While William went to work, I immersed myself in various projects, the largest of which involved chopping down the singed Australian pines. I wanted to fix things up. Luckily, William didn't force me to look for work, or to write to any of those colleges that had offered me scholarships, but I was grateful for the absence of pressure, for I needed some time to figure out what I wanted from my life. Doctor, architect, horticulturalist, weatherman, Django Reinhardt scholar\u2014I still could be anything.\n\nYears in the future, I'd look back on this time as our happiest.\n\nHow strange, though, to be entirely dependent on someone. Strange to feel absolutely no power next to him. Sometimes I'd be whacked across the brow with the uncanny realization that I had but $425.69 in my savings account. It was nothing, barely enough to cover an apartment's security deposit. All he needed to do was to kick me out, and I'd be out on my ass on the streets. Hustling, shoplifting, shooting up drugs. But I couldn't give everything over to him. I couldn't let myself believe that I was smaller than he was, a petty moon orbiting some planet, even though he was footing the bills. I had the right to make some decisions. It was just as much my house as it was his.\n\nBut I wanted to feel more enthusiasm for my new life. My happiness and sadness seemed to live side by side, like roots intertwined, feeding and depleting each other. What had I lost? Whatever happened to that purer emotion, that purer joy: a hot yellow beam knocking me off my feet? It had departed now, for good it seemed. I walked to the window one day and saw three high school boys in huge, sloppy pants roving down the street, laughing and rebellious, throwing a hockey puck, smoking stolen Marlboros. They appeared to be so much younger than I was, with so much possibility ahead, and I wanted to walk with them, wanted them to like me, to call me by my name, if only for an hour.\n\nOne afternoon, I sat inside the moldy den. I was flipping through an overdue library book\u2014Sir Isaac Newton's Opticks\u2014when I heard a timid gurgling from the floor. I looked at the pipe. I stood, then peered down inside it. A sheen of greased water. All the houses on Avenida Bayamo had the same pipe inside\u2014a washing-machine hookup. My father had removed ours years ago when Peter had moved into the room, putting up some turquoise beaded curtains. Still, I often dreamt of our pipe. At four, I dropped my favorite trinket, a plastic blood-red fingernail, inside it. Once I wore it over the tip of my finger, extending my hand as if elegant, admiring it before my father and brother. They laughed at me, a drunken puppet, encouraging me to show off for them, before they stopped, uncomfortable.\n\n\"Stop being a sissy,\" my father said.\n\n***\n\nWe drove down the street, silent. It was a glorious wet night, masses of hot and cold air bumping up against each other. Our tires flung arcs of water onto the grass, the sidewalk. Toward the north, the clouds were underlit with a soft, baby-pink light.\n\nJust outside Publix stood a group of people waiting for the rain to stop. One old lady in a transparent raincoat kept looking at us, not with judgment or curiosity, but with the oddest benevolence. I dislodged a shopping cart from the train and kissed William, just once, on the cheek, in celebration. The world seemed dangerous and hopeful all at once.\n\nHe stiffened. His body language changed, its dark energies curling inward. The clouds had shifted, the rain stopped, and a bronze moon\u2014tropical, haloed\u2014hovered above the palms.\n\nI said, \"Are you okay?\"\n\nHis back straightened. He walked through the automatic doors, eyes fixed on the shining banks of limes. He picked one up and rotated his thumb across its green, pocked surface. It might have been a beautiful grenade in his palm.\n\n\"Is something wrong?\"\n\nHe glanced at me as if I'd hurled a glassful of water at him.\n\nHe inched the cart forward and picked up a box of pineapple gelatin, pretending to study its contents. His Adam's apple was hot, gleaming. He held up his hand: he didn't want to talk to me.\n\n\"William?\"\n\n\"There's a time and a place.\"\n\n\"I don't understand. Nobody saw us.\"\n\nHe was frowning now. \"Somebody saw,\" he said.\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Listen\u2014\"\n\n\"Is this our first fight?\" I asked, more baffled than I'd intended. Was it coming this soon\u2014only weeks into our living together?\n\nHe stopped the cart halfway down the aisle. \"Evan,\" he said. \"Now listen to me.\" His voice was kinder now, a whisper. \"You never know what these people'll do. They might look friendly enough, but all it takes is one false move.\"\n\nI considered his statement. Only a few days ago I'd read about two men in Dallas who'd been scorched with blowtorches after they'd been loitering in a park. Certainly these things happened in the world, but they were rare. Or were they?\n\n\"But she liked us.\" I nodded toward the old lady, who'd somehow wandered back into the store. She, too, was picking up limes. \"She wasn't upset.\"\n\n\"No, she wasn't,\" he agreed. \"But maybe her husband would be, or maybe her son. Her grandson, for instance, might be a skinhead. I'm just telling you, you can't be too careful.\"\n\nI sighed. I sensed she was listening to us. Her eyelids grew heavy as if she were beginning to feel depressed.\n\n\"Anyway,\" he said, his voice softening. \"We aren't the average couple. Especially in these parts.\"\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"We're not your average sissy interior-decorator couple. I mean think about it\u2014an older man, a younger man. We're a threat. We push their buttons. We have to watch ourselves every step of the way.\"\n\nI didn't want to watch myself every step of the way. I wanted to be deeper inside my life. I walked ahead, wandering about the freezers, as he straggled by the olive jars, the sardine tins. His anger seethed, completely out of proportion to the matter at hand. What was his deal? I'd only kissed him, for God's sake. If he wanted to be upset, I could pull down his zipper with my teeth, and take him deep inside my mouth, right here, right now, in front of everyone in the store. Then what would he do?\n\nMy throat pulsed. What was I doing with him, anyway? Could I be making a mistake? For all I knew there were already warrants out for his arrest. I walked ahead, my rage heating up my face to the burning point. Would I catch on fire? A cold drop of sweat rolled down my temple. I thought about his wizened shoulders. I thought about his bald spot glistening beneath the glare of hooded lights. William, William, I whispered. How I want to punch a spoon deep into the valley of your back.\n\n\"There you are,\" he said brightly.\n\nHe nudged me with the shopping cart, and I flinched, startled by the intrusion on my thoughts. \"Where were you?\"\n\n\"Look.\" Inside the cart were three pints of strawberries, taco shells, a half-dozen chocolate bars\u2014my favorite foods.\n\n\"Thank you.\"\n\nA mute smiling panic took hold of his face. \"I bought these for you.\"\n\n\"I know, I know.\"\n\nOutside in the car, we waited for the light to turn green. A man in the Camaro beside us banged on his dashboard like a conga drum, eyes gleaming as if he were high. He was singing now. Salsa music cascaded from his speakers. William turned to me then and kissed me hard, a bright dense charge coursing through my nerves. The other cars shot forward. The roads steamed beneath the streetlights. How quickly things could change, the world sparkling, full of rollicking possibility.\n\n***\n\nThe storms continued through the night. An electric smell hovered in the air, smoke rising from the trees. I rolled onto my side and pressed my lips into the warmth of his back. His skin smelled of rainwater, ferns. I thought: Everything has been leading here. All those nights spent alone, all those nights listening to my parents' silence\u2014all were in payment for this. I'll never be happier.\n\n# Chapter 5\n\nWhen I was finally adjusting to my new life, when I'd started sleeping eight hours straight without waking at 4:00 a.m. to the burning pit of my stomach, I saw her. The night was hot, sodden. We'd just watched The Bride of Frankenstein, and William was in the bathroom, flossing, then rinsing with water and two droplets of grapefruit-seed extract. I sat in the living room, my hands folded on my lap, feeling at peace, feeling entirely and utterly at peace, when I heard the familiar scuff of shoes on the pavement outside.\n\nThe curtains shivered in the breeze. I thought of Dr. Frankenstein's creation, lonesome and yearning, lured to the blind man's cottage by the plaintive call of his violin. Something scrabbled at my stomach. I had the distinct feeling I was being watched, so I stepped toward the window, closed the curtain.\n\nI might have been dreaming. Ursula was standing on the sidewalk, hands in her pockets, waiting for me. Drizzle streaked her orange windbreaker. I stopped dead, then switched off the light.\n\n\"Evan?\" she called.\n\nI froze, hoping she couldn't see me. My pulse thudded in my head. Was she really calling my name, or had I just imagined it?\n\nThen I got it: they were waiting for us\u2014my mother, my father, the police. I looked for the squad cars, their engines running, headlights off beneath the trees. They'd shoot him, I knew it. A clean white wound, a pucker, right through the center of his forehead, as I stood off to the sidelines, doubled over in shock.\n\nThen I looked closer. No cars, no police. My mother.\n\n\"Evan? I want to talk to you.\"\n\nHer voice was sweet, unbearable. I wanted her to come inside. I wanted her to walk away. Her presence brought back everything I'd driven out of my head\u2014that I'd given up a past and a future; that I'd gravely disappointed somebody close to me; that I'd been truly, genuinely missed. I felt it in my gut, an icy deadening ache. Who was she to tell about her sadness? Who was she to talk with about Peter, who hadn't come home for so many Christmases?\n\n\"Why's it dark in here?\" said William, walking into the room.\n\nI looked at his domed forehead, dumbstruck.\n\n\"Somebody out there?\" He edged toward the window before I could stop him. He gazed across the glittering lawn, the empty floodlit street. His eyes registered nothing, and he turned to me. \"Let's go to sleep, kiddo.\"\n\nI stayed before the window while William shooed the dogs to their respective beds. My heart was breaking in two. And then I saw her again, this time her head low, her hair unbraided on her shoulders as she walked down the street to the house of my childhood.\n\n***\n\nI lay on the floor beside the sofa, curled on my side, listening to William falling asleep. I often took refuge in that sound as I let myself go, synchronizing our breathing. Tonight, though, it distracted me. I lay with my eyes open, dwelling upon the singing tires from the distant turnpike. I tried to fix upon the sound of an individual tractor trailer. What was it carrying, where on earth could it be headed at this hour? I pictured star-fruit to Atlanta, contact lenses to Key Largo, walking catfish to Montreal.\n\nWas it Peter's leaving that had changed her? He'd always been her favorite. Not that she'd admitted it, but I knew how she felt: her eyes glistened whenever she talked about him. He was the first, born after two miscarriages\u2014a terrible labor that almost killed her. She named him after an old boyfriend, an amateur gardener and lineman who'd died on the job. For years afterward she'd stumbled from one thing to the next\u2014secretary, bookkeeper, restaurant hostess. She was even a lounge singer for a time. Still, as much as she'd worked to cheer herself up, she couldn't get Peter out of her mind. How he'd fallen against the transmission tower. Hanging, lifeless in his safety belt. Turning like the hands of a clock. An aerialist, a four-pointed star.\n\nShe'd never loved my father as much as she wanted to. She'd never felt that \"gut-level charge,\" though when she first saw him, in a shiny red jacket, surrounded by the prettiest girls at the party, she'd convinced herself that he was the one. \"I want him,\" she'd said to her friend Marilyn. \"I want him to notice me.\" She was tired, after all, of so much loss, the deaths of Peter and her clinging mother. My father had just been hired in the university's chemistry department, and all she'd wanted was to rest.\n\nHer beauty faded after the wedding. You could see it happening in their pictures, when she traded in her makeup for jeans and workshirts, as if she'd told herself that this was it\u2014the end of possibility. \"Where's the girl I married?\" Sid teased, hugging her from behind. \"Where's the beautiful girl I was so proud of?\" He couldn't get to her, though. After all, she'd gotten what she'd wanted. And now the only thing left to do was to have a baby.\n\nShe thrived once Peter was born. He was long, gangly, with tufts of dark hair, overly large ears, and a curious bump on his temple where the forceps had clamped. Eight pounds, seven ounces. Handsome, she knew he was going to be handsome. And it felt good to say that name again, Peter, as if her boyfriend had inhabited her baby to keep her company once again, to bring her back to life.\n\nFor five years he was the most important thing to her. She took him to the supermarket, to her gynecological appointments, to lunch at the Silver Wheel with her friend, Astrid Muth. She wouldn't even consider a babysitter, wouldn't let Peter for one minute out of her sight, convinced that mishap was lurking just around the corner. Peter grew anxious, cranky when she wasn't around. On his first day of kindergarten, after promising he'd never cross the street without the assistance of the safety guard, he strayed far behind the others, fearful, shy, only to find that the fifth-grader in charge was already off duty. He trudged up the wrong side of Avenida Bayamo. He sat down on the curb across from the house and waited\u2014ten, twenty minutes\u2014before Mrs. Feldman, hanging up violet socks on her clothes tree, spotted him.\n\n\"What's the matter, Pete?\"\n\nHe was sobbing now. \"The safety went away. I can't cross the street.\"\n\nMrs. Feldman glanced in both directions and crossed over to him. There wasn't a single car in sight.\n\n\"Do you want me to help you cross the street?\"\n\nPeter gazed up at Mrs. Feldman. Her body was huge, luminous, the size of a planet. He swiped at his nose and nodded.\n\n\"Okay, honey. Look both ways. And take my hand.\"\n\nHe took her hand. Once on our yard he skittered across the grass to the back door, forgetting to thank Mrs. Feldman.\n\n\"You tell your mother to watch you,\" she called.\n\n\"Okay,\" Peter said. \"Bye bye.\"\n\nAnd years later I was born, and things changed once again.\n\n***\n\nWe'd passed the critical point. It seemed that we'd crossed some mine-strewn landscape, that if we weren't meant to be together we'd have found out by now. I wanted to take William out to dinner, to give him a card, to buy him a pair of boxer shorts patterned with pink cocktail glasses and swizzle sticks, but I stopped myself, as if doing so would only have called attention to the possibility of conflict. Remarkably, there was no conflict between us. We were learning to live together, falling into our respective routines as all companions do. What was the point of deeming that an accomplishment?\n\nAnd yet there was the issue of the bed. Were we becoming too comfortable with the situation? Were we too afraid to wrest ourselves out of the familiar, with William on the couch, and me on the floor with my blankets, sheets, and pillows? We certainly had sex\u2014good, ravenous sex, though it was less than I'd expected. Once a week? Once every two? Was something wrong? One evening I'd even convinced myself I preferred sleeping this way to having his warm body curled around mine, grasping me, taking me with him as he turned from side to side. After all, for most of my life I'd slept alone, liking it, imagining it the only possibility for a good night's sleep.\n\nAnd yet?\n\nIt was time to do what I'd been putting off. One afternoon, while William was away at work and I was home alone, I walked into the master bedroom to check out the mattress. Couldn't I fix it myself? I sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing slightly, staring at the framed photos of Lorna and Poppy. They covered every square inch of the dresser\u2014images of his former life, which unsettled me sometimes. Where were the pictures of me? I looked at Lorna. It was hard to imagine he'd ever been married to her, with her expensively treated hair and plucked brows. Even more unsettling was Poppy, whom I'd never met, and never cared to. Though we were close in age, we'd probably never get along. I studied her tilted, heart-shaped face, the precise, calculated sweep of hair across her forehead, knowing she would have all but ignored me in high school because I wasn't interesting or fabulous enough.\n\nOr maybe I wasn't giving her a chance.\n\nI bounced again on the bed and decided to check out the underside. I crawled upon my hands and knees, left eye close to the floor. Dust, nickels, chewing-gum wrappers, used rubbers\u2014it was enough to make me lug the vacuum from the closet. In about ten seconds I discovered the culprit: a dislodged support board. I hefted up the mattress with one arm, slipped in the board with the other, and that was that. I laughed. I started laughing so hard that I couldn't stop. It was strange to think that we'd exiled ourselves to the living room for this.\n\nI lay on the restored bed, basking in the light of my accomplishment. The palms outside the window threw golden shadows on the wall, weaving. I felt so good that I unwittingly pulled down my pants to my ankles, palming the head of my dick, not intending to come, of course, but consoled by the ministrations of my hand. I realized how much I'd missed jerking off, how I'd always thought it an essential activity, a primary component in the development of one's imaginative life.\n\nGlancing up, I saw William standing in the doorway.\n\nI had no idea how long he'd been watching me.\n\nImmediately I wriggled up my pants and sat up, my face hot with shame. I was too unnerved to laugh at myself.\n\n\"What are you doing home?\" It was only four o'clock; lately he hadn't been coming in the door until nine.\n\nHe looked harried, uncomfortable. He walked over to the window and pulled open the drapes, flooding the room with a yellow light.\n\n\"I fixed the mattress,\" I declared. My voice sounded starved, panicked, as if I were trying too hard to please. What was the matter with me? He wasn't my father.\n\nHe flopped deliberately on the bed.\n\nWe were silent together. I sat down beside him, diminished and disabled, entertaining the possibility of him spanking me across his lap. I'd pull in my breath, eyes squeezed tight, jerking at the sting of his slaps. The heat swarming in my butt. Afterwards, he'd hold me in his lap, wipe away my tears, tell me he'd be kinder to me from now on, a better person. I took a photograph of us in my mind, a tableau.\n\n\"So you're home,\" I said, venturing an observation.\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said. He leaned back and crossed his arms behind his head. He pulled in his lips. \"We had a bomb scare at the station.\"\n\n\"A bomb scare?\"\n\n\"A bomb scare. Terrorists. They sent everyone home until further notice. Station's off the air. Turn on the TV.\"\n\nI reached for the remote. The picture was snowy, the audio a harsh scratch. I shuddered. \"God,\" I said, picking at my lip. Why hadn't I recognized that my lip was chapped?\n\nWilliam closed his eyes. I rested beside him on the bed, wanting to recapture the uncharged emptiness of everyday life. How could I calm down? How would I interpret this moment, years in the future: masturbation, spanking fantasy, terrorism, bomb threat? And yet a part of me liked the unsettling rush: I wanted to have sex. I wanted to climb on top of William's prone body and fuck him, savagely, with gritted teeth, like an animal, though I didn't think I'd get away with it.\n\n\"I worked hard all day,\" I said suddenly. \"I vacuumed the living room, I scoured the rust stains from the kitchen sink, I did three loads of laundry, I walked the dogs in the storm\u2014\" The blood was beating in my ears. Was I more upset than I knew? \"And that was all today. Would you like me to show you what I did?\"\n\nCautiously he opened his left eye. \"I know you work hard,\" he said, \"I'm sorry,\" and offered me a sad, depleted smile.\n\nInside of me a door creaked open. I felt vindicated\u2014yet exposed and repentant. We stood. We walked into the kitchen where we fixed ourselves an ample, pleasant dinner: rice wine, peanut sauce, stir-fry. That night we still slept in our usual settings, the repaired bed glittering in my mind like some remote island.\n\n# Chapter 6\n\nSometimes I worried that I wasn't a complete person, that I couldn't label myself. What if I was just a composite of everyone who'd passed through my life\u2014strangers, family, friends\u2014all of whom had inhabited me, taking over my thoughts and gestures before departing, leaving me defenseless? Looking back, I saw how I moved not in a straightahead line, but in lopsided, parabolic circles. I pushed myself out, I reigned myself in. I craved sex, I didn't crave sex. I wanted to transgress, I wanted to conform. I wanted to be brilliant, I wanted to be a mindless fool.\n\nWas I becoming myself? Or was I stalled, trapped before some rust-clenched gate while everyone else was getting somewhere?\n\n***\n\nThe night before William's trip to Key West, we finally ended up together in the master bedroom. I didn't know quite how it happened, but that seemed to be beside the point. I lay beside him, my chest flooding with gratitude and energy. I held him closely under the hot tent of the covers. His body felt foreign, huge to me. Hold me back, I thought. Hold me so tight that it hurts. Keep close now. Stay, stay, stay.\n\nThe next morning we waited at the front window, watching for Lilo Patrick, the reporter with whom he was working on the assignment, to pull up in her yellow Toyota. He stood beside me, jittery, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He'd been anxious about the project\u2014something about the recent decline of Key West\u2014the incursion of national chains, the dearth of affordable housing, the dead-end alcoholic culture\u2014none of which, William believed, established a single point of view. My pulse quickened in the core of my chest. He was to be gone for the entire week. I didn't want him to leave, especially now that we'd finally become so comfortable with each other.\n\nAt two past eleven\u2014the designated time\u2014Lilo pulled up front, her car engine purring, finely tuned as a sewing machine. I motioned to walk through the front door, until he stopped me, asked me to stay put.\n\n\"But why?\" And then I remembered that he didn't want Lilo or anyone at the station to know about me, so much so that I was not to answer the phone, but to let the machine take the message. \"It's a high-powered job,\" he'd once explained. \"I mean, I don't think I'd get fired, but you never know. I don't want to chance it.\"\n\nI looked downward. A vault of emptiness opened inside me. \"You better go,\" I said miserably.\n\nHe kissed me, before opening the door. The dogs stepped backward in the foyer, already lonesome, already resigned. Soon enough they'd start longing for him, cocking their heads at any sound of footsteps outside. \"You'll take good care of the dogs?\" he asked. \"You'll give them walks?\"\n\n\"I'll take good care of the dogs,\" I singsonged. \"I'll give them walks.\"\n\nHe looked at me curiously. \"You'll behave yourself?\"\n\nI tried to connect with his gaze, but couldn't. His words seemed laced with all sorts of innuendo and danger. Did he expect me to spend the entire week locked inside with cartoons and a full refrigerator?\n\n\"I'll miss you,\" he said dully.\n\n\"I'll miss you, too.\"\n\n\"Call you tonight,\" he said. \"Take good care of yourself.\"\n\n\"You too.\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"I'm off.\"\n\nI lay on the couch, both comforted and alarmed. The house seemed oddly centered: all the various pieces of furniture in their proper place, the two Dobermans lying like sleeping Sphinxes beside me. It occurred to me, when I thought about all I'd been through, the collisions with my parents, my separation from Peter, that I was lucky. Once again I reminded myself that I could have ended up on the streets, strung out, penniless, hacked to death.\n\nThen, for whatever reason, I remembered something else about last night.\n\n\"I'm not going to see you for seven days,\" I'd whispered.\n\nWe were lying in bed, in the still seconds after the lamp had been switched off. Across the street an animal\u2014dog? raccoon?\u2014was rooting through somebody's trash cans.\n\n\"Eight days,\" he corrected.\n\nI thought about eight whole days by myself. I reached over for him, pressed my palm upon his taut stomach. I waited. Nothing. Then I waited longer.\n\n\"I thought we could make love or something,\" I said.\n\nMy voice sounded tentative, vulnerable. I couldn't stand the sound of it. I couldn't stand the way I had to ask for it, begging, as if it cost him. Already, in memory, I could taste him, like blood, like steel, and now that I'd had him, it wasn't enough. I needed more, even though I knew my wanting was going to do me in someday.\n\nHe heaved a tired sigh. I already knew his answer.\n\nI turned away, moving to the farthest edge of the bed until my face pressed up against the wall.\n\n***\n\nI plodded through the arcade in my workboots. I kept my expression remote and aloof as if to indicate that I wasn't new at this. But I was dying inside. I wasn't ugly. I wasn't desperate, hopeless, dumb. Adult book stores: weren't they meant for those who led secret lives, who hated themselves? Who else would put up with nasty attendants, filth, that fruity metallic smell? But I'd walked the entire seven miles, not even bothered by the sand in my sneakers, the blisters on my feet.\n\nI kept threading down the halls, if only because I couldn't stand still. I didn't want anyone to greet me, or touch me, or pay me the slightest bit of attention. But I liked being in the thick of it, little dramas of pursuit and rejection crackling around me like fires. Gathering my nerve, I glanced at the faces of the\u2014customers? There was an old man\u2014tall, slouchy, wedding band tight on his finger\u2014who might have been on his way home from choir practice. There was a coke dealer, I presumed, with vibrant blue eyes and sunwrecked hair. There was a businessman, sleeves still crisp from the cleaners; a dark-skinned guy with tiny red rings in his ear. All told there were nearly a dozen\u2014fat, skinny, old, young, rich, poor\u2014none with anything in common, but for a melancholy expression, which clearly masked what I felt too: a longing for escape, otherness, transgression, connection.\n\nI calmed down soon enough, fed my coins to the soda machine: a lighted box with a smeared, eye-shaped logo. The soda tasted delicious, an abrasive splash against the back of my throat. Actually, most of these fellows seemed to be having a decent enough time. Doors kept banging shut, then opening, admitting and releasing the hungry. One trucker-type practically danced a jig down the hall. Another strolled past with a look of dumb wonder on his face. \"Oh, what the hell,\" I said to the graffitied walls. It was time to stop thinking so much.\n\nStill, I imagined William staring down at me through a hole in the ceiling, cataloging my gestures. I imagined his footsteps clomping across the parking lot, his husky brusque voice taking over the sound system. The music faded to static. \"What are you doing here?\" he said, grabbing me by the collar. \"I can't believe you'd punish me like this.\"\n\nFoolish thoughts. Foolish.\n\nI found an empty booth and bolted the door. I panted slightly, dazed. Was I going to be sick? It still held the scents of its last inhabitant\u2014perspiration, Right Guard, spilled semen, body heat. I rested my head on my knees. I glanced upward. Al Parker floated across the flickering screen, legs shining like the flanks of some heavenly animal. My vision blackened for a moment. I loved Al Parker. I concentrated on his exuberant brown beard, his hard vascular chest, his rakish Semitic nose. I concentrated on his dick, an enormous fleshy thing that wagged when he walked, with a jaunty personality all its own. But there was more to him than that. It wasn't just his body, or his personal warmth, or his casual, fluent masculinity. It was his very persona, which told us that sex was fun, that there was a wide, wide world out there, more complicated and various than we'd ever assumed. He'd never call anybody else a faggot because he himself was a faggot, and he felt just fine about that, thank you. Unfortunately, he wasn't here anymore: another soul, lost, like half the world, to AIDS. At least his image still quivered with life. I looked at the screen, then down at myself. There was Al, there was me.\n\nI closed my eyes. When I opened them, Al was fucking a tall, rangy kid with a gap between his teeth. Together they gyrated over a workbench. The camera panned the kid, surveying every square inch of his skin, grazing past a deep violet mark on his wrist. A burn, a bruise, or what I feared it was? His hair\u2014parted down the middle, shaggy over the ears\u2014seemed right out of 1979, just before protected sex had become an issue. I hated to think the kid had done this while sick, all for the sake of making a few fast bucks. But who would have known then? Who would have thought the world was on the brink of such threat?\n\nI went soft in my palm. I wanted to be home. I wanted its banality, its routines, the anonymous sanctuary of its dull gray rooms. Already I thought of the dogs barking as I worked the key into the lock. I thought of their tails whipping my legs, the weight of their snouts in my palms. And their eyes\u2014how they closed them in gratitude whenever I stroked their heads. Time to get out of here. I pulled up my pants, my right leg prickly with sleep. Home: odd to think of it that way, but that's what it was now, for better or for worse.\n\nI opened the door. Before me stood the most beautiful man I'd ever seen.\n\nWe looked at each other, quizzical. An awful thrill went through my stomach. Had we known each other once? \"Evan,\" he might have said.\n\nHe stood there longer than was exactly comfortable, as if he, too, felt paralyzed. Though he was altogether perfect, it was his eyes that drew me to him, large brown eyes that revealed a soulfulness, an abundance of spirit, with just enough wryness thrown in for good measure. There wasn't a wall between him and the world. Everything, I imagined\u2014praise, insult, injury\u2014registered on his psychic screen. I glanced about the booth as he walked down the hall. What should I do? The wadded tissues on the floor, the twisting bodies of the videos seemed otherworldly, radiant now, imbued with the richest amber light. I imagined taking him in my arms, nipping him, tugging the skin of his neck between my teeth. Then reaching downward for his belt buckle, rubbing circles on his stomach with my fist. A shard of paper dropped through the chicken wire overhead, and a note? Was that what this was? I want you right now. Meet me in #2.\n\nMy face blazed. I strolled down the hall toward the indicated door and entered the booth, reaching out into the darkness. My breaths quickened. His chest was warm, softer than I'd imagined, yielding. He smelled of orange rind, fresh laundry. He exhaled in a slow, satisfied half-whistle.\n\nOnly when my eyes adjusted did my presumptuousness become clear to me.\n\n\"You're here,\" whispered an odd, balding man.\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"What took you so long?\"\n\nHe pressed a soft palm against my cheek. He gazed at me with such tenderness and awe that I couldn't say no to him. He wasn't attractive. His forehead sloped, speckled and vulnerable like the underside of a fish. I'd like to say that I treated him with warmth and compassion, some modicum of fellow feeling. Instead, I guided him to the floor, jerked down my zipper, and gave him exactly what he wanted.\n\n\"Suck it,\" I mumbled.\n\n\"Mmmm.\" He gazed up at me with glistening eyes, so grateful, relieved.\n\n\"Don't say a word, faggot.\"\n\nI crossed my arms over my chest in a complete affectation of boredom. I thought: You can be whoever you want. Your name's not Evan, and your longing isn't killing you. I gazed down at my cock slipping in and out of his mouth, numbing every sensation from it, refusing to admit that we were even engaged in the same fundamental work. I didn't touch him or urge him onward. Loneliness, I thought. This was isolation, and this was loneliness. I saw my bones turning at once to powder, particles of me flying up through the air filters. A broken bell chimed in a distant tree. Was it even sex that I wanted, or something more elusive, more rigorous than that? Had I wanted William to change my life? Had I wanted him to solace my pain, to exchange my former home for a better, more protected one? Had I wanted him to embrace every last facet of me\u2014my speech, gestures, flaws, potential? And in expecting these things, was I pushing him away?\n\nOr, simply, did I want a fraction back of what I was giving to him?\n\nI thought of Al Parker's bearded face. I pulled back from the stranger while there was still time.\n\n\"That was terrific,\" he said, smiling.\n\n\"Thank you,\" I said nervously, giving his shoulder a squeeze.\n\n\"No. Thank you.\" His face glowed with a freshly pink sheen. \"I've never seen you here before. What's your name?\"\n\n\"Kevin.\"\n\n\"I'm Irwin,\" he said, offering his hand to shake.\n\n\"Are you okay?\"\n\n\"Of course I'm okay,\" he laughed. \"Couldn't be better. You're a very hot boy, Kevin.\"\n\n\"Thanks,\" I said shyly, bowing a bit, and left.\n\nI stood upon the hot surface of the parking lot. It was twilight now. Cars rushed by on Route 1, careening past the tank farms, the container complex, the clumps of palmetto in which someone could get lost. The air smelled of napthalene, forest fires. I glanced once up at the sky, the harsh bowl of it, thinking about its indifferent blue, knowing its eye had already focused on the next brutality. What was one more tiny crime? I held up the stranger's note and released it, watching it blowing out into the traffic. The warm-eyed boy was gone now, gone forever. Whoever told me I didn't deserve to be loved?\n\n***\n\nWhen I was eleven, I thought a lot about a boy named Douglass Freeman. I was fascinated by his house. There was nothing else like it: its Colonial-paned windows, its cupola, its gardens with the plywood comic-strip characters (Nancy, Sluggo, Aunt Fritzi). And beside it all, gleaming in the driveway, a new Winnebago like the showcase prize from The Price is Right. For most of that year I wanted more than anything to live there.\n\nHe was in every appearance an average eleven-year-old with freckled skin, tetracycline-stained teeth, and a stunted brushy plume on the crown of his head. It wasn't until the end of the school year when every sixth-grader from Gus Grissom was bused off to camp that we learned something else about him. The rumors had been flying even before Mr. Albertson sat us down in the cabin.\n\n\"Tonight most of you boys'll be taking a shower.\"\n\nWe nodded. We gathered around a citronella candle in the dark. His voice was hushed, grave, as if he were trying to scare us.\n\n\"These showers are what we call communal. Have any of you showered with other boys before?\"\n\nMy upper arms itched. I'd never heard of such a thing. I couldn't help but think the idea was a little outlandish, even obscene.\n\n\"I want you to know that Douglass Freeman doesn't have a penis.\"\n\nEric Woodworth fisted the air. \"Yes!\"\n\n\"Quiet!\" Mr. Albertson cried. The entire campground stilled, crickets and tree frogs falling mute. \"Once more and I call your parents.\"\n\nWoodworth trembled, pretending to quash the triumph from his eyes. I was mortified. All this time I'd thought that Douglass's newest nickname\u2014Dickless\u2014had been nothing more than a harmless, ongoing prank. Hadn't we all called him that?\n\n\"I want you to put yourselves in his shoes,\" Mr. Albertson said. His eyes shone with great intensity and warmth. \"I want you to imagine what he lives with every day of his life. Do you understand?\"\n\nWe nodded, humbled and ashamed.\n\n\"He's all boy. That's all I want to say.\"\n\nWe nodded again.\n\n\"Good. Very good.\" Then Mr. Albertson started a story. \"There was a boy, there was a girl, and there was a ghost...\"\n\nBut I couldn't follow his words. If I'd only known that Douglass's condition resulted from a birth defect or cancer, I'd have felt better. I imagined my own penis, a thing I'd learned to like, crumbling off in my hand as I cleaned myself with a washcloth. The truth was I'd been touching myself a lot, probably more than I was supposed to. I pulled my legs closer to my chest. Around me boys were laughing, utterly immersed in the tale. Mr. Albertson crouched and tiptoed about the cabin, illustrating his drama with little props: a pin light, a tennis ball, a handkerchief resembling a lady ghost. What was wrong with me? Was I the only one who felt like this?\n\nMr. Albertson left for the showers, Dobb kit in hand, white towel slung over his shoulder. \"Keep an eye on the ship,\" he said, his eyes meeting mine.\n\n\"Five bucks,\" Woodworth mumbled. \"Five fucking bucks.\"\n\nSteve Strandberg gazed out at the empty, starlit paths. \"I wouldn't go to the showers now,\" he said in a lonely voice.\n\nI said, \"Why?\"\n\n\"That's when Dickless's there,\" said Steve. \"He won't go till everyone's finished. Sometimes it's midnight, sometimes it's three in the morning. The school board had to approve it.\"\n\nI pictured Dickless standing outside in the middle of the night, his chest peppered with goose pimples, scrubbing himself with a soap-on-a-rope (a gift from his mother?) while he looked repeatedly, anxiously over his shoulder. It pissed me off to think that only a few weeks ago these boys had played kickball with Douglass, calling him by his correct name, treating him like the quiet, unremarkable boy he was.\n\nBut who was I to talk? I'd already made my decision not to shower until I got home.\n\nThe week was relentless. Our days were crammed tight with activities\u2014math classes, crafts seminars, athletics\u2014as if our teachers were fearful of leaving us unoccupied. I missed the girls, their precise, intricate outfits, their kindness, their expansive senses of humor. I missed Jane. Without girls, the boys grew wilder, more aggressive, as if shot up with hormones. Gregg Novak, for one, a skinny thing with twig-like arms, lifted me up, spinning me around and around in full sight of seven boys\u2014my legs flailing all the while\u2014if only to show them he could do it.\n\nThis wouldn't have happened back home.\n\nThe week creaked onward. I ticked off each day on my calendar, striking it out with a wax pencil, pretending I was doing time at Sing Sing. Soon enough it became clear to my cabin mates\u2014Eric Woodworth in particular\u2014that I hadn't taken a shower since my arrival. By this time, they'd all showered together and had gotten used to it, barely mentioning Dickless's name as if he were already old news.\n\n\"You haven't taken a shower,\" said Woodworth one night.\n\n\"Yes, I did,\" I answered. \"Two nights ago. You weren't paying attention.\"\n\nHe knew I was lying. I stared at his slight chubbiness, knowing that at twenty he'd be ugly, fat, and unlovable. I didn't know why this comforted me. He glanced over at the top bunk. \"Hey, Strandberg, has Sarshik taken a shower yet?\"\n\nSteve stared down at his dirty pink feet, utterly silent.\n\n\"Your hair's greasy,\" Woodworth said to me. \"What's the matter? You don't have a dick either?\"\n\n\"Shut up,\" I cried.\n\nI might have downed a glassful of paint. Was I a coward? I couldn't bear to be talked to like this. It was the moment I'd been afraid of. All at once I leapt up and rummaged through my backpack for my shower supplies.\n\nI hurried to the outdoor shower stalls, leaves rasping beneath my feet. You had to do these things, win the races, catch the fly balls hit to your corner, even if it killed you. If you didn't do it, you got them mad, and they made you an outsider\u2014someone who was pounced on, spit out like week-old food\u2014and there was nothing worse than that.\n\nBut none of these thoughts steadied my pulse.\n\nWhen I arrived at the stalls I heard a shower running full force, a drain sucking water. I stopped at once. Was it Dickless?\n\nMy steps were timid. To my relief Mr. Albertson stood underneath the showerhead, hair flattened to his scalp. I couldn't take my eyes off him.\n\n\"Hi, Evan,\" he said affably. \"Beautiful night.\"\n\nMy throat was too tight to respond. I nodded, then crept inside the changing room. I stared down at the pocked floor, breathing, yanking off my shirt and pants, dropping them in little balls upon the exposed wooden slats. I was going to do this. Once and for all, I was going to get this over with.\n\nMr. Albertson smiled at my reentrance. I stepped toward the showerhead beside him and turned on the faucet, testing the temperature. I'd never felt more naked in my entire life, my arms like insect feelers, my chest like the cheapest concave trinket\u2014something to be bought at Woolworth's. Mr. Albertson rubbed the shampoo from his hair. He dug his fists into his tightly closed eyes. I couldn't stop staring at his hard furry butt, his balls, his dick\u2014alarmingly big, its head the color of a plum. I'd never seen anything like it before. And you call this a dick? I thought, speaking to my own parts in disappointment.\n\n\"Who won the softball game?\" he asked.\n\nI swallowed. Had he known I was looking at him?\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\n\"Greens,\" I said finally. \"Greet hit a fly ball over the fence.\"\n\nHe nodded. He turned off the faucet, reached for a towel on the hook. \"Don't use up all that hot water,\" he kidded. He stepped past me, mere inches away. His dick swung gently as he walked. I shuddered. If his towel had been bigger, he might have snapped it against my butt.\n\nI stood under the showerhead for another five minutes. The water felt hot, consoling upon my shoulders. Why had I waited so long? I shampooed my hair over and over, waiting for someone to step around the corner. But when no one did, I turned off the faucet, and stepped into my clothes, letting my hair drip so all my cabin mates would know that I was just like them.\n\nTwo nights later, we all sat around the campfire, singing \"The Circle Game\"\u2014an old Joni Mitchell song that Miss Mastrangelo strummed on a busted guitar while everyone squinted at their song sheets. We were due to leave Saturday morning, and I was already feeling nostalgic. It wasn't that I didn't want to go home. I still hated it here, there was no doubt about that. It was that looking into the flame-lit faces of my classmates around the campfire, I thought, Time is already sweeping us forward. Our bodies are changing. We smell like our parents. Soon enough we're going to separate and move away, and some of us will die sooner than we think, and as a group we'll never be together again. Was this a pop song? I was shocked by my corniness. But maybe it was only because we'd all fallen into our respective routines, learning new skills, growing more relaxed with one another. And unfortunately, there was that other thing: Mr. Albertson had announced earlier that evening that Douglass Freeman was leaving camp two days early. He'd had a hard adjustment and had come down with a sore throat. And there was the sticky issue of contagion. \"It would be best for everyone,\" Mr. Albertson assured us, \"if he left us.\" He was right, for the announcement of his departure made an immediate difference. Everyone relaxed, became themselves, as if the world were returned to its proper order.\n\nIt was dusk. I was walking down a path through the woods. I wasn't supposed to walk alone, not without another camper, but it felt good to be lost in my thoughts, listening to the cheers and yelps of my classmates in the distance. I stepped up on a riverbank. I looked at the sawgrass weaving in the water, the impossibly vivid sky, thinking about how nice it would be to go back home again, to sleep in my own bed, to take a hot bath while my mother sat on the closed toilet seat listening, pretending she was interested in my stories. I wouldn't even let my parents' fighting bother me.\n\nI stepped closer to the fallen log beside the shore.\n\nAnd all it once it moved toward me.\n\nMy whole body clenched. I didn't yell. I'd seen alligators in our very neighborhood, where on winter mornings they'd crawl up out of the canals, sunning themselves in the backyards, looking for handouts of marshmallows. They seemed almost benign, bovine in that context\u2014dumb, leaden beasts too stupid to fend for themselves\u2014and yet they were known to have swallowed a neighbor's Boston Terrier in one gulp, a veritable raisin. But this was the wild. It came to me that alligators had the capacity to run up to 60 miles-an-hour in short distances. The peach fuzz bristled on my neck. I started running, feet pounding the sand, all the way back to the dining hall.\n\nOn the way I ran into Dickless standing in the path. I'd actually seen his face only three times all week.\n\nMy chest heaved. \"Alligator\u2014\" I said, winded.\n\nDickless smiled in utter calm. \"Oh really?\"\n\nI swung my head back and forth. \"Big. thirteen feet or more. Tell the teachers. Dangerous.\"\n\n\"Fuck the teachers,\" he replied.\n\nI stared at him, blinking. I caught my breath. He'd never talked like this before. These simple words unsettled and mocked me, more than I could say.\n\n\"I'd like to see it,\" he stated.\n\n\"Get out.\"\n\n\"I'm serious.\"\n\nI slapped at a mosquito on my wrist. \"You sure?\"\n\nHe followed me down the path. By the time we got to the shore, the alligator was gone, leaving no wake in the river, no imprints on the sand.\n\n\"Liar,\" he smiled.\n\n\"I'm telling you. I saw it right here.\" But for some reason I found myself smiling along with him. Had I been imagining things?\n\nWe sat upon the shoreline, watching the pelicans gliding inches above the brackish river. An air boat whined faintly in the distance, diminishing. The sky darkened a notch. Above a hammock of palms, a lone planet sparkled. The first star.\n\n\"I thought you were leaving,\" I said.\n\n\"Tomorrow,\" he said, leaning forward. \"My dad's coming. Sometime after breakfast.\"\n\n\"Your throat still hurts?\"\n\nHe laughed through his nostrils. \"My throat feels fine. It's never been better. I just needed to get out of here.\"\n\nI laughed. I was going to tell him about the time when I, too, wrangled my way out of a school obligation, mimicking a sprained ankle after a basketball game, when I noticed the stricken, unsettled look on his face.\n\n\"Do you hate it here?\" he whispered.\n\nI glanced at his muddy shoes. I thought of all the things that had been said about him, things I knew he'd heard, how his time back at school would never be the same. The inside of my lip tasted like a penny. I couldn't say anything but yes to him.\n\n\"I thought so. You don't seem like you belong with them.\"\n\n\"I don't?\"\n\nHe rested his sneaker atop mine. For a few seconds I tried to ignore it, but the gesture was intentional, a game of sorts. He wanted me to play. I didn't like such games, thought them childish and beneath me, so I slipped my shoe out from under his and dug my heel into his toes so that he winced, tears springing to his eyes.\n\nI looked in his face. He was laughing now. I had an uncomfortable feeling, an odd buzz of shame, excitement, sadness. Then something else took hold of me, something comfortable and friendly that told me I could be what I was with him. Why wasn't I afraid anymore?\n\n\"Hold still,\" he murmured.\n\nIt happened too smoothly for me to stop. I pulled in a breath. He fumbled for my fly and\u2014to my discomfort\u2014reached into my pants, pulled out my dick, holding it, watching it harden in his grasp. It would be years before it would even reach its adult size. Still, he looked at it like he'd never seen anything like it before. I thought of Mr. Albertson standing under the showerhead, confident, at peace with his body. \"Amazing,\" Douglass whispered, moving his small brown head.\n\nI leaned backward on my elbows. He began stroking me, dutiful and tender, the leaves turning silver, vermilion above us, making me forget that anyone else could even travel up the path, though, thankfully, they didn't dare.\n\n# Chapter 7\n\nWilliam came back from Key West on schedule, tanned and fit, more energetic and relaxed than he'd been in weeks. He knelt down to embrace the Dobermans, and they rushed to him, licking his face, nuzzling, nearly knocking him over until he shielded his head with his arms.\n\n\"How are my children?\" he asked them. His voice was sweet, in the manner of Mr. Peabody. \"How are my pretty, good-for-nothing, well-behaved children?\"\n\nThey rolled on their backs, scuffing their hindquarters against the rug.\n\nHe looked up at me, smiled. His eyes were nearly bloodshot. \"And how are you?\" he said merrily.\n\n\"Good,\" I said, and squatted down beside him.\n\nWe kissed. I was relieved to see him back, though a small part of me already missed the longing, the empty space I'd contemplated in his absence. The week had been odd. Once I stopped resisting my aloneness, I gave myself over to it, relaxing, even cultivating this new privacy. There were certainly worse places to be. I felt confident, capable. I took a greater interest in the house without anticipating the repercussions of my gestures. I threw out the stained bathroom rugs. I threw out a malfunctioning lamp\u2014a hurricane lamp, a divorce present from Lorna to William, which William had actually liked. I taped a picture of some sexy young daddy to the refrigerator, his smile, his black furry chest on display for the whole household. And all the while I read, staying up half the night, immersing myself in projects I'd been putting off for months: Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor, the Osteology and Lymphatics sections from Gray's Anatomy.\n\nWilliam undid his tie. He flopped into the sofa, loafers up on the coffee table, telling me about his adventures of the week, how Lilo Patrick had been arrested outside Sloppy Joe's, drunk, sobbing, after taking a poke at a female tourist who'd made fun of her purse. The station was doing everything in its power to hush-hush the incident. He seemed overly excited, manic, as he relayed this tale to me. Spittle dried in the corners of his mouth. A bleak thought crept into my head: this is the person I missed so much?\n\n\"And how was your week?\" He looked at me directly. Had he recognized anything foreign, the stranger's hands upon my body?\n\n\"Stayed at home. Cooked, cleaned, walked the dogs, read.\"\n\nBefore we could get too settled we put on our jackets and left for Arigato, our favorite restaurant. I loved Arigato\u2014the koi pond at the front door, its cool, tinkling music of koto and gong, its overly solicitous waitstaff, clad in their blacks and whites, smiling just a tad, never talking louder than a whisper. I followed William past the cash register; the inner legs of his 501s made loud rubbing sounds. I thought, since when did your ass get so big?\n\nOur waiter\u2014middle-aged, unfamiliar, Caucasian\u2014seated us in an alcove near the front, not where we usually sat. William regarded the gas grill in the center of the table, stricken. This wasn't good. He didn't take well to change.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" I asked.\n\nHe looked up. \"Waiter,\" he called out across the restaurant.\n\nThe man walked to the table. \"Yes, sir?\"\n\n\"What's this?\" he said, gesturing at the gas grill.\n\n\"A grill, sir. Does that bother you?\"\n\nI knew what was going on. I got the \"sir\" thing, the slight sarcasm of it, the waiter's recognition that we might be a handful at the end of a long day. But I didn't get the look on William's face, a look which said, I don't like you, though he'd barely given the waiter a chance.\n\n\"Where's Hatsuko?\" William said. Hatsuko, a pretty long-haired woman from Nagasaki. Our usual waitress.\n\n\"She's off for the night, sir.\"\n\n\"She'd never seat us here. You can tell your manager that, he knows us. We come here all the time.\"\n\nThe waiter looked to me then, flummoxed, his face softening as if he felt some concern for me. He clearly didn't know what was motivating William's anger, and nor did I, for he'd seemed buoyant and cheery only a few short minutes ago. Or had I misread him? A hot, waxy bubble swelled inside my chest. The waiter left us now, shifting to another station.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" I said, frowning now.\n\n\"Oh, that guy.\" His eyes drifted over the menu listings. \"It's weird. He reminds me of my brother.\"\n\n\"Your brother?\" This was even more of a surprise.\n\n\"Yeah, Henry. You know, the one who never paid my parents back, who wouldn't talk to me after I left Lorna.\"\n\nHis family was off limits. I knew better than to open up that subject. \"That's no reason to hate the waiter.\"\n\n\"I don't hate him,\" he declared.\n\nI heaved a sigh. What were we talking about? \"Forget it,\" I mumbled, propping up my head with my hand.\n\nA tense quiet stood between us. Across the room an older couple broke open their fortune cookies, scrutinizing the printed messages with great interest and pleasure. They laughed, then chewed the broken pieces with calm, measured satisfaction. It was clear that they were happy together.\n\n\"So I've disappointed you,\" he said suddenly. \"All right?\"\n\nI looked down, attempting to dazzle myself with the renderings on the placemat: yellowtail, sea urchin, salmon roe, sunomono. But I wasn't hungry anymore. Too bad, I'd been looking forward to our first night together again.\n\n***\n\nThe funny thing was I'd been thinking about my own brother. Not in the usual sense, in which I couldn't forgive him for leaving my parents, but in a stranger, more complicated manner. Many years ago, I spotted him in the powder room one day. He lingered before the mirror, examining the recent changes of his body\u2014the weight of his genitals, the dense tangle of pubic hair\u2014proud, excited, frightened at once. I was five, he thirteen. Odd, I thought. What we choose to remember.\n\n***\n\nStanding in the bathroom one morning I saw a bump\u2014a tough, painless eruption on the base of my penis. I shrugged it off. I went back to my projects for the day. I transplanted the bottlebrush to the backyard; I opened up the circles of the royal palm beds. Two days later, though, when I saw it again\u2014its margins still hard and not at all diminished\u2014I literally moaned out loud.\n\n\"Are you okay in there?\" William said.\n\nHe was working on the opposite side of the door. It was Friday, his day off. He'd gotten it in him to paint the hall ceiling the palest yellow, and I pictured it misting down on him from the roller, a cool citrusy rain stippling his forehead. The smell of fresh latex leaked beneath the door.\n\n\"I'm fine. It's just a backache.\"\n\n\"A backache? Since when do you get backaches?\"\n\n\"Always.\"\n\nMy secretiveness got the best of me. I should have opened the door, pointed, and shown him what the problem was.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" I said, and stood behind him. I scraped some paint off his forehead with a fingernail.\n\n\"Are you sure you're all right?\"\n\n\"Absolutely I'm all right,\" I said, a little peeved now, and wandered outside.\n\nI lay down on the backyard lawn in the sun, panting, the blades of Floratam scratching into my back like quills. I'd all but banished the arcade incident from my mind, but here it was back to haunt me, as if my life were some great morality tale from the Middle fucking Ages. We hadn't been having sex much\u2014a whole other issue that completely eluded me\u2014but what we'd done was enough to transmit it to him. He wouldn't take it well. Not only had I done something completely behind his back\u2014a spite fuck\u2014but I'd done something worse: I'd shown him, in the most trenchant terms, how completely inadequate he was to me.\n\nMy relationship, as I knew it, was about to end.\n\nI had to tell him. There was no other way. I pictured sitting down with him one evening, placing a hand on his shoulder. \"You have an STD,\" I'd say simply, in absolute calm, with authority.\n\nA puzzled look would capture his face. \"What do you mean? How could that be?\"\n\n\"You have an STD. There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of.\"\n\nHe'd frown. \"That doesn't make sense. I haven't had sex with anyone but you.\"\n\nI'd nod, waiting for him to piece it together. He'd look at me in a kind of vacant, childish wonderment. Then his face would crumble and he'd bury his forehead in his palms.\n\nI stayed up the entire night, trying to calm down, convincing myself that the announcement wouldn't be as bad as I feared. He wouldn't raise his voice or beat me; he wouldn't kick me out of the house. He was a rational, reasonable man. After all, we'd never declared monogamy, and though it hadn't come up as an issue, he wouldn't have been completely surprised, given the state of our sex life. Right? And yet I wasn't convinced he'd take to it lightly.\n\nWas it possible to live with an untreated venereal infection? What about Flaubert, Maupassant, Jules de Goncourt? George Washington, for God's sake? I went to the library and read through every medical reference text, pored through every online database, until my eyes were scratchy and sore. According to the facts, it was indeed possible to live with the disease for years; if untreated, sufficient defenses would develop to produce a resistance to reinfection, even though these very defenses would fail to eradicate the existing infection, leading to lesions involving bones, skin, and viscera; heart disease; a variety of ocular syndromes; and the weakening of the central nervous system. In worst-case scenarios: tissue destruction. I pictured us sitting together at the dinner table, chewing on the softest foods, watching our incisors wobbling out, then coughing once, spitting them discreetly into our napkins.\n\nIf only I'd had a two-week supply of penicillin.\n\nI checked myself daily. To my amazement the blemish wouldn't go away.\n\nI buckled down finally. I went to a local specialist, Dr. Maltman, who informed me in no uncertain terms that I was fine, that I had a pimple. It was hard not to feel foolish, cheated. But he'd given me back my life, and the story of our daily unraveling.\n\n# Chapter 8\n\nIt was on a hot, swampy morning, after dropping William off at Channel 7 Studios, that I saw my mother shopping at the Town and Country Publix. My initial impulse was to leave the store or hide. What was she doing so far from home in an emporium that catered primarily to wealthy retirees? Once I got a hold of myself, I took to following her through the crowded aisles. How lonely, ponderous, and insignificant she looked as she tilted her head upward to examine the scribbled shopping list, which undoubtedly contained the same staple items we'd consumed for the past twenty years: chow mein, frozen peas, watermelon. Etcetera.\n\nI realized at once that I loved her more than anyone.\n\n\"Hello, Mom.\"\n\n\"Evan?\"\n\nShe tilted her head, her eyes fiery and alarmed, their slight almond shape enhanced with liner. Gone were the sweat-shirts and the oversized glasses of the past, replaced with contacts and a deep blue Merino wool skirt. She looked healthier, actually, prettier and in better shape. Had her makeover been triggered by my absence from the house?\n\n\"You look beautiful,\" I said, releasing her from my hug.\n\n\"I do?\"\n\n\"Yeah. I never remember you looking so good.\"\n\n\"That's nice.\" She sipped from a Styrofoam cup of coffee, a vile, watery concoction provided by the supermarket to pep up the customers. She grimaced down at the lipstick mark on the rim. \"I'd come to the point in my life where I realized I had two choices. I could either shoot myself in the temple or reinvent myself. Needless to say, I went with the latter option.\"\n\nMy mouth fell open. \"You were going to shoot yourself?\"\n\nShe winced. \"For Christ's sake, no. Don't be so literal.\"\n\nShe told me about what she'd been up to. She'd been working on the garden, uprooting the liriope to replace them with spreading junipers. She'd been attending a flamenco dance class at Miami-Dade Community College, where she startled the others with her quiet proficiency. She was even writing, she'd said, a good six pages a day.\n\nI asked her what on earth she was writing.\n\n\"Journal stuff. Stuff about my life. It wouldn't be of interest to anyone.\"\n\nHer words stung, though I know she didn't intend it. She kept talking and talking, mindless things that had nothing to do with us. I saw the apprehension on her face. And then the veil went up: I almost watched it: a thin, filigreed thing through which she wouldn't let me in. I heard the thoughts working behind her starched, fiery eyes: I am not going to let him hurt me again. I cannot bear any more loss. I can go on without him.\n\nWe might have been two longtime friends who'd had a falling out, still shaken, resentful, not knowing what was to become of us. She spoke with the slightest edge. But I believed it was possible to renew. I thought of all the times I'd had reunions with Jane. It was always tentative at first, as if we were both dreading and expecting the first signs of conflict. And then the path would clear, opening up, and we'd relax, remembering what we'd once been for each other.\n\n\"So what have you been up to?\" she said in an overly cheery voice.\n\nI walked with her side by side, up and down the crowded store aisles. I knew better than to talk about William: this was not what she'd wanted to hear. I might have been eight years old, helping her fetch Mrs. Paul's fish sticks\u2014once my favorite childhood food\u2014from the steaming caves of the freezer. I might have been basking in the drab, comforting days when Peter was away at school, before anything complicated like puberty and desire had gotten hold of me.\n\nBut once I erased William from the picture, I had nothing to say for myself. For some reason I thought of the mole on his left wrist, the moist pink skin of his hot fleshy neck.\n\n\"Mom,\" I said, surprising myself. \"Would it be okay if I stayed with you and Daddy for a few days?\"\n\nShe inhaled, pretending to examine the ingredients on the back of a cake mix.\n\n\"Mom?\"\n\nHer head pivoted back to me. \"Sweetheart,\" she said with a wounded smile.\n\n\"I don't understand.\" I'd only wanted to get away; if only I could talk to her about William.\n\n\"Your father\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nShe glanced to the floor, sniffed, and cleared her throat.\n\n\"You mean to tell me that he doesn't want me at home?\"\n\nHer eyes filmed. \"Of course not. He's not like that. Don't talk about your father like that.\"\n\nI shook my head back and forth. I decided to let her have it. \"So you're saying he's abandoned me, then?\"\n\nHer face hardened. Deep lines bracketed her mouth. \"You're the last one to\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Who's abandoned whom?\"\n\nI felt myself getting smaller, a pinpoint, a particle, an atom. I fixed all my attentions on the teenager in the big jeans, the big sneakers, on his tiptoes, helping his grandmother\u2014great-grandmother?\u2014pick out a bagful of orange lentils. He placed them in the child seat of the cart, and she smiled dimly at him through her warped glasses, welcoming his presence.\n\n\"Listen,\" she said, more gently now. She touched my arm. \"Let's save this for another time.\"\n\nI glanced down at her fingers resting on my arm, the wedding band, the abrasion beneath the knuckle. It might have been the hand of somebody foreign.\n\nShe exhaled once, noisily. \"I'd love to have you back. I'd love to have you home more than anything. It's just\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"If you promise never to see him again...\"\n\n\"Fine,\" I mumbled, though I was prone to say, Fuck it. I don't need your kindness. I don't need your mercy.\n\n\"Keep in touch,\" she said. \"We want to know how you are.\"\n\n\"You do?\" I said.\n\nShe nodded and walked ahead. \"Be good now.\"\n\nI watched her threading down the aisle, maneuvering the cart in and out through the stalled shoppers. It was hard to keep from walking after her, from prolonging the discussion, from saying, \"I'm sorry. I love you. Don't you know how much I love you?\" Anything to keep her from leaving the store.\n\n\"Wait,\" I said at once.\n\nShe turned just slightly to her left, as if she were hiding her face from me.\n\n\"How's Peter? Have you heard from him?\"\n\nShe shook her head, looking with some urgency toward the checkout.\n\n\"What's he up to?\"\n\n\"Naples,\" she said, and shrugged her left shoulder. Once again her shoulders slumped.\n\nAnd then I watched her leave. This was rupture. The longer we were apart the more damage we created. Was it ever possible to move back and forth across that bridge, that bridge between the two fenced-in countries?\n\n***\n\nYounger, I could have watched them forever. My mother with her peat-rimmed cuticles, trimming the flame vine beneath the rain spout. My father with his flasks and his beakers, mixing up some fizzing compound. My own puzzles and toys often bored me in five seconds, but the study of my parents within the laboratory of their household afforded me the richest pleasure. Nestled between them in the secluded valley of their king-sized bed, I knew that life was never meant to be so sweet.\n\nSchool made a difference. I trudged to the bus stop through rough games of tag, coins aimed at the bulb of my skull. Immediately I felt indifferent toward anyone my own age. I wanted to be with my parents. I wanted to be encompassed by their routines and manners, their dignified, high-minded chatter. School might have been a zoo. I might have been caged up with monkeys, their golden shit still fresh between their teeth. All day long I gazed at the droning clock, lonesome and yearning, pretending to be immersed in the swirls of my finger paintings, counting down the hours when I could be safe with my parents again.\n\nIt wasn't that they were flawless. Even before they started drifting apart, they had had their tensions, which they occasionally took out on us. A bitter word, a slap out of nowhere. But these were the occasion rather than the rule. The money was racking up in the bank; Sid was still ascending the mighty ladder of the chemistry department, and there was the sense of dizzy optimism about it all, the belief that they could still redeem every disappointment in their respective pasts.\n\nSo it wasn't without sense that I felt an enormous loss when I thought of them now, that the combination of their absence and proximity\u2014their house within (I'd counted it) 1,260 feet of William's\u2014unearthed me as it did. For years, I'd lived with the naive assumption that nothing would rattle their deep links to me. I could rob a bank, could pass nuclear secrets, and still they'd love me. Had I been wrong? My eighteenth birthday, July 12th, passed without a note. My card congratulating my father on his promotion to full professor\u2014something I'd heard from Wendy Park, his former student\u2014remained unanswered. They knew where I lived. It was as if they'd moved. I imagined sometimes that they'd fulfilled their lifelong ambition to buy a sailboat and negotiate it through the locks of the Panama Canal. Sometimes in the middle of the night I'd sneak out through William's garage and wheel my bike past the water tower, taking the jogger's path behind Country Club Plaza. I'd spot the house, then taste it, the flavor of fear, a rubbery dank taste like sucking on an inner tube. Something would have been different: a new set of gray trash cans, a sapling Norfolk Island pine, and I'd think, Goddamn it, goddamn them, they've gone somewhere without me. But then I'd see some touches that could only be theirs: the copper wind chimes, the old weather vane glinting on the roof, my broken ten-speed leaning against the fence. Relief.\n\nThey'd never do something as terrible as that.\n\nWasn't it time I stopped thinking about them so much?\n\nI didn't expect kindness or wisdom or solidarity overnight. And yet they weren't making the slightest of efforts on my part. Did they actually believe that every decision and gesture I executed was simply to spite them? Some people wanted to be boneheads, some people didn't want to feel good about their circumstances. The truth was that my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Sid Sarshik, wanted to think that they'd failed somehow in their raising of me.\n\nWell, fuck that.\n\n***\n\nNights later, lying in bed, with William at my side and the Dobermans at my feet, I was still thinking about my parents. Was my mother so fearful of aggravating my father that she'd do anything to avoid a conflict in which she'd eventually side against him? Did she feel so awful about her compliance, her lack of nerve, that she couldn't stand the sight of herself, the sound of her own voice? Or did she, on the deepest level, share my father's point of view?\n\nMy feet were freezing. \"I can't sleep,\" I said out loud, if only to myself.\n\nWilliam turned on his side. He punched softly at the pillow behind him, then offered a low moaning sound. Seconds later, he turned on the lamp beside the bed. \"What's wrong?\"\n\n\"I ran into my mother in the store a few nights ago.\"\n\nHe sounded dehydrated. All week he'd been working on an expose about the nuclear plants of South Florida, a project which involved hours of overtime. His face said: Do you know how hard I've been working?\n\n\"And how was that?\"\n\n\"Strange. I asked her if I could stay at their place for a couple of days. She more or less said no.\"\n\n\"Mmmmm.\" He stared upward at a fissure in the ceiling.\n\nI felt emboldened and exposed at once. \"What are you thinking?\" I asked him.\n\n\"You're not happy here?\" he said, curious. His eyes worked to seem bright, anything but startled and hurt. Up to that point I hadn't indicated that things had been anything but cheery between us.\n\n\"No, it has nothing to do with us. Don't you ever miss Poppy?\"\n\nHe looked at the trim on the blanket, withholding his response. It happened that Lorna had forbidden him from seeing Poppy in the wake of their divorce, even though the agreement was far from legal. To make up for his silence, William wired 500-dollar deposits into Poppy's Winter Park checking account 4 times a year.\n\n\"She doesn't mean what you think,\" he said, but his voice faltered.\n\n\"How would you know? You've never had a real conversation with them.\"\n\n\"I've seen them outside your house. I've seen your father fixing your bicycle for you\u2014watching you pedal away, making sure the chain didn't fall off.\" He looked at me. \"They love you.\"\n\nI blew my nose. \"If only as a concept. If they love me it's only because I'm their mutual creation. I represent a certain lost thing between them. But they haven't been behaving toward me with anything approaching affection.\"\n\nHe was silent for a time, breathing. \"Aren't we erudite?\" he said finally.\n\n\"Don't make fun of me.\"\n\n\"Too many thoughts,\" he said. \"You're thinking too many thoughts. Calm down now, turn off your mind.\"\n\nI rolled my eyes. \"I'm hardly a child.\"\n\n\"Get over here,\" he insisted. \"Now.\"\n\nSlowly, methodically, he began rubbing my head. I tried to relax, concentrating on his weighted palms working the contours of my skull, its bumps, gullies, and planes. He got me then. He knew me this well: nothing anyone did could center me like this, could demarcate my borders with such easy precision.\n\n\"Feel better?\"\n\nI nodded. I glanced over at him through one eye. What was I doing with him? So what if I decided to say it?\n\n\"Why haven't you been having sex with me?\"\n\nHis eyes blinked rapidly. I might have asked him if I could taste his blood.\n\n\"We have sex,\" he said softly.\n\n\"When was the last time? Tell me. Has it been a month, two? You don't even remember.\"\n\nHis brow clenched. He seemed truly, deeply flustered, so much so that it was hard not to back down and forget it. \"I've been busy as hell with my job,\" he rasped.\n\nAnd yet I could answer: two months, eleven days. My eyes watered. \"See?\"\n\nHe propped himself up, held up a hand like a crossing guard. \"Hey, that's not fair. Just let me off the hook, okay?\"\n\n\"No one's putting you on the hook.\"\n\n\"I don't need to be accused of something at\"\u2014he picked up the alarm clock, held it mere inches from his face\u2014\"at three in the morning.\"\n\n\"That's not what I'm doing.\"\n\n\"I don't believe it,\" he said, yanking once at the covers. He turned away from me.\n\n\"Are you impotent?\" I said quietly.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Are you pushing me away?\"\n\nNo answer.\n\n\"Hel-lo\u2014\"\n\n\"No, I'm not pushing you away.\"\n\n\"Do you have another boyfriend?\"\n\n\"No. Now stop it. I'm not subjecting myself to your interrogation. Just go to sleep.\"\n\nI settled back in the bed. \"If you gave me an explanation, I'd understand. I could be patient, okay? I want to help. All I need is a little explanation.\"\n\nHe seemed enwrapped in some tendril of thought. He glanced away. Quietly, he said, \"Did it ever occur to you that you're just too damn horny?\"\n\nI laughed out loud. The idea was preposterous. Wasn't everyone horny? \"You've got to be kidding.\"\n\n\"No, let's shift the light to you. Do you know what it's like to feel that you're disappointing somebody every minute of your life?\"\n\nMy face heated. \"What?\"\n\n\"I'm talking about your neediness. You're putting too much pressure on me.\"\n\nI glanced at the picture of Lorna on the bureau. \"Oh, it's my fault, I get it. Christ.\" I shook my head, hard. \"You're a gay man, for God's sake.\" And then I leapt out of bed, walked down the hall, and curled up on the kitchen chair.\n\nI sat there, palming the loose change he'd left on the counter. I loaded it in my pocket\u2014forty-five cents, no big deal, but it was the gesture that shocked me. In the entire realm of his life I meant about as much to him as a chauffeur or a pet. He liked the idea of having somebody around, but when it came down to the day-to-day obligations of living with someone, the duty to affection, he came up unbearably short.\n\nNo wonder Lorna wanted him to have nothing to do with Poppy.\n\nI walked outside, crept into the garden. The sounds of the night: a plane overhead, blinking, vanishing, then nothing. Shifting circuits on a sprinkler system. I edged closer to the property line. A rustling beside the pool cage. I knew it: red stripe, yellow stripe. Black snout. Coral snake.\n\nBut it was only our neighbor. She was sitting in a lawn chair in her backyard, pressing a cup of coffee to her chin. She gazed out at the trees with such intensity that it was hard to watch her. In the one and only time we'd ever talked, she spooned bloodmeal around the roots of her begonias, her personal trick for keeping their colors so vibrant. Now, for whatever reason, I lost my usual sense of shyness and caution. I decided to walk over to her.\n\n\"I hope I didn't startle you.\"\n\nShe kept staring at her garden wall, and shook her head. \"I heard you coming,\" she whispered.\n\nA silence between us. Dew dripping from the staghorn ferns. \"You couldn't sleep, either?\" I said finally.\n\nShe nodded, sniffed. She wiped at her nose with a balled Kleenex in her fist.\n\n\"Your begonias look beautiful,\" I said.\n\nShe glanced over to them. \"They are,\" she said quietly, satisfied. \"Aren't they? Thank you. Thank you for noticing.\"\n\nShe turned to me then for the first time. Her chin glistened in the dark. I wanted to step back, embarrassed. \"Are you okay?\"\n\nShe started crying again. I stood beside her, looking down at the sparkling grass.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" she said through a low sob.\n\n\"How's your husband?\" I asked, glancing over at the single light in the window.\n\n\"Drunk,\" she said. \"A basket case.\"\n\nThe dew felt icy on my forehead. A warm breeze rattled the coconut palms. \"If you ever need help,\" I said, \"with your garden...\"\n\n\"You would?\" she said, her eyes brightening slightly.\n\n\"I'll water your begonias,\" I offered. \"I'd love to feed them.\"\n\n\"I'd appreciate that. What a nice gesture. Thank you\u2014\"\n\n\"Evan,\" I said, and extended my hand.\n\n\"Mrs. Stendhal,\" she said. \"Virginia Stendhal. Thank you very much.\"\n\n\"Have a good night now.\"\n\nI walked back into the house, down the hall to our room. The door was half closed; I stopped. Already I heard the snoring of Pedro, the Doberman, a full sawing throttle that could make us laugh when our moods were right. I didn't expect that now. I pushed open the door, reluctant. Had I harmed him beyond imagining, underestimating my own capacity to hurt?\n\nHe sprawled on the bed, motioning me toward him. His eyes, though sad, glimmered in invitation.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Be quiet,\" he said with tenderness.\n\nMy gratitude was boundless, large as a country. Why was I crying? He took hold of my arm, pinned me to the bed, and to my bafflement and surprise began to make love to me.\n\n# Chapter 9\n\nI had to know things. I had to take apart everything I saw, even as a kid: lamps, toys, hairdryers, toasters. The world was a flurry of blues, oranges, and golds, unbearable in their vibrancy. Sid and Ursula tried their best to calm me down, but I skated away from their grasp, agitated, voracious. I had to ask, where is this going, how is this put together, why are we so shy, so brittle? There was Beau Roberts's mouse. I wriggled it in my cupped palm, on its back, eyes red, astonished. I fumbled for the toy knife, gently nicking its fur, wanting more than anything to peel back that white, exposing the pulsing wet bead inside, before Beau's mother caught me in the act. Our phone rang later that evening. I tried to tell my parents I only loved the mouse, but my words fractured in my mouth. They sat across the kitchen table, fingers latched, gazing at me with their wet, dazzled eyes.\n\n***\n\nThe morning air was sluggish and sweet, yellowing the surfaces with pollen. We lounged inside the pool cage, reading through the Herald and eating carambola. On such mornings it was easy to convince myself that there was indeed something between us, that, together, we were actually immersed in the moment. We felt a pleasure in our silence, a camaraderie and a comfort, a mutual respect for the distance between us.\n\nThe week had been a good one. On Tuesday, William had surprised me by taking me to the Channel 7 Studios (at last breaking his pact to keep me hidden from his coworkers), where he introduced me to Dinah Strang, aka Dusty Cartwright, host of Casper's Corners, my favorite childhood TV show. She'd been out of work, in hiding for years, after the FCC crackdown on the endorsement of products by the hosts of such programs\u2014in this case Dinah's own Dusty Cartwright Dairy Bar. A host of rumors had swirled around her disappearance\u2014one, that she'd lost her leg to gangrene; another, that she was living on the streets of Newcastle, Delaware, a sometime prostitute, after draining her bank accounts and turning over the funds to the SPCA. It was hard to believe any of it now, as she stood before the flying-fish sculptures outside the studio, preparing for her local comeback program, which already gave off the queasy scent of failure. I wasn't giving up on her, though. She held me close\u2014a big blowsy grandma in a fringed white cowboy suit\u2014as William snapped the picture. \"A big smoocheroony for your Aunt Dusty,\" she cried, and I kissed her then, unfazed by her pancake makeup, her whiskied breath. She looked at me, confused, stricken, as if I were some demanding child.\n\nWilliam flapped the newspaper once on his lap. In Virginia's trees next door: a riot of orchids. \"Did you know a Todd Bemus?\" he said offhandedly.\n\nI moved to the edge of the patio chair and leaned toward him. \"Yeah, I went to school with him.\"\n\nHe raised his brows. The headline of his page read OBITUARIES.\n\n\"He died?\"\n\nHe handed the paper to me. I pulled in a breath and held it. Over his name I saw Todd's yearbook photo, his white hair\u2014\"bleach out,\" we called it\u2014his pink, dangerous lips. Already he looked like he knew so much more than the others, his eyes bitter, yet willful. He might have been someplace far ahead in the future. I passed over the announcement: Todd Bemus of Coral Gables, Florida, died Thursday of complications due to AIDS in San Francisco, California. He was 20 years old and is survived by his mother, Cherry, his sisters, Heather, of Port St. Lucie, and Tabitha, of Nags Head, North Carolina.\n\n\"He was a friend?\" William asked.\n\nI kept shaking my head. \"We were in gym together for two years.\"\n\n\"Twenty,\" William said. \"Shit.\"\n\nI clenched my right hand tightly, rubbing a knuckle with my thumb. My throat filled quickly with tears. Still, it didn't seem quite real to me, not only because I'd been out of touch with Todd for two years, but because the event seemed like something he'd have staged, watching it take place from afar, then obnoxiously showing up at his own funeral\u2014\"ta da\"\u2014laughing at everybody, then apologizing for all the grief he'd caused. Dead. How could Todd, of all people, be dead?\n\nWilliam rested his arm on my shoulder. I must have looked sadder than I knew.\n\n\"Wasn't he too young?\" I said. \"I mean, I thought it took ten years to come down with symptoms.\"\n\nHe raised his eyebrows again. \"Not always. Sometimes\u2014\" His voice trailed off.\n\nWe sat still, reading about the impending water shortage and the proliferation of hi-tech firms in Boca Raton, pretending that it was just another humid South Florida morning, that something of consequence hadn't split open the day. A sluggishness settled in my arms, the tips of my fingers. I wasn't used to seeing my friends die. There was June Pulte, of course, whose car had sledded off a storm-slick road into a cypress stand after leaving Disney World, and Mark McNitt, who'd OD'd on a lethal cocktail of speed, Valium, butane, and vodka, but neither of these had been close friends of mine, and these incidents were mere accidents, quick dealings of fate that hadn't mucked with the deepest part of their identities. It was happening all around us, I knew it, though it was sometimes hard to believe. William, for one, had lost nearly all of his friends: Thomas and Mark, David and Larry, Tony and Richard. But it was something that happened to older men, men in their thirties and forties, not to people like me.\n\nWilliam took the Dobermans for a walk, and I squatted beside the pool, testing the water chemistry with the little kit, waiting for the PH to go pink. I strained out some leaves from the surface. Poor Todd. I thought about how he'd tried to get closer to me, how he'd called me one day out of the blue to watch videos with him. He'd gotten a hold of the whole Pam Grier \"ouevre,\" he called it\u2014Coffy and Foxy Brown among them\u2014and he'd wanted to watch them with me because he thought only I would appreciate them, and then I promised to get back to him. I knew what a big deal it was for him to call, how he'd probably worried about it all day, and yet I completely and totally blew him off.\n\nSecretly, I believed he had a crush on me. True or not, this was the real reason I kept my distance from him. I preferred to spend time with him in public, at Dadeland, at Haulover Park\u2014any place where he couldn't jump me, for every time I was alone with him I felt a tremendous pressure, even if it was only communicated through the weight of his gaze and the way he sat so close to me. It was too bad that I didn't feel the slightest bit of attraction to him.\n\nStill, I believed he was the funniest guy in the world. He could make me fall down the stairs in stitches, mimicking friends or second-rate celebrities like Joan Van Ark or Tori Spelling, though he also embarrassed me with his airy-thin voice, his occasional cackle, his broad, overreaching gestures. More than once I'd slipped into an empty classroom when I saw him walking toward me down the hall, clutching to his chest his three-ring binder\u2014decoupaged with sunflowers, smiley faces, Day-Glo peace signs\u2014as if he were shielding his breasts.\n\nOnce he'd worn makeup to school. Some of the boys had finally had enough, and he'd probably called one a name, and he was going to get throttled. I could hear him now: Hey straight boy, hey pencildick. Want to get fucked? Straight boy loves to get fucked. He was too much for them. His very presence mocked, and they couldn't stand it, couldn't stand it at all. Eric Woodworth went first. He tugged Todd's earring, and snagged it once, ripping it right through his lobe. A dark drop of blood pearled on Todd's ear. \"You'll get AIDS,\" Convey cried, looking at the red on Woodworth's palm. \"Drop it, you fool. You'll get AIDS!\" Still, Todd walked ahead, a determined look on his face as if he were telling himself that nothing could harm him.\n\nThen Woodworth turned and noticed me. He knew that Todd and I were gym buddies, banding together during softball class, deliberately, flamboyantly missing the fly balls that dropped in our direction.\n\n\"Hey, Sarshik,\" he said. \"Here's your friend, he's bleeding. Why don't you come over here and take care of your friend?\"\n\nI looked at him as if to say What friend? then left Todd to his own devices as I hurtled down the steps to the locker room.\n\n***\n\nTwo mornings later I went to Todd's funeral mass. I dropped William off at work, then drove around Coral Gables looking for the church. I found it after a few minutes, a large Catholic church with ocher brick walls and a round rosette window\u2014St. Michael the Archangel. I sat in the back row, near the baptismal font, in my single white shirt and ill-fitting suit (an old thing I'd borrowed from William's closet), and stared down at the initials etched into the soft wood of the pew. Ten rows ahead were his cousins, dozens of them, all bused in from Allentown, Pennsylvania; his former neighbors; his most recent friends, two of whom appeared to be models or porn stars; and his parents, Francis and Dot, who seemed alternately composed and quietly devastated. It was hard to imagine that they'd ever been cruel to Todd, but they'd been awful, literally locking him out of the house upon learning he'd had sex with Lloyd Scarborough, the marching-band director. Still, they'd welcomed him back home when he'd come down with his first symptom, a case of CMV retinitis, realizing that he had no other choice but to stay put, that he wasn't going to run away, or frighten or surprise them anymore.\n\nBut it was foolish to expect anything but surprise from Todd. Even in death, he still managed to unsettle. Before mass, standing outside with his cousin Ricky (who'd allowed me to bum a cigarette, something I did from time to time), I'd learned that before moving to San Francisco, where he'd butched himself up and started sleeping with porn stars, Todd had been an accomplished composer of liturgical music, something he'd hidden from almost everybody, including his parents. He'd taken it quite seriously, taking pride in his designation as the youngest composer ever in the catalog of UIA Library, his publisher. Now the choir was performing some of Todd's music for the service. The cantor intoned his setting of my favorite psalm, one of those I still knew by heart, Psalm 42\u2014Like a deer that longs for running streams\u2014and then we all repeated it, its antiphon rising, lifting us up, moving and unnerving everyone in the congregation.\n\nOutside the church, Todd's other cousins, three of whom had been linebackers for Penn State, hefted the shining casket down the steps. The sun went in. People milled about, jabbering. It was hard not to feel cheated somehow, though it was a nice mass, a nice sermon. There were only veiled, uncomfortable references to AIDS, the priest assuring us that God, in his infinite mercy and wisdom, was blessing Todd, seating him at his right hand. I tried not to be miffed. The palm fronds glistened in the heat. Karen Kenley, a mutual friend of Todd's and mine, spotted me in the throng. To my dread, she made her way toward me.\n\n\"What have you been up to?\" she asked.\n\nI visored my eyes. Already she'd aged. She might have been five or ten years older than I was with her brittle blonde perm, her pitted skin. She waited for me to answer.\n\nI hadn't anticipated the question. Since I'd been with William I'd more or less isolated myself from everyone I'd known. I couldn't possibly tell her the truth, that I'd been staying at home, immersed in a relationship that I worried about more and more with each passing day.\n\n\"I took some time off from school,\" I said. \"But I'm going back someday.\"\n\nHer face betrayed surprise and relief. \"I thought you'd have been in grad school by now. You seemed so brilliant. You were always throwing off the curve on tests.\"\n\nHer words barbed and shamed, though I doubted she'd wanted to hurt me. One thing you could say about Karen was that she was kind. She might not have been smart or attractive or ambitious, but she was kind, and no one would take that away from her. I turned the question around. \"So what about you?\"\n\nShe was hostessing at a Perkins Pancake House in Naranja, on the seedy deadbeat strip to the Keys\u2014most of which had been torn open by Hurricane Andrew. Already she'd divorced and married a second time, but the current marriage\u2014to a guy twenty years her senior, a former real estate salesman for General Development\u2014wasn't working. She was thinking of moving back in with her mother, if only to put some money in the bank. She was twenty years old. I couldn't have imagined a life so different from my own.\n\n\"And I have a baby!\" she cried.\n\nShe reached into her wallet and passed me a cellophane-wrapped picture of a baby, a little girl with blonde hair, blue eyes, and white shirt patterned with golden pachyderms.\n\n\"Her name's Lola. Seventeen months old. Don't you think that's the coolest name?\"\n\n\"Wow.\" I wanted to feel what I was supposed to feel. She so much wanted my approval, even though I could barely muster it, with Todd on my mind. What was she doing with a baby when she could barely take care of herself?\n\n\"Let's get together sometime,\" she said. Awkwardly, as if on impulse, she hugged me.\n\n\"We should,\" I answered. I felt her gripping me closer, her tears hot on the cloth of my shirt.\n\nShe laughed, sniffed, pretended she wasn't crying. \"Remember when the three of us went to the drive-in, and the tire blew out, and we had to walk six miles to the Texaco?\"\n\nI nodded. I'd had such a horrendous time that night, bickering with Todd, walking with him in a pair of thrift-store shoes that were one size too small, that I'd all but suppressed it. But maybe I'd had a bad attitude. Was my recollection any truer than hers?\n\n\"So give me a call, please? How's Jane, by the way?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"I don't know. I haven't seen her.\"\n\n\"You haven't? That surprises me. You two used to be like this.\" And she crossed two fingers together, holding them up for me to see.\n\n\"People drift apart.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"I never liked her,\" she said, admitting to something I'd always suspected. She rubbed her arm as if chilly. \"She always made me feel fat, stupid. Maybe I'm jealous of her.\"\n\nI grabbed her tightly by the hand and shook it, in full measure of my support. \"That's Jane. Well, we won't ask her along this time. How's that?\"\n\n\"Good,\" she said, laughing now.\n\nI walked away from her. The cars, headlights on, inched down the road toward the cemetery. Driving home, I knew that we'd never get together. I was in another life. I'd never see her again.\n\nThree weeks after Todd's funeral, on a night marked by the arrival of a cold front, with violent bursts of lightning, and eerie passages of calm, I locked myself in the bathroom and pressed a damp washcloth to my face. My stomach lining popped and burned. There was no question: I knew that I was infected, and that it was only a matter of time before I came down with it\u2014the night sweats and fevers, the rashes and gum disease, the odd tingling and numbness that would prevent me from walking.\n\nI crawled back into bed and sidled up to William, deliberately waking him.\n\n\"Do you ever worry?\" I asked him.\n\nHe opened one eye. \"What now.\"\n\n\"Don't you ever worry about AIDS?\"\n\nHe breathed deeply, patiently through his nostrils. \"We've been safe,\" he said blandly. \"What's there to worry about?\"\n\nBut we hadn't been safe, even though we tried to be. There had been that time or two when just before he'd rolled on the rubber, he'd pressed his dick inside me, just an inch or two deep, just for the thrill of it, just to test something. Wasn't that a part of it, the thrill, the daring? Wasn't that the thing that drove people to let down their guard, to stare down death in the face, or to finally stop fighting, because it took all of your resources to keep it at bay? I thought of the first time we were together, the hot afternoon on which I'd fucked him, the smell of cut grass in the air, only to find a rusty, bloody bloom on the top sheet after he'd left for the bathroom. I looked at the spot, thinking, we're never going back from here, we're linked together now\u2014William and Evan, blood brothers\u2014brutalized and comforted at once.\n\n\"We never talk about it,\" I said. \"Don't you think we should at least talk about it sometime?\"\n\n\"What's there to talk about?\" A grimace passed over his face. He twisted his hands together, once, not even knowing he was doing it.\n\nI sat up. I tried my best to sound rational, nonchalant. \"Maybe we should both get tested.\"\n\nHe shook his head from side to side, emphatic. \"No way. I'm over that idea.\"\n\n\"Why not? We'll just get it over with and we won't have this dreadful thing looming over us.\"\n\nHis face looked empty, bleak. \"It's always looming over us.\"\n\nHe stood. I followed him into the bathroom, watching him pour baking soda into a juice glass. Carefully, he filled it with tap water, stirred it with his finger, then sipped it as if it were champagne.\n\nI sat on the closed toilet seat. If I were sick, if my time were really limited, I wanted to be doing things. I wanted to be living like Todd did, having experiences, fucking, becoming somebody new, changing my name, somewhere on the opposite side of the country.\n\n\"Do you think you're positive?\" I asked.\n\nHe swallowed, testing the condition of his throat. \"I feel fine, if that means anything.\" His face looked brighter, calmer all of a sudden. \"How about you?\"\n\n\"I'm fine.\"\n\n\"That's good. That's all we need to know.\"\n\nI followed him back to the bedroom. Outside, the sky lightened notch by notch. I expected him to be resentful, silent. Instead, he turned to me and held me tight, breathing slowly, at regular intervals, until he was fast asleep, as if he'd convinced himself the world was nothing but a restful, safe place.\n\n# Chapter 10\n\nI found it in our mailbox, without postage, in a used, brown envelope once addressed to my parents. A ghastly photograph of Ed McMahon peered down from the upper left corner. As it had been deposited after 2:30, the last time I'd checked the box, I assumed that my mother had delivered it herself.\n\nDear Evan,\n\nI'm writing this in the kitchen. I want you to know that this is the first letter I've written in thirteen years. I know I told you that I've been writing about my life every day, but this is different. It takes a special kind of attention that I don't know I'm capable of these days. In any case, the house is quiet without you, and I miss your spirit in these empty gray rooms.\n\nIt was terrific to see you at the Publix. You looked better than I'd imagined\u2014though there was something about your eyes. (Are you taking zinc? Dr. Oglethorpe says that there's nothing better than a good dose of zinc for the eyes. One or two tablets a day\u2014I forget which dosage.)\n\nYou asked about Peter. Luck has it that he called not long after I saw you. He's bought a bankrupt motel somewhere near Naples. We don't know how on earth he came up with the money\u2014he doesn't tell us anything. Anyway, if you don't waste too much time, you can probably reach him at King Cole Resort, Tamiami Trail and Boca Palms Parkway, Naples, Florida. I told him that you'd like to talk to him and that you'd be getting in touch with him soon.\n\nThe fish are doing just fine, and we've gotten a new wall hanging for over the sofa\u2014you'd probably hate it, but there. Speaking of your father, he's driving me nuts, as usual. He's on his way to Austin, Texas, for some academic to-do, and it's a relief to have some time to myself. FYI: on the subject of your staying with us, he came to the conclusion that it would be too much right now. Let's face facts, dear\u2014you like the IDEA of staying with us, but once you moved back in, you'd be miserable. The thing is, you can't be two things at once. These things are hard for me to write, and that's one of the reasons it's taken me this long. Forgive me. I want you to know that I love you, and miss you terribly, but, damn it, it's hard. When I think of you living just down the street, the way you've chosen to turn your back on us, it's hard not to feel hurt. And a little rage. You'll see things sooner than you think, perhaps when you have children of your own. We're waiting for you, Evan. Please make up your mind. We love you more than you'll ever know.\n\nMom\n\nI read the letter twice more before I tore it in half, then pieced it back together with strapping tape. Goddamn, I thought. They were locking me out. I really had no place to go.\n\n***\n\nWilliam's solution to my seething rage was to take me out to a party. He received the invitation from Cleve Stern, a sound engineer from Channel 7, one of the few employees he was officially \"out\" to, so I assumed there'd be people like us there. William wouldn't tell me anything specific about the party, except that it would be taking place in a loft in an industrial area of Little Havana, and that I shouldn't worry too much about what I was going to wear.\n\n\"What kind of party? Who's going to be there?\"\n\n\"You'll see,\" he said, nudging me onward. \"Hurry up, get moving. It starts in forty-five minutes.\"\n\nI felt a dread coupled with a low-key anticipation. We hadn't had much of a social life. All these months it had been just him and me, and I'd been feeling the pressure of that, the sense that we needed to open ourselves out. It made me wonder why he'd waited until now to do this, when we were practically crawling around on our hands and knees. But any change was potentially refreshing, especially from someone who was so dependent upon routine.\n\nIt took us a good fifteen minutes to find a parking space. The neighborhood wasn't great. I looked up to the sky above the warehouses and high-tension wires, lines of pink and red light creeping across its map. I thought, this is the Florida that no one sees in postcards, the Florida that's always there behind the palms, the bronzed bodies, the swept, glittering surfaces.\n\nInside, the loft we were met by a line of men in a graffiti-scarred hall. The music was loud beyond imagining. I recognized the song, a remix of \"Rude Thing,\" by some alternative band that Todd had introduced me to.\n\nYou can kiss me, you can torch me\n\nYou can touch me, you can scorch me\n\nCause you just mean nothing\n\nYou just mean nothing to me\n\nIt certainly didn't seem like William's kind of party.\n\nThe line inched forward. We stood at a table where two men sat in nothing but their jockey shorts beneath a hand-printed sign: SUGGESTED DONATION: $10.\n\nI turned back to William. \"You mean we have to pay?\"\n\n\"Quiet,\" he said, passing a ten-dollar bill into my hand.\n\n\"And who's this?\" said one of the men to William. He was talking about me. He smiled. In different circumstances I'd have liked his chiseled chest, his lacquered Caesar haircut, shorn on the sides, but now, for whatever reason, he reminded me of Frankenstein's monster.\n\n\"Where do we go?\" William said, unnerved.\n\n\"Around the corner, to the right. You can check your clothes in there.\"\n\nI blinked repeatedly, not yet processing these instructions. I followed William down the hall, and, to my left, I saw it: a great room, perhaps forty feet long, its concrete floor covered with a plastic tarp, on which a hundred men of all ages, races, and levels of attractiveness, were clumped in threes and fours, standing in their perfect underwear and Doc Martens, leaning into each other, jerking off.\n\nI stood there for a minute, intrigued and repelled at once. The participants were suffused with a crimson otherworldly light. A vision of terror and beauty. A J-O party, of course. What, then, were William and I doing here?\n\n\"Are you okay with this?\" he asked. He seemed more than a little bewildered.\n\nMy brow tightened. I didn't know how I felt. \"Why didn't you tell me?\"\n\n\"I thought it would be a surprise. I thought you'd get a kick out of the surprise.\"\n\nI shook my head, a numbing sensation between my brows. My head itched. I followed him down the hall. We took off our clothes, shoved them inside numbered Winn-Dixie bags, and handed them over to the clothes check, a sweet geeky fellow who might have spent his days as a programmer. I imagined the flashing beeper on his belt, summoning him to fix the bug on some trust-accounting system so the dividends could get posted by day's end.\n\nWe walked back to the big room and observed, like an audience at some Roman bacchanalia. It wasn't what you'd think, though. A lot of it was just plain dull. I got the feeling that most of the guys liked the notion of the spectacle more than anything else, longing for intensity and pleasure, hoping to confront, then push past the boundaries of shame. Did they leave feeling empty, unsatisfied, going home by themselves, more solitary than ever before?\n\nAround us \"Rude Thing\" spun out from the speakers, the longest dance track in history.\n\n\"There's Cleve,\" William said.\n\nI watched Cleve, a randy, bespectacled thing with an amazing physique for someone of his age, fooling around with a kid twenty years his junior. At one point he glanced toward us, and\u2014to our discomfort\u2014waved. At once the cracks in his armor asserted themselves. I saw how Cleve had grown up thinking he was unattractive, knowing that his opportunities for sex were limited by his essential homeliness. I saw how his first visits to the gym at thirty had literally changed his life, how with the simple repetition of a few free-weight exercises four times a week, he could transform himself into the man he'd always wanted. I saw how his fooling around with the young muscled boy in these circumstances was all meant for display, not fun, how it was ultimately about declaring his status: Hey, boys, look what I got. I'm not worthless anymore.\n\nI wanted to relax into the situation, but I couldn't stop stepping out of it, couldn't put to sleep the critical apparatus\u2014a necessary condition if I were to have a decent time. But already I saw myself fifty years in the future, telling younger people about what was transpiring before me: This is what we did to amuse each other, to kept ourselves from going crazy in the age of AIDS.\n\nNot ten seconds later, a middle-aged man\u2014a leather-daddy type\u2014walked up to me with a posed, stern expression on his face. I felt a twinge of erotic feeling, a pleasant discomfort, though I couldn't get beyond the fact that William was standing beside me, territorial, possessive. I couldn't get into this. I held up my right hand.\n\nThe guy nodded, walked away, moving on to someone more willing.\n\n\"Creepy,\" William said, his eyes fixed to the guy's thin white waist.\n\nI shrugged. \"He wasn't so bad.\"\n\n\"You're kidding.\"\n\nI dulled the expression on my face. On some profound level, I'd wanted to provoke something akin to jealousy, though I couldn't say why. The air vibrated between us. I looked over at William, his grim, hopeless face, his pale, pockmarked back, and imagined him tasting flavorless in my mouth. Above our heads, a poster: Five Easy Steps to Safer Sex. I still didn't know what we were doing here.\n\n\"Now that's cute,\" William said, pointing to a kid across the room.\n\nWilliam kept staring at him with an intensity that seemed forced, inappropriate. I didn't see what was so great about him, but I kept quiet, trying to make sense of his interest. Maybe it was only because he looked like me, and I liked men who were older, butcher, who'd been around the block a bit. I'd have taken the leather daddy over the kid any day, but again, I kept my mouth shut. Soon enough, William's stare had drawn the kid toward us\u2014a calf to a block of salt.\n\n\"Howdy,\" he said, quizzical.\n\nI smiled, in welcome. Something hooked into my stomach. He stepped closer to the kid, then, to my confusion, stepped backward, disengaging himself. He nodded toward me, as if in collusion. What was going on here?\n\nThe kid leaned into me, kissed me ripely with his full red lips. His tongue was scratchy and sweet as he reached up, rubbing the knots from my shoulders. It felt good, unbearably good, but I couldn't get into it\u2014at least not with William standing there. The hook snagged deeper into my stomach lining. Was I going to be sick? I realized then that William didn't want to participate, that he only wanted to watch, and that was the sole purpose for bringing me here.\n\n\"I can't get into this,\" I said, and pulled back from the kid. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nBoth William and the kid looked at each other. The kid's eyes seemed hurt and alarmed.\n\n\"I'm getting dressed,\" I said, and hurried toward the clothes check.\n\n\"I thought you'd be happy,\" he called out after me. His footsteps were brisk down the hall. \"I did it for you.\"\n\n\"Well, thanks,\" I muttered to myself.\n\n\"Huh?\"\n\n\"Fucking clueless.\"\n\n\"Fucking what?\"\n\n\"Fucking me.\"\n\nWe sat in the front seat of the car without speaking. My back teeth ached to their roots. I felt something deeper than rage, a blank, zeroed-out place, a null set. I couldn't find my foothold, for everything was rocking now, spinning too fast.\n\nI went straight to bed. For whatever reason, I pulled out the obituary of Todd, which I'd kept inside the night table, and started reading it to myself. William stepped into the room, glowering, wounded.\n\n\"Are you still reading that?\" he whispered.\n\nThey were the first words we'd exchanged in close to an hour.\n\n\"Yes, I'm still reading that. What's it matter to you?\"\n\nHe shook out a pillowcase he'd unfolded. He wagged his head. \"This isn't healthy. This feels inflated.\"\n\n\"He was twenty years old!\" I yelled.\n\n\"What does that have to do with anything?\"\n\n\"Everything,\" I said.\n\nHe worked the case over the pillow. \"Fine. Just don't expect me to participate.\" Then he crawled into bed, switched off the lamp, casting the room in darkness.\n\nThe burning crept higher in my stomach. My mind started wandering. I thought about the fact that he hadn't encouraged me to work, hadn't encouraged me to contact all those schools that had once accepted me. Or to make friends, for that matter. My thoughts were all over the place, scattered, as if hammered around the edges. What was I doing here?\n\n\"What am I doing here?\" I said, repeating my thought aloud.\n\n\"Immature,\" he muttered, staring at the ceiling. \"Don't be so fucking immature.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You heard what I said.\"\n\nHe'd hit bottom\u2014a declaration that insisted only upon his age, his power over me. Something against which I couldn't stand up. \"At least I'm not shut down,\" I said after a few minutes. \"At least I've given myself permission to be affected by things.\"\n\n\"La tee da,\" he said.\n\nFine, I thought. Take the last word. You don't know how to fight anyway. Or I don't. Our gestures said it all: this wasn't working out. I decided that minute: it was over, kaput. Fine.\n\n***\n\nI waited three days. I picked a morning on which the sun wasn't too hot and the wind was calm, a light southeast breeze pushing the fried leaves across the lawn. The weather was good. We might have been someplace ghastly, beautiful like Barbados, Antigua\u2014islands to which I'd never been, but had imagined as real. I drove William to work, taking the long route on the bay front, past the mirrored towers and the marinas, actually feeling comfortable in his company. How civil we were, how amiable\u2014no allusions to what had been happening in the last few weeks. Any bystander would have thought that there was nothing lethal between us. We were perfect for each other, no? I'd given him not one inkling of what I'd worked out, which buzzed me and prodded, slapped me high about the head as if I were stealing something expensive\u2014a watch or a jewel.\n\nI cleaned the house from top to bottom. I cleaned the sinks and the showers, the oven and the baseboards, the tile grout, the exhaust fan, the medicine chest. Then I went to work on the garage. I could have been Astrid Muth, my mother's fanatical, desperate friend, who cared for her yard with such scrutiny that she literally probed through her flower beds in order to stop the weeds before they'd sprouted. I got it now. I was something like Astrid. After an entire afternoon, only two hours before I was to pick William up at the station, I set to work on my backpack. As I wanted to travel light, I didn't pack much. Some T-shirts, a pair of jeans, shorts, underwear, jacket, sweater, flashlight. The rest of it? The truth was I didn't need anything more than that.\n\nI walked into the den, the room in which I'd been scheduled to sleep on the day of my arrival. What had I been thinking? I stared at the rusted pipe on the floor. The water murmured. And all at once a scorpion pulled itself out of the neck, nearly translucent, creeping over the rusted rim.\n\nI paused once before the front door, patting the Dobermans twice, three times upon the head. \"You be good to Daddy, now. Will you miss me?\" I spoke aloud to the empty white walls. The house was still, unbearably still, yet starting to turn. \"You really weren't a bad guy,\" I said. \"Son of a bitch.\" And then I left.\n\n# Part  \nTwo\n\n# Chapter 11\n\nThey huddled beneath a lone palm in their bright yellow jackets. I walked faster. Something twinged my shoulder blade. I had to tell myself that the simple fact of my appearance was not the prime reason for their gathering, that they didn't exist to taunt, to yell faggot to any lone boy who happened to walk through the field. Clearly, I said to myself. See clearly. They were simply conferring, talking about tonight's football game. Nothing wrong with that. Paranoia. Residue, it seemed, from an earlier time.\n\nI walked along the treeline. My sneakers caked with marl. It took all of three hours for me to start asking myself why I left. He wasn't the worst of partners. He wasn't condescending or surly; he wasn't unctuous, lunkheaded, dishonest, or cheap. His breath was fresh, pleasant; he smelled good\u2014lavender and sea salt, a surprising mix. Each Wednesday night, as part of his weekly caretaking ritual, he tweezed the hairs from his earlobes, back, and shoulder blades, leaving behind a trail of fibers, like carpet threads, all over the bathroom tile.\n\nIt occurred to me that I had hurt someone.\n\nSometimes in passing moments I still wonder what he might have thought when he finally returned that night from work, having taken a cab home from the station, only to see the car lolling in the driveway. Was my absence in the house instantly palpable? Or had he dropped into his favorite chair, switched on the lamp, called out Evan\u2014only to realize minutes later that I had really gone? Was he angry or wounded, searching urgently for a note, an explanation that would never surface? Or did he feel a certain satisfaction, a smugness about it all? Could he have said to himself: He will be back?\n\nHe really wasn't a bad guy.\n\nI found the pipe at the end of the path. The scrub had thickened since I'd last been out here, denser since the brushfire, but I appreciated that, knowing I'd be sheltered, safe. Vapor trails stitched across the sky. I eased down into the pipe feet first, pulling myself across its floor, its cylinder surprisingly warm, dry, cocooning. I fumbled for my shirt and balled it behind my head. I had no good reason to feel this good. It was hard to believe that so few people had ever known the humble pleasures of sleeping outside.\n\nThe sky went dark. In the distance I heard the boys, more ominous now, their war cries coiling up into the trees. They were starting a fire. Laugh it off, I told myself. Means shit. And then I fell asleep, not waking up until a full night later, when I sat up, feeling a seepage of water on my shirt.\n\n***\n\nI started walking. I stored my backpack up inside a rotted palm\u2014\"Old Merv,\" I called it\u2014freeing me up to go anywhere. Coral Gables, Westwood Lakes, Medley, Aladdin City, Cutler Ridge, Coconut Grove\u2014I walked through half the towns of the county, over dams and drainage ditches, past service stations trembling with orange strips of neon, jogging, then running, then jogging again. A chevron of sweat dripped through my shirt. A white ecstatic granule vibrated inside my head, and I wanted to aim myself into that place, to break through its crust and explode it, to be that\u2014that calmness and void, that place without movement.\n\nI walked down a street on which most of the houses had been totaled by the hurricane. Roofs pulled from their joists, stucco stripped, fancy furniture still floating in the pools. There was something incongruous about the wreckage, for the worst damage had been centered ten miles south, in Homestead, Naranja. This region had escaped the fiercest sustained winds, but thunderstorms had spawned tornadoes here, imploding the houses as if they were toys, only to leave the next block unscathed.\n\nUp ahead, something called to me. Soon enough, I was walking toward the house of Douglass Freeman. Dickless, who'd moved to California years ago.\n\nNo matter how many others had lived here after his departure, it was still his house to me. In some inexplicable way its walls contained his very spirit, his bafflement, despair, and slanted curiosity. I stared upward at the roof beams, sheared from their trusses by the winds. The house was hopeless. The most recent owners, gone for good now, had spray painted the garage door with harsh jagged letters: ANDREW, GO HOME. Then beneath that: ALLSTATE DOESN'T DELIVER and their policy number.\n\nI stepped up the driveway. The street was empty now, a ghost town of ruptured houses. No one was watching. The front door opened as if its former occupants had been expecting me.\n\nIt was worse than I'd imagined. Insulation sagged; walls buckled under the displaced roof. Mildewy curtains flapped on a rod above the open back wall. Beyond that, the pool cage. It lay twisted in a particularly crude fashion. I studied the family portrait above the mantel in which a father, a mother, and two little boys\u2014all with bottle-thick glasses\u2014were trying desperately to enjoy themselves, to show the photographer\u2014a dense, falsely enthusiastic teenager, I decided\u2014they were a well-adjusted family. They'd left everything here, throwing up their hands. I rifled through a desk to find something with their names. I found a short stack of wet envelopes\u2014tithing envelopes for St. Michael's Parish. Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Carson.\n\nI sat upon a ruined pit sofa. A dome light lay perilously on its side. For a few seconds I imagined the Carsons in the contented period before the storm, milling about the rooms, carrying presents to each other at Christmas, the particular smell of this family together\u2014fabric softener, reheated turkey, tube socks, carpet freshener\u2014still wafting through the house. But overlaid were my thoughts of Douglass Freeman. I pictured him sitting in one of the chairs in the dining room, his arms folded over his chest, shoulders hunched, trying not to contort his face as he told his parents he wouldn't ever, ever go back to Gus Grissom.\n\n\"We'll see what we can do,\" Mrs. Freeman said, glancing over at her husband. He sat opposite from them, an older version of his son, slouching forward, thinking.\n\nI walked the halls. I chose the back bedroom, a tiny cubicle in which a Spirograph box with faded, soft corners lay on the bureau. There was no question, I felt him here. And soon enough my premonitions were confirmed. I saw his name, and beneath that a date\u20147\/9\/73\u2014etched above the light switch in red pencil.\n\nI lay on Douglass's bed, closing my eyes, drifting. He was out there somewhere, but I was falling asleep, and the world outside was shifting, slipping away, too fast for me to hold onto it.\n\n***\n\nI was down to zero, zilch. No job, no car, not even a credit card for emergency's sake. I used to think that I was safe from bad fortune, that personal catastrophe was ultimately self-willed, that we all have the power to make our own luck. But that's bullshit.\n\nI plodded up Dixie Highway beside the buzzing transformers. I might have been Peter years before. Peter, who'd landed the greatest drop dead on my parents' threshold by leaving the house without warning one day. Ever since, he'd been only two things to me: a torn postcard from Beach Haven, New Jersey\u2014I'm happy, but you're not\u2014and a vague standard of disaffection and disillusionment against which I measured myself.\n\nNow he was where I was going.\n\nI'd finally allowed myself to call him. \"So, could I stay with you for a while?\" I'd said.\n\nMy tongue tasted hot, grassy in my mouth. The tip of a palm frond squeaked against the phone booth. I'd just watched an older man\u2014formal, crisply dressed\u2014holding out a cupped, tentative hand to passersby at the Coconut Grove Metrorail. He looked like he'd never fallen this low, all his dignity coming down around him like rags.\n\n\"How long?\" Peter said after a silence.\n\nMy throat went dry. \"If it's a problem, I understand.\"\n\n\"No, no. I'm just surprised.\"\n\n\"Well, I've been thinking about you.\"\n\n\"You have?\"\n\n\"A lot, actually.\"\n\nA siren wailed somewhere in the distance. Wind rattled the seagrapes, foam cups blowing across the street. \"Did Mom put you up to this?\" he said warily.\n\n\"Are you kidding?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\"\n\n\"Daddy doesn't even want me at home anymore.\"\n\nHis voice thawed, relaxed, as if we'd gone crabbing together that morning. I tried to block out my last picture of him: crying, high, after my father had discovered the bag of bright pink pills in his room. The ground might have heaved beneath my feet. His voice went on and on. And all at once I heard him say yes.\n\n\"So I'll pick you up in Fort Myers?\" he said. \"You'll take the bus?\"\n\n\"Right,\" I answered. \"I'll call tomorrow.\"\n\nI walked up Jane's sidewalk now, pressing on the bell. The doleful notes of an oboe drifted out over the roofs of the neighborhood. The door opened, and she stood there in lycra shorts and black T-shirt, cradling her instrument in her hands. Her hair was brighter, the color of cranberries.\n\nShe troubled her chin with her fingertips. \"You look awful.\"\n\n\"Thanks a lot.\"\n\n\"You were in a fight?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Why is your hair such a mess?\"\n\n\"I walked out on William.\"\n\n\"You what?\"\n\nI nodded once, twice. \"You'd look like this, too, if you'd spent your last two nights outside.\"\n\n\"You what? Oh God. Come in here. Come in here and sit down.\"\n\nWe sat upon her parents' couch beneath the harlequin pictures. I talked for a good half hour. I told her about the breakup of the relationship, filling her in on the grittiest details as she listened attentively with the gravest expression. She fidgeted with her bracelets on her wrists.\n\n\"That's awful,\" she said.\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"I had a feeling something was up.\"\n\nMy head hurt. I leaned over, massaging my eyebrows, making circular motions with my thumbs. For some reason, I couldn't say another word. \"And what about you?\"\n\nIt turned out that she'd started oboe lessons again. She'd found a stern, demanding teacher, a retired player from the St. Louis Symphony, who was pushing her, excited about her potential. Even though she'd put off college for the year, she felt ready now. In only a few short weeks, she was auditioning for Juilliard, Eastman, and New England Conservatory.\n\nThen, to our mutual discomfort, she'd run out of things to say. Inside the kitchen, Mrs. Ettengoff was tossing avocados inside a food processor.\n\n\"I just came to say good-bye,\" I said after a silence.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"I might not see you for a long time,\" I explained.\n\n\"Like I'm not going to see you again,\" she said with a throaty, abrasive laugh. Had she been smoking again? \"Naples is only two hours away, for God's sake.\"\n\n\"I'm not kidding, Jane,\" I said quietly.\n\nShe saw the seriousness on my face. She turned toward the kitchen and left for a moment without excusing herself. The dense smell of yeast hovered about the rooms. Over the whir of the food processor she and her mother carried on a conversation.\n\n\"Do you have enough money?\" she said upon her return.\n\n\"Of course.\" I nodded twice, though she knew me well enough. My forehead felt tight, sunburnt. I hadn't been drinking enough water.\n\n\"My mom says you're welcome for dinner.\"\n\nI shook my head from side to side. \"I have to go.\"\n\n\"You'll call if you're in trouble?\"\n\n\"Of course I will.\"\n\n\"Take care.\"\n\n\"You take care,\" I said, laughing now. \"And good luck with those auditions.\"\n\nWe stood, holding onto each other by the front door. Her right hand wandered down my back. I tensed slightly, resisting the warmth of her touch as she slipped something\u2014two fifties and a ten, I found out later\u2014into my pants pocket.\n\n***\n\nBefore I left for Peter's, I needed to do something.\n\nI waited until I knew he was at work. More than anything I didn't want to see him. I knew he'd be livid; I imagined the thick cords of his fingers tightening around my throat. It was one thing that I'd departed without a note or good-bye when I was still living with my parents. It was quite another that I'd done it after living in his house for months, when I theoretically knew better. Perhaps I was too hard on myself. I didn't owe him my future if he wasn't willing to work for it. But I at least owed him an explanation, some acknowledgment of the fact that something important had transpired between us. I wasn't a kid anymore. My decisions mattered, had consequences, and I carried within me the lulling, intoxicating power to hurt another human being.\n\nBut right now I was thinking about my notebook. It was the one physical thing that I needed in the world. It was the repository of so much\u2014addresses, quotes, phone numbers, clippings, lists, equations, names of books, fractured diary entries, even doodlings\u2014things so important to me that I felt unwhole without it. Leaving it behind had been nothing more than an indication of my fissured mental state. Not a page of it was blank, but I still managed to scrawl things inside, as if I inherently believed in its possibility to always yield some space to me. In its details one could piece together the narrative of my life, and I couldn't leave it with him no matter how many times I'd said: Just let it go.\n\nHis car was gone. I stepped over the driveway's expansion joints, glancing over the anise hedge to see if Virginia, the neighbor with the beautiful begonias, was watching. She wasn't. I made it to the mud-room door, fumbling over the door frame for the key, but what was this? No key. The spare, the ever-reliable duplicate, wasn't here. My eyelids burned. I read it as nothing more than a statement to me: You're not welcome here. You've disappointed me. Fuck you. Keep out of my house.\n\nI might have broken the windows, each and every one of them. Instead, I sat on the slab and pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. Calm, calm, I said. Calm yourself down. After a few minutes I remembered the loose window over the bath-tub, and before long I was crawling inside, headfirst, my ass hanging over the sill for all of Avenida Manati to see.\n\nI walked swiftly through the cool rooms, my bare feet shushing the white terrazzo. Absolutely nothing had changed. The rattan lamp, the stacks of newspapers, the framed Toulouse-Lautrecs\u2014every one of them assumed the same coordinates they always had. Even the dogs, Pedro and Mrs. Fox, hadn't barked upon my intrusion, only glancing at me in utter ennui before retreating to their respective beds as if I were still the resident boy.\n\nGiven what he'd put me through, I decided it was my right to enjoy some air-conditioned comfort and a good hot shower before conducting my business. I still had two hours. At that moment he was most likely seated behind the camera, squinting into the lens with his astigmatic eye while the technicians cued up the theme music for the Florida Noon Report with Sally Reedy. First, though, I needed to eat.\n\nI breathed in the chill of the open refrigerator. Sun-dried tomatoes, yogurt, pears, and raspberries\u2014I had it in me to eat them all with my fingers, swallowing without benefit of spoon or fork before opting for the civilized. I hadn't realized how hungry I was. And I hadn't realized how fortunate I'd been. The life I'd once taken for granted now seemed decadent and lush, a golden treasure inside a chest. But should I have stayed here? I already knew the answer to that.\n\nI sat on the Chesterfield. Without thinking I aimed the remote at the TV, only to discover that the Channel 7 News was already in full swing, seventeen minutes into the broadcast. I couldn't not watch, if only to satisfy some morbid curiosity.\n\nSally Reedy blathered on about the development of a tropical storm sixty miles southwest of Great Abaco. Sally's face betrayed a curious combination of motherly concern, wry sex, and grace. The idea was to convince the viewer that the set was a purely jovial exercise, that the staff was comprised of good pals who met five days a week for the sheer fun of it. Off camera Sally could be distant to the point of downright cold, though rumor had it that she was suffering terribly, that her gynecologist husband was about to be arraigned for the alleged rape of four of his patients, that once this broke on her own broadcast, Sally's celebrity (and credibility) would forever be dimmed.\n\nIt was perplexing to think that such gossip was no longer a part of my life. I prepared myself to switch off the TV when an auxiliary camera panned the behind-the-scenes staffers, and in an utter affectation of highjinks, they mugged in feigned horror at the prospect of the developing tropical system.\n\nWilliam's face flashed briefly before the screen.\n\nHe looked fit, trim, the hair on the sides of his head just a little too long.\n\nHe sickened me. It was strange to have spent so much time with somebody, only to find that with each passing week I knew him less and less, instead of what one would have expected. It certainly hadn't started like this. After I'd first moved in with him, we were still careful to wear our best faces, to grant tolerance and respect for each other's tics and idiosyncrasies. Occasionally I saw that darker knowledge passing over William's eyes: Who are you? What are you doing in my life? I didn't ask for you. I only want to be myself in the world. I'd walk into the woods behind the house, picking up stones, bottles, Coke cans, throwing them as high as I could into the dull blue of the sky until my wrist snapped, until my joints ached. How could you have done this? I loved you, you jerk. I've given up everything I had\u2014my family, for God's sake\u2014for you. You owe me much more than this. But I'd walk back to the house, tasting disappointment like weeds in my mouth, knowing I wasn't the easiest person to live with, that two people could still love each other and not be able to forge a life.\n\nWhy did this seem to be one of the most difficult things to learn?\n\nI turned off the TV. I walked to the bedroom and found my notebook in the night-table drawer. I drank in a breath and looked once about the room. I concentrated on its details, its rugs and books, its curtains and bedspread, taking a mental photograph. Then just as I was leaving, I spotted William's flannel shirt, with its intricate plaids of tan, yellow, and forest green. I raised it to my face and breathed, naming in detail what I smelled: its resinous cotton, its suggestion of sweat once his Right Guard gave out, its piquant smoky odor, like pine, or roasted cypress chips.\n\nI pushed my arms into its sleeves, vaguely comforted by its possibilities. The shirt would come to good use. I was going on a trip. It was chilly at night on the other side of the state, with temperatures expected to dip into the upper fifties.\n\n# Chapter 12\n\nImmediately I picked out my brother from the small crowd at the bus station. My heart shuddered. My toes curled inside my sneakers. His oblong forehead, his benign dolphiny smile, those long-lashed, yet lusterless eyes\u2014all these features suggested that he was a younger, better-looking version of Sid, with more hair and less baggage in the stomach region.\n\nWe hugged each other at the curbside. He was bigger than I remembered, his body softer, wider, warmer. He smelled of deodorant, chewing gum. There were little creases around his mouth. We started laughing. He took my bag from me, then led me to a van parked beneath some nutrient-starved palms. He dressed exactly as I'd expected: khakis, chambray shirt, wire-rimmed aviators\u2014practically the same uniform he'd always worn.\n\nWe stood at the back of the van. On its pitted bumper were two stickers: a radio station's call letters in the shape of a guitar, and a purple sticker with chipped edges: PRACTICE RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS AND SENSELESS BEAUTY.\n\nHe grinned at me. \"I can't believe you're here.\"\n\n\"It's kind of weird.\"\n\nHe blinked rapidly for a second, then calmed himself. He really did look a lot like our father.\n\n\"I mean, a good weird. Who'd've imagined this a few days ago?\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said, clapping me on the shoulder. \"I didn't think I'd ever see you again.\"\n\nWe slouched in the bucket seats. I stared through the fly specks on the windshield. I pressed the back of my scalp into the headrest, my bare legs sticking to the cool, damp leather. My head felt blasted. Throughout the bus ride, I'd churned with worry. I sat for hours and hours, staring at the truck farms and phosphate mines, digging for opening lines, most of which were of a highly adult nature, engineered to generate conversation. Meanwhile, the driver shouted out the names of each stop: Moore Haven, Port LaBelle, Lehigh Acres. Well, maybe we didn't have anything to say to each other, but that seemed to be all right. He wasn't making an issue of it.\n\nThe landscape shimmered and prismed in the sunlight. All around us vast stands of slash pine and swampland were knocked down and filled for new construction. Billboards everywhere announced splashy white houses on cul-de-sacs\u2014The Pinnacle, The Brightness, Indigo Lakes, Pineapple Lakes\u2014all of which ruptured the virgin terrain. Businesses serving the dwindling rural population foundered on the roadsides, their days already numbered: Beverage Barn, The Shellpile. A Christian campground: Don and Veda Shea's Hallelujahland. It might have been the Gold Coast thirty years before. Florida, place of our birth, chewed up its marshes, sucked its aquifers dry until there was nothing left but a parched bed of limestone. Already it was a busted balloon, a bloated appendage at the end of the United States, a veritable Toledo, Ohio, with palms. A vessel of people's myths, its image had nothing to do with its essential character\u2014the turpentine state. Once that realization was assimilated on a wider level, the cities themselves would wither and burn, and the people would forsake them, moving on to ruin someplace else.\n\nStill, I loved it more than any other place. Florida, oh Florida. Embodiment of wrecked dreams.\n\nI couldn't believe I was sitting next to my brother.\n\nWe sped down the Tamiami Trail in silence. He slowed. We passed a fence, a row of broken gaslights, turned right, signal ticking, at a stucco wall with missing letters. KIN CO E. The place looked deadened, vacant. Peter parked in a back alley. He stopped, got out of the car. He led me up a flight of open stairs before walking me down several long, long halls. I couldn't take it all in. My sinuses filled, pounded, a stuffed duffel bag in the center of my head.\n\nThe place needed some work. The hall carpets, a dull turquoise, carried a complex union of scents: smoke, mildew, spilled fluids. Cracks spidered the length of the pink stucco walls as if the building were gently insisting upon the presence of the former mangrove swamp beneath it.\n\nPeter worked a key into a lock, then flipped on a switch. The room was about as big as the old space William had offered me in his den. A skyscraper collapsed inside me. I forced a look of gratitude in my eyes.\n\n\"Well, what do you think?\"\n\n\"Great,\" I said too loudly.\n\nHe lifted his brows, then clenched them. \"Do you want to take a shower? Would you like some towels?\"\n\nI slapped my back pocket for the whereabouts of my wallet, a paranoid gesture for which I was famous. Once I felt it, I dropped down upon the bed. \"No, thank you. Do you mind if I just sit here for a while? I need to be still.\"\n\n\"You're hungry, I guess.\"\n\nI wasn't. I bit into my lip, harder than I thought, until my eyetooth pierced the skin. I winced. He sat down upon the arm-chair across from me, then tilted his head. His eyes glowed behind his glasses. I ran my tongue back and forth across the puncture, my mouth tasting of zinc.\n\n\"Are you sure this is all right?\"\n\n\"You're so nice to do this.\" I looked carefully at the room for the very first time, its wood floors, its perfect rows of laminated shelves. I leaned backward, propping my weight with my elbows. I pulled up my feet on the bed. \"You did all this work yourself?\"\n\nHe nodded, then told me how he'd gone about remodeling the room, an intricate, laborious process. About two minutes into the tale, I began picking out random words, phrases. I breathed deeply through my mouth, holding it, telling myself deep, deep, deep, deep, until my heart slowed, until my nostrils opened up, my face relaxing. I could smile again. My cheeks felt hot. For all he knew, nothing was happening inside my head.\n\nSilence. Then footsteps down the hall. I drew my arms tighter to my ribs. \"Who's that?\" I said.\n\nA man in a white T-shirt, cutoffs, and combat boots appeared in the doorway. \"Well, look who it is,\" he said with a sly, gritty whisper.\n\nAbruptly, my brother stood, almost losing his balance.\n\nThe man offered me a dark, veined hand with oddly thick fingers. \"Hector Ybarra.\"\n\n\"I'm Evan,\" I faltered.\n\nA pinch in my back, a chill. We held each other's gaze longer than was exactly comfortable. There was something about his voice: arrogance, authority. A certain \"fuck-you\" quality. Yet his eyes hazed with a funny, self-deprecating glint. I stared at the exquisite curve of his deep pink lips, their fullness, his dark, nearly black skin. Was my brother watching? My throat tightened, then burned. Shit.\n\nHis T-shirt was imprinted with the logo STAR BOY IN FLAMES.\n\n\"Hector's my assistant,\" Peter said. \"You'll be working with him, so you better get used to his jokes.\"\n\nI couldn't lift my head. \"Oh really?\"\n\n\"Yes, really,\" Hector mimicked.\n\n\"Are you done for the day?\" Peter asked, creasing his forehead.\n\n\"More or less,\" mumbled Hector.\n\nPeter turned to me. \"You have no idea how much we need you right now. Things're a mess.\"\n\n\"How come?\" I said.\n\n\"All our staff just quit.\"\n\n\"Oh boy,\" I said. And all at once I knew we were sunk.\n\n\"Well, the RoadStar lured them all away. People who'd been here for five years. Bigger money, day care, benefits... I mean, I wouldn't say no if I were in their shoes.\"\n\nI tried to look at Hector but couldn't. Why was he staring at me like that? His gaze felt fraught, heavy on my head like a hand.\n\n\"And of course the worst situation happens when we're least equipped to deal with it. A bus full of senior citizens, get this, thirty widows, breaks down by the bridge and they're all tearful and shrill. We're filled up, but it's not good. They want extra towels and hot coffee, and before we know it, they've broken both ice machines and practically blown out the switch-board by calling home to Bountiful so many times. By the time they left we actually put a NO VACANCY sign in the office window and slept for two days straight. I didn't even get up to drink or pee.\"\n\nMy brother's eyes went glassy. He clearly enjoyed talking about the struggle as it were a soccer game. He was more like my father than he knew.\n\n\"So is this what I'm supposed to expect?\" I said.\n\n\"Not all the time. But I just wanted to let you know. You never know what could happen.\" He grinned again, revealing a darkened eyetooth. Root canal.\n\n\"Welcome to Planet Hell,\" said Hector.\n\n\"Hey\u2014\" said Peter.\n\n\"God's Little Acre, God's Little Asshole\u2014\"\n\n\"Now stop,\" Peter chortled. Forced, I thought. Nervous.\n\nHector shrugged his left shoulder. He blew out some air through his lips. \"It's good to meet you,\" he said with a smile. He squinted a bit, raising his chin, showing off the squarish nugget of his Adam's apple. \"Welcome, my friend. You're in for a big adventure.\"\n\nHe left. Some residue was suspended in the air, an explosion of sorts, a storm of fine particles. Ten seconds later, I still felt his presence in the room.\n\nPeter stood. \"So if you need anything, don't be afraid to let me know. I'll be just down the hall.\"\n\n\"Sure.\" I reached down to unlace my hightops. \"Peter?\"\n\n\"Yeah?\"\n\n\"I really appreciate this. Thank you for being my brother.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you're here,\" he answered. \"We're going to get a lot accomplished.\"\n\nAccomplished, I thought. I lay down on the floor as Peter left the room. My pulse started racing, but the worst part was over. Anything might have happened. He could have mouthed off about me. I could have mouthed off about him. It was all so civil and pleasant and sweet. Listening to them knocking about the floor below me, I had a very distinct impression that it was going to be all right, and even if this weren't true, there was Hector, whose very presence reminded me that I wasn't alone.\n\n***\n\nOnce, I couldn't stop looking at him. I loved nothing more than the bristles on his face, the depth of his voice. I crouched in the upstairs hallway where I knew he couldn't see me, peering through a crack in the door. He stepped out of the shower stall, his wet hair splayed across his scalp. A pang in my gut. A smell\u2014stale ice? iron?\u2014wafted through the room. In truth, he was the first boy I'd ever fallen in love with. (His dusky eyes, his shoulders.) I think he must have known this on some level, for soon he was pulling back from me, detaching himself from the family, entrenched in his daydreams and silences.\n\nI'd wanted to be him. I'd wanted to be him more than myself, though I didn't admit it. I kept my hair the same scrappy length, combing it across the cowlick whether it stuck there or not. I wore the same painter's cap, the same chambray shirts, the same wire-rimmed glasses, though my eyes were near perfect. I copied the arcs and slants of his penmanship; I imitated the hard supple bounce of his stride. Once I even practiced talking like him, opening up my vowels, digging my teeth into the consonants as if I'd been the progeny of some speech therapist and not the second son of Sid and Ursula Sarshik, born July 12th, 1973, on the burnt fairway of an abandoned golf course, somewhere south of Coral Gables.\n\nA stormy August morning. Peter exits the downstairs bedroom and I plant myself before the mirror, holding his damp towel to my face, breathing in his rich, fluvial smell. I reach for his shaving cream, then lather my jaw, imagining it hatched with stubble. I stop, thunderstruck. I start spraying my nose, brows, forehead, ears. Warpaint, a mask. And\u2014boom\u2014it happens: my legs grow lush with hair, my muscles rumble, my penis thickens like a chain. I can knock down buildings with my voice, I can soar past rockets in the firmament. I close my eyes and take myself deeper. I am wise, responsible, brilliant, and funny. I can make you laugh. I can speak long fluid thoughts before television cameras, in the pool of burning light, without stuttering or unease. I know things. I tell you the square root of 1,738, all 8 names of Saturn's moons, the total air mileage between Jakarta and Buenos Aires and Las Vegas. Even when I trip or fuck up or do something patently wrong, you smile and think I am charming.\n\nWhen I opened my eyes I was only myself again.\n\nThen I became him: our roles shifted. I started doing well in school. I loved hunkering down in my quiet corner of the library, devoting my attention to my work while things fell apart at home. If I was good enough, smart enough, I could bring my parents\u2014the whole lot of us\u2014back together. They were talking again. A start, at least. Science-fair ribbons, perfect report cards.\n\n\"Evan,\" Ursula said one day. \"All A's. This is amazing, terrific.\"\n\nI stood before her in the kitchen, satisfaction beating in my face. Peter walked past us, winded, in his green nylon shorts.\n\n\"Did you see this?\" Ursula said to him.\n\n\"Who ate the Oreos?\" He hunted through the pantry shelves.\n\n\"Peter. Your brother just came home with all A's. Aren't you excited for him?\"\n\n\"Great,\" he said dully, then lurched out of the room.\n\nSomething changed after that. A quiet tension hummed between us. Once, pretending I was asleep, I heard him come into my sunshot room. Midday, the hour after lunch. Our parents were at the store. He stood beside my bed, twirling the mobile above my head with his fingertips. He spun it so fast that I was afraid it would fall down, crashing on my forehead. Would he kill me? Cooling shadows swept across my face. I loved the fact that he wouldn't leave, spinning the thing until he expected me to give in to him. Still, I refused to open my eyes.\n\nI chalked up good grade after good grade. I was the only one Sid and Ursula ever talked about. I felt fat with their pride, unbearably rich, as if I'd consumed an entire loaf of pound cake. They made no secrets of their love or their favor. But there was my older brother, who was cutting classes now, stumbling around the house with the harsh glare of speed in his eyes.\n\nWe started swimming. We swam every day, in the moments before twilight, at the house of his friend Javier Rodriguez, whose parents had the largest pool on Avenida Bayamo. Each of us had our respective routines, but our last five minutes together always culminated in a race that involved swimming ten laps. It goes without saying that he always lurched ahead of me at the finish. I didn't care. He was the natural athlete between us\u2014the older, the stronger. But this day, when the air smelled curiously of clematis, datura, and burning charcoal, when it seemed all but apparent that I'd be the victor, Peter hefted himself out of the water mere seconds before my forehead slapped the tile.\n\n\"Winner!\" I cried, gulping air.\n\nHe sat on the edge of the pool. In his boredom, he inspected a cut on the ball of his foot.\n\n\"What are you doing?\"\n\n\"I hurt my foot.\" He dangled his leg in the water, watching the trails of broken blood turning rusty in the chlorine.\n\n\"You mean you couldn't wait five seconds?\"\n\nHe stood, then dropped his Speedo to the concrete. I tightened inside. I looked away. He routinely did such things in my presence, trying to provoke me. \"I'm taking a shower.\"\n\n\"You did that on purpose,\" I said, and slapped at the water.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You did that on purpose. You didn't want to finish because you knew I'd win. I scare you.\"\n\n\"You scare me all right.\" He hobbled to the outdoor shower enclosure. His blood left stains on the bleached concrete like drops of rosehip tea. \"You have a complex.\"\n\nI didn't have a complex. All I know was that we stopped swimming together from that day forth.\n\n# Chapter 13\n\nThe following morning, after I'd unpacked and settled in, I got the tour of the 55-acre King Cole property. Peter's manner was formal, almost distant, as he led me around. Had he gotten enough sleep? His voice was hoarse and whispery as if he'd stayed up all night.\n\nIt was hard to stay cheerful. My face felt tired from smiling too much. The place was a pit. Not only was it a good thirty miles from Naples, but it was situated in a battered glade with such a high water table that it needed a sump pump to keep the parking lot dry. Still, the place practically shimmered with its history. Here's the story: in 1964, Clem Thornton, the big Florida developer, platted a city called Boca Palms on the surrounding land. Two years into the project, the whole thing was halted, after several of the buyers\u2014senior citizens from Massachusetts, laborers from Detroit\u2014learned that their lots were under six inches of water. But who could have blamed them for buying? They got a free trip out of it, after all. Flown to Miami, they were bused across the Everglades by a cheery driver who called them by their first names. Upon arrival, though, things heated up. The pitch took place in the conference room, a spiel laced with threat, guilt, and the possibility of wealth. Salesmen (undercover, of course) cried out for the lots, creating the illusion of demand. It goes without saying that 75 percent of the detainees bought property out of fear and confusion, not even balking when they were told they couldn't tour the place beyond the fenced-in resort.\n\nWe walked farther. Peter's face was drawn, a little chapped, fixed upon the ground, as he pointed out the various wings of the building\u2014Solar, Nurmi, Seven Isles, Bontona\u2014all named after the fanciest lagoon streets in Fort Lauderdale, where Clem Thornton had spent his halcyon years before landing in jail. Peter kept chatting up the property, promising improvements, but I couldn't help noticing its inadequacies: the cracked parking lot, the sudsy pool with its algae-coated walls. Past the deserted golf course and the landlocked marina were a set of burnt-out buildings. They hulked there with their charred walls and broken windows, separated from the nicer part with a makeshift wall.\n\nFortunately, none of this was visible from the highway. On balmy winter nights, it still looked nice enough to lure that certain kind of guest, retirees on their way to the Gold Coast, charmed by the jungly landscaping, the golden gas lanterns, the curved driveway leading to the on-site mineral spring\u2014all the symbols of a more innocent, unfettered era. I couldn't help but feel both affection and pity for it.\n\nAfter the tour I was put directly to work. Immediately I was shown the correct way to answer the phone, a veritable mouthful: \"Good Morning, King Cole. It's 82 degrees and sunny. This is Evan speaking. How may I help you?\" I was told how to log reservations in the black book, how to run applications and utilities on the computer, how to process traveler's checks, how to swipe a credit card through the ZON. I was told how to smile. I was told to look all prospective guests directly in the eye\u2014\"not intrusively, but gently. They're friends, after all.\" Once I passed Desk Duty with flying colors, I moved on to Housekeeping 101, a post I was assigned to for the remaining three days of the week. I was shown how to make beds, how to fold bath towels, how to tuck in the sheets to make crisp hospital corners. I was shown how to Windex mirrors and windows. I was shown how to wrap glasses, how to apply the sanitary paper strip to the toilet seat. I was shown how to run the mighty washers of the laundry room, how much bleach, Sta-Puff, and soap to use, with severe instructions not to overburden the delicate, malfunctioning septic system.\n\nIt all seemed a bit much, especially since I'd never had a real job, unless you could count the two traumatic days I spent working at Dairy Queen when I was sixteen. Not to mention the fact that nothing was said about any days off. But the truth was that none of these tasks took a Ph.D. I imagined completing my duties early every afternoon, spending the rest of the day reading, swimming, or landscaping, my raw hands working the loam.\n\nThat night the three of us ate in the northwest corner of the banquet hall, the huge 60 \u00d7 20 ft. room in which the Boca Palms sales staff had unloaded thousands upon thousands of underwater lots 25 years before. Our voices echoed off the walls. Beyond the closed curtains was the golf course, its waist-high weeds shrouding its once-molded fairways.\n\nMy favorite childhood foods had been lovingly prepared by Peter: corn on the cob, hamburgers, sliced tomatoes, watermelon. I pointed my fork to the chain of leaping blue marlins on the outer wall.\n\n\"What was this about?\" I asked. \"The Clem Thornton fishing tournament? All-expense-paid trip to the Riviera?\"\n\nI hadn't even noticed that Peter had stepped out of the room. I glanced up at Hector, his sleeveless T-shirt, the vaccination print on his upper arm. I jiggled my foot, slumping my shoulders until my chest caved in. Did he enjoy my shyness, my foolishness? I had the unsettling sense that he knew what I was thinking, that all my thoughts were broadcasting from some golden transmitter planted inside my brain.\n\n\"You have the same speech patterns,\" he said blankly.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You and Peter. You both have the same speech patterns. It's funny, I've never heard it in anybody else. The way you cluster your words.\"\n\n\"Really?\" I said.\n\nHe nodded.\n\nI nodded back, but I didn't quite agree with him, and for the first time, I noted an odd, lilting turn, an accent of sorts, in his own speech.\n\n***\n\nCould fifteen years have passed since I almost did myself in for him?\n\nPeter and I slipped past a security guard, scampering out onto the roof of Miami Beach's Shelborne Hotel. Sid and Ursula were dressed to the nines, oblivious of our whereabouts, still smoking Lucky Strikes in the restaurant twenty-some floors beneath us. We laughed at their ignorance. The sun beat the strength from our backs. I walked to the side, poised myself on the ledge, breathing, vertiginous. We gazed out over Miami, its deep aqua water, the patterned beach umbrellas like hard Venetian candies.\n\nPeter stepped beside me. \"Would you jump for me?\" he whispered in my ear.\n\nHe stood to my left, his hand firmly weighted on the small of my back.\n\n\"Would you? Would you jump?\"\n\nI sat down on the ledge. I began easing my butt over the side, watching my legs, as if they were someone else's legs, flailing in the air. Already I pictured the people watching on the street. I saw the rescue-squad truck, heard the megaphone, saw the young mother covering her mouth with her palms. I would put on a show for them, but I would flourish, thrive.\n\n\"Don't. I didn't mean that. We better go.\"\n\nI didn't say anything back to him. But he had his answer, and his face reflected that, though it was shadowed and unassuming.\n\n***\n\nSomething soon became clear to me. Our guests were so few and far between that working the front desk became downright tedious after a few hours, and once I finished my book (The Life and Trials of Angie Dickinson, a paperback that I'd retrieved from the library), I found myself staring at the phone, willing it to ring. I talked for a while to a lady from Scotch Plains, New Jersey, who wanted to know what particular measures we took to keep the local mosquito population under control. Once she seemed dissatisfied with my fabrication, I hung up on her, then gazed at the brass arms of the starburst clock. Ten-forty-five. I stepped to the front window, hands pushing deep in my pockets, staring out at that hot mossy swamp of a pool, where a girl in an orange life jacket snorkeled within sight of her father. My breath fogged an oval on the glass. I transmitted a mental message to the girl: Don't put your head under that water. You might as well be swimming in liquefied lead.\n\nI had to set some projects for myself or I'd go nuts.\n\nAfter Peter dismissed me from my duties, I wandered through the halls for a while, admiring of and appalled by the vastness of the place, its tributes to ball-breaking work, its misguided faith in a corrupt future. There was something especially deathly, yet beautiful, about this kind of silence in the middle of the day, when it seemed all but natural that everything should be revving in highest gear. At the RoadStar Inn ten miles down the Trail, I imagined just the opposite\u2014soda machines knocking, ice machines humming, teenagers gossiping by the pool, people driving back from the Gulf beaches, the sand still hot inside their sneakers.\n\nThere was no way Peter wasn't losing tens of thousands of dollars per week.\n\nI returned to the confines of my little room. I couldn't have been lying on my bed more than ten seconds when someone started rapping on the door. I sat up at once.\n\nHector said, \"Are you busy?\"\n\nI rubbed some grit from my eye. \"No, I was just taking a rest.\"\n\n\"I have to drive to Cape Coral, bank stuff. Want to come?\"\n\n\"I don't know. Maybe I'll just stay here. I'm kind of tired actually.\"\n\n\"Oh come on. It'll do you good to get out.\"\n\nHis face was lively, yet glum, as if he'd wanted to be anyplace else in the world. He was again wearing cutoffs and 18-hole workboots, a look which, though essentially ludicrous, especially worked for him, calling attention to a pair of the most alarming and voluptuous calves I'd ever seen. I saturated myself with the most deadening facts imaginable: the latest NASDAQ average, the current price of gold, the winners of the American League pennant. Anything to distract myself. I wouldn't look at him. Too long, at least. It would be a mark of my growing up: I didn't have to see every attractive man as a potential sex slave.\n\n\"You sure you want to do this?\" he said, stopping midway down the hall. He grinned demonically.\n\n\"Why not,\" I said, and shrugged.\n\nOutside, Peter stood with a big-bellied workman, choosing sites for a well out near the old golf course. Complaints about the water quality had risen. Only recently the guests had caught onto something as if it were part of some national trend, blaming the water for a whole host of ills, from stomach flu to night sweats to yellowed dentures. One woman had even insisted upon showing us the crystallized salt upon her liver-spotted wrists, as if it were an emblem of our inherent disregard and incompetency. \"What if somebody sues you?\" she'd said merrily. Peter glanced up at us and sighed, then waved us on, as if he were sorry he couldn't join us.\n\nWe were speeding through the glossy subdivisions on Rattlesnake Hammock Road, a former country lane converted to a four-lane parkway. Blue tile roofs sparkled behind walled yards. Stopped at a traffic light, Hector turned to me and said, \"So tell me all about William.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Your old boyfriend, William.\"\n\n\"You're kidding.\"\n\nHe wagged his head. \"Word has it that you've been around the block once or twice.\"\n\nMy chest tightened. I might have been pushed facedown into cement. \"Who told you about William?\"\n\nThe left half of his face smiled. He shrugged smugly as if to indicate he wasn't telling me.\n\nThe blood hummed between my shoulder blades. I felt a peculiar combination of vulnerable, betrayed, destabilized, and pissed off. I didn't think he was at all funny. Was it that the mere mention of William's name still managed to trigger a whole host of feelings when I wasn't prepared for it? Or was it that I thought my privacy had been walked on, disregarded? It was one thing that Peter knew about William; it was quite another if his business partner knew the details of my personal life. I thought about packing my bags, handing over my money to the ticket clerk, taking the last bus back to Miami.\n\n\"God, are you burning up. I didn't mean to upset you.\"\n\n\"No,\" I mumbled, as if talking to myself. \"I'm sure you didn't.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nI turned to face him with a mocking, fabricated smile. \"Do you always like to make fun of people you don't even know?\"\n\nHis eyes widened a bit. \"I said I didn't mean anything.\"\n\n\"Just forget it,\" I said testily.\n\nHe mumbled, \"Drama queen.\"\n\nIt would have been too easy to dismiss him at that point, for I had every right to. But he wasn't worth it. Instead, I made a pact with myself: I wouldn't trust him. I could learn to work with him, I imagined, even like him to some degree, but I'd never fully trust him. He was too much about himself. I thought of a ten-year-old splashing around in a puddle, throwing cinders, doing anything to get a rise out of passersby. I should have listened to my gut. It would have been better had I not gone alone with him.\n\nAnd what about my brother's role in all this?\n\nA silence took over the van. I loaded a tape into the stereo, and Laura Nyro's \"Timer\" made its first fumblings toward coherence.\n\n\"Frankly, I'm over him, if you want to know the truth,\" I said after the song had finished. \"I don't even think about him all that much anymore.\"\n\n\"Well, you still seem pretty upset.\"\n\n\"Well, you seem to have pretty bad instincts. Everything's fine, okay? I'm not the least bit upset.\"\n\nWe kept driving. Something clattered and buzzed inside my head. He seemed to be one of those people who respected you more once you flexed your grip and stood up for yourself. It didn't make it any easier, though. Was I already fucking things up for myself? We passed a two-story green dinosaur outside a mechanic's garage, which prompted me to glance over at him. I expected to see that arrogance again taking hold of his face, but there was something more complicated there, a look that told me that he knew it too\u2014an emptiness, the loss of something nameless yet profound. I thought about my earlier assertion that it was unreasonable to have sex with every single person whom I thought was attractive. And then I reconsidered it. His arms were chiseled and bronze. His head was shaved. His eyes shimmered with an irradiated, wilting light. And then I changed my mind again.\n\nIt turned out that Ursula, mistaking Hector for Peter, had many months ago called the King Cole desk in a minor fit to inform him that a neighbor, a Mrs. Diane Petrancouri of Avenida Bayamo, had spotted me standing naked with William in the window. Too immersed in the story not to reveal his true identity, Hector listened to my mother's words with a keen interest, her fear that the neighbors were talking, her realization only minutes before that I was actually involved in a \"full-fledged imbroglio.\" She was beside herself with frenzy and grief. It wasn't until a full three minutes had passed that she'd realized she wasn't talking to my brother, but to someone with a Cuban accent, whereupon she promptly hung up the phone.\n\n\"God, she was a trip,\" he said.\n\nMy face burned hot with shame. Still, I was compelled to know more. \"Is that all?\"\n\n\"Well, it was too much to take in all at once, though she said something about\u2014yeah, this was my favorite\"\u2014he began mimicking my mother with disturbing accuracy\u2014\"This kid was accepted to Princeton for Christ's sake.\"\n\nHe started shaking his head. \"And I thought my mother was a lunatic.\"\n\n\"Oh God.\" My stomach was a nervous pit. I laughed hysterically, exaggeratedly, somewhere between dread and relief.\n\nAs if to make up for his earlier misstep, Hector started telling me about himself, an activity with which he seemed well acquainted. Apparently before he'd moved back to Florida\u2014he'd grown up off Hialeah's Red Road, within earshot of the racetrack\u2014he'd lived in the East Village for ten years, where he'd waited tables at various restaurants, sold clear plastic clubwear at Patricia Field's, and tended bar at the Tunnel. He'd immersed himself in as many crowds as he could. He knew\u2014\"only casually,\" he insisted\u2014the Lady Bunny, Misstress Formika, Sherry Vine, Tabboo!, and Girlina\u2014the fiercest drag queens in New York. He faithfully attended Monday-night ACT UP meetings, participating in the Labor Day march on Kennebunkport when George Bush was still president. He appeared in several films\u2014\"bit parts\"\u2014among them Paris Is Burning, a Super 8 short for a Jack Pierson installation, and a homo horror movie called Boys on a Meathook. He had a boyfriend of six years, a Welsh guy named Simon. He spent four summers in Provincetown where he danced nights at the Crown and Anchor and was a go-go boy (nickname: Lanolin) in Ryan Landry's House of Superstars. He was photographed by Nan Goldin for the Ballad of Sexual Dependency. He lived in the same railroad flat for ten years, until one day, after waking up to frozen pipes the fourth time that month, he decided he'd finally had enough and packed up a suitcase and moved back to Florida, whereupon he immediately took a job at Disney World, of all places, selling mementos of Mickey Mouse and Dumbo to children from the Midwest.\n\nIt was terribly interesting to me, probably more so than it should have been. Something became clear. It seemed to me that young suburban homos had one of two options: either you could do what Hector and Todd had done, move to the city and turn your back on your past, giving yourself a new name, or you could stay where you were, attempting to hide yourself, becoming nothing but paltry, constricted, cowardly, and dull. It worried me that I was veering closer and closer to the latter category.\n\n\"How come you didn't stay?\" I asked finally.\n\n\"Tedious, tedious. Homo High School,\" he said, shrugging it off. \"A big old charm school. After a while it's time to pick up your certificate.\"\n\n\"But didn't you have fun?\"\n\n\"Of course, I had fun. But,\" he sighed, \"it's like this: I was thirty-two years old. I wasn't a kid anymore. I was tired of seeing all my friends die.\"\n\n\"Your friends died?\" I said dumbly.\n\n\"This was New York, honey. I'd buried four of my closest friends in four months. Five guys I'd been a buddy for: Leo, Rex, Israel, Duncan, Thomas. Only months before Simon died.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" I said.\n\nHe shrugged again. \"There's nothing to be sorry about. It's like, I didn't give a damn anymore. I'd been to so many memorial services that they didn't mean anything anymore.\"\n\nHis fingers tightened slightly on the wheel.\n\n\"And it just seemed like everyone I knew was positive. I'd hear about someone else getting sick, riding out the first symptoms, and it didn't touch me. It didn't make me sad. I'd perfected this reaction, this absence of reaction, as if this whole mess were perfectly par for the course, the way it's supposed to be.\"\n\n\"So what about your friends?\"\n\nHe fiddled with the sun visor, then flipped it up again. \"That was terrible, it was the worst. You know, it's bad enough watching an old person die, but\"\u2014he started shaking his head\u2014\"these were my lovers and friends. I didn't want to remember them lying on the floor with shit staining their pants.\"\n\nI eased down into my seat, holding my arms over my chest.\n\n\"It wasn't good for me after a while. It was too easy to be detached and hard about things, and I hated that about myself. It killed all my enthusiasm, though I didn't know it at the time. I needed to get the fuck away.\"\n\n\"So you went to Florida.\"\n\n\"So I went to Florida,\" he said. \"Some decision. Go south in hopes that all your troubles'll melt away.\"\n\n\"And you met my brother.\"\n\n\"And I met your brother.\" He turned to me with a weary, troubled grin. He blinked as if flummoxed. \"Do I sound like an asshole? Does any of this babble make sense to you?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, then, \"yes,\" though I couldn't be completely sure of either answer. I looked at the parkway ahead. Above it, the sun loomed heavy and white, boring a hole through the clouds.\n\n***\n\nThe van skated down Cape Coral's Diplomat Parkway, a four-lane highway bisecting a lunar landscape, a tabula rasa of sorts, on which kids in convertibles threw cans, pulled down their pants, and hurled the occasional racial epithet. I imagined this place from the air, a vast, chilling land mass the size of Phoenix or Detroit, with its 100,000 lots, all of which had been initially sold, like the failed Boca Palms, through high-pressure vacation packages 30 years before. It was slowly but surely cocooning itself into a kind of hell. I thought of news reports I'd watched in the last week, footage of throats slashed in West Palm, home invasions on friendly streets, race riots, huge chimneys jetting flame, layoffs at Digital Equipment, clouds of chlorine gas wafting over a Little League game. I thought of these stories, and of myself in them, and what kind of part we'd all played in their creation.\n\nThe bank stood in an especially desolate socket, bordering a lily-choked canal with clots of scrub on the banks. The earth was the color of pulverized soap. It shouldn't have surprised me that my brother chose to do his banking here, a good forty miles from the King Cole, all for the sake of saving a few bucks. It was just like Sid, whose savings multiplied in a series of dubious Dallas banks, all of which paid back the highest dividends, yet offered minimal protection from risk.\n\n\"Look around,\" Hector said, parking the van. \"Isn't it thrilling?\"\n\n\"You're serious?\"\n\n\"Of course, I'm serious. It's so awful it's beautiful. It's like that scene in The Snake Pit where that woman's singing \"Going Home\" and before you know it, the whole mental hospital's joining in with her, and it's awful, corny, and moving all at once.\"\n\nI nodded. I understood what he was getting at. I thought of Wolfie Cohen's Rascal House, Piccadilly cafeterias, all notions of a similar point of view, but they were all about wreckage, fading emblems of a sweeter era. This place seemed like something darker.\n\n\"Watch these kids,\" he said, pointing to the Circle K next door. They circled about ominously on their little bikes, like fevered mosquitoes. \"I bet they're going to call me a fag. Just watch.\"\n\n\"Careful,\" I said.\n\nHe was already heading toward the bank. He deliberately flounced up the sidewalk, in full view of the teenagers, in boots, tiny shorts, and a Hooters Boca Raton T-shirt. He might have been Todd Bemus, the tougher, more streamlined version, the city boy, the one I'd never known. Sure enough, behind his back, I heard talk of pussies and fags, uttered just loud enough for me to hear.\n\nIt occurred to me that I was no longer annoyed with him.\n\n\"So what happened?\" he said when he returned to the van. \"Anything happen? Did they call me a fag?\"\n\nI shrugged. \"More or less,\" I said. \"Yes. I guess they did.\"\n\n\"Great,\" he said, not the least bit ruffled. A satisfied smile spread across his face. \"Just what I told you. Yo, pencildicks,\" he shouted to the astonished kids. \"Greetings to Cape Coral.\" Then he threw the van into gear and we were off.\n\n***\n\nTwilight was falling on the neighborhoods outside Naples. One by one the amber streetlights trembled on, saturating the houses with an orange phosphorescent haze. By the time we pulled into the King Cole driveway, the sky was nearly dark, the color of burnished ebony. Beside the chickee hut a young woman struck a match, then began lighting the torches beneath the baobobs. There was something so lonely and comforting about her attentions, her complete immersion in the task, that I couldn't take my eyes off her. She stepped backwards, holding her arms over her chest. For some reason, I felt oddly magnanimous. I loved the world.\n\n\"What's she doing here?\" Hector said, not moving from behind the wheel.\n\n\"Who?\" I said.\n\nA disapproving noise came forth from his mouth. He nodded in the direction of the woman.\n\n\"Is she a guest?\"\n\n\"Don't tell me she brought the kid here too. Tacky,\" he said, shaking his head. \"Tacky. That's about as tacky as you can get.\"\n\nI opened the van door and stood on the parking lot. I heard a single child splashing around in the pool. \"Hey, Mom,\" he cried, \"I'm making up swimming strokes. This one's the turbo. Look at me, you're not looking!\"\n\n\"If she's not a guest,\" I said, \"she shouldn't be here. I don't have any qualms about telling her to leave.\"\n\n\"Oh right,\" he mumbled.\n\n\"Who is she, then?\"\n\nHe looked at me as if I were a lower form of life. \"Peter's girlfriend,\" he said, frowning.\n\n\"Peter's girlfriend? Since when does Peter have a girlfriend?\"\n\n\"He hasn't told you about Holly?\"\n\nI looked over at the woman standing by the pool. The fact was Peter hadn't told me anything. I hadn't known about his drinking: only recently had I figured out that he faithfully attended AA meetings two times a week. I hadn't known other things: how he put the money together to buy this place, or how he'd spent the many long years away from our family. But that was Peter, a wily, mysterious sort, always negotiating behind our backs, resisting at all costs any movement toward overt explanation.\n\n\"So she's a jerk?\"\n\n\"No,\" he said, \"Not really. She's actually a very nice, decent woman. I mean\u2014I mean I could even imagine being friends with her in a different context.\"\n\n\"Then why are you so upset?\"\n\nHe shook his head.\n\n\"Did she do something to Peter?\"\n\nHe didn't answer. I stared at his face, that wry, exhausted gaze. My stomach pressed against the plate of my ribs. I needed some food. And then I got it: this was jealousy. Peter wasn't only involved with Holly. He was also fucking Hector.\n\n***\n\nThere was so much to talk about. I wanted, once and for all, to tell him about my time together with William, so he'd hear it from my side, not processed through Ursula or Hector. I wanted to tell him that whatever he did was fine with me, that he didn't have to worry about feeling self-conscious or judged or anything but comfortable. I wanted to tell him that I cared about him deeply, that I couldn't have been more grateful that he'd invited me to live with him, giving me the opportunity to offer my help during this chaotic time. It seemed that our situation couldn't have been more ideal, for who could understand each other better than two brothers, after all? I knew exactly how he felt. What better person to talk with? I imagined that we'd grow closer in the coming time, that I'd start living the kind of life I'd always longed for, a life without dissembling, or second-guessing myself.\n\nStill, there was Holly. Was he primarily involved with her, with Hector as the occasional diversion, or was it the other way around, with Holly there for appearance's sake? Did he even know what he wanted? I thought about the time when, during one of his brief surprise visits home, I'd declared, without warning, at the dinner table, that I'd liked another boy in my class. \"I can't believe you'd do that to Mom and Dad,\" he'd said with disgust, not three hours after my admission. \"Anything to get attention. Anything to aim the lens back on yourself.\" Why hadn't he, as older brother, stepped in, telling them, \"He isn't the only one\"?\n\nStep up, step right this way. Secrets, secrets: welcome to Sarshik's House of Secrets.\n\nI believed that both Sid and Ursula still held more sway over us than we realized. It was hard not to imagine our lives in a shadowbox, the two of them still hovering over us, twisting our strings. How we wanted to please them, to bring them their happiness, as if their success actually depended upon our achievements. It wasn't like they'd actually prepared us for a life apart from them. Once in the dentist's office I read a magazine article about a certain kind of family\u2014\"The Self-Sufficient Family,\" as the author called it\u2014so self-absorbed, suspicious, and dependent upon one another that it couldn't help but cave in on itself. It described us to a T, in such an eerie fashion that I couldn't help but throw the article down, convincing myself it was horseshit. It made me think about Holly and her presence in my brother's life. Could his relationship with a woman still primarily be about pleasing my parents, even though he'd kept her hidden from them?\n\nI thought about the one time that Peter had brought a girlfriend home. I still remember her name, a beautiful name, DeeDee Middlebrook. She lived in a big house off Old Cutler Road in Kendall\u2014the daughter of an obstetrician and a lawyer. Ursula talked about the dinner for days, planning the menu, pondering what dress to wear\u2014all to the dismay of Peter, who didn't want to make a big deal of it. I didn't think he was all that interested, anyway. Upon meeting DeeDee, they made every effort to be nice to her, to welcome her, deliberately restraining themselves from saying anything patently provocative. Still, beneath it all was the disturbing sense that Peter had to choose between the family and DeeDee, that a decision to spend a Saturday night with his girlfriend constituted an implicit betrayal. Something was at stake here. I sat at the dinner table, listening to the jovial conversation around me, a dread settling into my marrow. Just one false word from Sid, and she'd find out we were freaks, that we weren't like other people. \"I guess you'll be out having fun tonight,\" my mother had said glumly on more than one occasion. Though the evening went off without a hitch, Peter stopped seeing DeeDee not two weeks later.\n\n***\n\nIt was the quiet, laid-back hour before dinner. The guests were already in their rooms, taking their showers, rubbing sunburn cream on freckled shoulders. I walked farther into the woods than I ever had, past the burned-out buildings and the marina, across the single, unfinished bridge on the property. Here, before the state land commission had issued the sales moratorium on Boca Palms, Clem Thornton had actually started constructing a semblance of a city, all for the benefit of his prospective lot buyers, though not a single house had ever been completed. The roads now were crumbling at the edges, coarse weeds growing through the sun-bleached asphalt. On every corner stood a moldy concrete marker, its exotic name printed vertically\u2014Miraflores, Isla Dorada, Tulipan, Costa Nera, Costa Brava\u2014each derived from a street in Cocoplum, the gated section of Coral Gables, of all places, near where Peter and I had grown up.\n\nI stepped into a partially built house on Pan American Boulevard. It was the only one of its kind, an unfinished model home with a faded sign hidden in the brush: THE BAL BAY. The exterior, though finished, was chipping, the window glass peppered with BB holes.\n\nThe inside was another matter. A mere shell, its floorboards were weathered to the point of rotten, and I stepped cautiously, testing their strength. The air smelled of dust. My eyes drifted through the cobwebs toward the corner. I jumped. Instantly, my stomach was in my mouth.\n\n\"You scared me,\" I said.\n\nPeter sat on the floor, legs drawn up to his chest. He looked bemused. He shrugged once, a gesture toward apology.\n\n\"What are you up to?\" I said finally.\n\n\"Thinking.\" He smiled more openly, then shrugged again.\n\nI sidled up next to him, leaning back into the wall. My heart was still beating. I glanced at his bent legs, conscious of the space between us. I imagined that space itself vibrating, charged with a complexity of emotions I couldn't name. \"What are you thinking about?\"\n\nHe rubbed his whiskered face with his palms. \"Bills, bills.\" He sighed once, loudly. \"More bills. They'll be the death of me. And you?\"\n\nI made a steeple with my fingertips. \"Just taking a walk.\"\n\nThe afternoon light was orange, thick, almost sticky on the floorboards. I was going to tell him what I assumed, ask if it were true. Then something told me not to: any inclination toward openness had always shut him down. It wouldn't be any different now. My secretive brother.\n\n\"You and Hector\u2014\" he started.\n\nI looked at him. I tried not to register any expression on my face. \"What about?\"\n\n\"The two of you. You both seem to be getting along fairly well.\"\n\nI nodded, pushed out my lips. \"I guess so. Well enough, I guess.\"\n\n\"That's good,\" he said. \"He's quite an interesting guy. I'm glad you two are getting along.\" He pushed himself up off the floor, glanced down at me.\n\n\"We are.\"\n\n\"Good, good. Just watch yourself.\"\n\nHis words burrowed in the pit of my stomach.\n\n\"I don't mean to sound corny, and I don't mean to exaggerate.\"\n\nI laughed out of sheer nervousness. \"Could you be clearer?\"\n\n\"You'll know,\" he said, and offered me his hand. He made a face. \"Now get up.\" And, in silence, I followed him through the door, down the wrecked road back to the complex.\n\n# Chapter 14\n\nI slumped before the TV in the guests' lounge, sitting before a rerun of Lost in Space, barely processing the images. It was early afternoon, a little after two. I'd already done my assignments for the day: I'd retested the pool water twice. I'd rewired the noisy switches in my bedroom. I'd even fertilized some plants\u2014the loquat, the pitch apple, the clematis, the breadfruit\u2014an intricate, complicated procedure that involved the consultation of several guidebooks; I didn't want to burn anything. Now I sat here in stillness, too bored to read, too fidgety to immerse myself in anything but the fact of June Lockhart's appallingly tight spacesuit. My eyes drifted to the granulated spray ceiling. I pictured mold spores growing on those dusty clumps, mold spores turning to protozoa, then to more complex cells, then to flesh-eating bacteria, then to: Where's my arm? Where's my arm?\n\nHector walked in the room. I jerked awake, afraid it was Peter. What was the matter with me? He was hardly my father.\n\nHe collapsed into the vinyl chair beside me. He was shirtless, revealing a torso so sculpted and defined that I looked away\u2014so much for my notion that I'd stop thinking about him in those terms. The night before, trying to cheer each other up, we found ourselves exchanging our most embarrassing personal stories, and before we knew it, we were laughing like old friends, a peculiar comfort and intimacy passing between us. I thought now about his date with Ted Gessler, a famous music producer, in a trendy, pretentious Upper West Side cafe. I thought about how he'd excused himself to go to bathroom, returning to the table only to see that a thirty-foot length of toilet paper was sticking to his shoe.\n\n\"What's so funny?\" he said now, laughing along with some nervousness. \"You're laughing at me, aren't you?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said, pressing my palms to my face.\n\nI looked up. He was staring back at me now with an expression I reserved for the best of my friends, something open, without judgment, as if he simply liked the experience of looking at me.\n\n\"You're making me crazy,\" I said after a while.\n\nHe squinted slightly, confused.\n\n\"Stop\u2014\"\n\n\"You know what I think?\" he said, looking at the top of my head.\n\n\"What?\"\n\nHe shook his head emphatically. \"Forget it. It's none of my business. Forget it.\"\n\n\"Unh-uh,\" I said. \"You can't get away with that.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" he said. \"Okay. I don't like to tell other people what to do. It's one of my worst habits, I'm always getting crap for it, but\u2014\"\n\n\"What, what?\"\n\n\"I really think you'd look good if you buzzed off your hair.\"\n\nWe made faces at each other. My laugh was sloppy, out of control.\n\n\"What's so funny?\"\n\n\"No way,\" I said.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"No way, Jose,\" I said, wagging my head three times.\n\nIt wasn't that I was so attached to it, that I was afraid of giving it up, like my poor aging brother with his bald spot, his bureau topped with Minoxidil bottles. It was that I knew I didn't have the head for a buzz cut. It was too long, too narrow, with hard angular features\u2014in particular, a straight pointy nose with a high bridge\u2014that needed to be softened. I knew myself too well: it just wouldn't work on me.\n\n\"Another time,\" I said, standing up. I turned off the TV. \"Do you want something to eat?\"\n\n\"Oh, change the subject, why don't you.\"\n\nI stared back at him, annoyed. \"You're really into this.\"\n\n\"Well, I think it'd look really hot. I'm not bullshitting you. Everyone else would think so, trust me.\"\n\nI looked back at him, my face heating. He'd hit on something. He knew where I was confused, unsure, and took advantage of it. I might have pushed him over onto the floor. I glanced at the blank TV screen, waiting to see what he'd do next.\n\n\"You're bad news,\" I mumbled.\n\n\"Come on.\" He smiled, buoyant with newly won power. \"Just give it a try. It'll grow back in two weeks.\"\n\nPulse pounding, I followed him up the stairs to his apartment. I'd never been inside before, but I was intrigued. What a place! Aside from the expected\u2014unopened letters, Japanese comic books, precise stacks of porno magazines\u2014there was an entire wall devoted to Laura Nyro artifacts: posters, autographs on napkins, bootleg album covers, as well as news-letters from her fan club, which operated out of a post office box in North Jersey.\n\n\"What's that about?\"\n\n\"Greatest fucking singer\/songwriter on the planet.\" He tapped out some pot into the bowl of a red pipe. \"My soul mama.\"\n\n\"I don't know her very well.\"\n\n\"Know her,\" he demanded. And he handed me the pipe, lighting the bowl, before wandering off to put on a CD.\n\n\"Christmas and the Beads of Sweat,\" he said, closing his eyes.\n\nI pulled the smoke deeply into my lungs, tasting its harsh acrid scratch. I was curiously out of practice. It made me think about that one and only time I'd gotten stoned alone with Jane. The pot crept up on us, cunning, mysterious; we could barely keep our hands off each other. I dragged warily, worrying about Peter finding out. What about those AA meetings? What about that twelve-step sticker on the bumper of the van? PRACTICE SENSELESS ACTS OF SELF-DESTRUCTION or whatever the fuck it was.\n\n\"Now let's get to this hair,\" he said, wielding a clipper at me.\n\n\"Are you sure you're in good enough shape to do this?\"\n\n\"I'm fine, for God's sake.\" His smile was trumped up, maniacal. I couldn't tell whether he was playing with me or not. \"Now take off your shirt and shut up.\"\n\nI sat. I did what he said. The minute \"Brown Earth\" kicked into rhythm, he took his place behind me, pressing the contours of my head. I couldn't tell him how good that felt, that the last time I'd gotten my hair washed at a salon, I'd literally moaned aloud in ecstasy, unnerving the poor old guy. I apologized immediately, embarrassed by my outburst.\n\n\"You have a good head,\" he said, flipping on the clipper. \"You're going to look great.\"\n\nI held perfectly still. The blade was cold against my neck; my chin tucked into my chest. Hector hummed tunelessly to the song about Freeport. On the tiled floor were the feathered shreds of my hair. I thought of a sheep being shorn, tied up, then trucked off to slaughter.\n\nThe clipper switched off.\n\n\"My God,\" he said, as if amazed.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I mean, I thought you were going to look good, but\u2014Christ\u2014\" He started shaking his head.\n\nI made a face. Was he making fun of me? I felt the short stubble with my hand, then asked for a mirror.\n\n\"What do you think?\" Hector said.\n\nI gripped the mirror in my hand. It was hard not to be repulsed. It made my eyes leap out, the thick brows above them darker, bushier, even demonic. My facial bones looked sharper, more masculine. Could I pull this off? It didn't jibe at all with the way I knew myself, and I doubted I'd ever get used to it, but hey. I liked and hated it at once.\n\n\"You're going to need some sun on that scalp, paleface. Let's sit in the grass.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\" I looked around for a hat. I might have been standing before him without clothes.\n\nHe switched off the Laura Nyro. \"Come on, fancy boy,\" he said, laughing harder. \"We're going outside.\"\n\nWe sat on a patch of burnt lawn behind the office. It was a breezy, torporous afternoon. The sun was warm, coiling, boring down into the roots of my scalp. All at once I realized I was high, unbearably high. I lay back down on the grass, laughing quietly, my arms latching behind my head. Above me, wild violet clouds blew in from the Gulf.\n\nHector turned onto his side, looking at me, propping up his head on his palm. I heard footsteps down the sidewalk heading in our direction. I felt too stalled and contented, too lazy to move.\n\n\"Have you seen your brother?\" Hector called.\n\n\"No,\" I said, but then I realized he wasn't talking to me. I lay flat on my back, staring up at my brother's blasted face. He attempted to smile, though he couldn't stop biting into his lip.\n\n\"When did you do that?\"\n\n\"This afternoon,\" Hector said, answering for me. \"Just a few minutes ago, in fact. I cut it myself.\"\n\nThe three of us fell silent. My back pinched. I tried to cover my eyes\u2014their hazy red wetness would be sure to give us away. I sat up, wishing I'd worn my shirt, brushing off the blades of dead grass stuck to my shoulders. I looked over at Hector, who seemed amused by it all, a passing glimmer of superiority on his face.\n\n\"But why?\" Peter said. \"Your old haircut looked perfectly fine.\"\n\n\"Why not?\" I said.\n\nHe shrugged, put off by the hardness in my voice. \"It'll grow back,\" he said calmly. \"No reason to be upset.\" He glanced at Hector, blinked once, then lugged off a hose toward the junction boxes.\n\nHector and I were silent for a time, watching my brother work. He might have been reassuring himself. I felt hungry, diminished. I was certain of it, then: I wanted Hector as much as I wanted anything.\n\n# Chapter 15\n\nI didn't take Peter's discomfort to heart. If anything, I felt myself becoming more and more adventurous in the weeks that followed. It was as if I'd thrown up my hands to the fear of judgment and censure. I was tired\u2014once and for all\u2014of reigning myself in, toning myself down. So I assembled a look. I wore faded black T-shirts with the sleeves hacked off. I wore a battered silver motorcycle jacket (borrowed from Hector) whenever the temperature dropped. I even grew accustomed to my crew cut, buzzing it short every Friday night whether it needed it or not. It seemed that I was gradually becoming my look, and I felt snappier, more streamlined and self-assured than I had in seven years, when for a brief period I'd gone through my Ozzy Osbourne phase. I was changing, crumbling, slipping away right before my very eyes. It was nothing but a relief to me. So what if I looked like a big old homo?\n\nThe truth was I'd been wanting to assume another look for years, but hadn't pursued it for fear of seeming false, pretentious, of falling flat on my face. But wasn't that part of the fun? Wasn't that what was interesting about other self-created people, the visible cracks in the armor? It seemed that all I needed was a sense of humor, a dash of smarts, and I could be whoever I wanted. What was a lifetime but a series of shifting, inter-changeable masks? I could look like a biker boy today, and tomorrow a trust accountant, and the next day a geeky scientist.\n\nI stopped before the mirror every time I passed it. \"Grrrrr,\" I growled, flexing my muscles.\n\nWhat I didn't comprehend was that my dressing up could concern Peter so much. It wasn't that he'd directly addressed the issue. It wasn't that he told me to tone it down for fear that I'd put off our guests. Instead, he made his feelings known in the way he talked around everything but the clothes on my back. Maybe he was taking on the role of Sid and Ursula, feeling it his duty to keep me in line, to inspire inhibition in a personality he perceived to be reckless and underdeveloped. Or was it that my dressing this way\u2014let's face it: hypermasculine, yet daffy\u2014reminded him of something that scared him about himself? He certainly should have recognized he'd constructed his own look. No one wore chinos and button-downs and wire-frame glasses day after day without some degree of intention, without knowing he desired to communicate a sensibility, a point of view to the outer worlds. But was he ready to admit that? I thought now of his earlier warning about Hector the night we'd stumbled upon each other in the sample house. In the days that followed, his silence started to pique me. He made me want to dress more and more outlandishly, to tattoo my back, to pierce my eyebrow, to dye my stubbled hair aqua, cranberry\u2014a new color depending upon the week and season.\n\nDeep down, I wondered whether Peter was simply frightened of the confidence that had been gradually inhabiting me. Did he want some for himself? It seemed to me that he both wanted some and was afraid all at the same time, but what did I know? I'd found a way to be in the world, a way of letting go, abandoning myself within a certain set of parameters. It was like learning how to eat with a knife and fork. I thought about Sid, his social cluelessness and fear of outsiders. I thought about his flirtations with his female coworkers, how it was endlessly getting him into trouble, baffling him every time he was called upon it. \"I never meant any harm,\" he'd say. \"I'm not a bad guy. I only love women.\" He might have come from another planet, another century. He simply didn't know the rules, as if he were navigating, rudderless, through a storm-drenched sea. You had to know the rules. It might have been foolish, mistaken to crave something fixed, but it made it easier, I knew that much, and I wasn't prepared to unlearn anything I'd taught myself.\n\nHector and I were hosing down the lounge chairs by the pool. A girl with thick glasses and a homemade brown dress was sitting by the gate, reading about plankton in an ancient volume of The World Book. She peered up at us occasionally, pretending she wasn't watching.\n\n\"By the way,\" Hector said. \"I have some good news for you.\"\n\nI looked up. A star-shaped patch of cleaning fluid foamed beneath his lip.\n\n\"You know Alejandro?\"\n\n\"From Fort Lauderdale? The tax accountant?\"\n\nHe nodded. The banana palms creaked above our heads. \"He wants to go out with you. He thinks your new look's really cute.\"\n\n\"Great,\" I said, more blandly than I'd intended. I thought of Alejandro, his aviator glasses, his slicked-back hair, the pleasing squirrely sleaziness of him. In exchange for services, he was given a free room, and he stayed here once a month, sunning himself by the pool in a micro-black bikini. He was sexier to me than I was willing to admit, but that wasn't what was irking me. It was Hector's detached, off-handed manner I didn't like: he sounded like a pimp.\n\n\"He actually said something very nice about you.\"\n\nThe girl looked up from her encyclopedia. Her name\u2014Mary Grace\u2014was markered on the olive cover.\n\n\"He did?\" I said.\n\n\"He thought that you possessed a really interesting combination of butch and femme. He thought that that was a sign of an interesting, complex personality.\"\n\n\"But he doesn't even know me.\"\n\nHe shrugged, then tossed his sponge on a chair.\n\nI followed him down the walkway. We were sitting on the floor of Hector's room, flipping through his collection of drawings\u2014\"cameos,\" he called them\u2014derived from the covers of women's detective novels of the 1950s. They were surprisingly good, though I paid little attention to them. The skin of my chest itched. In my usual habit, I was only gradually becoming aware of the fact that I was harboring any rage.\n\n\"What's this talk about femme?\" I blurted. \"That's ridiculous. I mean, do I look femme?\"\n\nHector raised his brows. \"Say what?\"\n\n\"I'm talking about Alejandro, what he said about me. You acted like that was a compliment or something.\"\n\nHector's eyes went blank. He remained silent for a second, then scooted over to the night table. He fumbled for something in the drawer. Not two seconds later he yanked back my scalp violently, with full force, hurting me. \"Hold still, butch boy.\"\n\n\"What are you doing?\" I cried.\n\nHe gripped the lipstick in his free hand, wielding it as if it were a scalpel. He began pressing the tube directly to my mouth.\n\n\"What the fuck?\" I said, trying to push him toward the wall. He was even stronger than I'd imagined. \"I told you I'd look bad as a girl.\"\n\n\"No one talks to me like that.\" And then he strayed from the outlines of my mouth, applying bars of lipstick across my jaw, my cheeks, my forehead, my hair.\n\nI reached for his T-shirt on the floor and wiped off my face with it. I tossed it away. Its fabric was red, ruined.\n\n\"I'll get you in drag,\" he said with a cool, casual smugness. \"Just you wait. I'll dress you up if it's the last thing I do.\"\n\n\"That's what you think,\" I muttered.\n\n\"Girl,\" he said, taunting me.\n\n\"Girl,\" I said, taunting him back.\n\nI'd had about all I could stand from him. But coupled with that was another more affronting, alarming thought: he'd probably get me to do it, the jerk. I stared at his handsome, arrogant, self-satisfied face. I could have killed him.\n\n***\n\nAt thirteen, I was afraid of someone. I did everything possible to distinguish myself from him. I recorded my voice over and over, imagining wide flat stones on my tongue, working out the inflections, sanding over any last traces of hiss. I trudged back and forth down the length of our driveway, taking heavy, self-assured steps, bouncing just slightly from the knees until my arms swung naturally, without concentration. I did push-ups by the dozen on the laundry-room floor. I read sports page after sports page, memorizing the scores, insinuating myself into arguments in which the merit of the Marlins' MVP was in question. There was nothing helpless about me. You could say that I talked too much, that I was scattered and lacked focus, that I hungered for overwhelming amounts of attention and reassurance from everyone who came into contact with me, but you wouldn't have said that I was feminine\u2014that much I was sure.\n\nUnlike Stan Laskin. Stan Laskin: hardware-store owner. Stan Laskin: who paid special attention to me every time I was sent in by Sid to buy switches or ten-penny nails. It wasn't that he was anything but kind. It was that his body, his entire self-presentation, soft and yielding, with its tendency toward flab, represented everything I didn't want to be. His colognes scented the atmosphere every time I waited at his counter. His glasses, all seven pairs of them, coordinated with his bracelets and rings. But most disturbing of all was the expression on his face, wounded and lamb-like, as if he were waiting for some devastating stranger to come through the door.\n\nAs far as I knew he lived alone and had never been loved by anyone in his life. His days, I decided, were repetitive, dull, and lonely, enlivened only by occasional visits to the fabric store, where he remembered all the employees' birthdays, and to the public bathroom stall where he sat six hours at a time before a vacant glory hole. After work, he'd walk through his front door, leaving his outer life behind, assuming a secret role, draping himself in chintz or black velvet, before giving hairdos to his Yorkshires or trying on his extensive collection of cloches and pins. Every morning he'd call up his mother, discussing the trip they were planning to the Lawrence Welk Resort in Escondido, California. His life had as much to do with my own as the newsletter of the Siegfried and Roy fan club.\n\nIt was a warm, overcast day in December, the weekend before Christmas. A heat wave was descending upon Dade County, moistening the foliage with dew. In Florida fashion, the trunks of the royal palms were wrapped with strings of clear lights. I hurried down the Miracle Mile with Mark Margolit and Steve Mendelsohn, two of my friends from school. At least I thought they were friends. I cared about them as much as I cared about the health of my gums, but to one another we looked like friends, and when the three of us were together no one dared make fun of us. I felt convincing with them. They believed me when I expressed my interest in Jane. Together, we talked about the color and texture of Jamaica Reed's nipples, the lead guitar solos from Metallica's second album, and the afterschool activities of Mrs. Walgreen, our Spanish teacher, who was forever tugging her miniskirt down over her hips. I wore a ripped Ozzy Osbourne T-shirt with black kohl eyeliner around my eyes, and when I looked in the mirror I even scared myself.\n\nWe walked around the perimeter of the circle, the scent of frozen pizza still rising from our fingers, stumbling to the video arcade, where we'd play a few games of Donkey Kong or Burger Time. In my thirteen-year-old way, I'd told myself I was having fun and was behaving like any boy my age was supposed to. We couldn't have been walking more than ten seconds when I saw Stan Laskin carrying boxes between a rental truck and his store, accepting a delivery. He looked relatively conventional for Stan Laskin: baggy chino pants, golden horn-rims, navy blue button-down. Except for the scrap of material\u2014a yellow brocaded print tied around his throat. A softness slid down inside my stomach. I felt nothing but embarrassed and afraid.\n\n\"Nice scarf,\" Steve said.\n\nHe wouldn't look at us. He lifted up a box marked screwdrivers, watching it fall through his hands.\n\n\"Did you always like women's accessories?\" Steve said.\n\nA single drop of sweat ran down the crease of my back.\n\n\"In case you're interested,\" Stan Laskin said, his face the deepest crimson, \"it's an ascot.\"\n\n\"Oh, an ascot,\" Steve said, highlighting his S. \"An ass\u2014cot.\"\n\n\"We better get out of here,\" I whispered to Mike.\n\n\"No,\" Steve said. \"Stay.\" A brutal, joyous laugh tore up from his lungs. He leapt toward the stop sign and slapped its red metal face.\n\n\"Do you like to suck cock?\" he said, spinning around, turning to Stan.\n\nNothing. A helicopter beat somewhere overhead, concealed.\n\n\"Do you? Do you like the taste of cock in your mouth?\"\n\nStan gazed downward at the box in his hands.\n\n\"Faggot,\" Steve said. \"Lousy cocksucking faggot.\"\n\nThe sidewalk might have cracked beneath my feet. More than anything I wanted Stan to dismiss us, to write us off as small, inconsequential. Instead, he turned not to Steve, but to me. He looked into my face in a more searching way than anyone ever had.\n\n\"What made you so hateful?\" he said matter-of-factly.\n\n\"Me?\" I said.\n\n\"All of you. I don't get it. Tell me how you live with yourselves.\"\n\nSomething bony and sharp pushed deep inside my chest.\n\n\"Come on,\" Steve said. \"I've had enough. Let's check out those bitches across the street.\"\n\nThe days hastened toward Christmas. I completed my activities as usual: I tossed Milk Duds to Delaware, our neighbor's Boston terrier, in my efforts to teach her how to fetch. I worked through all the supplementary exercises in my algebra packet, achieving a 98 on the pop quiz. I even helped Peter wax my father's Grand Prix, buffing its blue finish with a chamois cloth. At night, though, lying in bed, I couldn't scour Stan's question from my thoughts. I tried to tell myself that what had transpired hadn't been so sad. Everyone behaved that way, everyone I knew. It wasn't like they meant any harm. It was the way you carried yourself in the world. Otherwise, they'd pulverize you. Faggot, cocksucker, queer: these were just words\u2014empty, stupid, meaningless words. No one needed to be defended here.\n\nWhat the hell was I afraid of?\n\nI was standing in the locker room after gym class. We were midway through the swimming unit, the only sport I could bear. Nearly everyone had already left for homeroom. The air smelled of bleach and worn elastic. I looked from side to side, pulled down my gym shorts, as the spray pounded in the shower room beside me. I turned halfway. It was Jon Brainard, a small, intense boy with blue eyes and dark curly hair, who'd just transferred from Sarasota. He was watching me beneath the showerhead, defined fingers lathering a compact stomach. He might have been my brother in another time. My skin tingled, chilled, then flushed with the richest warmth. He was rinsing the suds between his legs. I couldn't keep myself from staring back, though I wanted to stop.\n\n\"Evan,\" he called.\n\nI turned. I fumbled inside my locker, pretending not to hear.\n\n\"Would you hand me that towel on the bench?\"\n\nThe drain gulped down the overflow. His smile was shy, as if he were thinking something enormous, beautiful.\n\nMy toes clenched tighter into the concrete.\n\nMany months passed before I again allowed myself to walk into Stan's store. It smelled of torn wood, matches, grass seed, pesticides\u2014a confluence of smells that I associate, to this day, only with that memory. In my pocket, I carried an arrowhead I'd found beneath an ice plant on the Metrozoo grounds. It was my talisman, my lucky charm. I'd attributed several minor miracles to its existence\u2014the recovery of a $50 bill and the rapid healing of a fractured ankle. My plan was this: I'd leave it on his counter in an unmarked bag without note or explanation. He could do with it what he wanted. I knew it was hopeless, and I knew it was unreasonable, but the exchange had been hovering over me, a ruined black blanket, and I just wanted to get it off my mind.\n\nStan was back in the supply room. I leaned the lunch bag against the cash register, then turned to make my getaway.\n\nAt once he came toward me with a crowbar. He looked kindly and quizzical, as if he thought I needed help. Then all at once his brows drew together.\n\n\"Don't I know you?\"\n\nMy breathing went sluggish. I imagined him bringing the crowbar down across my forehead, splitting it in two.\n\n\"You were one of those boys,\" he said. \"Get out of here.\"\n\n\"I didn't\u2014\"\n\n\"I'll call the police. Get out.\"\n\nI left the store without explaining myself. It was his pain and not the crowbar that frightened me. Even then, I knew that it wasn't just about my indifference, but about every time he'd heard the word faggot muttered behind his back. That night, lying on the living-room sofa, I thought about the arrowhead in the lunch bag. It was a vacant, meaningless gesture that wouldn't console him, I was positive. He probably even tossed it away. But there was always the chance that he kept it, and it's serving him now, giving him luck, warding off anyone who'd hurl a word at him, or anyone who'd let it happen.\n\n***\n\nHector and I leaned against a triple-loader at the outdoor Laundromat. We were working an entirely new look: our slacks narrow, our lashes smudgy with goo. Even our lipstick\u2014glacial, white\u2014coordinated with our jackets, tight vinyl numbers crisscrossed with zippers. We were space-age versions of Jean Shrimpton and Marianne Faithfull, right out of 1967. I looked straight ahead, trying to erase and assert myself at once. But I wanted to go further. More than anything I wanted to hammer through my shame, become enameled, incandescent like Hector\u2014\"Mistress Chevelle,\" as he called himself today. Something was off, though. If I was going to do this, I had to do it right. I looked over toward the ladies beside the dryers, taking in their weary, sardonic scorn of us. Where was that transformation that was supposed to take hold of me, whisking me off to that other sphere, where I was too perfected, too highly evolved to be bothered, beyond bitterness or spite? Was I just another failed fag, a dumb cluck, an old stick-in-the-mud?\n\nI wondered sometimes whether, out of sheer self-protection, I'd simply never allowed myself to develop a taste for things feminine. I walked around convincing myself I wasn't the least bit interested in cooking or fabric swatches or interior decoration or figure skating, but was that the essential me? What about my predilection for finding myself in public spaces designated for women only? How many times had I wandered into a bathroom only to find an absence of urinals, only to hear a terrified voice rising over the stalls: \"Is that a man in here? Oh my God, I think it's a man.\"\n\n\"Are you having fun?\" I said to Hector. \"I'm not having very much fun.\"\n\n\"What kind of talk is that?\" Hector said.\n\n\"Maybe it's just not the right look for me,\" I said, tugging at my cat suit.\n\n\"You might be right. Maybe you should have done the Mary J. Blige thing.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You know, black girl, blonde hair. That would have worked.\"\n\n\"I personally think I'm the Liv Ullman type. We both could have done it. Did you ever see Persona?\"\n\n\"Is anything ever right with you?\" he said, flustered. \"Hand me that detergent.\" And before I knew it he'd poured another half-box into the washer compartment. Our clothes spun wildly, suds flinging against the glass.\n\nThe truth was we needed some diversion after the events of the week. Two nights before, the septic tank had overflowed, precluding us from doing our own laundry on the premises. Behind the office, a translucent stream flowed from the lid toward the mangrove banyans. The scent, to say the least, was less than pretty, prompting complaints from the guests.\n\nI stared at one of the white-trashy women whose eyes had been fixed on us. \"I don't like the way she's looking at me,\" I said, loud enough for her to hear.\n\n\"Oh, get over it. She doesn't even know what day of the week it is. She probably just thinks you're some trollop.\"\n\nI fixed him with a level stare. My glance was high, my voice elevated. \"Look who's talking.\"\n\n\"Slut.\"\n\n\"You're a joke.\"\n\n\"Whore.\"\n\n\"You're a joke\u2014a dirty joke from one end of this town to the other.\"\n\nWe laughed, collapsing against each other. Our witnesses looked at us with a mixture of disdain and fascination. Hector clapped me hard on the shoulder. \"There you go. Now you're getting it down.\"\n\nA boy in a ripped T-shirt, dirty beret, and mutton-chop sideburns passed us, lugging a wash basket over his hip. His look seemed to be especially thought out, as if he'd spent a full ten minutes trying on various combinations in an effort to seem like he'd just thrown the whole shebang together. He had the look of someone who'd fixed a camera on himself, watching himself with every gesture, assuming that everyone else was doing the same.\n\n\"What do you think?\" Hector said, nudging me in the side.\n\nHe kept staring at the boy with a flagrant, unnerving calculation. I didn't know what he was talking about.\n\n\"Our church or theirs?\"\n\nI looked him over again. \"Ours,\" I said finally.\n\n\"No way, chica.\" This was new: he'd taken to calling me chica in the last week.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"Too sloppy. Way too sloppy.\"\n\n\"Get out of town.\"\n\n\"Listen to me,\" he said, holding up his hand. \"Listen. I'm going to teach you something. A fag wouldn't do that. He'd shave the sides of his head. He'd keep it neat and severe around the ears, and he'd wipe off the mud from those shoes.\"\n\n\"What mud?\"\n\n\"And he isn't looking around enough. Fags always look around.\"\n\nI looked at Hector, confounded. Where did this certainty come from? How could anyone possess such single-mindedness, such pigheaded belief in one's point of view?\n\n\"Watch this,\" he said. And before I could stop matters, he started speaking to the boy. \"Excuse me, young man. Pssst.\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\n\"Could you tell me where you got your shoes?\"\n\nI slumped against the washer, stricken.\n\n\"Ben Southern,\" he said. \"Actually, they've got a giant sale going on. Thirty-eight bucks.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Hector said. \"They're just the sauciest little numbers.\" He swallowed demurely. \"Would it be a terrible imposition if I asked you to let me try them on?\"\n\nMy body temperature surged two degrees. Either he was going to punch us out or comply.\n\nSeconds later, he was passing the shoes to Hector.\n\n\"Goodness, they're big,\" Hector said, looking down. \"My feet are just swimming in them. I couldn't possibly wear anything so big.\"\n\n\"You know what they say,\" he said shyly. \"Big feet, big\u2014\"\n\n\"What's your name?\" Hector's smile was huge and platinum, on the verge of ghastly. He passed back the shoes to the boy.\n\n\"Josef,\" he said, glancing downward. \"With an F. And yours?\"\n\n\"I'm Mistress Chevelle. And this is my friend, Boca. But you can call her Big Pretty.\"\n\nJosef grinned back at us as he were in on the joke. He offered his hand to each of us and shook ours firmly. I was relieved. He was one of us.\n\n\"You girls from out of town?\"\n\n\"In a manner of speaking,\" Hector said. \"Slave labor.\"\n\nHe nodded, pretending to understand. He crunched his brow. \"Well, have a good time while you're here. It was nice meeting you.\"\n\n\"Already?\" Hector said wistfully.\n\n\"You watch yourselves, girls. Have fun on your trip.\"\n\nAnd then he wandered off, loading the silver washer with extreme care and attention.\n\n\"See?\" I said.\n\n\"See what. He's not a fag, you dope. He's fag friendly. He's just a straight boy who's comfortable with fags.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"There's a big, big difference. You could get yourself into trouble.\"\n\n\"Oh right.\"\n\n\"The hair, dear, the hair.\"\n\nI pointed to my wig, suggesting the crew cut that lay beneath it. \"I didn't used to have fag hair.\"\n\n\"You weren't a fag.\"\n\n\"Excuse me?\"\n\n\"You weren't a fag till I got a hold of you.\" He curled up the issue of Women's Wear Daily in his hand, gazed through it like a telescope. \"In terms of style, at least.\"\n\nThe heat off the dryers was making me swoon. I pictured my knees buckling, my face crashing flat to the floor. \"Oh, is this some nasty remark about my sense of style?\"\n\n\"No, it's not some nasty remark about your sense of style,\" he mimicked. \"You were making some bad choices, that was all. You looked like some sorry-ass straight boy with your hair flopping all over your ears. No wonder you weren't getting any dick.\"\n\nI could have throttled him. We weren't going to get any dick looking like this, either. I stared at the front loaders, fixing my gaze on them, as if they were fireplaces\u2014the fireplaces of Florida. I needed to turn off my thoughts. We might have been captive in Hell's Laundromat, with pool table, raucous music, bar, free popcorn, and huge TV screen across which Morton Downey, Jr. hovered. I couldn't help staring at the well-dressed, middle-aged woman beside the soap machine. She looked around nervously, with a barely suppressed panic. Her face carried all the doubts and anxieties of an aging flight attendant, the look in her eyes saying: Where is my beauty? Why is it disappearing from me?\n\nAnd I'd worried that we'd been out of place.\n\nHector was sitting in the yellow bucket seat, right leg crossed over the left knee. It was amazing: beneath his exterior, he still seemed butch, even butcher than usual. It troubled me that I'd actually been attracted to someone in an A-line miniskirt.\n\nI gestured across the room toward Josef. \"How would you know?\"\n\n\"I know,\" he said, pointing to the place between his eyes. \"You have it, I have it. It's just a question of whether you want to pay attention to it or not.\"\n\nBut it was never that easy. I thought about Ross-Bob Vittori, a boy from my high school, who lisped with abandon, collected Jean Seberg memorabilia, and was in possession of the longest eyelashes this side of a Maybelline model. Despite these factors, he was still one of the most popular boys in school, with no shortage of dates, asking out a different girl each weekend, most of whom had called him first. Any number of people didn't fit the bill, challenging expectations, resisting typecasting, but how could I begin to explain this to Hector? I knew him well enough: that brain was impossible to perforate.\n\n# Chapter 16\n\nI was thinking about one of the first boys I'd ever had a crush on. It was months before William. I ran into him every day at three o'clock, on my walk home from school, on my shortcut past the U of Miami Art Building. Invariably he was sitting within the shadow of an Australian pine, nibbling at a cream cheese and olive sandwich on white bread. I presumed he was an art major. But that in itself wasn't the thing. There was something about him, a locus of energy that suggested a fiercely complex internal life. He wasn't the best-looking guy in the world, and he couldn't have been further from my type, which tended toward road thugs and serial killers, or more precisely, those who looked like them. But there was something about him. Maybe it was his chin whiskers\u2014brown, downy\u2014or the sketches in his notepad\u2014fractured, strife-ridden, built from dashes, stars, and blips. I wanted nothing more than to save him from his pain. Soon enough, I was nodding to him, then he back at me, then we were actually mumbling hello, initiating that period of mutual recognition and appreciation.\n\nIt was a muggy, overcast day in early November when I walked into Bonita's Glaceteria, a little place on Coral Way, to buy some lime-ice to cool down from the heat. I was actually in a light, cheerful mood\u2014odd considering that I'd just been accepted to Yale, and the prospect of college unnerved me to no end.\n\nWhen I looked to my right, I saw the art boy, Arden, smiling at me.\n\n\"Hi,\" he said.\n\n\"Hello,\" I answered back.\n\nWe stood there for a stunned moment, staring at each other, not knowing how to proceed. Whole epochs might have passed. Then, for whatever reason, I crept to a table by the window, covering the left side of my face with my hand. My hairline pearled up with sweat. Here, I'd had every opportunity to sit down and chat, casually, without complication. I sat there sucking at my paper straw, looking for all intents and purposes like a moron, wishing that he'd get the hell out of the place, knowing that the mere fact of his existence was just further evidence of the universe's essential cruelty and indifference.\n\nTo my dread, he stepped toward my table.\n\n\"Do I know you?\" he said earnestly.\n\nHis accent was rounded, wide, as if he'd just stepped in off the prairie. He looked at me with luminous, grey-green eyes, a shade I'd never quite seen on anyone else. I'd never felt more defeated and desperate in my life. Then, as if somersaulting into a river of burning lava, I said: \"Would you like to go to a movie with me this Saturday?\"\n\nHe considered the offer. Outside a group of preschoolers trotted by, reciting their ABCs in both Spanish and English. \"Of course.\"\n\nWe made plans to see Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad, a film about which I couldn't have cared less, but it was playing at the university, and I was certain that he'd like it. It occurred to me that this was the first time I'd ever asked anybody out on a date. I pushed past the pedestrians, knowing that my days of loneliness and emotional aridity were forever over, that I'd soon have all the sex I wanted, and more. That night, I not only cleaned out my room from head to toe, but talked to Sid and Ursula with interest and civility. I was embarking on my new life. I was in love. Soon enough, we'd devote ourselves to making each other happy, and we'd give each other back rubs, and talk back and forth, and listen, and once we grew a little older, we'd trim each other's sideburns, shave each other's shoulders.\n\nI couldn't stop thinking about the sheer sonic loveliness of the name Arden. How it tripped off my tongue: a ballad, a prayer.\n\nThe day of the date, my stomach tightened as if injected with helium. I isolated myself in my bedroom, trying to relax my hunching shoulders. Only when I couldn't stand it any longer did I call Jane, asking about the appropriateness of my outfit.\n\n\"It's seven-thirty in the morning,\" she said. \"What do you want from me, dear?\"\n\nShe suggested a few pieces, a loud corduroy sport coat and a buffalo-plaid shirt, neither of which sounded particularly attractive. It occurred to me that she was more interested in seeing the endeavor fail, though she'd never admit to that.\n\n\"You know, Evan\u2014\"\n\n\"Yes?\"\n\nShe yelled at Sugar Pop, her dwarf Pomeranian, to shut up. \"You won't want to hear this,\" she said, more softly now.\n\n\"What.\" I aspirated the H in what. My voice took on an impatience I found myself using only with her.\n\n\"Be careful of getting your hopes up. You're not marrying him. It's only a date.\"\n\n\"I know that.\"\n\n\"I mean, you don't even know if you like him.\"\n\nOf course I like him, I wanted to say. I'm in love with him. Then it occurred to me that she was just plain resentful. She wanted me to be available to her every second of the day, to go to the beach, to get her car inspected with her\u2014all the minor, irritating tasks that she hated to do herself. The truth was she hadn't gone out on a date since her folks had forced her to break up with DeMarco, unless you could count her midnight rendezvous with Levon (aka her own private dildo). I could sympathize with her on those grounds, but what really vexed me was her unspoken belief that my attraction to other boys was a phase, that once I passed out of it, I'd come to my senses and fall deeply in love with her. Hogwash, I thought. Bullshit.\n\nHours later I met Arden outside the red-carpeted lobby of the campus film forum. He was wearing a checkered red shirt and a pair of overalls, the bottoms ragged and dragging. He might have been a farm boy fresh off the milking machines. A look of quiet expectation shone across his face, and all my fears were allayed.\n\nOnce seated he gazed up at the screen, awestruck, drinking in the images: the baroque hotel, the trimmed, geometric gardens, the feathered gowns of A, Delphine Seyrig, who looked as if she were listening to a ticking bomb inside her. He seemed to be so involved that I thought it best not to disrupt him, though I wanted to fuck him silly right then and there. Something twinged the root of my dick. Occasionally, his stomach would squeal, and a little belch would issue forth, but I relished this subtle indication of his humanity, relieved he felt comfortable enough to share it with me. Put simply, he was as nervous as I was.\n\nWe strolled down the storm-wet streets. The neon tubes trembled, clinging to the last of their currents. The branches were blowing. Out over the ocean, lightning pulsed twice, golden, subtropical.\n\n\"What did you think?\" I asked.\n\n\"Lavish,\" he answered. \"I never expected it to be so lavish. Those voices, those gowns.\"\n\nHis enthusiasm was more than I could stand. \"Tell me,\" I agreed.\n\nI had so much to say that I couldn't begin. He walked just slightly ahead of me, with only the slightest urgency, a beatific look on his face like the young St. John of the Cross. The world seemed unbearably benevolent all at once, the lightning flashing soundlessly in the distance, the palms above our heads watching, blessing us.\n\nWe stopped at a crosswalk. His smile was shy, eroding. Knowing that he wanted exactly what I wanted from him, I reached for the back of his neck and pulled him toward me\u2014reckless, I admit\u2014shoving into his mouth as much of my tongue as was humanly possible. His own tongue was soft, impossibly smooth, a sweet clam in a bath of brine. His whiskers sandpapered my chin. It was the most profound kiss in which I'd ever taken part.\n\nI stepped back slightly, dazed, chilled and sweating at once.\n\nHe pulled in his lips as if I'd tasted of mercurochrome.\n\n\"I'm straight,\" he cried.\n\nThe trees shook. My ears were humming.\n\n\"I'm straight,\" he cried again, as if to convince himself. Then he started running, fast as he could, down the length of the street.\n\n***\n\nThey'd been arguing off and on in Hector's room for more than two hours before I'd finally decided to climb out of bed. My guts burned. There was no point in trying to sleep. The moment I'd close my eyes, convincing myself that their silence was lasting this time, that they'd come to some peace, they'd start all over again, words volleying even louder than before. It was hard not to wonder whether it had been spurred on by something I'd done\u2014or not done, as the case may be. It was hard not to feel trammeled by it all. I might have been sitting in the bedroom of my childhood, scratching my name into the headboard, bending back the balsa wings of a model plane as Sid and Ursula fought through the night in the next room.\n\nSomething was bothering him about me. Was it his perception that I'd been under Hector's influence? I sensed it, just by the passing grimace on his face as we'd walked in the door, dressed in our skirts and wigs, from the Laundromat. In that one unsettling moment, any sense that I was multiple, that I could be anything other than what he perceived me to be, shrank to near nothing.\n\nDid I have to watch out for my brother?\n\nHe really wasn't a bad guy.\n\nI walked out across the dark parking lot and stared down into the pool. The floodlamps burned beneath the heated water, pitching golden waves of light onto the palms, the courtyard. A cord chimed once against the flagpole. Feet thumped across the walk, and there was Hector, climbing up the steps of the pool deck in nothing but his black jockey shorts. His face was dazzled and agitated, the muscles tensing in his legs. We looked at each other for several seconds, surprised into speechlessness.\n\n\"Is my brother mad at me?\" I said finally.\n\nHis expression dulled. \"What are you talking about?\"\n\n\"Forget it,\" I said. \"Good of you to get dressed.\"\n\n\"I want to know what you're talking about.\"\n\nI pulled in a breath through my mouth. \"Well, it was pretty hard not to hear you two guys fighting.\"\n\nHis brow clenched. He seemed apprehensive and appalled all at once. \"You were listening to us?\"\n\nWas he kidding? He knew as much as I how little privacy there was. Anyone walking down those halls could hear anything: burps, farts, little cries in the night.\n\n\"Do you want to talk about it?\"\n\nHe wagged his head back and forth.\n\n\"All right,\" I said, and stood up. \"Sorry I asked. I'll be out on the dock if you should find yourself deigning to talk.\"\n\nHe slumped down onto a lounge. The bottoms of his feet were dirty, spattered with drops of aqua paint. \"It's like he convinces himself it's all about money.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"He'll talk this way and that way about how he can't pay the bills, how it's time to start targeting a different market, cranking up the ads, but he hasn't done jackshit. He'd rather complain about it, put it off. Do you know what I'm saying?\"\n\n\"He'll hear,\" I whispered. I pointed up toward his dark apartment.\n\n\"He actually implied that I was responsible for that tour falling apart. I mean, you know that's not true. And this is after he's been pounding my back the whole day.\"\n\nA mole cricket drifted on the surface before a pool lamp. My eyes felt dry, stitchy. My throat was sore. It was minutes past 3 a.m. Suddenly I imagined this going on the entire night.\n\n\"Why don't you just get some sleep,\" I mumbled.\n\nHe lay back on the pink-webbed lounge. \"It can all be reduced to one single problem.\" His voice was oddly cheery, without malice. \"A single problem is all it amounts to.\"\n\n\"What's that?\"\n\n\"The problem's that he still wants to be a good little boy. He never got the affection he needed as a kid, and that's what's messing him up now.\"\n\nI looked at him skeptically. \"Yes, Doctor Freud.\"\n\n\"I'm serious. What do you think he's doing with a girlfriend anyway?\"\n\n\"You're out of your mind.\"\n\n\"He's just afraid. He's afraid to admit to himself he's a dirty little faggot like the rest of us.\"\n\n\"Oh, please.\"\n\n\"I'm telling you.\"\n\n\"And you know this for sure.\"\n\n\"Listen.\" He stood, poking a fingertip into my chest. \"I know what I'm talking about. He's twenty-eight years old, and he's still talking about his parents all the time. 'Sid this, Sid that. Ursula this, Ursula that.' My God, you might think they were sitting in the next room.\"\n\nI thought for a moment. There was certainly some truth to that, but only some. Wasn't Peter the one who couldn't wait to leave home, who never wanted to see them again? I'm happy, but you're not.\n\n\"But he hasn't spoken to them in months.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter.\" He gestured at the first floor of the motel. A single lamp trembled on in the window, a robed figure drifting behind the curtain. \"It's like this whole thing is for them. It's like he's preparing for this hypothetical time, this perfect time, when he's gotten everything down just right, so he can say, 'Look, Mom. Look, Dad. I'm not the fucked-up puppy you thought I was.'\"\n\nI didn't know what to make of it. It all sounded too cheap and easy. And believe it or not, I resented the running down of my parents, especially knowing he hadn't met them. They could be awful, the most unbearable combination of clinging and secretive, but what parents didn't cause some damage, regardless of their intentions? They cared about us in their own miserable, stunted way. How much easier it would have been to be Hector, whose own mother was a dyke, who was completely at ease with his life, who called once every week to ask his advice about her latest girlfriends. No wonder the world was much less complicated in his eyes.\n\nInsects thrummed in the trees. Behind the clouds, the moon swelled, an amber smear of light.\n\n\"Did it ever occur to you that he could be bisexual?\"\n\n\"Knock it off.\"\n\n\"I'm serious.\"\n\n\"Bisexual?\" he said, shaking his head. \"I don't believe that. That's horseshit. He doesn't know what the hell he wants, so instead of talking about the real issue, he's blowing up about everything else.\"\n\nHector squatted beside the pool, dipping his hand before the jet. Chlorine tanged the air. I walked closer to him and smelled something like gin on his breath. Was that it? Could he have been drinking and had that set Peter off?\n\n\"So do you two have sex?\" I ventured.\n\n\"Sex,\" he laughed darkly. \"What the hell's that?\"\n\n\"Whoa,\" I said.\n\nHe looked up at me. His eyes were calm, impassive, barely concealing what he thought. He moistened the corner of his mouth with his tongue. He mumbled, \"That's none of your business, okay?\"\n\n\"I didn't\u2014\"\n\nHis face flushed. \"I ought to beat you to a pulp.\"\n\n\"Hey,\" I said, holding up a hand. \"Calm down, I\u2014\"\n\nTiny particles charged the air. Suddenly Hector was bending toward me. I froze, startled. Carefully, in small arcs, he started rubbing his whiskered jaw against my chin, humming something nameless. I pressed my fist into his stomach, pushing him backward. What was happening here? Then the minute I was sure that Peter had certainly seen us, Hector pulled away, grinned as if gauging my reaction, then walked toward the head of the pool.\n\nMy head was pounding. Then all the outlines colored in: the shambles of the grounds, the biting quiet between them. No wonder this place had felt so much like home.\n\n***\n\nBefore the night was over I'd told him everything about my time with William. I told him about the many nights spent lying awake on the living-room carpet, while William slept soundlessly up on the sofa beside me. I told him about the times I'd gathered the will to make love to him when he made it patently clear he didn't share my interest any longer, lying still, silent, refusing to respond. I told him about the sex party to which he'd taken me a few nights before I'd left, his ill-founded notion that that would pacify me. I even told him that despite our infrequency, our lovemaking was good, so unbearably good that it always meant more than it was supposed to, that soon after we'd finished, I was inevitably filled with the most numbing sense of loss, the quietest loneliness and grief, wondering why it had to be so complicated between us.\n\n\"It's funny how someone like that can screw you up for the longest time.\"\n\nHector nodded. He sat in the lounge chair across from me, wrapped in a towel. He looked off toward the umbrella pines, the broken gas lamp.\n\n\"I mean, I can't talk about this without getting all riled up. It's been months now. Aren't I supposed to be over it?\"\n\nHector raised his brows. His mind seemed to be elsewhere. \"So what finally got you to leave?\"\n\n\"I don't know. I didn't really plan for it.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"I think if I'd actually planned for it I never would have left. I'd still be there today. It's not like I had any money, or any place to go. You know the story.\"\n\nWe passed back and forth a single cigarette. We'd found a box of Camels on the table and smoked through the whole pack. I hadn't smoked much since my outings with Jane. My throat might have been sanded, scoured. Hector took the last drag, then tossed it off into the pool, orange ember hissing on the surface.\n\nWe'd have killed any guest who'd tried the same thing.\n\n\"One of these days I'm getting out of here,\" he said plainly.\n\nMy head emptied of thought. \"It's that bad?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"It might not seem like it, but I actually care about him.\"\n\n\"I'm sure you do.\"\n\n\"That makes it harder. That's why I've stayed around as long as I have. But, enough already. I can't be bothered with someone like that.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\n\"I'm better than that. I deserve someone better than that.\"\n\n\"Haven't you talked?\"\n\n\"He doesn't talk, period. He either shouts or shuts up.\"\n\nI nodded. I stared down at the shredded cigarette package in my lap, shuffling its pieces. He couldn't leave. \"I'd say stick it out. Give it a few more months, then see how you feel.\"\n\n\"I mean, it's hard not to take it personally. If someone had told me two years ago that I'd be involved with someone who stopped having sex with me, who had a girlfriend, of all things, I'd have said they were crazy.\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"But there's something about him...\"\n\nHe kept talking. The night dragged on. Whether or not I listened didn't seem to be the issue. He might have been me at another time\u2014I knew that worry, that quality of exclusion. But there was something unsettling about it too: we were all becoming too close. We might have been three wires, braided, intertwined, fully connected to one another. I looked up into the brightening sky, spotted a comet, some falling streak of light. I wasn't the right person to be told these things. Or was I? I looked at my watch: 5:45. Maybe I just needed some sleep.\n\n\"So what should I do?\" Hector said. \"You tell me what I should do.\"\n\nI sighed. \"You don't have any money?\"\n\n\"I'm broke, I'm totally broke. What savings do I have? Nothing.\"\n\n\"Just like me.\"\n\nHe winced. \"Two brothers in poverty.\"\n\nIf only for an instant, something almost unbearable drifted through my mind. I saw the two of us moving somewhere, together, New York, Seattle, London, Mexico City, changing our names, starting a life. There was nothing tying me down to this place. Peter, though upset, would eventually understand. He wouldn't be totally bereft. He had Holly, after all.\n\n\"Maybe it's just a sign of things ending. I should just buck up and dump him, but who wants to be the bad guy? Frankly, I'd rather be the one who's dumped.\"\n\nThe dew moistened the armrest. One by one the sprinklers sizzled on, flinging arcs of cold water across the glittering grass. I looked away from him, trying to keep the longing from my face. \"I have another idea,\" I said thoughtfully.\n\n***\n\nThe three of us stood at the county landfill, tossing things into the pit. The morning was hot, windy. Wood chips sprayed from the spout of a recycling machine. Across the pit a yellow bulldozer climbed across the little hills of trash, rolling forward, backing up, rolling forward again. The machines roared and ground their gears. A spoon glinted among the mounds of used tissue. It troubled and interested me for some reason\u2014that single instrument held up to so many mouths so many times, a little vessel of pleasure\u2014and I was tempted to wade down the garbaged slope to retrieve it.\n\nWe were in the midst of a great cleanup. Peter had suddenly decided to empty one of the storage rooms, the contents of which had suffered smoke damage from a fire months before my arrival. The clothes, in particular, stank. Though we'd washed them in everything from Borax to bleach, they resisted our efforts, clinging in defiance to their new soiled selves. The scent nestled into their very fibers. They weren't even worthy of the worst thrift store. I wasn't sure why this task couldn't have waited, especially since high season was only weeks away. I, for one, thought someone should have been staffing the desk, but I didn't voice my concerns.\n\nA good 90 percent of the clothes had been Hector's. With an exaggerated flourish, he tossed each article into the pit. His sunglasses\u2014aviators that had once belonged to me\u2014reflected the striated clouds, the chaos around us. He behaved as if the whole experience were of great significance, an elaborate ritual. He paused to remember each piece\u2014a sock with blue sparkles, a pink kimono, a T-shirt with a faded drawing of Mao Tse-tung\u2014as if each one had an intricate history attached to it. Then he sent it flying out over the ledge.\n\nHe draped a worn chartreuse shirt over his arm. Its collar was pointed, its buttons huge, even silly, the size of silver dollars. I couldn't stop looking at it.\n\n\"What?\" he said to me.\n\n\"That's an amazing shirt. You're throwing that out?\"\n\nHe shrugged. His face feigned indifference. \"I was wearing this shirt the night I went out with Jonas Pike. We were walking down the aisle of the St. Mark's Theater, and everyone, I'm serious\u2014I mean, fucking Joe Dallesandro was there\u2014everybody was staring at me.\"\n\n\"How come?\" I said.\n\nHe shrugged again. \"I don't know. I might have looked fierce. Or I might have looked like a street person.\"\n\nI glanced over at Peter. His face was drab, pensive. He made a point of extracting himself from our conversation.\n\n\"Could I have it?\" I asked.\n\nPeter exhaled, as if he'd reached his limit with us.\n\n\"What's wrong with keeping one thing?\" I said to him.\n\nPeter said, \"It's ruined. It smells. What are you going to do with it?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I admitted, then stared down at the muck on my shoes.\n\nI watched a truck dump a fresh load onto the desolate slope. The gulls were screaming above it. The truth was I didn't want to rile him anymore. He didn't deserve it. All morning I'd convinced myself that his mood had been prompted by seeing Hector and me by the pool. It was ridiculous, but it preoccupied me, threading in and out through my thoughts. Not to mention that I wasn't fully myself. We'd gotten in at six, and I'd had but two hours of sleep. I imagined circles, the deep violet of bruises, beneath my eyes.\n\n\"Maybe you're right,\" Hector said, still clutching the shirt. \"Maybe I should hold onto it for a while.\"\n\n\"That's it,\" Peter mumbled.\n\nWe both looked at him, utterly blank.\n\n\"Do you want to see what I think of my clothes? I'll show you what I think of my clothes.\" And with that, he dumped out his garbage bag, watching its contents sliding down the slope.\n\n\"I'm impressed,\" Hector said, deadpan, with raised brows.\n\nI didn't know how to react. He was more bothered than I'd imagined.\n\n\"He doesn't have a fleck of fun in his body.\"\n\n\"Let's go,\" I mumbled.\n\n\"Come here,\" Hector said to me. He stepped closer to the edge of the pit. The marl loosened beneath his shoes. \"Just come here for a second. This is amazing. There are twenty different versions of the same blue chambray shirt.\"\n\nI did as I was told. Hector was right. The shirts lodged against the side of an old washing machine.\n\n\"We don't like to be creative,\" Hector instructed. \"We don't like to take risks or exercise our imaginations. And when we go out to replace our clothes, we go straight to the Gap and say, 'Six stonewashed chambray shirts. Size Large, please.'\"\n\nPeter's eyes were shot through with an enormous sadness. I wondered whether he was going to start yelling. Instead, he strode toward the van in silence, waiting for us to finish up.\n\n\"Oops,\" Hector mumbled.\n\n\"Now we've done it,\" I said.\n\nBack at the King Cole, we immersed ourselves in the most taxing assignments, a penance of sorts: Hector attended to the twenty blinks on the answering machine, while I helped replace the charred wood of the storage room. I couldn't stop thinking about Peter, though. I couldn't stop thinking about his reaction to the shirt. Didn't he understand that things could be more than themselves? Wasn't that why we honored them, hoping to reclaim them: little emblems of change, loss? Why else was he putting so much effort into running this pit of a motel, a motel with its clerestories and tinted terrazzo\u2014all of which embodied something that was new during the era of his childhood, when the world still seemed ample with possibility?\n\nOr maybe his feelings were about something else entirely.\n\nHe watched me working. In truth, my skills were less than stellar. I'd bent nearly eight out of every ten nails I'd tried to drive into the plywood. They littered the floor, making a wreath around my shoes, tokens of my distraction.\n\n\"Could you hold the hammer right?\" he said finally.\n\n\"I am holding it right.\"\n\n\"Come on,\" he said. \"Grip the base, not the neck. That's it. Swing back, then aim.\"\n\nI followed his instructions. Once more, the nail bent, splitting the wood.\n\n\"God-damn,\" he cried.\n\nI wouldn't look at him. It was the first time he'd actually raised his voice to me alone, and the sheer force of his outburst, the pent-up pressure behind it, scared me, caught me off guard.\n\n\"Maybe if you started behaving like you dressed,\" he said, \"you'd get it right.\"\n\n501s, black T-shirt with cutoff sleeves. My leather motorcycle jacket lay crumpled in a heap beside me. There it was: the issue of my look again. \"What's wrong with what I'm wearing?\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said. \"I didn't say that. Forget that I'd ever said anything like that.\"\n\nWhat was this crap about my clothes again? Was it jealousy, a projection of his fears? Or was he still hearkening back to the drag of a few nights ago? Outside, the sun lay burning, trapped behind a curtain of dirty clouds.\n\nMaybe if you had it in you to fuck\u2014\n\n\"Are you upset?\" I said after a while. I'd had enough of this shit.\n\n\"I'm not upset. Why would I be upset?\"\n\n\"You certainly sound like you're upset.\"\n\n\"You're way too sensitive,\" he murmured. \"Here,\" he said, passing a Coke bottle to me. \"You must be thirsty. Drink some of my soda.\"\n\nI shook my head, declining.\n\n\"Drink it.\"\n\n\"I'm not sensitive.\"\n\n\"No, no, you're not at all.\" He smiled, attempting to diffuse the tension in the room. \"My God, you're still that touchy little boy.\"\n\nI went back to work. I gripped the hammer like he'd told me, this time driving the nail straight through the plywood without splitting it. I resisted the urge to say, \"See.\"\n\nBut I didn't have to. To my surprise, his eyes held within them a sadness, a regret.\n\n\"Listen,\" he said, stepping closer to me. There was a new smell about him: pine, citrus, shards of burnt wood. He exhaled. \"I'm sorry. I'm really, really sorry. I'm under a shitload of stress right now. Florida tourism's down 40 percent from last year. If I don't have a good season, I'm going to lose the place.\"\n\nHe had a point. In the last month, our regulars, many of whom were from England or Germany, had been canceling left and right after the murder of a British couple at an I-4 rest stop. It was as if the very name of Florida had instantly become the most fraught of metaphors: a brutal, ruthless jungle where innocent tourists were hacked to death.\n\nWas this what all his tension was about?\n\n\"How have things been between you and Hector?\" I asked.\n\nThe mere mention of his name, the mere yoking of them together in the same sentence, aroused a perceptible change in him. He might have been a cat: I actually saw his pupils shrink, then swell.\n\n\"What has he said?\"\n\n\"Nothing,\" I answered immediately. I'd done it now. What was the matter with me? My face flushed hotly.\n\n\"Everything is fine with us,\" he assured me. \"We've had some troubles, but everything is generally fine.\"\n\n\"Great,\" I said dully.\n\nHe smiled at me. I brought the hammer firmly down on another nail.\n\n# Chapter 17\n\nAlready I knew it was going to be one of those days. Sometimes you know it the second you wake up, if only by the feeble slant of light on the furniture, the smell of mildew in the room. Other times you know exactly what's wrong.\n\nFor the past day we'd hosted Fulvia Diaz, editor of a widely read travel guide. As a rule I hated these people. A tiny woman in tennis whites with a nasty helmet of hair, she seemed to be completely at home in her role as a walking irritation, expecting, even demanding me to be exasperated with her. Not only had she asked to use the desk phone for six personal calls, all of which were of a half hour's duration, but she'd ensconced herself in the lobby, holding court as it were, asking leading questions of our guests (\"Was your shower hot enough this morning?\" \"And what about that continental breakfast?\").\n\nI'd had about as much as I could stand when Peter phoned from another line.\n\n\"Still there?\" he murmured.\n\nThe TV blared. On The Weather Channel, Vivian Brown described a developing winter storm off Cape Hatteras. I whispered, \"Yeah, but she's going to check out the beach in a few seconds.\"\n\n\"Tigertail?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes.\"\n\n\"You told her about the shortcut?\"\n\n\"No, I told her to crawl on her hands and knees through the swamp.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Peter\u2014\"\n\nI stepped back behind the desk. She walked across the parking lot, head down, chugging her arms. She opened the door to her rented Lexus.\n\n\"So I take it everything's going well.\"\n\n\"Oh, she's just as pleased as pralines. She's got the nicest suite in the place, all the free gin she can drink, and she's tied up the line for hours.\"\n\n\"That's fine,\" he said. \"A lot's riding on her. At this point we need all the good press we can get.\"\n\nThe storm swirled on the TV weather map, a furious, spinning comma. Meanwhile, it couldn't have been any more hot and torporous here. The liriope wilted in the heat. Even the motors of the air conditioner felt sluggish.\n\n\"I, on the other hand, think the Vatican should start canonization proceedings on me.\"\n\nHe started laughing.\n\n\"I'm serious. She's been relentless, a real pain in the butt.\"\n\n\"Come on now.\"\n\nHis laughter only sparked my aggravation. \"Why did you give me the desk, today of all days?\"\n\n\"What did she say?\"\n\n\"Oh, some crack about hospitality management. It doesn't matter, it's just\u2014\"\n\n\"I apologize.\"\n\n\"It's\u2014\"\n\n\"I said I apologize.\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\" I gazed up at the weather instruments\u2014thermometer, barometer, rainfall gauge\u2014over the desk. \"I just hope I never have to see that walleyed shrew ever again.\"\n\nI turned. My whole body went cold. There she was, standing before me with shining forehead. A manic smile spiked her face.\n\n\"Better go,\" I said, then hung up.\n\nShe passed her key across the desk.\n\n\"How much of that did you hear?\" I said, too shocked to be polite.\n\n\"I've seen just about as much as I need to see, thank you.\"\n\nMy tongue felt frozen in my mouth. \"Is something the matter?\"\n\nHer jaw clenched, then relaxed. She seemed oddly relieved, as if I'd delivered what she'd truly wanted. \"I said, thank you. I'll fax your entry by the end of the week.\" And with that, she turned and left through the door.\n\nI held onto the edges of the desk, immobilized. My hands were trembling, wet. My toes felt icy inside my socks. Once a few minutes had passed I walked up the stairs to Hector's room.\n\n\"Open up,\" I said.\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"I think I really fucked something up.\"\n\nThe door opened, and he led me to the couch. I was beside myself, mixing things up, halting, recasting my sentences. All the while Hector lounged on his side in a red union suit unbuttoned to his stomach, absently rubbing his crotch, his chest. A lazy, half-smile settled on his face.\n\n\"Get over it,\" he said finally.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"She's not going to run us out of business, and if Peter wants to believe that, that's his problem.\"\n\n\"But he needed this to work out, and I had to open my great big mouth.\"\n\n\"Listen to yourself,\" he said with some irritation.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Why are you so freaked out?\"\n\nI exhaled through my nose.\n\n\"He should have been working the desk,\" he said, \"and you know it. Why was he letting Little Miss Travel Editor walk all over you?\"\n\n\"So\u2014\"\n\n\"So he could absolve himself of responsibility if something went wrong, okay? I'm tired of watching you running yourself down like that. Here,\" he said, flinging something onto my lap. His grin was sly, complicated. \"Enough of that horseshit. I've been cleaning up. Look what I found.\"\n\nA dog-eared magazine lay across my knees. Beneath its title\u2014Man's Favorite Sport!\u2014two dark-haired men, stripped to their waists, lay embracing on an unmade bed, open mouths locked together. In the corner, within a yellow starburst, appeared the words: XXX Rated, Non Violent Explicit Pictorals\u2014Adults Only.\n\nSomething frigid pooled inside my stomach.\n\n\"Look inside,\" he coaxed.\n\nMy face flushed with blood. I wouldn't look at him.\n\n\"Come on.\"\n\nI finally flipped open the magazine. On the first page, the older guy, a big, muscular lug with stubbled jaw, sucked the dick of the younger, a weasly type with tattoos and a ruddy dick. On the next page their roles were reversed. On the next the older, now in a ribbed sleeveless jersey, was crouching on his hands and knees, face to the floor, reaching back for the kid to plow him. The shoot might have taken place in some Long Island motel room, the dark paneling, macrame wall hangings, and leopard bedspread adding a cheesy kind of authenticity to the scene. I imagined a nuclear plant humming across the street, steam billowing out over a glassy bay, a dead fluke floating on its surface.\n\nIt wasn't long before Hector was seated next to me, knee pressing into mine. I didn't know whether to inch away or to lean my weight into him. I went with the latter. Heat swarmed in my groin. \"What were you doing with this?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"Doesn't everyone have a little stash?\"\n\nMy chest hammered. If I were only at ease, I would have enjoyed this. It wasn't like I'd never looked at this stuff before. But it was different to be looking at it with Hector beside me.\n\n\"Now that's some killer porno.\"\n\nHe couldn't have been more casual. He might have been some old man showing off his fishing gear.\n\n\"I mean, look\u2014not a pretty boy or a gym rat in the bunch. See that mussed-up hair, that little scab on his back?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"These new photographers, this slick shit\u2014they would have airbrushed that out. And that's why the new porno sucks.\"\n\nThe magazine's narrative continued. On the fourth spread a skinny young guy in a brown UPS uniform barged in, to the amusement of the two guys on the bed. I paged forward, absolutely immersed. Someone might have been speaking directly into my ear: a murmur, a whisper. And then it occurred to me that the visitor was none other than Hector himself.\n\nI was absolutely speechless.\n\nHis knee ground deeper into my leg.\n\n\"What the\u2014Oh God!\"\n\n\"Well,\" he said, a little sheepish, flustered. He pressed his fist to his mouth. \"Are you surprised?\"\n\nI gazed at his torso, the ropy, idiosyncratic dick. That smile\u2014oddly complicated, disarming. His image shivered with life. It was hard to connect the Hector beside me to the Hector in the magazine.\n\n\"You never told me about this,\" I said finally.\n\n\"Yes, I did.\"\n\n\"Did not. You never said a word.\"\n\nHe wagged his head. \"If you only yanked your head out of the clouds\u2014\"\n\nI shouldn't have been at all surprised. But it did surprise me, and I couldn't help but wonder why he'd kept it from me. Some things you don't forget.\n\nIt turned out that Hector, twenty years old, had moved out to San Francisco to stay with a trick he'd met on the 21st Street Beach. It didn't take long to realize that the trick was full of hot air, that he already had a boyfriend, and Hector was out on the streets, with five dollars in his pocket. He'd wandered into a bar in the Tenderloin, where he was approached by a middle-aged man with a pocked face. \"I'll give you a place,\" he said, \"if you say yes to some pictures. Naked, I mean.\" Desperate, he went home with the guy, who, to his astonishment, led him to a room of his own. But the guy had big plans for Hector. Within weeks he was appearing in two videos a week, and was making enough as a hustler to live in North Beach, in his own two-bedroom apartment, with enough hibiscus and bougainvillea to remind him of his mother's yard in Hialeah.\n\nMy left eyelid pulsed. I'd seen him once before, maybe many times. Wasn't he Al Parker's partner in the video I'd once watched at the arcade?\n\nI paged ahead, entranced. All that brightness and heat, all those urgings toward\u2014Come here, they said. Come with us.\n\nHector laughed, testing my vision, moving his palm before my eyes.\n\nThen footsteps down the hall.\n\n\"Shit,\" I whispered.\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"Is it Peter? It's Peter, isn't it? Shit, fuck.\"\n\nWe sat in absolute stillness, listening. Coins fell; a soda can knocked, tunneled through the machine. A ziptop stripped, then mouth to metal. Fizzing.\n\n\"Guess not,\" I said, rubbing my face with my palms.\n\n\"Easy.\" Hector clamped his fingers around my wrist. \"Easy.\"\n\n***\n\nI waited till I was alone.\n\nI dug down deeper in my bed, relaxing.\n\nWhat other feeling could measure up? What other thing could smash me apart so beautifully, thoroughly? I might have already pulled the needle from my vein, drawing it out, waiting for its effects, heat seeping into my muscles. Once I said yes to it, that was that\u2014loneliness, fear, death, loss: all of it gone, running off into a wilderness. I was solitary, myself, a pure, driven thing. No past, no future. I imagined lying over him, holding onto his hands, tongue working, eating up a trench from his belly to his throat. His skin tasted of salt water, leaves. His dick pressed upward into my chest, grinding.\n\nWhy else was he showing me his pictures?\n\nI couldn't help but laugh sometimes.\n\nI wandered into the bathroom, wet washcloth to my face, breathing. I glanced up at myself in the mirror. My bottom lip, fat, ticking; my face, older, paler, harsher than I'd expected.\n\nSeventeen: slouched beneath the dark palms, waiting for William to walk across the lawn.\n\nMy hand wandered through the curling hairs of my belly. I cradled my dick, testing its weight, heft, fullness. I felt my stomach again. The skin was hot. Groping higher: something swollen, tender. A hardness. Scab? Blister? I kept pressing, probing it with my fingers.\n\n***\n\n\"Did you see this?\" Peter asked.\n\nWe were standing behind the front desk, 7:07 a.m. Peter fumbled through the rack of incoming mail, gestures animated, jerky. I smelled the coffee on his breath. He behaved like he'd been up and around for hours.\n\nIn my hands I held the fax from Fulvia Diaz.\n\nWhile most renovations wipe out the past, Peter Sarshik's King Cole Motel serves as an homage to Clem Thornton's former Boca Palms showplace. Not only have the odd details been lovingly restored (stucco friezes of gladioli and water jets, starfish, seaweed etched into plate glass), but there's enough decay in evidence\u2014e.g., rust stains around the pool, sulfurous tap water\u2014to make it all seem real. Check out the pastel disks of the walkways. Check out the aerodynamic design of the Nurmi wing (tell yourself it isn't moving a million miles an hour). Have a blended drink at the pool bar. And be sure to introduce yourself to Evan, the handsome, affable desk clerk.\n\n\"I mean, she really got it,\" Peter said.\n\nCould she have mixed something up? What stucco friezes? What seaweed etched into plate glass?\n\n\"This'll help us. I know this'll help us.\"\n\nI gazed out at the browning papyrus through the window. The light outside was glassy, overcast. She had to have mixed something up. \"I thought I'd pissed her off.\"\n\nHis eyes hazed over. \"You never told me that.\"\n\nI read through the fax again. At least she'd called me handsome. \"Did you have sex with her or something?\"\n\n\"Funny.\"\n\n\"Well\u2014\"\n\n\"I mean, she mentioned your name. I thought you'd be thrilled.\"\n\nI yawned, shrugged. \"I'm thrilled.\"\n\nThe truth was I hadn't been getting enough sleep to care very much about some travel editor's opinion. I lay in bed, wide awake, four, five in the morning, thinking about Hector.\n\nHe looked at me strangely. \"I'm going outside to work on the storage room. I've been on a roll. Call me if you need me.\"\n\nI stared outside at the gleaming inadequacies. The pocked leaves of the aurelia. The yellow mineral stains on the walls, fan-shaped from the sprinklers. Some-one had to have had sex with her. Not two minutes after Peter's departure the phone rang. I lunged for it, alarmed. \"King Cole, how may I help you?\"\n\n\"Peter?\"\n\nSilence, breathing. A woman. Holly.\n\n\"Listen, I thought it would be nice if you came over Friday night. I mean, Ory's going to be with my sister, and I thought we'd grill some shrimp. We'll have a nice quiet night together. How's that?\"\n\nA lump in my throat. I cradled the handset, frozen, until I was able to breathe again. \"Sure,\" I said finally, \"I'd like that.\"\n\nSilence again. In the background, Ory chattering about box turtles. \"Do you have a cold?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"Good. I'll see you Friday, then.\"\n\nMy head tingled darkly. I hung up the phone, rapt, listening to Hector's bare, perfect feet on the floor above me.\n\n# Chapter 18\n\nThe swelling still hadn't subsided.\n\nI kept telling myself not to panic. How many times had I acquired a cold, rash, or virus only to watch it fade, to learn it was just what it was, not a harbinger of something larger. It was life: one got sick, then healthy. Sick, then healthy. Who could even pass through a single hour without battling all kinds of imperceptible threats? Cooling systems, doorknobs, mosquitoes, standing water\u2014all of them birthing pools for potential hazard. If only I saw what was happening, saw how efficiently my body was burning, fending them off, I'd have much better things to think about. Instead, I'd willed myself indomitable. I'd gotten to the point where I'd refused to get sick, where I actually believed I'd acquired the ability to purge illness from my system, if only to prove to myself that I was well.\n\nDidn't I have a little swelling once before? Didn't I think it was something greater, before it passed on to nothingness?\n\nOnce I'd welcomed the first signs of a cold. Sickness was a tent, a house, a warm dark blanket wrapped around my aching bones. Game shows droned on the TV. Palms blurred through the windows. Ursula wandered in and out of my room, cool hand to my scalp, passing me a cup of broth or pineapple Jell-O. She liked these times as much as I did, her worries focused to a single point. There was nothing else in the world: no Sid, no Peter, only her care and my sickness. Compassion, an absence of complication. We were never any closer than this.\n\nIt would never be so simple again.\n\nWhen my worrying had gotten out of hand, I decided to approach Hector. I stood outside his apartment door, walked away, then back again. Would he think I was needy? Were my visits too obvious, or frequent? I stood there, paralyzed, mouth sour, listening to him puttering with some papers. Finally, I knocked.\n\nI said, \"Could I show you something?\"\n\nHe nodded. He was standing, thick arms folded, looking at the snapshots he'd just tacked up above his desk. On the top, Julia, his mother, standing before the exploding Mount St. Helens\u2014her smile huge, red, lipsticked\u2014volcanic ash clinging to her shoulders. Beneath her, two men on a beach\u2014shirtless, muscular, eyes flashing with laughter\u2014arms wrapped tightly around each other. Beneath them, a young black man\u2014almost pretty\u2014with solemn blue eyes and beaded necklace, squatting before the great globe of the Unisphere in Flushing Meadows Park.\n\n\"Who're they?\" I said, pointing to the couple.\n\n\"Don and Miguel.\"\n\n\"They're adorable.\"\n\nHe nodded. He passed through the stack of snapshots, assembled them with a rubber band, placed them in a drawer.\n\n\"I mean, they're not kids, but they're really, really handsome.\"\n\nHis smile clenched. He looked amused. \"I knew them for ages. Miguel, the shorter one\u2014he was my lover for two and a half years.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\nWe both looked over at their picture. Together, they seemed so radiant and self-contained, so oriented toward a future, that I couldn't help but feel included. They unsettled me, too. They reminded me of the fact that I'd never believed in the possibility of my own future, how my lack of faith had infused all my decisions, a low-grade fear and rage burning at the heart of everything, from why I'd stopped going to the dentist to my lack of organization to my hasty decisions about college, money, boyfriends. Wasn't it better to extinguish oneself than to lose one's light, little by little? Wasn't this what all those silly rock songs told us? But looking at them, I felt differently. It isn't so bad to get older.\n\nI said, \"Why is it we only see pictures of young men? All these magazines. You might think queer life was only for kids. What about the older guys?\"\n\n\"What older guys?\" Hector mumbled.\n\n\"Hmm?\"\n\n\"They're dead. Don and Miguel\u2014all these older guys are dead.\"\n\nMy stomach pitched. I thought of their contentment, their absolute confidence in each other. They'd known what they'd wanted: how could anything not have gone their way? Something fleeting coursed up the column of my spine. I might have been lifted, for the briefest instant, off my feet.\n\nOutside, the palms were drenched with an oddly golden light.\n\n\"What were you going to ask?\" Hector said.\n\nMy swelling pressed against the waistband of my jeans, resisting it. Blood hummed, murmured within my veins. I looked at him: there really wasn't very much time.\n\nI'd make my move on Friday.\n\n\"Would you mind cutting my hair?\"\n\n\"I'm tired,\" he said.\n\n***\n\nMy haircut was growing out, stray strands curling over the tops of my ears. It required more maintenance than was initially promised. Though it didn't need to be combed or washed every day, it looked dingy if it wasn't cut once a week. I looked more like my old self, the diffident, milky self I'd been before Hector had gotten a hold of me. But it didn't matter now. The swelling on my belly was healing, along with all those ghastly feelings I'd attached to it.\n\nStill, I felt distracted, possessed by an emptiness I couldn't name. Wasn't there someone, someplace in the world, who was being told that he or she was dying right at this very minute?\n\nLate Friday afternoon I walked into the Nurmi wing, where Hector had room duty. He was studying the bottom sheet of a bed, checking it for stains, sand, crumbs, or offending odors, deciding whether or not to change it for the next guest. I knew the ploy; I'd practiced it myself on occasion, though it was a lousy one. From the boom box, Laura Nyro wailed at top volume, pounding out parallel triads, Motown-style, on the piano.\n\nI stood inside the doorway, watching the deliberations crossing his face. Then he glanced upward, startled. \"Would you mind cutting my hair when you get the chance?\"\n\n\"Huh?\" He turned down the volume.\n\n\"I said\u2014\" And I repeated my question.\n\nHis brows lifted. He swigged from a can of watermelon soda. \"I'm really busy.\"\n\nHis response, however subtle, carried an accusation: I was demanding, pushy, self-absorbed. But I'd never asked him for anything.\n\n\"I mean, could it wait?\" he said, face thawing. \"This is a bad time for me. Maybe Tuesday?\"\n\nI tried not to be miffed. I pulled one side of the bottom sheet, helping him fit it around the corners of the mattress. He replaced Laura with Kate Bush's Lionhearted album. \"What about that barbershop in Naples? Have you heard anything about it?\"\n\n\"Porkchop's?\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\n\"He's pretty good,\" he replied, glancing up. \"And cheap. I've gone to him one or two times myself.\"\n\n\"Well, thanks,\" I said, too loud, forced.\n\nI walked down the hall. It hadn't occurred to me that I was asking for much. Five minutes, not even that. After all, wasn't he the one who'd insisted I'd look better with a shaved head? And wasn't I the one who'd been sprucing up his rooms, which had seemed increasingly flagrant in their ineptitude, just to keep him in Peter's good graces?\n\nI stood at the window in the eastern stairwell. I watched Peter standing in the parking lot, waiting for something. I couldn't stop staring at him. It seemed to me that his entire story was encapsulated in his waiting, from his jerky glances toward the road, to his nearly constant pacing, to his wringing hands, which he kept twisting and pulling as if they hurt him. He was nothing but uncomfortable in his own skin, and it was the loneliest thing I'd ever seen, and it repelled and frightened me, knowing that we were a part of each other.\n\nWhen I couldn't stand it anymore, I trudged down to the office, swiped the key ring off the rack, and walked outside. Over the Gulf, clouds hurried toward the south, swarming, tornadic.\n\n\"I'm taking the van,\" I called to Peter.\n\nThe breeze lifted, blew through his thinning hair. His eyes looked impossibly green against the palms. \"Where're you going?\"\n\n\"Haircut.\" And before he could insist I didn't need one, I shifted the van into reverse, and headed north.\n\n***\n\nThe sky darkened as the squall line approached. I was lost somewhere inside Golden Gate Estates. All the streets bore numbered names, qualified by quadrant directions (Northwest, Northeast, etc.), and I couldn't quite remember whether it was SW 130th Street or SW 130th Place. I pored over my memory of Peter's address book. It troubled me to think that anyone actually lived here. Like its better-known sister, Cape Coral, the landscape was jungly, dense, overrun with escaped tropical species\u2014Brazilian pepper, Chinese tallow, punk tree\u2014not a shred left of indigenous beauty. It was the kind of place that wasn't civilized enough for comfort, nor remote enough to point up the pleasures of solitude. The axle bumped over a tiny sinkhole in the street. There was no point in continuing on.\n\nJust then I spotted her gold Tercel. It sidled up alongside a long, narrow trailer in which all the lamps inside were on. A funnel of light illuminated the front yard. To my surprise, Ory, her six-year-old, was sculpting sandcastles beside a weaving pyracantha bush.\n\nI slowed the van to a crawl. \"Storm's coming,\" I said through the window.\n\n\"Lightning,\" he said, pointing a plastic shovel to the sky.\n\n\"Yes. It's dangerous. Do you know what happens if you get struck?\"\n\n\"Boom,\" he said, throwing up his hands.\n\n\"Does your mom know you're outside?\"\n\nThe boy nodded avidly, then smacked at the sand with his shovel.\n\n\"Ory,\" Holly said. She stood at the screen door in a black T-shirt, cutoff jeans, and motorcycle boots. Her hands were fisted on her hips. She squinted. \"Who're you talking to out there?\"\n\nI couldn't leave now. In truth, I'd only wanted to see where she lived. I'd only wanted to see the trailer, then get the hell out of there.\n\nHer smile revealed her upper gum. \"Peter?\"\n\nI froze, stricken.\n\nShe stepped closer to the van. \"Peter?\"\n\n\"It's Evan,\" I said finally, and looked away.\n\n\"Oh my God,\" she said, breathless.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"I didn't have a clue. I've only seen you from a distance.\"\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\"I mean, your hair's shorter, and you're a lot younger and all that, but\u2014\" She exhaled through her mouth and stared. \"Say something.\"\n\nI frowned, waggled my head.\n\n\"Please. Say something.\"\n\nI mumbled, \"What do you want me to say?\"\n\nShe started laughing, a little pained. Her eyes were vibrant. \"You even sound like him. Oh my God. This has to be, like, the weirdest experience of my life.\"\n\nWe stared. I had no business here. I should have gotten my hair cut.\n\nHer face quieted down. The wind picked up, palmettos scouring the surface of the trailer. \"Do you want to come inside?\"\n\n\"No,\" I said. \"Just out for a little drive.\"\n\nShe laughed knowingly. Her absolute familiarity with me was both unsettling and comforting. \"Yes, Evan. You just happened to be driving through beautiful Golden Gate during a severe thunderstorm warning, a full thirty miles from the King Cole.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Oh, just for a minute. Come.\"\n\nShe placed her arm around me as we walked toward the door. I wiped off my boots on the grass mat. \"It's so good to finally meet you,\" she said.\n\nInside, the trailer was as long and narrow as a boxcar. Nearly everything had a dual purpose: a sofa that opened up into a bed, a coffee table that doubled as a chest. On the table stood a tiny lamp, no taller than a wine bottle. The whole space was possessed by the spirit of order, a spirit determined by its limitations: one thing left out and the place would be a mess.\n\n\"So's it time to go to bed?\" she asked Ory.\n\nHe was sitting on the floor, looking up at me on the sofa, curious and amazed.\n\n\"Ory?\"\n\nHe stuck out his lip, showing off the linings of his eyelids, then shook his head no.\n\n\"Stop that,\" Holly said. \"Don't make monster faces at Evan. He's our friend.\"\n\nOry's face relaxed. He reached up, fingers scrabbling toward my belt loop.\n\n\"Oh,\" Holly said, and smiled. \"I know what he wants.\"\n\nI stood, picking up Ory. He was almost weightless, lips moist, sticky against my cheek. I kissed him back, bouncing him slightly. I wished I felt more at ease. His grasp tightened around my neck, flooding me with self-consciousness.\n\n\"Okay, that's enough now,\" Holly said. \"Time to say good night. Time for bed.\"\n\n\"Good night,\" he said to me.\n\n\"Good night, Ory,\" I said.\n\nI watched them walk hand in hand down the hall. I wandered over to the mini-china closet, an oversized toy, and glanced at the clear green tumblers on the shelves\u2014the free kind from service stations\u2014while Ory fussed and sobbed in his room. I looked at his pictures on the wall. Ory, at one, fed by an unseen hand, chocolate syrup smeared all over his mouth. Ory, at two, standing at a dock, eyes shining, holding a minnow in his palm. Ory, at three, in a straw Hawaiian hat, brim swallowing up his head. I kept staring at his face, the narrow forehead, the benign smile, pure and unassuming as a dolphin's. My stomach hurt. A queasy notion passed through my mind: Ory was my brother's son.\n\nThe rain picked up, pelting the windows. This was Peter's separate, hidden life.\n\nI roved down the hall to Ory's room. He was still crying, squealing, voice pitching higher with each explosion of thunder. Water pooled on the sills, seeping through the cracks. Holly perched on the edge of the bed, eyes merry, twinkling, but clearly within two seconds of coming undone. I stepped through the dump trucks on the floor, past the wooden blocks and the spotted pink anaconda. Bright tempera paintings covered the walls, edges curling inward.\n\n\"He's scared,\" Holly said.\n\n\"Am not,\" he said, face pressed to his pillow.\n\n\"Are too.\"\n\nHe gazed up at me with a single eye.\n\n\"But you liked it outside,\" I said to him.\n\nHe pressed his face to the pillow, shook his head no.\n\n\"Be still,\" I said, then turned off the lights. \"Be absolutely still.\" I motioned to Holly, and we climbed into bed, lying on either side of him, bodies tight. Ory flipped over on his back. The trailer rocked and pitched, wind nearly wrenching it off its footings. The lightning was upon us now. I pictured the palms outside flaring up, one after the other, blazing around us like torches.\n\n\"Shhhhhh,\" I whispered. \"It's taking our picture.\"\n\nThe room flashed. Ory frowned, whimpering.\n\n\"Look, the sky's taking our picture.\"\n\nIt flashed once more, and then again and again. Ory's eyes widened in the dark. And the three of us leaned into one another, breaths falling into sync, various smells commingling. Warmth passed from body to body, a single unit now.\n\nGradually, the storm subsided, thunder fading to a distant hush. The branches outside stilled, dripped. Moonlight poured through the room, illuminating Ory's mobile, his finger paintings. Down the hall clothes tumbled in the dryer.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Holly whispered.\n\n\"I can't believe he's actually sleeping.\"\n\n\"He likes you.\" She sighed hugely, then held herself with her arms. She lay absolutely still, eyes closed. I imagined a heaviness\u2014the weight of a truck tire\u2014pushing down upon her chest.\n\nI whispered, \"Are you okay?\"\n\n\"Listen,\" she said, \"do you mind if I kick you out?\"\n\n\"No, no. Not at all.\" And I didn't, actually. The roads would have drained by now. It was time to get home.\n\nShe turned on her side. \"Am I being rude? Tell me if I'm being selfish.\"\n\n\"Don't worry about it.\"\n\nHer smile was enormous, melancholy. \"I'm glad you understand. This was very nice.\" She reached over Ory and latched her damp fingers through my own. \"Let's get together sometime soon, okay?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"And tell your brother I'd love to hear from him.\"\n\nI nodded again. My chance: should I tell her about the call, that I'd pretended to be Peter on the phone? I straggled by the potted fig, rubbing my thumb across a dust-coated leaf.\n\n\"What's the deal?\" she said in a hushed voice, as if talking aloud to herself.\n\nI turned to look at her again. Coward: I didn't say a word.\n\n\"It's just\u2014\" She stopped. She seemed hopelessly, utterly baffled.\n\n\"He cares about you,\" I said, surprising myself.\n\nShe shook her head. \"It's not like I'm going to get anywhere with him. I should have known what I was getting into.\"\n\nMy ear felt hot, as if I'd knocked it against a post. To myself, I counted backwards from 100, trying to calm down: 99, 98, 97... \"I mean, he really cares about you more than you know. He's crazy about you. You're all he ever talks about.\"\n\nShe glanced downward at her crossed legs. A dog barked at regular intervals in the distance. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes, really.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"But what?\"\n\nShe lifted her face and looked at me. Her eyes were dolorous, hopeful, full of feeling. \"What does he say about me?\" she murmured.\n\nI touched the cooling silver of her bracelet. Her wrist felt warm as if she were running a temperature. \"You have to ask him that yourself.\"\n\nShe sighed. Her eyes rested on the sleeping boy beside her.\n\n\"Tomorrow night,\" I said. \"Come over tomorrow night. Surprise him. Come for dinner. He'd love to see you, I know it.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" she said quietly. \"You're right. You're absolutely right. Why have I been such a wimp about everything?\" A triangle of light illuminated her face. Her eyes looked calmer, grateful. I might have granted her a wish.\n\nI walked back to the living room, where I glanced at the TV. I knew it now: everything would work out for the best. I'd get Hector, Peter would get Holly and Ory. I'd make sure of it. We'd all be thankful and relieved, kinder, calmer. Another front was lining up over the Gulf, weather map pulsing, all greens and reds, blinking like a Christmas tree.\n\n***\n\nHis plan was this: he'd walk into our respective rooms, pause before our sleeping bodies, then smother us with a pillow. He'd listen to the gulp, stammer, and wheeze of our closing-down systems. Then silence. An absolute reverence. I'd be the first, the harder one. I'd resist, yelling out, driving my fists into his chest. Hector, on the other hand, would be the shocker. He'd take to the pillow, almost tenderly, like a lover, almost welcoming that choke, that heightened sensation before the heart stills then floods. Peter would pause, pondering the drip of the bathroom sink. He'd call up the police. He'd fix himself some coffee, basking in the numbered minutes of his freedom, bare feet up on the coffee table. Minutes later, he'd hear the squad cars pulling over the potholes in the drive. Daybreak.\n\nI woke up, panting. I crept to the window, eyes foggy from sleep. The yard was a reservoir, a lake. Paint cans floated across its surface, loose boards and boxes, all of them drifting, drawn by the imperceptible suck of the culvert.\n\nIn the morning, Peter and I sat at the office table, silent. My T-shirt clung to my back. He reached for the box of corn flakes. He poured them into a bowl, spooning them into his mouth, determined to finish them off, not allowing himself to acknowledge that they were stale, virtually inedible. I knew that he was losing money by the day, but this was about something deeper. He might have been our father. I saw it all: his self-denial, his secret cultivation of martyrdom, his exquisite selfishness, his stubborn indifference toward those affected by his decisions. My rage pushed up against my chest, a hard metal plate. I stood, then glanced at his thinning crown before I left the room.\n\nI had to stop. I walked through the corridors, listening to the water streaming through the rainspouts. I thought about what I'd liked about him, what made him interesting, valuable. I thought about his complete devotion to restoring the King Cole property, his ability to bestow all his attention upon a single window, sanding its frame for days on end until it was nearly perfect. I thought about his various interests\u2014the paintings of Richard Diebenkorn, the designs of Luis Barragan\u2014how he most likely knew more about these things than anyone else on the planet. I thought about his measured, good-natured rapport with our guests, how he'd once sat for two hours with an elderly couple after the man had experienced chest pains, convincing them he was actually interested in the subtleties of fly fishing, all in an effort to calm them down. But I couldn't hold all these thoughts in my head at once, and the pictures were already crumbling about the edges, no matter how hard I tried to keep them intact.\n\nWhy is it that I hate you so much?\n\nHe was everything I didn't want to become: stingy, closed down, secretive.\n\nI slouched around the pool that night, watching the lights blazing beneath the water. The rain had finally stopped, the ground swollen and sipping. Water lapped over the edge of the pool; the overflow made gulping sounds. Holly's gold Tercel was parked haphazardly on the grass beneath the royal palm, and I gazed up at the light in Peter's window, wondering what was happening between them\u2014love or argument, anguish or boredom? A tiny plane jetted across the dome of the sky.\n\nThen something popped.\n\nI looked up. In an instant a spark sizzled across a wire, traveling between the light pole and the office. It was all of ten feet. It happened so fast that I doubted myself\u2014flashes: detached retina?\u2014before it happened again. I couldn't stop watching. That subtle blue movement: it was as pretty as it was unnerving. My eyeballs ached from its brightness. And then the line sparked again.\n\nWhat dark fortune: my luck couldn't have been better.\n\nI pushed at the door to the stairwell. I bounded up the steps, two at a time, then ran down the hall to Hector's.\n\n\"Hi,\" he said, eyes foggy, half closed. His T-shirt said PUNCTURED. He looked like he was about to lean forward to kiss me. He grinned. The sweet smell of hashish fermented the air, drifting out into the corridor to be taken into the valves of the air conditioner.\n\n\"Did you look out the window?\" I said.\n\nHis face dulled slightly. \"What?\"\n\n\"Come here.\" And I grabbed him by the arm, pulled, stepped over the rumpled clothes on his floor. We stood together at his window, watching the wire, hushed, expectant. The quiet blue flashes lit up his face. We were motionless. Were we just seconds away from feeling the floor heating up, burning through the soles of our shoes?\n\n\"Shit,\" he said.\n\nI folded my arms across my chest. \"We have to tell Peter.\"\n\n\"He hasn't seen it?\"\n\nI shook my head, hard. \"No. We have to tell him. Now, right now. Move.\"\n\nAnd before he could say we'd handle it ourselves, I was leading him down the hall, nearly pulling him toward my brother's door. My chest pounded. My forehead boiled. Hector reached for the knob without bothering to knock.\n\n\"Peter, there's\u2014\"\n\nI stood directly behind him. He didn't process it immediately. Peter lying atop Holly, movements furious, ass gyrating, clefting like an opened fruit. They didn't stop. Peter glanced over his shoulder. His hairline filmed over with sweat. A rank human sweetness saturated the room: it almost had a taste. Holly's nipples were unusually large and dark, the deepest pink, unutterably foreign to me. She seemed to be too embarrassed to cover herself.\n\nSilently, Hector closed the door.\n\nThe line stopped sparking only two minutes before the fire department arrived in full force, radio blasting, beams of red light whirling about the courtyard.\n\nIt didn't happen till the next morning, but when it did, it was worse than I'd imagined. I watched it all from my window: Hector standing on the second-floor balcony, gazing down at Peter, whose arm held her close to his chest, escorting her to her car. \"You're an asshole,\" Hector called out hoarsely. \"You're a low-life fucking asshole.\" Peter looked up once, stricken, then looked back at Holly, who covered her face before opening her car door. Was this what I'd wanted? It hurt me as much to see it. I felt it deep inside my soul, burrowing.\n\n# Chapter 19\n\nI didn't think he'd still count. I didn't think I'd still think of him, but I did, often in the least expected moments. I might have been walking through Port Royal, immersed in the particularized order of a rose garden, and\u2014bam\u2014there he'd be in black leather and chains, throwing stones at me. Or a little farther up the street, squatting atop the bank in the lewdest position, dressed in harness and jockstrap and pretty clothes. I'd be startled for an instant, a dense high crackling like a brushfire inside my head. And then it would pass. He was back in Miami, working the camera at Channel 7, forever settled in his banal, tired habits, which he'd embrace for the rest of his life.\n\nI wouldn't see him again. Of that much I was sure. I wasn't so deluded to think there had ever been a chance anyway. Together we amounted to nothing: two specks, ground glass, empty bags blowing across a backyard lawn. At best, we were only an idea, and though the idea might have thrilled us with its daring, we were hardly daring. I couldn't say our time together had been a mistake, but some things are better left an idea.\n\nStill, if I thought hard enough, I could conjure him. The texture and taste of his back, sweaty and rich, as he came in from the garden. The trembling board of his stomach, brown, vascular, from light years of situps. In my mind I could play him, use him like a doll. My fury spun wild. I could poke out his eyes. I could spray him down with paint. I could strike up a match and toss it at him, watching him running through the woods with his hissing scalp, miles and miles, looking for water, screaming my name.\n\nI walked up Tamiami Trail, two in the morning. Cars careened up the highway, broken fenders dragging up little storms of blue sparks. It surprised me that he still mattered. He kept flaring up: a gas fire, a torch in the center of a cracked path, forcing me to reckon with myself. It seemed to me that I'd been shutting down, that I'd once again relegated myself to monkdom. Sometimes it seemed that the issue of sex had all the force of something much larger than myself, a huge moving glacier that threatened to run me over, consume me with its force. What the hell was I so afraid of? I could convince myself that the search for a lover\u2014or frankly, just someone to fuck\u2014was fraught with such risk and pain that the inevitable mess wasn't worth it, that it was easier to stay enveloped in my own fog, beating off to muscled images from magazines that had nothing to do with reality. Was it that I was truly afraid of happiness, of what I really wanted? Of what was so easily within reach?\n\nI was sitting across the street from a park. The palms were totem poles, their shaggy petticoats hanging lushly in the dark. It was getting hotter. Humidity funneled up from the tropics, coating everything with a slick wet net. Everything smelled of moisture\u2014the grass, the trees, the streets, the buildings. I glanced down at my arm. I wouldn't have been surprised to see a fresh mold growing on my skin, thick enough to be scraped off with a butter knife. At times like this I saw the whole Florida experiment as one vast error; the notion of an entire existence modeled after the one in the North seemed doomed to failure.\n\nTwo teenagers were running across the grass, diving near the sprinklers to cool themselves down. Deeper in the woods I saw the outline of a man. He situated himself in a glade of mock oranges, half hidden beneath a limb, only his vaguest outlines visible. He was tall, sturdy. I tried not to stare at him too intently. I pretended to watch a cargo truck with huge yellow letters bucketing down the street. When I looked up again, I noticed that he'd taken one step closer. There was no question that his eyes were fixed upon mine.\n\nI knew what was happening. Behind him, submerged in the dark trees of the park, were other men, all watching, waiting. It seemed nearly incredible that I'd delivered myself here of all places, but I wasn't about to question the destiny of things. I stood, conscious of the leaden weight in my legs, my trembling hands. Before I allowed myself to recognize my fear, to dwell in the moment of my essential ambivalence, I was walking toward the stranger, staring directly into the glare of the streetlight.\n\n\"William,\" I said aloud.\n\nMy words caught like crumbs in my throat. He pulled me toward him. In no time at all he'd taken off my shirt, and I was lying down on the grass beneath him, the stones digging into my back. His tongue was rough in my mouth. He worked a dry finger inside me, and I drew in my breath, resisting. I wasn't sure if I wanted this. He was going to murder me, I thought. We were going to be caught or he was going to murder me. I shut my eyes. I saw myself in a plane, looking down at a scar in the earth, an open pit filled with water the color of sewage. The plane circled the pit. A parachute opened, and then I saw myself slipping deep into the water. The stranger lifted me to my feet. He smelled of solder, burnt things. I looked into his grinning face, the gap between his teeth. I felt oddly moved by that for some reason, and he reached for my dick, holding it tight, tighter, and that did it\u2014I crumbled, my back going tight, my legs giving way, and then the release.\n\nI slouched against a palm, listening to the struggle of my breath. The man's footsteps crunched on the gravel. I recognized something, though I wasn't quite sure what it was. Where was I? I stood in the shelter of the glade, watching the man stumbling back to his car. I tried not to be absent. I waited until he was completely out of sight, then wiped myself off, walked over to the Trail, and hitched a ride back to the King Cole.\n\n***\n\nI stood on the abandoned golf course, watching Peter dismantle the old cabana, an outbuilding from the Clem Thornton Boca Palms days. The building inspectors had been hounding him for months, insisting it a hazard, in danger of collapse. I didn't know what had possessed him to finally take on the project now, at nine in the morning, in 88 percent humidity, but nothing he did alarmed me anymore. He worked the prybar into a seam and pulled. The rotten plywood crumbled like foam in his hands. I thought of people who'd become possessed of extraordinary capabilities in times of crisis, sandbagging their properties for thirty-six hours straight to save their livestock from flood. His energy reminded me of them, though I didn't know who or what he was protecting.\n\nI stepped beside him and pulled at a loose sheet. Grit blew through the air, catching in my eyes. I blinked it away. He kept pulling down the structure, holding in his breath, deliberately ignoring my presence.\n\n\"Not like that,\" he said finally.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"See what you're doing?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"You don't have the right tools.\"\n\nTermites crept over the brittle wood, tensing their clear, sticky wings. \"Calm down, will you?\"\n\n\"Gloves.\" He pointed at the nicks in my fingers.\n\n\"I didn't bring any.\"\n\nHe batted a mosquito from his brow. \"Listen, why don't you check out the pool?\"\n\nI tightened my fist in my pocket.\n\n\"I'm serious. It's been raining for days. It's bound to need some chemicals.\"\n\nHis eyes were vivid, sea green behind his safety glasses. He was wary of me now. Would we talk about the other night? Did he have any idea I'd partly set it up? Secrets, secrets.\n\nI trekked across the grassy slope. I imagined him nameless, a worn silver surface where his features had been. He wasn't himself anymore. He was emptied, a phantom. And all at once I knew what he was becoming for me. He was everything that stood between me and what I'd longed for, everything I'd ever lost and never had. He was my relationship with William\u2014failure. He was my relationship with my parents\u2014failure. He was my fear of the future\u2014failure\u2014my shame, the absence of love and trust\u2014all of them tied up together in one sticky knot. But I wasn't about to start fussing with it now. I might have been a whirling hate machine, hot wind blowing through my blades, spinning me around so fast I could have lifted off the ground, and then what?\n\n***\n\nA little after midnight I spotted Hector within the illuminated rectangle of the pool. He drifted around on a red rubber raft, turning imperceptibly like the hand of a clock, nudging himself from the sides with the ball of his foot. I couldn't stop watching him. I eyed him from the darkness of my room through the torn fronds of the travelers trees, murmuring his name.\n\nI walked to the pool in my green swimsuit. I stood on the ledge for a moment. The water bubbled, teeming, alive, a container of light.\n\nI'd waited long enough.\n\nI dove in. I swam all the way down to the pool lamps, kicking forward, then up, up, water whooshing, churning inside my nostrils, ears. My eyes burned. I moved beneath the raft\u2014a submarine!\u2014and knocked him off. \"What the fuck,\" he cried. His arms thrashed. His drinking glass sank\u2014dream-like, slow-motion\u2014to the bottom. I grabbed for his swimsuit, pulled it down, as he fought me off, pounding my back, laughing, bewildered. We faced each other. I reached for his dick and looked in his face. \"What?\" he said, shier, more vulnerable than I'd expected. \"What?\" I squeezed him tighter. A tingle in my groin. \"Give up,\" I said. \"Give it up. Let go. This isn't any surprise. You know exactly what you want.\" He sighed all at once, eyes closed, a little smile on his lips, shoulders letting go, dropping forward. He laughed softly. I pulled him toward the shallow end. I had him now. My moment: I wasn't going to waste it. I knelt, water sloshing around my neck, and took him inside my mouth. I sucked in a breath through my nose, throat full. Good, so good: I raised my chin. I rubbed his stomach, squeezed the tough pink nub of his nipple. Skin, musk, hair, the moist rich darkness\u2014everything focusing, everything centering in us. He bit into his lip, winced. \"Yes,\" he said, and swayed above me. \"Ah, yes.\" My head knocking his belly. His palms pressing harder to my ears, blocking out the sound.\n\nA rushing inside my head: a downpour.\n\nHow long did it last? An hour? Fifteen minutes? Five? Time dilating, opening up like an aperture.\n\nThe backs of his legs clenched. Something scalded my shoulder. When we finished, we both started laughing, soft at first, then louder, more raucous. We shook the water from our hair. \"Jesus,\" he said.\n\n\"Oh God.\" I backed up to the rungs of the ladder and fought for my breath. What had I done? I couldn't believe what I'd done.\n\n\"It's all right,\" he said. He kept blinking, rubbing his temples with his fingers.\n\nI exhaled through my mouth. The windows around us were dark, curtained, everyone sleeping soundly in their rooms. The fans of the air conditioners rattled in unison. I heard voices in their drones, scraps of songs, harmonies. Stars blazed, rotating above our heads. \"So I'll see you tomorrow, then.\"\n\n\"Good night, you.\"\n\n\"Good night.\" I swam to the opposite wall\u2014heart banging, triumphant. I pulled myself out of the pool, and ran, shivering, all the way back to my room.\n\n***\n\nI couldn't sleep. I lay on my humble bed, sheets kicked to the floor. Floodlights poured through the curtains. The room felt hot, sealed off. My mouth tasted like a bandage. A thousand thoughts stampeded through my head. I pulled on some shorts, hooked my flashlight to my belt loop, and left.\n\nI walked down the Trail. I walked to the west, through the vast, vacant city until the sky blued, until my feet hurt in my shoes. Branches bearded with moss. Ghosts crashing in the trees. Shapes, souls. Something was ringing inside my head, a fire alarm: You can change your life, you can.\n\n***\n\nThe van lurked behind the office. We swung onto the backseat, leather scorching our legs. Two p.m. Roasting, a sauna inside, the floor cluttered with coupons, wrappers. Our sunglasses steamed up. I crouched, facing him on the seat, palms pressed to his jaws. Air stifling, too thick to breathe. I pushed my tongue between his lips, tracing the ridges on the roof of his mouth, the softness, his teeth.\n\nI cradled the pouch of his jockey shorts.\n\n\"Here?\" He laughed, bewildered, as if afraid of me. \"You've got to be crazy.\"\n\n\"Yeah, here,\" I said.\n\nHe cleared his throat, swallowed. He shook his head. Then he unzipped his own pants, lifting me inches above his lap.\n\nA stab. I yelped, clenching, breathing, then balancing myself, grabbing onto his shoulders. His skin whitened beneath my fingers. I coughed. Little by little, we started moving. Wet, sloppy inside. Sweat rivering down my torso.\n\n\"Like that?\" he said.\n\n\"Like that.\"\n\nThe axles flexed. We kept moving the van that way, squeaking, working it, almost laughing at our audacity.\n\n***\n\n\"Are you all right?\" said Peter one day.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"You look a little strange,\" he said, tilting his head, considering. \"Around the eyes. Have you been getting enough sleep?\" His breath felt warm, like the heat off a candle, on my cheeks. He stepped closer, so close that I almost fell backward.\n\n***\n\nHector and I floated in the pool one night. No talk. My suit floated off on the surface, an empty bag. Our mouths fastened. We were circling, hands pushing at each other, muscles tensing. I wanted him closer. I studied his face: that scar beneath his ear, those fleshy pink lips. How to get him closer? How to get deeper inside the body? Our bodies. I tried hard as I could to inhabit it, us, closing my eyes, frenetic. A fluttering in my gut. Deeper, I thought, concentrating. Deeper. A well: the water inside the well. Icy, burning. Down, down, down the dark ladder. His stubbled jaw rubbed against the grain of my chin. Shuddering, my eyes opened. I pictured something rising off Hector, a dark violet cloth, the size of a handkerchief, floating upwards.\n\nIt occurred to me we were most likely causing someone pain.\n\nWe were up to our shoulders in water, chlorine burning in our nostrils. I pressed my mouth to his shoulder. I might have bitten right through to the bone, hurting him, leaving a mark like a tiny animal trap.\n\nI glanced toward the nearest wing. There were rustlings from the rooms, vague murmurings and the occasional cough. A jalousie window cranked closed.\n\n\"Did you hear something?\"\n\nHis brows drew together.\n\n\"I'm serious. I think someone might have been watching.\" I looked off toward the buttonwoods, the acacia, the loquat. Peter? \"Hey, somebody there? Who's out there?\"\n\nHis eyes were solemn, dignified. Garbage trucks lumbered down the Trail. And, if only for an instant, looking at the smudgings of his cheeks, the slight sag beneath his eyes, I imagined him older, sixty. \"Everyone's been in bed for hours. Stop worrying.\"\n\n\"I'm not worried,\" I said.\n\nHe hefted himself up onto the raft, belly scuffing against rubber, hands scooping, paddling away from me.\n\n# Chapter 20\n\nDay 21. Agitators, vandals; we did it anywhere, in the most outlandish places: the utility passage, the floor of the conference room, the hood of a guest's sedan within full view of the pool. Always testing our nerve. Always amazed by ourselves. My body authoritative and deft, my thoughts fluid. I was beside myself with\u2014what? Bliss? Joy?\n\n***\n\nMy head buzzed. I imagined him standing behind me, arms around my chest, chin wedged between my shoulder blades, wiggling it, telling me to trust him; yes, of course, he felt just like I did, of course. He was crazy about me. I meant the world to him. His breath heated my spine. I curled back into him, eyes closed, purring like a cat. But why so many fragments, scraps in my head? Why this persistent, gummy absorption: the almondy taste of his fingers, the smell of his scalp already growing fainter and fainter?\n\n***\n\nHector crooked his elbow over his face, feet wide apart, in imitation of a vampire. Together we stood outside the laundry room. The dryers rushed and spun inside, throwing out their heat.\n\n\"Dracula?\" I said.\n\nHe made biting motions toward my neck. He raised his upper lip: fangs, plastic Halloween fangs.\n\n\"This is supposed to be funny?\" I said.\n\n\"I'm used to seeing you only at night, that's all.\"\n\nIt occurred to me that I'd been avoiding him outside of our \"dates,\" for lack of a better word for them. Just the merest sight of him had started jostling my demeanor. \"Shhhh\u2014\" I pointed to Peter's hunching back through the office window. He leaned forward over the desk, talking on the phone, taking notes furiously upon a legal pad.\n\nThumb pressed to the roof of his mouth, he pulled out the fangs with a quick suck. \"I thought you were through with being afraid.\"\n\nMy voice stopped in my throat. Instantly I saw it: he wasn't anxious about me at all. His stance, his wry, ironic gaze\u2014it was as if nothing substantial had changed between us.\n\n\"I've got rooms to finish,\" I mumbled, then hurried down the walk.\n\n\"Evan, wait, wait.\"\n\nI sighed hugely. I didn't turn.\n\n\"Do you want to drive into Fort Myers this afternoon?\"\n\nThe glibness. How could things be so easy for some people? Whoever said life was supposed to be so flippant, so casual? My eyes fixed upon a sea-almond pod in the dirt. \"Some other time.\"\n\nNights later, I came in from the pool, hair wet, shivering. I lay facedown on my bed with my clothes off. The air conditioner ebbed, droned. I couldn't catch my breath. I had every reason to be ecstatic, energized, relaxed: didn't I finally have what I'd been longing for? Didn't I finally know the elusive pleasures of the body? How far away those days with William seemed. How far away those days of loneliness, panic, yearning. Yet even the most fundamental tasks required a terrific will. No energy. I couldn't even finish my sentences. They stalled on my lips, dissolving in my mouth like sugar cubes, while my listener waited for me, puzzled, impatient. My room was a mess, my floor strewn with T-shirts and towels. I hadn't gotten my hair cut in weeks. No books, no tending trees. I'd become so lax in my duties that I was surprised that Peter hadn't let me go by now.\n\nI cleaned the first-floor rooms one day. One of the guests had left behind a pack of Lucky Strikes, and I started smoking them, one after the next, as I vacuumed the worn carpet. I left my cigarette on the air conditioner. Not three seconds later the curtain above it started smoking. I tore it off the rod, stomping it, swiping it with my sneakers until I was certain the fire was out. The flames had chewed and charred it, eaten off its edge. It seared my palms as I tucked it the closet. I sprayed a half-can of Glade around the room, and still I smelled the smoke, gloomy and acrid, stinging the membranes of my nose.\n\n***\n\nThe old sample house glowed. We'd brought with us four orange flashlights, and I'd propped them together on the warped floor: a centerpiece. They cast their warm glow onto the rotting studs, the unfinished ceiling. Fat sacks of Dursban hulked beneath the windows. We'd just finished, and we lay there on the floor, lingering, listening to the ospreys in the swamp\u2014a departure from our routine.\n\nI was lying on my side, running my thumb along his jawline. His face looked unusually pensive, aquiline.\n\nHe turned on his side. \"Well, you're affectionate this evening.\"\n\nThe tips of my ears blazed. A judgment? I felt foolish, as if I'd violated some invisible code.\n\n\"I'm sorry. That wasn't very nice. It's just\u2014you care about me?\"\n\n\"No, like\u2014\" I sat up. Blood rushed from my head, blackness falling before my eyes.\n\n\"We have to talk.\"\n\nI looked at the ceiling, willing any reaction out of my face. I was motionless now, a puppet, a cartoon, a stick figure. I steeled myself.\n\n\"I'm worried about you,\" he said finally.\n\n\"I'm perfectly fine.\"\n\n\"It's like this means too much to you.\" He shook his head, faltering. He dragged his tongue across lower lip. \"You're a very sweet boy, a very good friend to me. But you need to get harder, tougher.\"\n\nHis voice was impossibly quiet, almost tender. One of the flashlights toppled on its side, beam swinging across the ceiling, down the wall, to the floor.\n\n\"I don't understand.\"\n\nHis eyes darkened, burning now. \"We're having sex, all right?\" His voice got louder, tinged with a warning. \"It's just sex. I'm not your boyfriend, I'm not your lover.\"\n\nA welling, a heat gathering in my throat. \"I see,\" I said finally.\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\"And you're making this decision for the both of us?\"\n\n\"I just want to make sure we know what's what.\"\n\nI couldn't hide it any longer. I flexed my toes until they popped inside my shoes. At once, a door yawned open beneath me. My stomach fell. Bright lights flashed above, taking my picture. I felt astonished and exposed, to him, to myself.\n\nI wanted to pummel his back until he wept.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" he said.\n\n\"Have a good night, pal.\"\n\nMy back teeth might have cracked apart. Sweet boy, I thought. Good friend. I shook my head, left the emptied house without another word.\n\n***\n\nHope: a pop, a lightbulb blowing out.\n\n***\n\nI woke at three one morning. A party was in full swing across the courtyard. The door was off its hinges; inside sat a boom box on the bathroom counter, bass line thudding. The proceedings spilled out onto the grass. The kids stomped, throwing back their heads, flailing their arms. An occasional scream lashed the gusty, gelid air. A girl ran out the door followed by a guy with the widest shoulders I'd ever seen. He tackled her to the grass, and amidst her protests, poured beer foam down her impossibly white back.\n\nThe idea of a party at this minute in the world seemed completely beyond my comprehension. I fell back asleep.\n\nI cleaned up the mess first thing the next morning. My rage and longing fueled me, helping me work faster and faster. An unrolled condom stuck to the headboard like something ghostly, mysterious: a jellyfish. As I cleaned, the radio announcer described the late-night shooting of a local teenager in the Crossroads Mall parking lot. His voice was flat, clinical, as if he were reading off a grocery list.\n\nWhen I finished, I sat at the desk, reached for a piece of motel stationery, and started writing as fast as I could.\n\nHector,\n\nHow not to sound like an asshole, a fool?\n\nQuestion: what is it you feel for me? When I look into your face, I think, well, of course, of course. And then I'll see you walking across the blacktop, cocky, not even a hello from you. And what you said the other night: fuck you. Do you think we're going to keep this up?\n\nYour indifference makes me want to yell.\n\nI want to smear myself in it to show you what it looks like.\n\nI'll get up again: don't doubt that for a second. As for you\u2014\n\nI can't get anything done.\n\nI read what I'd written three times, crossing out words, writing over them. The pen pressed deeply through the paper. Idiotic, ridiculous: nothing sounded authentic to me. Then I ripped the page in two and flushed it down the toilet.\n\n***\n\nHector was up earlier than expected. He strode back and forth from the Dumpster to the stairwell, gestures infused with an unexpected energy. This wasn't like him: he usually didn't get moving till ten or later, not till his two cups of cafe con leche. After a few minutes I followed him up to his apartment. Everything was packed up in boxes along one wall; snapshots were stacked on the desk.\n\nSomething gnarled in the root of my neck.\n\n\"Want this?\" he asked.\n\nHe offered me the chartreuse shirt with the pointed collar and oversize buttons. It was the very shirt we'd retrieved from the county landfill, to Peter's protests, many months before.\n\n\"Why would I want your shirt?\"\n\n\"What about these things?\" He walked across the room, picked up a magenta House of Field shopping bag. Inside an assortment of gadgets, postcards, magazines, doodads, gewgaws.\n\n\"What's going on?\"\n\n\"You're going to freak,\" he murmured.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Peter's onto us.\"\n\n\"Peter?\"\n\n\"Peter knows that we've been fucking around.\"\n\nSomething rumbled in the distance\u2014a plane crash? Forest fire? I watched his wiry back through his white T-shirt, the muscles rolling gently in his arms. My adrenaline surged. I brought up my hands to my face.\n\n\"He sat me down last night and said that he'd heard us together in 209.\"\n\nI whispered, \"But that was last week.\"\n\nHe nodded firmly.\n\nI tugged at the skin on my wrist, twisting it. \"Oh God.\"\n\n\"It's no big deal\u2014really. He seemed perfectly sane about it.\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"He just wants me to leave.\"\n\nThe laugh that came out of me was ridiculous, raw\u2014a splutter.\n\nHe fastened the buckles of his knapsack. He lifted it once, testing its weight. \"I'm going back to New York. I've already made the arrangements. I'm staying with my friend Juany.\"\n\nMy eyes wandered about the room. The thought of it emptied seemed outrageous, dreadful to me. The gnarl spiraled deeper into my neck. \"You can't just leave,\" I said.\n\nHe moistened his lips. \"I talked to my old boss last night. Believe it or not, I have my old restaurant job back.\" He smiled now, the brown of his eyes brightening, pupils haloed with amber. \"Actually, I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be good for me.\"\n\nMy eyes fixed on the wall where his snapshots had been. Already they'd left crisp white squares where the sun had yellowed the paint around them. I'd memorized their positions: Don and Miguel, Julia before the steaming volcano.\n\n\"What's the matter?\" he asked, glancing over his shoulder.\n\nI grabbed his forearm, looking him straight in the eye, and twisted it behind his back. He gritted his teeth and winced. The cords of his veins tightened in his arms. \"You almost seem grateful,\" I said.\n\n\"Hey,\" he cried.\n\nHe shook me off, frowning, stomping off. He raised his brows, face cautious, bitter, aloof.\n\nI studied his scuffed boots on the floor. Against my wishes, my eyes started to fill, flood. I pressed the small of my back into the wall. \"Jerk,\" I said, sliding slowly down to the floor tile.\n\n\"Don't\u2014\" he said.\n\nI sat there for a while, watching him rolling his shirts. I'd ruined things. So why not push it further, see how far I could go? I'd crawl around in the muck if I had to. A snake in the slough, a vole. Let him be disgusted by me.\n\n\"I'm coming with you. I'm going to run up to my room to pack some things. What should I bring?\"\n\n\"Stop\u2014\"\n\nI folded my arms. The light in the room shifted, leaves quivering outside, golden, polished, as if a front were passing through. Drier weather.\n\n\"So I was just dreaming this up, then?\" I said finally.\n\n\"Evan,\" he said, a kindly, pitying look in his eyes.\n\nAnd then I knew. Something thorny pierced the surface of my skin, right through to the center of my chest. My heart felt hot, too big for my body. A cold breeze sluiced through the room.\n\nHe picked up his boots, then tossed them off to the side. \"My plane's at six-thirty. Would you do me a favor and let me finish, and then we'll talk about this?\"\n\nI wouldn't look at him.\n\nHe wrapped his arm over my shoulder, holding me tight. I tried to shake him off, but he only gripped harder. His shirt had a smell: dust, fabric softener, cigarette smoke. I almost kissed him on the mouth\u2014a challenge, a protest\u2014before he let me go.\n\n\"Meet me at four outside the office. We'll say our good-byes then.\"\n\n\"So this is it?\"\n\nHe shrugged. \"Evan, this isn't the end. Get a hold of yourself. Buck up.\"\n\nI walked out the door. I wandered through the woods for hours, walked all six miles out Pan American to the ruined marina. The water in the cove looked smoky, brackish. A dead fish swelled on the surface like a piece of foam. I pulled up a weed and tore it apart in my hands.\n\nWhen I made it back to my room, my body felt emptied, oddly spent, cleansed. But tired, terribly tired. I stepped before the sink and splashed water onto my face. My eyes were red, my muscles sodden. There was something on my bed: Hector's House of Field bag. One by one, I laid the various articles out on the floor with a kind of awe\u2014a map of Las Vegas, Laura Nyro's Gonna Take a Miracle, a leather wristband, a postcard of the Lady Bunny milking a cow, a Crown and Anchor Townie Pass, shirts, jeans, hats, belts\u2014trying to make sense of them, pondering their connections.\n\n***\n\nHe was gone, once and for all: I'd finally admitted it to myself. He was lost: the one I'd been before I'd left home, before William. It was hard not to think him stupid, insignificant. It was hard not to wish him out of existence. The one who believed he held a secret so extraordinary and vast that he couldn't possibly tell anyone, not even his best friend, Jane. Who believed that once he broke away from his parents' judgment and silence he'd find someone to love, and love him back, and his real life would begin. Who felt an inordinate pleasure, an electrical current, when another boy just happened to brush up against his shoulder. Who believed that once he moved past his initial awkwardness and grief and grew into himself, his life would continue to offer him reward after reward.\n\nI thought of his eager, dark face, that enormous secret behind his eyes. I didn't know what to call him anymore. Dead now. It seemed remarkable to me that he'd ever been called Evan.\n\n***\n\nAt four o'clock I stayed behind in my room. I busied myself with my reading, wearing my chartreuse shirt with the pointed collar. I glanced once through the blind. He looked up toward my window, before he swung into the cab's backseat. I turned away, imagining its lozenge-shaped taillights growing smaller down the driveway. I was determined not to watch. Go, just go. Enough already. I refused to have another ending in my life.\n\n# Chapter 21\n\nI stood at Peter's open door, holding onto the frame. He sat upon the bed in jeans, unbuttoned denim shirt, and cricket cap\u2014all of which appeared to be too small for him. Were they Hector's? His chest pearled with sweat. Outside the window, an elaborate white bird\u2014an anhinga?\u2014took off for the sky.\n\n\"Do you have a minute?\" I said.\n\nHe nodded evenly.\n\nAll I needed was to look at him. Something rumbled and chugged inside my chest\u2014orange, molten. I couldn't let it out\u2014wouldn't unless I had to. \"I'm not very good at these things,\" I said, wetting my lips, standing at the window. Around the pool a towheaded boy pulled a red wagon with a missing wheel, its back axle scraping the asphalt.\n\nThe small of my back needled. \"What's wrong with you?\" I said.\n\nHe blinked. His eyes brightened, their rich green going bluer all at once.\n\n\"You let Hector go, just like that,\" I said.\n\n\"You were doing all his work for him.\"\n\n\"That's not why you fired him. Hector, Holly. What's going on in your head?\" My voice sounded hoarse. I started shaking inside, just slightly, cold now, as if I'd downed a pint of something frozen. My arms prickled. I kept them hidden behind my back so they wouldn't give me away.\n\n\"Keep it quiet. There are guests in the next room.\" His jaw shifted. He pushed it out, attempting to harden his face. He glanced down at the bed, the stained sheets on which Hector and I had lain a few short weeks ago. \"What's the gist of all this?\"\n\n\"Secrets,\" I mumbled.\n\n\"I beg your pardon?\"\n\n\"I can't live like this anymore.\"\n\n\"Secrets,\" he repeated.\n\nHe stood before me with his hands in his pockets. His face was dark. I couldn't tell whether I was making any mark on him. I pictured myself holding a struck match in the room, and the whole place blowing up from what it contained.\n\n\"And you?\" he said.\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"What makes you think you're any more direct than I am?\"\n\nThe skin vibrated around my lips. My mouth parted, astonished, as if someone had punched it. I imagined it swelling, a rich hurt purple.\n\n\"I'm not like you,\" I said.\n\n\"You don't have any secrets?\"\n\n\"I'll tell you anything.\"\n\nHe walked to the window, hands working in his pockets. \"So what about Hector?\"\n\n***\n\nWe floated around the motel pool for as long as we could stand it, determined to push ourselves. It was dark. We tried to talk about Mom and Dad; we tried to talk about Hector\u2014but thick with emotion, we couldn't say much. Our tongues fattened in our mouths. Stubbornness. We stared at each other, lockjawed, ashamed. The pads of our fingers wrinkled. After an hour, we hefted ourselves up the ladder.\n\nSecrets, secrets: welcome to Sarshik's House of Secrets.\n\nThe sprinklers cooled the flower beds, the little piles of mulch. We walked up the outside steps to the second floor. On the landing, Peter stopped and turned to me. \"Didn't I tell you he was going to be trouble?\"\n\n\"Who?\"\n\n\"Hector.\"\n\nMy thoughts stalled. A gibbous moon hung suspended in a cloud.\n\n\"Didn't I? Didn't I try to help?\"\n\nWe stood together on the landing. I wanted him to stop, to talk about something else, any-thing else, when all at once he was looking at me, eye to eye, standing even closer. My scalp tingled. A pungent, sweet scent wafted off his shoulders. He put his arms around me, embracing me in spite of all my tightness, my resistance. His breaths were warm, oddly comforting upon my neck. He was alive, thrillingly human and real. I gave in to him; I held him tighter. Blood hummed beneath his flesh. My love was so fierce that I felt giddy with it, woozy, a little sick. Then it all started pouring: how I'd have done anything to be him once; how I'd have copied his handwriting, dressed like him, spoken like him; how I'd have waited outside the bathroom door for him just to catch his gleaming wet flanks; how I'd even have died for him, jumped off the roof, or at least pretended to, laughing, the city stretching out just for us like an offering, a bed of candy.\n\nI looked down. Below us, a rolling, scraping sound, and the child I'd seen out the window earlier was pulling his broken red wagon again. He stopped, turning his face up to us (eyes shocked, pale; strawberry-blond bangs) as if he'd listened to our every word. He sat on the curb, put his head down, and pressed his hands together.\n\nAn edgy muteness from Peter. He looked away from the boy, shy now, reserved.\n\n\"What?\" I said.\n\nThe streetlight shined on Peter's forehead. He lifted his face to me, wearied, corners of his mouth raised. A smile?\n\n\"Why didn't you tell me about Ory?\" I said quietly.\n\nHe tilted his head as if puzzled.\n\n\"Ory,\" I said. \"Your son.\"\n\nThe muscles relaxed in his jaw. His tongue pushed his bottom row of teeth. An \"uhh\"\u2014something abrupt, strangled in his mouth, then just as quickly he stopped himself, swallowed, squinting. He moistened his lips. He looked at me harshly, briefly. He took a firm, calming breath, then walked up the steps.\n\n\"Peter.\"\n\nHe turned right, striding down the long dark hall, shoes trundling.\n\nThe soles of my feet trembled. I followed. \"Wait.\"\n\nHe paused outside his room and stared downward at the knob. He wrenched his head to the left, opened the door, walked inside. Shut now. The deadbolt clamped. A hushed, liquid wind passed over the roof, then stillness, rest, a single cricket screeking in some corner.\n\n***\n\nDays passed.\n\nI spent most of my free time walking, trudging out through the sawgrass behind the resort. The sky changed as many times as my moods, one evening a brazen pink, the next the deepest indigo: clear funnels\u2014waterspouts\u2014swirled deliriously above the coastline. The longer we were apart, though, the more I dreaded seeing him again. No resolution, no change. The days felt wide and ponderous, emptied cathedrals in which a clock ticked. I walked deeper and deeper into the swamp. The muck\u2014the color of pumpkins\u2014sucked at my sneakers.\n\nA postcard of an East Village restaurant arrived for me in the mail. Postmarked from Hialeah. I stopped my packing, looked at it for the longest time: a dark cellar with cherry-red upholstery, ceiling strung with a thousand blazing white lights. I projected an ebullient crowd into those rooms: glasses clinked, curries spiced the air. Hector weaved in and out through the cramped tables, brow creased, superior in expression, holding a tray high above his shoulder. Someone was laughing. And just as quickly everyone was gone, their collective absence making a rushing sound like space.\n\nHe'd scribbled on the back: a temporary address, then Forgive me. I miss you.\n\n# Part  \nThree\n\n# Chapter 22\n\nWith the little money I had, I rented a car and drove off for Miami.\n\nMy first stop was the airport. A red radar grill spun ominously on a pedestal. Pulpy clouds shredded across the sky. Out where the runways ended I knew of a place where you could watch the jets landing. I'd spent hours there when I was twelve. I'd ride my bike after school, all ten miles up Dixie Highway, in and out through the bus exhaust and the brake lights, timing it so I'd get there in time for four o'clock, when the L1011's from New York and Philadelphia and Detroit and Chicago landed one after the other in a great continuous chain. All my anxieties\u2014about my parents, school, Peter, my growing yet unnerving interest in my friend Luke Oosterhuis, about whom I'd started to fantasize\u2014all of them seemed to disperse as I lay motionless on my stomach, staring up as the landing gear descended, that massive sound rumbling in my bowels. I stopped the car, got out. The bare flesh of my arms prickled. When I screamed, only a dry noise came out of my throat.\n\nThere were other places. I drove past my high school, through Coconut Grove, underneath the dual signs of the Everglades Hotel and the Coppertone girl. I drove past Dadeland, the Woolworth's, Miamarina, the old Dusty Cartwright Dairy Bar\u2014now shuttered and festooned with graffiti. I drove past the islands\u2014Rivo Alto, Star, and San Marco. I drove down Coral Drive, which only a few short years ago had bisected a drained swamp, an empty prairie, but was now surrounded by vast tracts of Lennar Homes. I should have been troubled or angered, but the truth was the land had already been wrecked, and if it wasn't this, it was going to be something else: a dog track, a shopping mall. a gambling casino, a jetport, a virtual reality entertainment park.\n\nWelcome. Welcome to South Florida.\n\nMy thoughts scrambled. The houses I passed seemed to take on richer colors, yellows and deep blues, until they weren't houses anymore but complete worlds in which I imagined intricate dramas were being played out. In the first house a second-grader was sitting at the kitchen table with her mother, explaining to her with great kindness and trepidation that she couldn't bear living with her new stepfather. In the second an oral surgeon was lying atop his wife, whispering in her ear that he loved her more than anyone in the world, even though in two short weeks he'd be charged with fondling a female patient seconds before he extracted her wisdom teeth. In the third a teenager smoked crack for the very first time, curled up on the bed of his childhood, shocked and frightened by how much he liked it, how much it admitted he wanted to be extinguished. In the fourth a young couple knelt before a framed portrait of Jesus, holding hands, their heads bowed, murmuring, petitioning God to return the world to the safe place it once was.\n\nI drove by Kevin St. Ledger's old house on Avenida Santurce. I thought about my father's initial explanation for its suddenly emptied rooms. \"Kevin blew away.\" It wasn't till I was six or seven that I'd realized he'd said something else entirely, that I'd misheard him: \"Kevin moved away.\" But it wasn't quite the same. For years after I refused to let it go, the image of the weightless, mysterious boy drifting, scuttling upwards over the neighborhood like a leaf.\n\n***\n\nWilliam's lawn was as lush as it ever was, washed and pristine, smelling of minerals, fertilizers, hose water. The house had been painted apricot. The sprinkler heads pivoted and locked above the grass line, coughing once, misting. Leaves glistened. A tiny red bird flitted her wings inside the head of a palm, frantic and joyous at once. I slumped further down in my seat, fingered the letters of the steering wheel. A thin dust powdered the radio dials, the stickshift knob, the air-conditioning vents like a coating of sugar. I brought it to my lips and tasted. Was I ready to do this? A quick cramp in my side, a stitch. I slumped even further. Did I need any more grief in my life?\n\nThen I started up the walk and knocked at the storm door. Prisms sparkled in the arcs of the sprinklers.\n\n\"Hello, William,\" I said, my head down.\n\n\"Evan? Evan?\"\n\n\"The one and only,\" I said with a weak smile.\n\n\"What on earth are you doing here? Come inside. Come in, you, come in.\"\n\nHe laughed ruefully, warmly, a relief. I concentrated \"authority\" into my expression, but it kept falling from my face, my loneliness welling up inside. But he seemed to read my thoughts. Did he feel it too? He put his arm over my shoulder and drew me into the house.\n\n\"You've lost some weight,\" I said. \"You're looking good.\"\n\n\"Thanks.\" He stepped back from me and appraised my new look: the shaved head, the hacked-off sleeves. My forehead went hot above my brows.\n\n\"How strange to see you. I was just thinking about you the other day.\"\n\n\"Really?\"\n\n\"Someone walking past the college gates. Someone with just your kind of walk, you know, that hard little bounce, that really guy walk, and I thought, Evan. That must be him. But when I looked over my shoulder...\" He shook his head. \"Not nearly as cute,\" he said, with a nervous smile. \"I like the haircut, by the way.\"\n\nSomething scratched behind the bedroom door. William hurried down the hall, and soon enough, the Dobermans were crashing toward me, bellies closer to the floor, tongues lolling, eyes crazed with desire. Their muzzles were sprinkled with white.\n\n\"Hey, Pedro, Hey, Mrs. Fox. Do you remember me?\"\n\n\"It's Evan,\" said William. \"Say hi to Evan. You certainly remember Evan.\"\n\n\"They're getting older,\" I said, looking up at his face.\n\n\"Like all of us.\"\n\n\"Not me,\" I declared, and then we both laughed.\n\nI squatted, pressed my nose into their dusty scalps, and breathed. They gave me their weight as I gazed over their heads. It bore only a minor resemblance to the house of the past. The dull, tepid rooms were gone. In their place a huge white room with squat, tasteful furniture facing out toward the banks of bougainvillea. The pool looked profoundly blue, almost lunar, a gray-green life ring knocking about its surface. A single spoon glinted on a table.\n\n\"It's so peaceful,\" I said. \"Orderly. How did you manage it all? It's barely the same place.\"\n\nHe pressed his palms together. \"You don't like it.\"\n\n\"No, no, there's nothing not to like. It's really beautiful. I like the openness, the light. And the clerestories are pretty. It's just\u2014\" What was I trying to say?\n\n\"Well, the original plan was to do it one room at a time. But then I thought, do I want to breathe in sawdust and fiberglass for the next two years? Why not get it over with while things are still fine?\"\n\nThere were footsteps up the walk. A key jiggling in the lock, and the dogs started barking.\n\n\"Hey,\" someone said.\n\n\"Hey, you. Look who's here, it's Evan. You remember hearing me talking about Evan.\"\n\nHe was a young, wiry sort, mid-twenties, in orange drawstring shorts, with the most forbidding calf muscles I'd ever seen. He leaned over and kissed the dogs on the tops of their heads. He extended his hand up to me and smiled warmly, but with a remote, abstracted expression in his eyes. \"Alfred,\" he said.\n\n\"Hello, Alfred.\"\n\n\"But my friends call me Laser.\"\n\nHe stood. Laser folded his arms across his thick chest, smiling, sidling up next to William. If only through their shared gestures (the smiles, the closeness of their stance), I could see that they were clearly a couple, inhabiting their lives with a fluidity and ease. How did any two people do it? How did any two people achieve a life, sharing each other's time with kindness, respect, and sexiness, without pushing each other away? I was troubled with the urge to say, Do you fight? Are you in love? Do you still sleep together?\n\n\"Excuse me for a minute,\" said Laser. \"I have to take these two for their walk.\" Their eyes brightened at the word. \"Walk? Walk? Do you want to go down to the beach for your walk?\" Panting, the dogs scampered after him, nails clicking, down the hall.\n\n\"You guys are happy?\" I said dully.\n\n\"You wouldn't think it would work, but it does, believe it or not. It's been almost a year and a half.\"\n\n\"He's in school?\"\n\n\"He's still in school. Med school. A year to go before his internship.\"\n\nI tried to compose my face, but I must have looked strange to him. I knew what kind of expression it was: it told anyone who was even halfway perceptive that my outer self, which was trying to maintain decorum at all costs, was at odds with my inner self, which was plunging downward like a kite. What did William's relationship with Laser have to do with me? I'd moved forward in my life. I'd had all sorts of experiences. I certainly did not want to come back here. Do not take this in. Do not take this personally. At least give them that. A thought: I was just as resentful and afraid of abandonment as my brother Peter.\n\nWhat makes you think you're any more direct than anyone else?\n\n\"What's all this?\" I said, indicating the orange plastic pill bottles on the kitchen counter. I picked up one and shook it gently beside my ear. It made a kind, pleasant sound like maracas.\n\nHis eyes fixed on the coffee pot beside him.\n\n\"Something wrong?\"\n\n\"Evan\u2014\"\n\n\"Is Laser okay?\"\n\nHe raised his face to me.\n\nI said, \"Why are you staring at me like that? Why so serious?\"\n\n\"Have you been tested?\" William said finally.\n\nMy attention still snared on those bottles, the miraculous capsules inside.\n\n\"I think you might want to get tested,\" he said, graver now, looking directly in my eyes.\n\nI grimaced. \"Are you\u2014?\"\n\nI held myself still for a few seconds. Then I felt myself falling off a building, the ground close, closer, advancing like a bull's-eye, then slump.\n\nI was still shaking after William came up to hold me.\n\nAsh dusting now, sticking in our throats, the world colder, meaner, more ragged than before. I saw myself walking through jags of ice\u2014dark, dark world, steam rising from my mouth.\n\n\"I know we've talked about this before. Frankly, it's not like it's a total surprise.\"\n\n\"Oh God.\"\n\n\"I feel fine, though. I can't quite explain it. I haven't felt this optimistic and energetic in years.\" And I saw what I'd overlooked before: the flat, puttied color of his skin, the waxy hollows beneath his cheekbones. He stepped toward the window, not quite so confident on his left leg. \"But I just talked to my doctor yesterday. My T-cell counts aren't good. They're on, as the professionals like to say, a downward trend.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" I said.\n\n\"But he says better drugs are on the way. Well, as far as I'm concerned, the sooner the better. We need them now. Right now.\"\n\nI looked down at my fingers curling on my lap. I thought of my stomach\u2014emptied, translucent, the ghost of a stomach\u2014floating somewhere in the room, then out the window, floating on and upward through the palms like a soul. I am twenty years old, I thought. I am twenty years old and I am going to die.\n\n\"It's not like you have much to worry about,\" he offered. \"I mean, it's not like we weren't using rubbers or anything. We were very careful together. You should be fine. Assuming you've been watching out for yourself.\" He raised his brows, tears filming his eyes.\n\nBut had I? I thought about my hands\u2014nicks, cuts, abrasions, little openings. I thought about my teeth, brushing and flossing only seconds before sex. And of course there were those occasions on which we'd slipped. Had he forgotten all about them, purged them from his memory?\n\n\"And what about Laser?\" I asked.\n\nHe nodded. \"He's positive too, but his health is good, excellent actually. He's going to beat this thing. We have high hopes he's going to outlive the best of us.\"\n\nThe world torn in pieces, scattered on the ground like marble, broken bridges. I tried to think of William and Laser, of the difficulties that lay ahead for them, the infections and the doctors, how one would die before the other, leaving the survivor to spend his last months\u2014years?\u2014in loneliness, in a hospice, in pain, surrounded by doctors and strangers, but I couldn't. I could only think about myself, how I was going to die before I even had the chance to live.\n\nI wasn't as generous as I should have been.\n\nHe came up behind me and massaged out the knot where my neck met my shoulder. For some reason that made me cry.\n\n\"I know it's a lot to take in at once. Are you okay? Let me get you something to drink\u2014some tea, some coffee? Or how about something to eat?\"\n\nI shook my head hard.\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said plainly. \"I'd hate to think I'd...\"\n\n\"Don't\u2014\"\n\n\"I'm sorry, I'm very sorry. I feel awful about what happened between us. This stuff's been on my mind for a long, long time. I think I must have known I was sick on some deep level, and I wasn't ready to acknowledge it yet. And then I didn't have any choice. One night I woke up, and all the sheets were drenched with my sweat.\"\n\nHe leaned backward into the woodwork and sighed, said ahh. Drops of moisture glistened on the tip of a fig leaf, holding on for as long as they possibly could before they fell to the floor. The ceiling fan clicking. A dog\u2014a St. Bernard, I decided\u2014barked somewhere in the distance, solemn, calling for his dinner. The sky over the trees went gray, the absence of color. Then everything in the room, the smallest details, seemed to glitter fiercer, brighter, until I thought they would pop: the bulbs in the chandelier, the violet irises in the clear glass vase on the table.\n\n\"Where are you staying tonight?\" he said. \"You're always welcome here.\"\n\n\"I have to be somewhere at six. I promised Ursula I'd meet her at Dadeland.\"\n\n\"I'm glad you're talking. That seems like a start at least.\"\n\n\"Well, I want to get to know her again. I don't have huge expectations, but you never know.\" I made a silly, stranded face. I didn't know where my words were coming from, but I tried to invest myself in them, if only for the moment.\n\nWe were stalling for time, fearful of our awkwardness, fearful of departure. Then, looking out the window, I thought about the dream I'd had on our fifth night together. We were standing by a riverside amusement park: PLAYLAND. Somewhere north. Maryland? An empty roller coaster surged down the track. The river surface shimmered in a pewter haze. Before I knew it I'd taken William's hand and walked into the water with him, feeling not a second of trepidation. Trust, hope, absolute confidence, and delight. The river splashed warmly against the backs of my legs, rising higher around us. Side by side, we started swimming across the river. The roller coaster struggled up the rusty track, cranking and ticking, as if for the very last time.\n\nWas it the mere absence of our life together\u2014and not so much William himself\u2014that had pained me?\n\nWould our time together always have such significance for me?\n\n\"So\u2014\" I gazed downward at my shoes, empty and full at once. I wanted to run as much as I wanted to stay, to move into the old den with its stacks of mildewing magazines.\n\n\"Take good care of yourself. Stay in touch, okay? Are you around for a while?\"\n\nI shrugged, smiled weakly. \"We'll see.\"\n\n\"Just let me know how you're doing.\"\n\n\"I will.\"\n\nI kissed him right on the mouth then, with all the tenderness I could muster, without understanding it, wildly alive, before leaving through the door.\n\n# Chapter 23\n\nUrsula was already seated at the front table of the ice-cream parlor, her legs resting up on a chair, when I arrived.\n\nHow odd that we were in Dadeland, in the space once occupied by Farrell's, a short-lived chain for which our entire family\u2014Sid, Ursula, Peter, and me\u2014once managed to have affection. It had nothing to do with the menu (which challenged one to take on the \"Zoo,\" an ice-cream project comprised of twenty flavors), or the atmosphere (hokey Victoriana with lots of screaming and hooting at birthdays), only that its presence coincided with an especially poignant time in our family life, when there was a period of relative peace in the house, when we knew that our outings as a complete family unit were numbered. We were already too old for this. Still, these excursions were the single activity on which we could all agree, and once they were mentioned as even a remote possibility, the four of us, sadly enough, would hurl ourselves in the car, forgetting our differences for an hour, convincing ourselves we weren't nearly as fucked up as we were.\n\n\"Look at you. What happened to all your hair? You look like something off a chain gang.\"\n\n\"Mom.\"\n\nShe rubbed the bristles of my scalp, then stared at the blue Icarus on my bicep. \"What's this?\"\n\n\"Tattoo,\" I mumbled.\n\n\"Tattoo? Where on earth did you get a tattoo?\"\n\n\"Prison.\"\n\n\"Prison? Oh my God. Since when have you been in prison?\"\n\nI couldn't help but roll my eyes. \"Hel-lo\u2014\"\n\n\"Well, don't do that to me. Don't get me all worked up like that.\"\n\nWe smiled wanly. In spite of our mutual cautiousness and fear of each other, I was relieved to see her. She appeared to be in good spirits\u2014playful, even proud of me, and she'd spruced herself up for the occasion with a purple-pink scarf tied jauntily around her throat. Her hair was a complex of darks and lights, the color of nutmeg. She smelled of teaberry, weeds.\n\nIn no time at all she gathered herself. I glimpsed at her hands\u2014veined, brown, dry, with their fragile superstructure of bones\u2014remembering how she'd once been so proud of them.\n\n\"You could have met me at home, you know.\"\n\nI shrugged. Could I have told her that just being inside the house would have shaken something loose? Already I saw it all in my head: the oak door between the garage and the house\u2014split, dented\u2014which I'd kicked repeatedly after being locked out in my tenth year; the backyard toolshed, chewed to a soft pulp by termites; the hole in the laundry-room ceiling, still unrepaired after ten years, the tufts of pink insulation revealing the guts of the house.\n\n\"You look different,\" was what I said. \"Something's changed. What is it?\"\n\nShe tilted her head, inhaled, not without delicacy. Then she turned to the side, offering me her profile.\n\n\"Nose job,\" she said finally. \"I just had a nose job.\"\n\nI examined the new nose, the softer bridge, the flaring, dilated nostrils. A bungled approximation of a WASP nose. \"You're kidding me.\"\n\n\"I'm actually relieved. Julie Spivak thinks it's very, very natural. Some of the best work she's ever seen.\"\n\n\"But you had a nice, voluptuous, Eastern-European nose. It had character.\"\n\n\"Character, shmaracter. What do I care about character?\"\n\n\"But\u2014\"\n\n\"Do you know what it was like to have been made fun of as a child?\"\n\nMy tongue felt fuzzy and thick, a wad of cotton in my mouth. I had to remind myself it wasn't anything new, this will to remake herself. How could I forget the complete line of diet products, many of which were even then out of date, she'd stashed in the kitchen cabinet when I was young\u2014Metrecal, Figurines, Carnation Slender, Instant Breakfast. Even something called Ayds, of all things.\n\n\"What's Dad think of this?\"\n\nShe shut her eyes for a moment, then opened them. She looked hurt yet detached from that hurt. \"Don't ask.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"That son-of-a-bitch\u2014\"\n\n\"Mom\u2014\"\n\n\"That fucker\u2014\"\n\nHer voice was rising. I glanced around at the other tables.\n\n\"Don't talk to me about that snake in the grass.\"\n\nThe waitress, a slip of a thing with a crest of hair like some rare tropical bird, pretended to be oblivious to my mother's mouth. She scribbled our order on her hand with a lavender-tipped ballpoint. All the while my mother frowned, her face pinking, staring down at her sunfreckled arms crossed tightly over her chest. She waited for the waitress to depart.\n\n\"Airhead,\" she mumbled.\n\n\"Shhh\u2014\"\n\n\"Bimbo.\"\n\n\"She'll hear you.\"\n\n\"I don't care,\" she said miserably. \"If she doesn't have enough decorum to know that you're supposed to write on a sheet of paper and not on your hand, then what do I care?\"\n\nI shook my head, exasperated. My neck felt hot in my collar. \"But what about Dad? I'm waiting to hear about Dad.\"\n\nShe eased forward in her chair. She looked pained again. \"You sure you're up for this?\"\n\n\"What's the matter now?\"\n\nHe'd been gone for some time now, almost three months. He was living in Huntington Beach, California, with a forty-three-year-old woman named Anita Burnell who had ironed, bottle-blonde hair all the way down to her ass\u2014\"right out of 1969,\" according to my mom. He'd met her six years ago at an academic conference at UC Irvine. Like my father, she was an assistant professor with a specialization in nuclear fission, and she and Sid had corresponded by letter, phone, and fax for years, so openly and casually, in an approximation of professional comradeship, that my mother hadn't once suspected there was anything between them. If anything, she'd convinced herself that Sid was put off by Anita's chumminess, that he quietly dreaded running into her year after year at conferences, that he imagined her pushy and coarse, always sniffing around for the next job opening (or \"corpse-to-be\") until she\u2014my mother\u2014found out otherwise. It happened on a quiet Thursday evening, moments after she'd finished up a New York Times crossword puzzle with the word \"glossolalia.\" Sid walked up behind her in the kitchen, wrapped his arms around her waist\u2014her \"love handles,\" she said\u2014then told her, not without tenderness, that he didn't love her anymore, that she'd be better off by herself, that he was leaving for Huntington Beach in the morning.\n\n\"I just never thought he had it in him. I mean, I never thought he'd leave. He never seemed particularly, I don't know\u2014passionate? Is that the correct word?\"\n\n\"Did you two still have sex?\"\n\nGod knows what possessed me to ask such a thing.\n\n\"If you could call it that,\" she answered thoughtfully.\n\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\n\"When a man\u2014when a man can't\u2014\" She stared at me, startled, and rubbed at her arms. \"Why in God's name am I talking about this with you? I don't want to talk about this with you.\"\n\nIn the mall two teenagers, a boy and a girl, ambled in and out through the fountains, the figs, the ficus, grasping hands. Unlike us, they were the very picture of safe. It seemed incredible to imagine that they had any complexities swirling in their midst. When I looked back at my mother, she was staring at her new nose in her compact. Already she'd rolled on a fresh coat of coral lipstick.\n\n\"So next I'm going to get an Adrian Arpel makeover, then I'm going to get eyeliner tattooed around my eyes.\"\n\n\"No way,\" I said. \"No tattoos around the eyes.\"\n\n\"What about you? You have tattoos.\"\n\n\"We're talking about your eyes, Mom.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"You've convinced me. It's all because of you. I'm going to get my eyes done, and then I'm going to get myself a new boyfriend, and I'll show that\"\u2014she wrenched her head\u2014\"ass-hole he's made the most foolish mistake in his life.\"\n\nA thousand thoughts were leaping concurrently in my head. I saw them luminous\u2014dark and oily, like colored fish in an aquarium. The tips of my ears felt hot. I couldn't restrain myself any longer. \"Mom,\" I said, \"I hate to bring this up, but there was an actual purpose to my visit.\"\n\nHer face dulled as if she'd been taken aback. I hadn't meant to sound cold or insensitive.\n\n\"Could I ask you a question?\"\n\n\"Of course, dear.\"\n\n\"If I ever die, could you do a favor for me?\"\n\nShe grinned darkly, addressing me as if I were eight years old again. \"You're not going to die.\"\n\n\"Oh yes I will.\"\n\n\"You're not.\"\n\n\"Yes. We're all going to die.\"\n\nHer mouth parted.\n\n\"It's not like when you were a girl. It's dangerous out there. Young people die all the time. Tons of young people that I know.\"\n\nShe blinked once. She looked at me as if I were telling her that the world, as she knew it, was about to implode.\n\n\"I want you to give my CDs, the Joni Mitchells, to Jane. Take all my books to Herridges and keep the money for yourself. And pack up all my clothes and send them off to the Salvation Army.\"\n\nHer face blanched with worry, hands twisting. \"I'm not sending anything to the Salvation fucking Army. You're not going to die, okay?\" Her voice carried, just loud enough for the women two tables away to hear. They halted their conversation, pretending not to listen. Quietly, she said, \"You're not going to die.\"\n\n\"Mom\u2014\"\n\nShe smiled slightly. \"I'm not going to listen to this. How dare you make me listen to this. There are a full range of beautiful topics in the world. What about your brother, for instance. Why haven't you said one word about your brother? What was it like?\"\n\nI didn't want to talk about him. I'd already made the decision not to go back. \"Have you heard anything from him?\"\n\n\"No, he's just like you. Both of you have deserted me. I don't even know what you look like anymore. I'll be lucky if I even get a Christmas card from him, sometime next June.\"\n\nSomething snagged into my stomach.\n\nI watched her wiping her hands on her napkin. I knew she'd pictured her future differently. She'd lived her entire adult life as if its choices had been guided by a map, a paradigm: Do these things right and you'll get your just reward. Once she'd pictured both Peter and me living nearby, in Cocoplum or Coconut Grove, with decent jobs, dropping in on her every Tuesday night, bringing our pretty wives with whom she'd have coffee and talk about furniture. She'd have grandchildren, four of them. She'd have stayed married to my father, and though their lives would have been marked by silence and periods of retreat from each other, she would have had a vision to present to the world: I am fine, I am not marked by grief, I am just like you.\n\n\"I'm so lonely,\" she said. \"I never thought I'd be so lonely.\"\n\n\"You have to be tough, Mom.\"\n\n\"What if I don't want to be?\"\n\nThe breath left my lungs.\n\n\"Listen,\" she said, glancing at her wristwatch. \"I have to go. I have to be somewhere at eight.\"\n\nI faintly smiled. We both knew she was lying, but I understood: all this was more than she could bear at once. At home she'd fumble for her Halcion, or Valium\u2014whatever was closest to her grasp\u2014then go straight to bed, and for the next two days ponder over and over what we'd said to each other, weighing my words for their various meanings.\n\nWe stood. She stepped forward toward me, then held me close, if tentatively. I smelled the soap in her hair. \"Mom?\"\n\n\"Yes, dear?\"\n\n\"Watch out of yourself.\"\n\nShe nodded. \"I'm not as helpless as you'd think.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"And no more tattoos,\" she said, smiling slightly. \"Be care-ful. Deal?\"\n\n\"I'll try.\"\n\n\"Stay in touch now. Bye, dear. Bye-bye.\" And with a quick peck of a kiss, she left the table, stumbling for a second, then righting herself, hurrying out past the kiosks of the mall.\n\n***\n\nThe free clinic was in a pagoda-like structure with glass-block walls, so close to the beach that I heard the waves, the lifeguard whistle, the joyous shrieks of tourists in the distance. Inside, I slouched in the waiting room with three other boys and a girl\u2014all of us with sullen, vaguely bored faces\u2014waiting for our names to be called. A TV monitor droned a message: \"A positive result is not a death sentence.\" I didn't flinch as the health care worker pressed the needle into my vein and drew back a syringe-full of blood. I stared fully at my blood, its thickness, its rusty red potency. I wasn't as debilitated as I'd expected. I'd already prepared myself. There was no reason to assume the results would be anything but positive, anyway.\n\nWith the remainder of my money, I rented a room at the Hotel Lumiere for the week. It was no-frills simple, with single bed, TV, combination bureau\/desk, and salt-pitted, dorm-sized refrigerator. And it had that scent, that inimitable fusion of cigarette smoke, mildew, cat pee, and chlorine bleach. I thought of the people for whom this place had initially been built\u2014working-class Jews from Brooklyn or the Grand Concourse who'd anticipated their stay here for months, who'd envisioned their vacation on the beach as a little taste of Heaven. It cost a near mint now, more than I could afford, but I didn't care. I spent most of my days lying in bed, thinking, ordering pizza or Chinese food, listening to the many languages of the people on the street: German, French, Arabic, Japanese, Spanish. One night there was a loud crash, like a stack of falling plates, and I walked to the window to see a party revving up in the apartment across the street. A samba spun louder, and a good twenty or thirty people stumbled out onto the balcony, some in a conga line, some with cocktails in hand, before waving over to me, and I back at them.\n\nA girl with large, soulful brown eyes cupped her hands around her mouth.\n\n\"\u00a1Anda ca!\" she cried.\n\n\"Come over,\" someone else yelled.\n\n\"Join the party,\" said a third.\n\nAcross the bay, a faint popping of fireworks.\n\n\"I can't,\" I answered.\n\n***\n\nI waited until the following morning to leave the room. I walked up Collins Avenue out of the trendy, gentrified zone into the run-down section of South Beach that hadn't caught on yet, where the tourists weren't glamorous, but looked ashen, pockmocked, and haunted, dressed in their tight shiny fabrics, gold chains, and wide collars. It could have been twenty years ago, the Miami Beach of the late seventies, and I both loved it and was depressed by it. I walked into a T-shirt shop, checked out the gag gifts and souvenirs: oversized dice, Statue of Liberty pens, furred little beagles with nodding heads\u2014stuff I hadn't seen since I was a kid. I thought about how much Jane would have gone nuts over these things, how she would have borrowed money from me, chattering excitedly, leaving the store with a full shopping bag and then some. Where was Jane? I missed her so much. It was time I made an effort to get in touch with her.\n\nI couldn't have been in the store more than three minutes when I spotted a man in the aisle ahead of me. I didn't see his face, but I saw the back of his neck, a long thin neck, swan-like, though on the verge of gawky, atop which balanced a sweet head with ears that stuck out. He looked nearly perfect to me. I watched him picking up the very same things I'd picked up\u2014snow globes, netted bags of bubble gum resembling lemons, tangerines, grapefruits, and limes\u2014cupping them in his palm, eyes shining. I couldn't stop looking at that neck. The neck had always been the most telltale part of a man's body for me. Nothing could excite me more, not even muscles or big feet or big dick or large nose or dark hair or well-developed Adam's apple.\n\nI followed him. He walked north on Collins, past the Sunoco and the Shelborne, before turning left on 16th. He strode down the street, looking straight ahead, taking long, athletic, supremely confident strides. My eyes watered. The wind crackled, purred inside my ears. He turned south on Meridian, glancing at a particularly beautiful cherry palm outside an apartment house\u2014good sign\u2014then started toward Lincoln Road. His walk seemed to have no destination or plan. Was he cruising? Lost? I decided he was lost. I decided I could bump into him, step down on the back of his shoe, ask if he needed directions, and he'd recognize something in me, something in my eyes, a shared spirit, a sense of humor, and we'd get to chatting, and soon enough we'd be drinking coffee together, talking about what we were doing tonight.\n\nI kept following him. I kept looking at that sweet and luscious and vulnerable neck, and I wasn't about to let him go. I thought of his chest\u2014firm, muscular, lightly matted with hair\u2014and I imagined holding a melting ice cube over it and watching him shudder as I worked my tongue upwards from his belly button. The heat beat in my face. Outside the Night 'n' Gale he turned a bit to the side, not fully facing me, but just enough to see me out of the corner of his eye, and he knew who it was, and he knew I was after him, and I knew that he liked it. I pictured him smiling. My dick rustled, plumping the front of my jockey shorts. And then, just as I stepped closer to him, narrowing the distance between us, he crossed 14th, mere feet before a cargo truck, and the traffic light went red, and everything stalled. Horns. Curses. Heat. Gridlock. I tried to pass around the truck. I tried to sidestep to the left, to the right, but the seconds were ticking. The noon sun hammered my brow, blurring my vision. I banged my fist on the side of the truck twice, three times, before it moved forward. My fingers throbbed like a boxer's. The traffic loosened, I walked ahead.\n\nHe was nowhere in sight.\n\nSomething occurred to me: I didn't want to die.\n\n# Chapter 24\n\nThree weeks passed at the Hotel Lumiere. I lay in bed, staring up at the rotating paddles of the ceiling fan. Checkout was 11:00 a.m., and I'd timed it so that I could pick up my results from the clinic upon my departure. I stood, shoved my possessions\u2014jeans, T-shirt, contact-lens solution\u2014into my backpack. My mouth was dry. My hand looked old. I kept staring down at the skin of my hand, asking myself how on earth could the hand of a twenty-year-old get to looking so old.\n\nBut who was I kidding? Already I felt it: that slight white heat, simmering inside the engine of my body, making me older before my time. Correct? Didn't anyone who'd ever lived through this recognize early on what had already possessed him, inhabiting his corpuscles on the deepest, most urgent level? It was as if one had never been anything but sick, that loneliest place, and it seemed astonishing that there were actually people in the world who'd never felt this: to have something burning inside you as intimate as a lover.\n\nAnd yet I wondered whether I was cutting myself off from surprise. What if, to my good fortune, I was deemed negative? What if I was told that my days weren't immediately pressured, that I most likely had decades ahead of me? Would I feel different? Negative: funny, awful word. What did it mean to call oneself negative, anyway? I was only negative until the next time I had sex with someone. Wasn't staying negative always the most demanding of efforts, and not a state of grace, not a protected, privileged zone?\n\nSomething became evident. This whole matter was about being handed two choices.\n\nI stared at my reflection in the window glass. I looked fine, I felt fine.\n\nI couldn't bring myself to believe that there were only two choices.\n\nI walked to the window, not knowing whether I was copping out or not. I felt relieved and shaken all at once. I looked out toward the ocean and saw a cruise ship passing into the warm aqua of the gulf stream. It looked so small from here, the size of a toy. I imagined a couple\u2014straight, young, still in their twenties\u2014lounging on the deck of that boat, the sun shining on their faces. How would they have reacted if they'd been informed in hushed tones that a terrorist bomb had been planted aboard one of the ship's lavatories, that sometime within the next few minutes or the next few days they'd come to violent death? Would that have made them generous, wise, more responsible to one another, or would it have diminished and destabilized them, making them feel they were under the fist of something so much greater than themselves?\n\nBut even that wasn't the same. An instantaneous death\u2014even a death that permitted a few days of preparation\u2014seemed merciful compared to a death that lingered for years and years, where one got sick, better, then sick again. Where a simple sore throat could signal the onset of ruin. Where one's family and lover and friends were ever tempted to bail out. Where one had to push past the inevitable burdens of blame and shame\u2014all the meannesses that people happened to attach to them.\n\nWhere one had to forgive. Forgive.\n\nI glanced down at the appointment card in my hand and tore it in two. I watched its pieces flutter down onto the people of the street.\n\nIt seemed that I'd already made my decision weeks ago.\n\nWas I a coward? Was I selfish, irresponsible? It seemed that even now, I was suspended between the two worlds\u2014the world of the living and the world of the dead. I would go on in the only way I knew. I picked up my backpack, walked down to the lobby, and handed over my money to the desk clerk. The lighting was milky. Outside, the people seemed beautiful, pale, their ghosts following close behind, already guiding them someplace.\n\n***\n\nThree hundred dollars: enough to get me through the next two weeks, but barely. It wouldn't last the month, unless I was willing to subsist on rice and beans. I tried not to fret too much. I had the uncanny sense I was revisiting my days when I'd first moved out of William's house. I thought briefly about the nature of time, how it's always tricking us into thinking it's taking us forward, when, in fact, it's always coiling around like a spring, bringing everything we've known back to us.\n\nI spent the days looking for work. I bought the Herald and checked out the various restaurants, clothing stores, gas stations. Everyone I talked to seemed wary of my lack of experience. It was all right; I would have screwed up those jobs, anyway. I was about to start lying, fabricating a history for myself\u2014name: Vico Bakaitis, age: 24, place of birth: Seal Beach, California\u2014when on one of my wayward afternoon walks I literally found myself within the fencing of a nursery. It was on a forgotten back road, west of the city. It bordered a canal filled with stagnant, olive-green water. Florida's turnpike rushed in the distance like a waterfall. Though the place was overgrown and past its prime and sadly disheveled, it yielded the most offbeat plants, the likes of which were impossible to find at bland, commercial nurseries: blood banana, surinam cherry, weeping fig. Immediately I felt possessed of a good feeling, as if I'd been here in another life. I needed a task if I was going to make it through. I wanted nothing more than to reinvent the place, to reclaim just a bit of its former glory.\n\n\"I'd like a job,\" I said to the owner.\n\nHe squinted down at the marl beside my shoes. His face was weathered, puffy. Above his shirt pocket: a blue patch that said Hickory Bob's. In the calmest, kindest voice, he said: \"I never said I was hiring.\"\n\n\"I'm not asking for much money. All I want to do is help out. Get this place back into shape.\"\n\nHe squinted, only mildly threatened. \"You're young. What would you know about plants?\"\n\n\"A lot.\"\n\nHe walked me up and down the rows, expecting me to identify each variety he pointed to. Without pause, I said: loquat, maya palm, aurelia. I even named the dreaded pitch apple, a variety that had routinely stumped even the most knowledgeable of his clients. \"What else? What else?\"\n\nHe shook his head back and forth. He didn't know what to say.\n\n\"You think I'm a weirdo, don't you?\" I said after a while.\n\n\"No.\" His face was clearly dazed. \"We better sit down,\" he said ruefully.\n\nI followed him down the path to a bullet-shaped trailer. Cattle egret scampered about the yard, in and out through the windbreak of Australian pines that bordered the Everglades. A pink sky rumbled over our heads. It turned out that Bob had been wanting to sell after his wife, Dorothy, had died, but had taken it off the market after receiving but two meager, demeaning offers. Things only worsened after Hurricane Andrew. Though managing to cut a swath a mere three miles north of the property, leaving the nursery virtually unscathed, it hurled the entire region into a real estate depression.\n\nHe fell silent for a full six minutes. He quoted a salary that was a full three dollars an hour more than I'd expected. He also offered me a place to stay in a second trailer out back. I'd tried to conceal my astonishment and disbelief.\n\n\"Do you think that's enough to live on?\" he said.\n\nI looked at the wall clock, a cuckoo clock in a shellacked box on which drawings of various minerals had been pasted. I hated to think that I'd be taking advantage of anyone in dire circumstances, but he was offering it to me.\n\n\"I guess we could give this a try.\"\n\nI nodded avidly.\n\n\"Why not,\" he said as if convincing himself. \"Let's give it a try.\"\n\n\"Done.\" My handshake was damp, feeble. \"Done deal.\"\n\nIn only a few days I threw myself completely into the nursery. I told myself that my work was all that mattered, that contentment and peace were not to be found in the world of people, but in the world of vegetation. I dealt with my customers with patience, caution, and care, never raising my voice or condescending to them. The dirt blackened my fingernails. I walked to my little trailer every evening, welcoming the ache of my lower back, concentrating on the sting of cuts on my hands, if only because they told me in no uncertain terms that I was still alive.\n\nOne morning, I walked up and down the rows of plants, garden hose in hand, watering. I loved the plash of water on the leaves, loved the tuneless flat splat it made on the mulch. I walked to the cluster of shrimp plants, which Bob had virtually left for dead after a brief drought last year. Their leaves were healthy now, shiny and loose, with pretty saffron heads (ladies' swim caps!), and for the first time since my arrival (or \"takeover,\" as Bob called it), I realized that my simple gestures were doing some good in the world. I squirted a squat wooden fence and glanced around at my little domain. I shivered inside. Soon I'd get to moving the cacti closer to the front, then cleaning out the old koi pond, stocking it with marbled, thick fish. Then more varieties of plants; weirder, stranger specimens, plants I'd never seen, names I'd never heard. I wanted them all. I wanted to stay surprised. This is happiness, I thought. This is where I want to be.\n\n***\n\nAnd love?\n\nWhat else is there to say on the subject? I wasn't quite bitter about it, but I wasn't hopeful either. I was in some vague, vaporous place that blended both of those worlds. If anything, I'd come to decide that relationships were best for other people, that my own longing and need had in the past gotten the best of me, and it was time to let that go. There was no reason to assume that I couldn't be comfortable by myself. All I really needed was a few close friends, a love for my work, and some occasional sex. I felt wary admitting to this, as if I were only deluding myself, trying to justify my failure, my giving up. But was I giving up, or growing up? Was I in some deep depression and afraid to deal with its causes? My answers wavered depending upon my state of mind.\n\nAnd yet there were worse places to be. As the months passed, I looked at the people who came to the nursery regularly\u2014my new friends\u2014and saw how their notions of love had nearly wilted them. I saw how Nan, nearly thirty and still single, was willing to settle for a mostly mild-mannered man who occasionally flew into rages, striking her, because she needed more than anything to satisfy her demanding parents who wanted her to marry a graduate of an Ivy League school. I saw how Zack, the most loyal of my customers, had moved in with a man he suspected of being both heartless and mentally deficient weeks after breaking up with Ladd, the love of his life, only because he was afraid to be alone. I saw how Zack's friend Beth had fashioned herself into such a control freak that she wouldn't date any woman unless she was over six feet tall, dressed in fox stoles from the forties, spoke with the slightest lateral lisp, and knew inside and out the collected works of Jane Bowles. I saw how Thisbe\u2014a sculptor, fresh out of a bickering, competitive marriage in which her painter husband continually sabotaged her work\u2014kept rejecting each successive suitor, simply because he never measured up to her idealized image of her ex. It went on and on like this. Was there something wrong with all these people, or was it me? How could I not see myself as lucky when I looked at them, then looked at myself? How could I not stand in front of the mirror, stare into my cool, uncomplicated face, and not call myself one lucky son of a bitch?\n\n***\n\nHis name was Jesus. He was short, muscular, with blue-black skin, thickly lashed eyes, and a wet, enormous mouth curving upward. I'd met him in Lummus Park late one night, sitting on a bench beside the beach. The ocean scented the air with seaweed, tanker fuel. A reggae band thudded loudly in the distance. Soon enough we'd gotten to talking, then we were walking arm in arm up the street, laughing at things that weren't even funny, ambling toward his second-floor apartment off Meridian.\n\nWe were lying together in his bed, holding each other. \"Man, you're sweet,\" I said, pulling away from him.\n\nHe smiled back at me. \"You too.\"\n\nWe continued to make love. It occurred to me I'd leave early in the morning after a quick cup of coffee to be back at the nursery. I knew I'd never see him again. But it was possible, I believed, to enjoy a stranger's company, to be a little in love with somebody, even if it was only for the moment. A breeze stirred the leaves outside the window. Headlights flittered through the slats of the jalousies. I knew we'd never be boyfriends, but there was nothing sad about this.\n\n\"Think about it,\" I said afterwards, latching my hands behind my head. I gazed up at the splintered ceiling and pressed my head deeper into the pillow. He'd brought a bag of tortilla chips to the bed. \"I can tell everybody I spent the night sleeping with Jesus.\"\n\nHe winced. \"Watch your mouth.\" But then he smiled again, making love to me over and over.\n\n# Chapter 25\n\nHow expected that someone should be interested in me when I most wanted to be alone. Not long before we drifted apart, Jane had told me that this was the way it happened, that one only received what one longed for when one achieved perspective, when that desired thing ceased to occupy one's every thought. To me it sounded false, though, something sifted from some ghastly self-help book, and I never thought she fully believed it, the way she believed that you should pursue what you want with all your energy, heart, and affection until you gleamed like plutonium.\n\nI didn't want to be in love now.\n\nI should have sensed that something was up by the simple fact that he stopped into the nursery nearly every day, asking me questions about fertilizers and sprays, about the appropriate ground covers for his particular agricultural zone. He was about forty or so, tall, with red hair that receded in a point, full lips, and deeply blue eyes. Handsome, vaguely conservative in appearance. I'd been told by my friend Zack that he was one of the most successful surgeons in Dade County. He listened to my answers with a feigned thoughtfulness, looking directly in my eyes, even though his mind was clearly elsewhere. For all I knew he was thinking about his latest triple bypass or whatever, and he was one of those annoying, entitled types who expected complete attention from service people, who needed to be chatted with and fussed over and appreciated just so he could feel good about himself.\n\nOne afternoon, after I'd spent six minutes describing to him the fertilization procedures for sabal palms, I said, \"You're not listening to me.\"\n\n\"No,\" he said, and grinned, abashed. \"I guess not. Could I ask you another question?\"\n\nI thought, Make it snappy, buddy boy. To my left an older man in a floppy golf hat was examining the wrapped roots of an acacia, checking for the price tag. \"Look, I don't mean to be rude, but I have customers waiting.\"\n\n\"Okay. I'll let you alone in three seconds.\" He leaned forward on the counter and whispered something, his lips almost grazing my jaw line. \"Would you be interested in going out with me sometime?\"\n\nMy face must have contained within it an element of shock. I'd been so absorbed in my own duties that it hadn't once occurred to me that he might be attracted to me. A pleasant, though alarming surprise. \"Of course,\" I answered.\n\nImmediately I regretted the eagerness I projected.\n\n\"Let's do something tonight. What are you doing tonight?\"\n\nThis wasn't what I wanted. I preferred keeping it open, vague, in the distant, far-off future. The notion of spending any substantial time with him did not sit well with me. All day I'd been looking forward to going to bed early and finishing up a book. \"Nothing,\" I admitted.\n\nHe said something about dinner, something about picking me up out front at eight.\n\n\"Okay,\" I blurted.\n\n\"I'm Perry, by the way.\"\n\n\"Evan,\" I said, and extended a hand to him.\n\nI felt that peculiar combination of flattery and dread. Where was my backbone? How banal was my life. Watching him stride to his car, I thought: Now you've done it, you fool.\n\n***\n\nIt certainly wasn't his body, which was muscular and dense, from laps of hard swimming and years of working out. It certainly wasn't his voice\u2014an important consideration for me\u2014which was resonant and deep, commanding authority and projecting confidence. It certainly wasn't his taste in music\u2014he loved Stravinsky and Poulenc and Joni Mitchell, especially the albums For the Roses and Hejira. It wasn't his height or his manner or his intelligence or his personal style or his sense of humor.\n\nThat thing called chemistry, that elusive connection and tension, what was that about? Why did we feel it for some people, for people who weren't necessarily good for us, who could even do us damage, and not for others? La Quan, who I'd met at one of Nan's parties, insisted it was deadly to fall into any relationship where the sparks weren't flying all over the place. She, after all, would know; she'd spent four years with an older man for whom she felt nothing only because he took care of her, putting her through school, literally rescuing her from her dismal life in Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project. In the years following the breakup she'd coined something she'd called the boner test\u2014\"Does he give you a boner?\"\u2014and every time she'd dated she asked herself that question, even though, for obvious reasons, her experience was figurative.\n\nWhy was I getting so worked up about this before anything had happened between us?\n\nWe drove north on Collins Avenue, toward the Broward line, where Perry insisted he knew of the cheesiest restaurant in the world. \"I think you'll like it,\" he said nervously. I looked out at the fountains of the Bal Harbour Shops, the high-rise apartment towers\u2014the Avant Garde, the Seascape\u2014to which the word \"tony\" had once applied, while trying to fill Perry in on my history. I didn't sound terribly interesting to myself. How much I would have preferred staying in bed, reading; after all, I had to wake up at six-thirty to ready the nursery.\n\n\"Here it is,\" he said, easing the car into a parking stall.\n\nI wasn't surprised to see it was the Speedboat\u2014William's old favorite. I had an odd psychic sense, a kind of quasi-deja vu, which brought up a whole host of allusions and associations. I watched my knuckles whiten on the armrest.\n\n\"Isn't this great?\"\n\nThrough the windshield, I stared at the incongruous window display: the bonsai trees, the felted grass sheet lining the floor. \"Oh yeah,\" I said, not without sarcasm.\n\nInstantly the enthusiasm went out of his expression. \"We can go someplace else.\"\n\n\"No, it's fine,\" I said. \"I guess I'm just a little tired. Long day.\"\n\nInside the waitress seated us beside a wooden wheel, through which a continuous stream of sudsy water kept pouring into its pitchers, keeping it turning. In the pool beneath, an orange carp floated beside a hunk of coral.\n\n\"Look at this,\" he said, gesturing around. \"They built this place when going out for dinner was exotic, an event.\"\n\nHis manner was unsettling. At one point, I'd had that kind of energy and passion for things, but I'd worked it out of myself. Was I in mourning for something and hadn't admitted it? He made me nervous\u2014truly, deeply nervous. \"You haven't said very much about yourself,\" I said.\n\nHe went through the requisite details, telling me about his job, his patients, his hobbies and house\u2014all with a genuinely humble bent. In all outward respects he'd be the ideal boyfriend. Still, that didn't make me any more comfortable. What was he doing at forty-one, single, alone? Maybe he wasn't alone. Maybe he already had a boyfriend and just wanted to have sex, just once, with me. If that were the case...\n\nThere was a lull. He stared at me with an increasing interest, and I found myself looking away, continually, in shyness.\n\nI didn't have the energy to keep up my end of things. \"So what else?\" I said, much too loudly. \"Tell me about your love life.\"\n\nHis expression grew serious. Immediately, I regretted my flippancy. It turned out that he'd lost a lover within the past two years to AIDS, a lover with whom he'd lived since med school. His name was Andrew, and he spoke about him, a serious painter who'd been inspired by the original Arrow Collar Man ads and the covers of 1950s detective novels, with a quiet affection and longing that clearly indicated that the loss had shattered his life. Sometimes he wondered whether he himself had died with him. In the months since, he'd dated any number of men, a leather boy, a go-go boy, a personal trainer, a boat builder\u2014all frivolous, insubstantial types, he acknowledged now\u2014in an effort to make some contact again with the world. But he wasn't sure he was ready yet. He looked down at the tabletop, latching his fingers together. He'd barely eaten his dinner.\n\n\"And you?\" I asked.\n\nHe looked up. \"What do you mean?\"\n\nI looked away again. I was the last one to put him on the spot.\n\n\"Am I healthy, you mean?\"\n\nI nodded, flustered.\n\n\"Well, I'm negative, if that's what you're asking. At least the last time I tested. But that's been six months. Who knows? It's not like I haven't had sex since then.\"\n\nI gazed downward at the stone crabs on my placemat. I felt like nothing but a coward. \"I didn't mean to pry,\" I said quietly.\n\n\"Don't worry,\" he said, taking a sip of his water. \"What about yourself?\"\n\n\"I've been tested,\" I said. \"But I never picked up the results.\"\n\nI expected him to draw back from me, but his eyes shined with interest and understanding. \"Do you have any reason\u2014?\"\n\n\"My ex-boyfriend's positive. Actually, he has AIDS. I just found that out a couple of months ago.\"\n\n\"I'm sorry,\" he said.\n\n\"Yeah,\" I said. \"It sucks.\"\n\nWe were both quiet for a time, watching the waitresses scurry from table to table, setting down dinners like porterhouse steaks and lobster thermidor prepared from the same recipes the cooks had used thirty-five years ago. To our right a young white couple squealed delightedly at the yellow umbrellas in their drinks. Water plashed from the wheel. If only things were so easy. I expected Perry to be through with me, to call the evening to an awkward, ho-hum finish, but then I felt his shoe resting over mine under the table. There was a complicated smile on his face.\n\n\"Listen, I know how hard it is.\"\n\nI didn't say anything.\n\n\"It happens all the time. When I saw what Andrew went through, the drugs, the doctors, all this... shit in an effort to prolong his life a few months, I'm not even sure it was worth it. I think it was the stress of knowing, the depression, that wore him down. I mean, wouldn't it be better not to know anything at all, and die\u2014boom\u2014just like that?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said. And I really didn't.\n\n\"Just as long as you're not putting anyone else at risk,\" he said. \"I mean, aren't we supposed to behave like we're all positive anyway?\"\n\nI nodded.\n\n\"Ugh,\" he said, rubbing his face with his palms. \"Enough already. I can't stand this anymore. Let's talk about something else.\"\n\n\"Shall we get out of here?\"\n\nHe stood up, nodded, and paid the check himself, a gesture I appreciated. Walking to his car, I felt a peculiar wave of kinship with him, something I suspected should be resisted at all costs. Perhaps we'd just be friends. I assumed that that was where this evening was headed, anyway. He'd drop me off, stop by the nursery in a few days, call me once or twice before it was over. Maybe we'd even have coffee one day in the future if our schedules permitted it.\n\nHe stared at the dashboard for a moment without turning the key. On the pylon atop the restaurant's roof, the neon speedboat pulsed once, the deepest blue, in the night sky. \"I don't know if I should say this,\" he said.\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\nHe gave a heavy, measured sigh. \"I don't mean to be presumptuous\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nHe turned to me, a vulnerable, scattered look on his face. The silence between us was as heavy as the damp air.\n\n\"You want me to go home with you?\"\n\nHe nodded, relieved.\n\nI looked over at him. It wasn't the worst idea in the world. It was clear, after our talk, that we were lonely, in need of connection, affirmation. We needed to leave our brains. So what if I had to get up early the next morning? Actually, I admired the intention. It seemed that everyone I'd ever dated without having sex with right away ultimately failed to seize my interest, and they'd fallen away from my memory, nameless and vague. But that was irrelevant, anyway. I wasn't looking to get hooked up with him.\n\nHis house lay hidden behind a thatchy grove of palms. I hadn't been inside more than two minutes when he started kissing me, eagerly, pressing the hard weight of his tongue into my mouth. It all seemed a tad fast. I hadn't even had a chance to glance around, to check out the floor plan and furnishings, but I thought, all right, if we're going to do this, we might as well get it over with. I was as ready as I'd ever be. Would I get a boner? I thought of La Quan.\n\nWe moved to the bedroom. In no time at all, he'd taken off his clothes, and he stood to the side of the bed. His was in much better shape than I'd anticipated; muscular and dense, a trimmed mat of reddish hair sprinkling his chest, leading down a thin line to his abdomen. It might have been the body of a twenty-five-year-old. But what really surprised me was his dick. How could such a gentle, mild-mannered fellow be hiding such a killer in his pants?\n\nHe lay on top of me, kissing me all over my face with an intensity I'd never met in anyone else. It unnerved me, for all my life I'd always been more into sex than my partners, and this felt off-putting, as if my efforts to reciprocate were coming up short. I didn't want to disappoint. I closed my eyes and tried to think of Hector, his long lean body, his inky, close cropped hair, but all I saw were the scattered vague parts of him, and not the whole person, the disparate pieces never fusing into a soul. Same with William. He seemed remote, posed, a spread from Honcho or Mandate. I was trying too hard. Why wasn't this easier? I opened my eyes and watched Perry's face, his tightly shut eyes, his bitten lip, and thought, You really died, didn't you? You really died along with Andrew and are coming back to life.\n\nHe shuddered. He lay on top of me, wet, out of breath, burrowing his chin into the soft part of my shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked at me as if I might be a stranger. And then he grinned, recognizing me. \"Yee ha,\" he said plainly.\n\nI lay there, nodded. I didn't know what on earth we'd just done.\n\n\"Back in two seconds.\" He kissed me once on the forehead, then disappeared inside the bathroom.\n\nI fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, not waking up once until the following morning, when Perry came in the room dressed in a business suit, carrying a cup of hot coffee to the bedside. I stretched my arms over my head and yawned. \"What time is it?\"\n\n\"Late,\" he said, his face a bit fretful now. \"We overslept. It's\"\u2014he picked up the alarm clock\u2014\"it's twenty past eight.\"\n\n\"Oh God,\" I said, sitting up. \"I need to be at the nursery. Bob's going to kill me. I have a delivery of cedar chips at nine.\"\n\n\"That's okay, don't worry. I'll take you,\" he said calmly.\n\nHe sat on the edge of the bed, watching me picking up my clothes from the floor. He sipped from his cup of coffee.\n\nHe hadn't said a word in minutes. \"Do you think we should pursue this?\" he asked.\n\nI glanced upward at him as I pulled on my sock. I wasn't quite sure what he meant.\n\n\"I mean, should we try to see each other again?\" He bit into the skin of his lip. \"It's not like I don't have mixed feelings. I'm not even sure I'm ready.\"\n\nI kept looking at him. I could have said anything at that point. If I'd said no, what risk would there have been? Instead, I said, \"I don't see why not.\"\n\nHis face relaxed a bit. He walked over to me, led me to a standing position, then held me tightly in his arms. His chest felt warm and enormous next to mine. \"There's something about you,\" he said cryptically.\n\nI kept absolutely silent. Sweet man, I thought. Don't you know who you're fooling with? Don't you know I'm only going to hurt you?\n\n# Chapter 26\n\nThree times a week Perry and I did the typical things\u2014movies, dinners, walks, beach, gym\u2014nothing unsettling or spectacular. Sometimes we just drove around when we managed to have a day off together. We'd spot an isolated road with a quirky name and turn onto it, only to find something waiting for us at the end: a Dalmatian sunning herself on a floating raft, a house painted with patterns of tulips. These odd little visions seemed to present themselves to us, and we stopped questioning them after a time, accepting them as a function of our being together. And always at night, there was the sex, sex that was playful and complicated and demanding, if only because Perry was putting so much effort into it.\n\nStill, something bothered me about this whole endeavor. It was clear that he was much more committed to this than I was. I knew I could learn to love him. I could see that he had all the qualities that would make for a decent, stable boyfriend\u2014patience, tolerance, compassion, brains, even an edge when need be. But I trusted my gut more than anything. I wanted to feel reckless, and it frustrated me that I was still questioning my involvement with him. Watching him make love to me, I thought nothing could be sadder between two people, that one could have such feeling for the other and not have any idea it wasn't being returned to the same degree.\n\nIn October I read in the Herald that a woodwind ensemble from the Richmond Symphony was to perform in South Beach, in the concert hall on Lincoln Road. A while back I'd heard that Jane had taken a leave from Savannah to play second chair in Richmond, and I thought I'd show up to see if she'd be a part of things. I arrived ten minutes late, carrying a box of Fannie Mae candies, a token from another era. I couldn't see all the players from where I was sitting, but I suspected she was in back, with a mop of tangled hair, her head lilting in time to the music.\n\nWhen they stood to receive their applause I saw how wrong I was. She was sitting on the opposite side, her hair bleached silver, pulled back severely off her tanned forehead, with frosty lipstick, and green contacts. She'd appeared to have lost weight. She looked terrific, but oddly unapproachable at once. For a moment I was tempted to leave. Then I decided to wait for the crowd to disperse.\n\n\"Why didn't you call me?\" I called out to the stage.\n\nJane looked over to me, distracted from her conversation with the piccolist. \"Oh my God,\" she said, bringing her fingers to her mouth. \"Don't move. Give me time to change. Wait,\" she said, pointing a finger at me. \"Wait right there.\"\n\nIn no time at all she came out in leggings and an oversized T-shirt emblazoned with the Empire State Building. It was quite touching: Already I could see the kind of middle-aged matron she was to become\u2014stepping gingerly through the lanes of Palm Beach with a Saks bag on her arm and a fretful look on her face. \"What's all this?\" I said, regarding her new look with a wary affection.\n\n\"Look who's talking.\" She rubbed the top of my shorn scalp, then pointed to herself. \"Don't you think I look like a drag queen?\"\n\n\"For you,\" I said, passing her the box of Trinidads. The gesture felt wrong suddenly, though I didn't know why.\n\n\"Oh honey,\" she said. \"I can't. I try not to eat candy anymore.\"\n\n\"No?\"\n\nShe wagged her head from side to side. \"You meant well, though. Thanks.\"\n\nWe sat in a little deli, the last of its kind on a street that was rapidly being overrun with galleries, stores, and gay pride shops festooned with rainbow flags. \"It's time for shame,\" I'd said on the walk over. \"I'm going to start it, I think. The latest industry. Gay shame.\" Jane smiled slightly, but her mind seemed to be elsewhere.\n\nShe filled me in on what had been happening with her. To my surprise she'd gotten married last August. His name was Moon Lee; he came from a wealthy family who'd started up a successful carpet-cleaning business in Midlothian, Virginia, after their emigration from Seoul. She claimed to be in love with him, though I found that hard to believe. She adored her house, a center hall\u2014\"hip colonial\" she called it. She was hoping that the current oboist would vacate her chair because she had no intention of returning to the \"dingy backwater\" of Savannah. Otherwise, she'd quit and go into retail if the chance presented itself. \"I want to work,\" she insisted. \"I don't want to sit around painting my toenails. And there's this, of course.\"\n\nShe tugged up her shirt, reached for my hand, and pressed it on her stomach. Beneath my palm I felt the sensation of something turning. \"You're pregnant,\" I said.\n\n\"Mm hmm,\" she said, smiling. \"He's due in July.\"\n\n\"It's a boy?\"\n\n\"We don't know yet.\" She gazed longingly at the pastel-colored Sherman between the lips of a pretty young dyke. \"Aren't you excited?\"\n\n\"Of course.\"\n\nHer eyes hazed over. \"I'm a little surprised. I just thought you'd be more excited.\"\n\n\"But Jane\u2014\"\n\nShe blinked away some odd welling of emotion, embarrassed. \"What is it? Something's bothering you, isn't it?\"\n\nI started talking about Perry. It was hard to get it all out at once, organized. I told her about his generosity and attention. I told her about his own difficulties, his struggle to regain himself after the death of Andrew. I told her of my doubts, my paradoxical feelings, which seemed to fluctuate with every hour of the day. I talked so scrupulously, covering everything in such minute detail, that it occurred to me why all my confidants and friends hadn't been returning my calls. I hadn't realized it was bothering me so much. Only one thing I left out: the burning, low-grade fear that I was dying.\n\n\"So I don't get it. What's the big problem here?\"\n\n\"What do you mean you don't get it?\"\n\n\"I mean, please, he's falling in love. It sounds like he'd bend over backwards for you.\"\n\n\"It's a matter of integrity,\" I continued. \"I feel like I'm leading the poor guy on. Who knows what he expects from me?\"\n\n\"It's not like you're married to him.\"\n\n\"Of course not, but\u2014\"\n\n\"Enjoy this time,\" she said evenly. \"Enjoy this time, keep with it, and see how you feel in six months.\"\n\n\"I can't do that to anybody.\"\n\nHer eyes sparkled green. \"Just what the hell are you doing to him?\"\n\n\"I mean, for all I know, he's in love with some image of me, and not me. He doesn't love me. I mean, what the hell would he want with me, anyway?\"\n\nMy admission flustered me. My eyes darted toward the window, where I watched a rollerblader weaving, turning backwards, drawing figure eights in and out through the pedestrians. He was shirtless, sinewy, in amazing shape, a crazed, ecstatic look in his eyes. Cocaine? Crystal meth? I looked back at Jane. She appeared to be completely entrenched in her thoughts.\n\n\"You know what I think.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nShe gazed down at the tabletop. \"I think you're so used to being treated like crap that you don't know what to do with someone who's actually decent and responsible.\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Shhhh\u2014\"\n\n\"Listen\u2014\"\n\nI dug my fingernails into my palm.\n\n\"It's not all that easy to be with someone who's kind. You have to have a certain sense of yourself. You have to be able to say, 'I deserve to be with someone who's good to me.'\"\n\n\"You sound like you're talking about yourself.\"\n\nShe shrugged her left shoulder. \"Anyway, that's all I have to say on the subject. Enough already.\" She folded her hands on the Formica. She glanced at the dessert menu, returned it to the aqua wire stand. Then in a hushed voice she said, \"Don't fuck things up.\"\n\n\"No?\" But I didn't feel any better, and I didn't think she'd heard one thing I'd said.\n\n***\n\nIt happened weeks later. I was driving the pickup to Perry's house, where I planned to tell him that I didn't want to see him anymore. Things had been so much easier once I'd admitted this to myself, and my life had opened up again, allowing me to relax and to concentrate on the things that were important. The trick was to do it kindly, without menace, without making him feel I was deserting him forever. He'd been through too much. Perhaps I could tell him I needed a break for a while; perhaps I could tell him I only wanted to see him once a week, for a while at least. I'd play it by ear. In any case, what I had in mind would hurt him like hell, but it would be best in the long run, and he'd thank me one day for my brutal honesty, I knew it.\n\nHe stood outside the house, watering the bottlebrush with his shirt off. His nipple ring glinted in the sun.\n\n\"Aren't we bold?\" I stepped out of Bob's pickup. I pointed to his bare chest, on display for all the suburban mothers to see. A grassquit flew over our heads.\n\n\"Hey, sexy.\" He dropped the hose, grabbed me to him, and attempted to wrestle me to the lawn.\n\n\"Not here. The grass is all wet.\"\n\n\"What's wrong with wet?\"\n\nNot five minutes later we were in his bedroom. God, I thought. This was going to be harder than I'd imagined. I'd have to tell him after we were finished, and that would hurt even more, feel more like a betrayal. I heaved a huge sigh then stiffened my limbs. I heard him squirting lotion into his hand.\n\n\"What's that?\" I said, and clenched up, resisting his touch.\n\n\"Shhh\u2014\" he said. \"I'm going to rub your back.\"\n\nI lay there, trying to relax as his hands, strong and pressured, kneaded the muscles of my shoulders. I hadn't realized how tense I'd been. It felt terrific actually, although it hurt like a blowtorch, like he was writing his name onto my skin. Little utterances emanated from my mouth. After a while I moved into a place beyond thought. It only took minutes. I found myself floating, backstroking through a pool the size of space. Stars fizzled out, and I looked over my shoulder and saw a little earth turning in the darkness, silent. Even from this place I could see it diminishing. Even from this safe place I saw great forests burning down, towers crumbling, vast countries of people scrambling for food. I saw that there wasn't very much time. I didn't believe in epiphanies or easy answers or sudden revelations, but all at once Jane's words came flying home to me, a hail of pellets flung against a wall. I turned over on my back. I looked up at Perry. I saw him at six, waiting to be photographed with his mother and sister, staring sternly at the wolf puppet waving in the assistant's hand. I saw him at twenty-six, arm in arm with Andrew, in black robe and mortarboard, grinning upon his graduation from medical school. I saw him at ten, walking alone through Disneyland after his father left him off with a twenty-dollar bill, not knowing what else to do with him. I saw him at thirty-nine, feeling the heat gathering in Andrew's stomach as his body went cold. I saw him in the future, older, with a head full of white\u2014all of these images stacking up at once, projecting themselves simultaneously onto a screen. A door might have fallen open beneath my feet, and then another. What had I been resisting? What was my strength? Had the thing I'd wanted all along been right here with me, for months, and I hadn't even seen it?\n\nHe turned me over on my back.\n\n\"Why are you crying?\" he said.\n\n\"I don't know,\" I said, and then I held him close to me.\n\n***\n\nIt wasn't something I'd expected. I walked into the nursery one morning, spilling coffee on myself, rushed as usual, to find Bob sitting in his chair, eyes opened, a glassy, bemused smile on his face. I wouldn't have known as we weren't in the habit of exchanging greetings, and he'd always said hello the first thing in his gruff, kind voice. I had no idea how long he'd been like that, but I stayed with him, so calm I surprised myself, holding his hand until the medics arrived with the ambulance. Two days later, I helped with his funeral. A motley crowd showed up at the Methodist church, comprised of police officials, our regular customers, and Dorothy's twin sisters, Muriel and Lu, both of whom had flown in from Las Vegas. The floral arrangements were the most screwy and peculiar I'd ever seen\u2014canistel, tamarind, sapodilla, ginger lilies, firebushes, coral vines, Brazilian plumes\u2014most of which were trucked in directly from our nursery. A silver banner draped across his closed casket\u2014HICKORY BOB, in the darkest blue letters.\n\nOne rainy morning, a few months later, the phone rang. A lawyer identifying himself as Sam DeSears called at 8 a.m. to tell me I owned a nursery. I listened intently, quietly astonished, barely mumbling a reply, as he read off the clause from the will.\n\nI told everyone I knew. I told Perry, whom I'd moved in with only a few months before. I told my friends Zack, Nan, and Jane. I went through the whole list of people, everyone I ever knew\u2014Hector, William, Ursula, even minor customers\u2014with the curious exception of a single person.\n\nWhen I called the King Cole, a recording told me that the number had been disconnected. I called two more times, if only to make sure I hadn't dialed wrong. It took a while for me to admit that Peter had left, and that the resort had finally closed its doors.\n\nI thought of him often, late at night, lying in bed with Perry. He might have been anywhere, but no one knew, not my mother, not Holly, who'd called me once or twice. I made a place for him inside my head. I put him somewhere in the Yucat\u00e1n, close to the shoreline, in an aqua house with butterfly chairs out front. He had parrots, cats, mice, and a mule, and a large garden in which he grew plantains. He was utterly alone. He swam in the sea every day, after four, only after the last tourists had left. He watched the sunset\u2014a gaudy, overblown event\u2014from his kitchen window nightly. He even shaved off his hair and taught himself Spanish, giving things he'd made to his neighbors on the street: bread, enchiladas, cups of coffee rich as the blackest loam.\n\nOr maybe he didn't.\n\n***\n\nI picked up my test results one morning without intending to. The receptionist, a pretty red-haired woman with a cast in her eye, smiled faintly as she returned from the lab, and told me I could leave. I stood in stillness for a moment. The sunflowers blurred before me in their vase. Then I walked miles and miles through the buzzing city, grateful and melancholy all at once.\n\n***\n\nWe stood upon the beach at Biscayne National Park, a deserted preserve, barefoot and parched, while forest fires ransacked the Everglades. A flamingo straggled on the mud flats. Oyster shells clung to the roots of the mangroves. Earlier, we'd driven across the county, inspecting hurricane damage, seeking out the gardens and plants that interested us. At one point, I took Perry to the concrete pipe in which I'd spent so much of my childhood. The ditch that passed through it was filled with thick, sludgy water, clogged with melaleuca roots, and it was hard to imagine how anyone, man, woman, or child, would fit into that cramped cylinder without drowning.\n\n\"That's it,\" I'd cried, pulling hard on his sleeve. \"That's the pipe I told you about.\"\n\nPerry looked more than a little perplexed. \"You hid out in there?\"\n\n\"Yes, as a matter of fact, I did. But it was safe. That concrete pipe got me through my childhood.\"\n\nHe looked even more perplexed. He made a face now.\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"You know what I think?\"\n\n\"What?\"\n\nHe mumbled, \"My boyfriend's a lunatic.\"\n\n\"Shithead,\" I said, and socked him in the arm.\n\nWe continued up the beach, rested, though half the world was burning down. The smoke spun higher in the distance. I stared hard at the horizon, picturing everyone I'd ever lost scorching, coalescing in that pyre, their spirits melding, turning yellow, green, copper, red. Was it too much to bear? It was hard to say no. For all I knew the worst would still happen: Perry would get sick, my mother would wither, Peter, my father, William, Hector, Laser, Jane, Arden, Holly, Ory, Stan Laskin, Todd, Douglass Freeman\u2014all of us leaching white until there was nothing left but alkali, little crumbs of salt blowing up into the void like sand. Or maybe not. Maybe we'd all pass through the door, ruined, yet wiser. The ocean murmured. The kingbirds glided above the mangroves. The flames were still distant, rumbling, not quite advancing. At least the two of us were here, together, the sky over our heads ferocious, harsh, beautiful.\nPAUL LISICKY is the author of five books: Lawnboy, Famous Builder, The Burning House, Unbuilt Projects, and The Narrow Door, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2015. His work has appeared in Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Fence, the Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, the Rumpus, Unstuck, and in many other magazines and anthologies. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener\/Copernicus Society, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has taught in the creative writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Rutgers\u2013Newark, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and elsewhere. He currently teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers\u2013Camden, the low residency program at Sierra Nevada College, and at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. He is the editor of StoryQuarterly and serves on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.\n\n# Acknowledgments\n\nSections of this book have appeared in A&U, Blithe House Quarterly (www.blithe.com), Cosmos, Global City Review, Provincetown Arts, and in the anthologies Best American Gay Fiction 2 (Little, Brown, 1997) and Men on Men 6 (Plume, Penguin, 1996).\n\n***\n\nI'd like to thank my good friends Stephen Briscoe, Polly Burnell, Michael Carter, Denise Gess, Elizabeth McCracken, and Katrina Roberts for their careful, wise feedback. I'd also like to thank David Bergman, Brian Bouldrey, Karen Brennan, Chris Busa, Patricia Chao, Bernard Cooper, Michael Cunningham, Robert Jones, and Ann Patchett for their encouragement. Thank you to Ruth Greenstein for her astute editorial suggestions. Thanks, too, to Jonathan Rabinowitz and Turtle Point Press for kind, immeasurable support. Thank you and love to my parents and brothers\u2014Anton, Anne, Robert, and Michael Lisicky\u2014for their generosity, patience, and good spirit.\n\nI'm grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts, James Michener and the Copernicus Society, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Ragdale Foundation for much needed assistance.\n\nAnd finally, deepest thanks to Mark Doty.\n\n***\n\nThe new edition of this book invites me to thank the incomparable staff at Graywolf Press: Fiona McCrae, Anne Czarniecki, Janna Rademacher, Katie Dublinski, Mary Matze, and Jeff Shotts. And thanks to Kyle Hunter for the brilliant cover.\n\n\u2014P.L., New York City, December 2005\n\n# Lawnboy \u2013 Paul Lisicky (12\/05) Frequently asked Questions\n\nYour book expresses an ambivalent attitude toward Florida. How is the setting central to the book?\n\nPL: I think of the South Florida of the book as a kind of a stage set. It's a Florida of the imagination, even if it makes reference to real cities and streets. I'm interested in the tension between nature and artifice. I think of the seagrape hedges of Palm Beach, surgically clipped to look like stone walls. Or plants that look like hats or wigs. You can convince yourself that the man-made has the upper hand in a place like that, but we all know that South Florida is a hurricane or drought away from being done in. I think of Elizabeth Bishop's great poem \"Florida,\" in which nature is just lying in wait, ready to swallow up the whole grand scheme. She calls Florida the \"poorest postcard of itself.\"\n\nSo the tensions within that landscape mirror Evan's imagination. I'm reluctant to pin down the metaphor, but I'd say that Evan's perception of that setting\u2014his simultaneous love and resistance\u2014is crucial to understanding him.\n\nWhat were the special challenges in writing a book with a gay narrator?\n\nPL: I wanted him to be both a representative character and completely himself at once. The struggle of trying to balance those two desires pulses behind every scene. If he was too much of a representative, he'd be dull and washed out, too externally conceived, a type. If he was too peculiar, he'd put off readers. It often put me in a quandary. For instance, I didn't know if I could get away with a sentence like: \"How I wanted to lift the bowl in his moment of peace and kill him.\" All the same, I wasn't interested in writing a role model. I thought it was important for him to be fallible, wrong, even stupid at times. But he's also smart, sensitive, loyal to a fault, and capable of a huge, beguiling sweetness.\n\nHow are style and self-presentation important to the book?\n\nPL: Evan's sense of himself as endlessly mutable worries him at first. At one point he wonders whether he's merely the sum total of \"everyone who'd passed through [his] life\" and nothing more. Hector teaches him, if only through example, that it's not necessarily awful to be one thing one day and something else the next. You can give form to that mutable self through your clothing, through how you make yourself up every morning.\n\nI think we too easily conflate style with consumerism these days, but they're two different things in the world of the book. Style is constructed in the face of despair. It defies death and loss; it's an emblem of persistence, of faith in the world. And it's even better when it involves some act of reclamation. I'm thinking of Hector's thrift-store clothes, or Peter's doomed attempt to fix up the King Cole.\n\nWhat is the significance of all the ruined buildings and places in the novel?\n\nPL: They're all over the place: Golden Gate Estates, the ghost city of Boca Bay, Douglass Freeman's house and neighborhood... all cases of dashed hope, failed optimism. All originally conceived as points of pleasure. You could say that all this ruin stands for the fortunes of Evan, Peter, and Hector, who are all struggling against disillusionment and fear. And then again I hope that my metaphors resist easy explanation. You want them to be wilder than any attempt to cage and tame them.\n\nIn what ways is Lawnboy a novel about the age of AIDS?\n\nPL: The dread of AIDS\u2014and the stigma associated with the disease\u2014is everywhere in the book. The body out of control, a limited sense of time, imminent loss\u2014all these things haunt Evan, even though he hasn't tested positive. He has such a compromised sense of the future that even the prospect of going to the dentist seems futile. Hence, his urge to find someone now because he might not be around in three days. Every wish is intensified to the burning point. Life ablaze on the precipice.\n\nWhat do you say to those who read the ending as happy?\n\nPL: Sure, it's happy. Just as Evan tells himself that he's better off on his own, he gets the relationship he's wanted all along. But Evan's happiness lives with his knowledge that relationships are fragile. Even if he and Perry manage to make a long life together, Evan knows that he might outlive his new partner. The book closes with suggestions of terrorism and environmental collapse\u2014\"towers crumbling,\" \"forests burning down.\" So any personal joy is cut through with melancholy and loss\u2014my usual ambivalence rearing its head again!\n\nLawnboy is set in the early 1990s. How would Evan's story be different if you were a young man now?\n\nPL: It's almost too obvious to say it, but we're the products of our time. Protease inhibitors, cell phones, September 11th, \"The War on Terror,\" our disastrous president and his cronies, the Internet, online cruising, crystal meth, Friendster, MySpace, blogs, the widening gap between rich and poor: none of these was a factor in the early 1990s, and every last one\u2014good, bad, or both\u2014shapes daily experience in ways vast and small.\n\nI'd like to think that Evan would feel less isolated, a little less afraid of dying before his time. But even the most openminded parents don't raise their children to be homosexual, and the process by which gay kids come into their own is still traumatic. They often learn to efface themselves out of simple self-protection. What young kid wants to be called \"gay,\" which still stands for \"freak\" or\" loser,\" on the schoolyard? I think that any young man of Evan's intensity\u2014his loyalty to his family and his contradictory pull toward a life of desire\u2014would have a hard time of it. We're living in an era that's hostile to originality, to those who make their own path. There's a tremendous pressure to conform, no matter how you understand yourself.\n\nStill, it's sort of fun to imagine him standing in line to see Brokeback Mountain for the tenth time, listening to the Hidden Cameras on his iPod.\n\n# Reading Group Guide for Lawnboy by Paul Lisicky\n\n  1. Evan senses \"a wall between himself and the world,\" and describes a \"low-grade fear and rage burning\" beneath all his decisions. He is torn by contradictory impulses and sometimes experiences himself as \"a puppet\" or only a compilation of people he has known. How much of these feelings have to do with his age and how much with simply trying to live in contemporary society?\n  2. Landscapes and settings play a tremendous part in the story. How does the King Cole reflect both the inner life and the desires of Evan's brother Peter? How are the brothers alike? How are they different? Why does Evan feel a need to visit the hurricane-ravaged home where Douglass Freeman once lived? Finally, what is the significance of Evan's love of plants and what they become for him at the end of the novel?\n  3. After Evan moves out of his parents' home and in with William, he runs into his mother one day and tells her that she's never looked so good. She replies, \"I'd come to the point in my life where I realized I had two choices. I could either shoot myself in the temple or reinvent myself.\" In what way is her life a continual act of self-invention? A continual coming of age?\n  4. In her letter to Evan at the beginning of Chapter 10, Ursula Sarshik demands that Evan choose between William and his parents. She remains staunch in her decision not to let Evan come home for just a few days. She accuses Evan of turning his back on his parents. Is Ursula justified in her demand? Or have she and Evan's father turned their backs on their son? Does the Sarshik family strike you as typical or unique?\n  5. In Evan's childhood recollection of taunting the gay man, Stan Laskin, the hardware storeowner, Stan asks the boys, \"Why are you so hateful? All of you, I don't get it. Tell me how you live with yourselves?\" Are people meaner today? Are children meaner? Why? At the other end of the spectrum is the notion that sometimes difficulty makes people larger, better... Is this the case with Perry at the end of the book? Do you think that his kindness and thirst for life have to do with the loss of his partner, Andrew?\n\nThis book was designed by Rachel Holscher. It is set in Calisto MT type by Bookmobile Design & Digital Publisher Services and manufactured by Bookmobile on acid-free paper.\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\nTHE BLOOD SERIES\n\nBooks 4-6\n\nBlood Reign\n\nAngelic Blood\n\nBlood Enchantment\n\nNew York Times Bestselling Author\n\nTAMARA ROSE BLODGETT\n\nAll Rights Reserved.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2018 Tamara Rose Blodgett\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.\n\nwww.tamararoseblodgett.com\n\nTRB Facebook Fan Page\n\nEdited suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing.\n\nCover Design: Willsin Rowe\n\n# CONTENTS\n\nWorks by Tamara Rose Blodgett and Marata Eros\n\nTRB News\n\nWarning! Contains spoilers\n\nCharacter Index\n\nBLOOD REIGN\n\nANGELIC BLOOD\n\nBLOOD ENCHANTMENT\n\nAcknowledgments\n\nAbout the Author\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# Works by Tamara Rose Blodgett and Marata Eros:\n\nTamara Rose Blodgett\n\nThe BLOOD Series\n\nThe DEATH Series\n\nThe REFLECTION Series\n\nThe SAVAGE Series\n\nShifter ALPHA CLAIM\n\nVampire ALPHA CLAIM\n\nFinal Enforcement Vampire ALPHA CLAIM\n\n&\n\nMarata Eros:\n\nA Terrible Love (New York Times bestseller)\n\nA Brutal Tenderness\n\nThe Darkest Joy\n\nClub Alpha\n\nThe DARA NICHOLS Series\n\nThe DEMON Series\n\nThe DRUID Series\n\nRoad Kill MC Serial\n\nThe SIREN Series\n\nThe TOKEN Serial\n\nFinal Enforcement Vampire ALPHA CLAIM\n\nShifter ALPHA CLAIM\n\nVampire ALPHA CLAIM\n\nThe ZOE SCOTT Series\n\nClick HERE for Download Links for your Retailer.\n\nNever miss a new release! Subscribe:\n\nMarata Eros NEWS\n\nAnd\/or\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# TRB News\n\nSubscribe to my YouTube Channel\n\nExclusive Excerpts!\n\nComedic Quips\n\nWin FREE stuff!\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# Warning! Contains spoilers.\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# Character Index:\n\nBlood Singers\/talent:\n\nJulia- Queen of the Singers; Telekinetic\/telepath\n\nJason- Singer\/\"Feral\"\/Red Were\n\nScott- Royal Singer Blood; Deflector\/Combatant\n\nBrendan- Tracker\/pyro\n\nMichael- Illusionist\n\nJen- Telekinetic\n\nCyrus- Healer\n\nPaul- Negator\/amplifier\n\nAngela- Feeler\n\nMarcus- Region One\n\nJacqueline- Royal Singer Blood; Region Two Leader\n\nVictor- Region Two\/Combatant- Boiler\/Flame of Blood\n\nLucius- Combatant\n\nCynthia \"Cyn\" Adams - Rogue\/Healer\n\nHeidi- Reader\n\nTrevor- Deflector\n\nNorthwestern Were Pack:\n\nLawrence-Packmaster\n\nEmmanuel \"Manny\" - Beta to Lawrence\n\nAnthony \"Tony\" Daniel Laurent- Second to Lawrence\n\nAdrianna \"Adi\"- Alpha female\n\nSoutheastern Were Pack:\n\nDavid- Packmaster\n\nAlan Greene- Alpha male\n\nLacey Greene \u2013 female Were and Alan's sister\n\nBuck \"Slash\"- Alpha male\n\nKarl Truman- former Homer detective\n\nFord- Alpha male\/ FBI agent\n\nReagan - Moon Warrior, Lacey's daughter\n\nSoutheastern Vampire Kiss:\n\nMerlin- Coven leader (now deceased)\n\nWilliam- new coven leader (now deceased)\n\nBrynn- New leader of the Southeastern\n\nNorthwestern Vampire Kiss:\n\nGabriel- Coven Leader\n\nClaire- William's cousin\n\nWilliam- Runner\/shifter\/Singer blood\n\nUnseelie Sidhe fey:\n\nQueen Darcel- Sidhe\n\nTharell- mixed Sidhe warrior\n\nCormack- Sidhe warrior\n\nDomiatri \"Domi\"- Sidhe warrior\n\nRex- Sidhe\n\nKiel (key-ale)- dragon shifting Sidhe\n\nCelesta- Sidhe warrior\n\nDelilah - Vampire, third to Julia, Scott's half-sister\n\nRogue Reds:\n\nEzekiel \"Zeke\"\n\nRogue Alpha female Were:\n\nTessa\n\nJuvenile female Were\/shapeshifter:\n\nTaliah\n\nFEDS:\n\nTom Harriet\n\nTai (tie) Simon\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# BLOOD REIGN\n\nA Blood Series Novel\n\nBook 4\n\nNew York Times Bestselling Author\n\nTAMARA ROSE BLODGETT\n\nAll Rights Reserved.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2014 Tamara Rose Blodgett\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.\n\nwww.tamararoseblodgett.com\n\nTRB Facebook Fan Page\n\nEdited suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing.\n\nCover Design: Claudia McKinney\n\nPhotographs: DepositPhotos\n\nPhotography: Oleg Gekman\n\n# Synopsis\n\nJulia's sworn enemies are safely sequestered in a prison of the fey and her forever mate has been chosen\u2014not by blood, but by a circumstance shaped from coincidence. However, it's not enough to save Julia and the others their fate at the hands of the Alaska den, whose reacquisition has come alarmingly full-circle to capture them.\n\nTharell of the fey aligns with the Singers, Were, and remaining vampires to take back the one true Queen. Only Julia can stop the interspecies wars and establish a genetic truce that would free all groups from extinction. Can they rescue Julia and her allies before it's too late? Will the Red Were's lineage prove to be the catalyst of victory against a corrupt pack grown too debauched by greed and power?\n\nDEDICATION\n\nLinda Palomera-Terpe\n\nMay this be the first of many....\n\n# CHAPTER ONE\n\nMotion woke Julia initially. Rhythmic. Unfamiliar.\n\nConstant.\n\nShe allowed her eyes to open to slits. What little light existed crept inside to illuminate the four corners of where she lay. Julia said nothing, alerted no one. Silver chain, a fine gauge little better than woven lace, covered Jason, Truman, and Adi. Cyn was bound from behind, her hands in painful-looking knots behind her back.\n\nJulia swallowed, acutely aware of the dryness of her mouth and throat. She lay on her side and rocked back and forth, accidentally throwing herself on her face. It pressed uncomfortably against the rough wood of the surface on which she lay. Julia moved her shoulder into the unforgiving wood and shoved hard, using her half-asleep legs to jerk up to her knees in a semi-kneeling position.\n\nHer head swam with the remnants of the drugs.\n\nJulia took several deep, steadying breaths. She blinked, meeting Cyn's.\n\nHers reflected in the dark.\n\n\"That cop bit me,\" Cyn croaked. Julia imagined her throat was as parched as her own.\n\nJulia hadn't witnessed Cyn's being bitten, and the reason behind it eluded her. She relaxed against her heels for the time being. \"Why?\" she asked.\n\nCyn grimaced as she shifted her weight, her eyes tightening with pain. \"I don't know. I think he was thinking he'd be Mr. Helpful.\" Her gaze roamed all over the inside of the stuffy space. She recognized they were in a truck as it jostled. She and Cyn groaned from the motion.\n\n\"You're looking a little wolfy, Cyn,\" Jason said from his slumped corner.\n\nJason. Julia half-crawled, walking to his position with her knees, and he gave her a small smile. It looked more like pain than joy.\n\n\"What is it?\" Julia asked.\n\nThe truck jerked to a halt, and Julia flew forward, no hands to ward her fall. The ground hit her face a second time, but this time with momentum. She yelped on contact, muffled as it was, rolling over as splinters and a bruise vied for position on her cheekbone.\n\nShe'd just kicked her own ass.\n\n\"Jules!\" Jason yelled, moving to her in the same awkward shuffle she'd just managed.\n\nNot fast, wrapped as he was with the silver chain.\n\nHis face appeared above her, tightening in pain.\n\n\"Jules,\" he whispered.\n\nTears rolled out of the corners of her eyes and she moaned. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"We're home boys... and girls. Home reek home,\" Truman said in a sarcastic commentary from the back of the bus. Or truck.\n\nJulia rolled over onto her back. She hadn't noticed the stench. Now that he'd brought it to her attention, exhaust was all she could smell.\n\n\"Not yet,\" Jason said to Truman without looking at him, his hands bound tightly against his back like everyone else.\n\nTruman snorted. \"Canada, pal. Close enough.\"\n\nJason grunted affirmation. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"What now?\" Cyn asked.\n\n\"Looks like they're taking us back to Alaska,\" Jason said and Julia could hear the despondency in his tone. It wasn't going to be reunion time. There was an entirely different agenda going on.\n\nThe truck slowed, coming to a shuddering stop.\n\nLily's entrance shattered their small group's quiet commiserating.\n\nVent holes and an opaque ceiling was the only air and light the five of them had. The sultry heat and dim interior vanished the instant the doors were slapped open and daylight streamed inside.\n\nJulia took in the woman who had pretended to be her aunt, secure the doors against the sides of the truck.\n\n\"You're awake,\" she said without waiting for a response. Gone was the demure, small-in-stature guardian with the perpetually sour disposition and perma-smirk.\n\nIn its place was a statuesque Sidhe warrior of the fey.\n\nJulia flung about in her memory bank for anything to do with fey lore and could only come up with the colorful Faerie stories of childhood literature.\n\nNone of that was remotely applicable to the reality that stood before her. A six-foot tall, inky black figure with a shock of silver hair gave them her inscrutable, pale gray eyes. She was nearly naked. A band of material like a vintage tube top wrapped her breasts and a matching covering that decorum dictated hid the female bits and nothing else. She looked like a barbarian from another planet. Every movement brought striated musculature to the surface of her skin like the rippling of water after a stone's throw.\n\n\"Good,\" she said in a soft purr. \"I'm sure the human necessities are calling.\"\n\nHer voice didn't even sound the same. Lilting, biting... it ran along Julia's skin like small bugs looking for flesh to penetrate.\n\n\"I always thought you were a dumb bitch before. Now I don't have to speculate. Yeah,\" Cyn commented dryly.\n\nThat was how Cyn coped. Julia just wished it hadn't been right now.\n\nLily's self-important smile wilted a little around the edges. \"Your good or bad opinion of me is not relevant, Singer.\"\n\n\"I think it's more like Were now, fairy,\" Cyn bit back. Then, \"I gotta pee, and unless you want to add winged janitor to the list of your bullshit, I suggest you get my drugged ass out of here.\"\n\nAdi groaned in the background. \"God... what\u2014silver.\" She blanched, looking around until she caught sight of Lily. \"Okay, kidnap us because you're asshats. I get it, but silver?\"\n\nJason and Truman said nothing. Their glaring at Lily was all the evidence needed that they'd rather be anywhere but in the back of a box van returning to Alaska.\n\nLily watched Cyn warily as she leapt up from the ground five feet into the rear of the van. Cyn grinned. It hung on her face wrong somehow.\n\nLily was on her in a second. She grabbed an ankle, jerking her like a willful dog on a chain.\n\nJulia saw what would happen before it did, but Lily was a little slow on the uptake. Some things remained the same.\n\nThey had not thought to wrap the spiderwebbing of feather light silver chain around Cyn. They'd discounted her.\n\nShe had been a Singer before Truman's bite, and someone had dropped the Were ball. Having Singer blood meant many things. But if the host held a Singer's blood, transference to cross-species genetics was a highway instead of a walk.\n\nCyn's fingertips burst with talons, her nose grew to a stub, downy pale fur taking the place of skin and her teeth becoming sharpened tips. She sat up, partially changed, her butt dragging along the rough wood floor, and took hold of the forearms pulling her out of the van.\n\nCyn easily broke her non-silver bonds.\n\nLily turned, her face filled with comical surprise. Julia understood from her expression that it was a rare event.\n\nCyn crushed the bones of Lily's forearms and Lily reared back, howling in anguish, trying to tear herself out of Cyn's grasp.\n\nIt was a horrible beauty to see her friend's face grin from a row of teeth more wolfen than human.\n\n\"No ya don't,\" Cyn growled and jerked Lily close, rolling her over onto her back. She didn't pause for consideration.\n\nHuman rational had left, and the Were had taken over.\n\nLily kicked out, connecting with Cyn's midsection as she simultaneously latched onto her shoulder.\n\nCyn grunted but didn't dislodge.\n\nInstead, she moved deeper into the hold, biting down on Lily's neck with crushing force.\n\nA second figure jumped into the van as Julia pressed against the sides of the wall.\n\nOne of the cops.\n\n\"Stop!\" he commanded, and Cyn shuddered.\n\nShe growled even as she reveled in mutilating Lily's neck, shaking her head slightly in glee.\n\nMetallic and warm, copper filled the air, and Julia gagged.\n\n\"Release her!\" the cop said.\n\nCyn raised her muzzle and howled, at once enraged and discouraged.\n\nHe had stopped her from tearing Lily's head off.\n\nJason and Truman snuffled and mewled, not in submission but in pain and disquiet.\n\nCyn backed away, shaking her head while on her hands and knees. No matter how much she swung her head back and forth, she couldn't rid herself of his command.\n\nJulia's eyes rose to his. A new Alpha.\n\n\"I'm Tom Harriet.\"\n\nJulia said nothing. His identity meant nothing. Did nothing. William was dead, his sacrifice feeling more and more worthless. He'd saved her from Cormack, the Sidhe that meant her death, only for another group to capture her.\n\nBut not just her. It was now her and the others.\n\nJulia dispassionately watched Lily's throat knit the damage, very pink against all that true black skin, Cyn's canines had made.\n\nJulia began to speak, but Harriet held up his hand for silence.\n\n\"It was one of my wolves that botched this entire acquisition up three years ago.\" His smile was a grim line in a hard face. \"And now we have the Blooded Queen\u2014who by rights was always meant to be with the Alaska den and no other.\" Harriet spread his hands away from his body.\n\n\"Who are you to tell me where I should be, and with whom?\" she asked. Her eyes were still closed, her breath shallow as she laid her head against the wall of the van.\n\nShe smelled his nearness, and her eyes flew open as Jason growled and struggled to get to her.\n\nHarriet's eyes bled to green.\n\nHe was a Red.\n\n\"We're not some weak outside pack.\" He evaded her question. Those spinning orbs dove into her gaze, mesmerizing, captivating\u2014dead serious.\n\n\"I am pack master of the Alaskan den. We take what is ours. No negotiations, no bullshit.\"\n\nJulia searched his eyes. He seemed to be telling the truth, though the truth as he saw it.\n\n\"What does this mean for me?\" Julia asked slowly, though she didn't think she'd like the answer. She was getting accustomed to receiving it.\n\n\"Easy, Julia Caldwell. You're the pinnacle of a breeding triangle, to simplify things. As I'm sure the fey rehearsed to you, you throw true, yes?\"\n\nJulia stared at him, speechless. Unbelievable. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jason inch closer.\n\n\"We want more than Alaska.\" Harriet's hand closed into a fist by her temple. Julia didn't flinch. She was desensitized at this point. It didn't help that she had to use the bathroom so badly it burned inside her, distracting her from even the fear of this new threat.\n\nHe casually swung that held fist into Jason's temple and he fell with a howl, the chains cinching tighter with the movement. As Julia now saw, they were meant to.\n\nStay still, and they remained slack. Move, and they grew tighter with each motion.\n\nJason writhed in agony on the floor behind them, and Harriet went on as if nothing had transpired.\n\n\"We have the highest concentration of Red Were in the world. We are destined by genetics to be the dominant Were. That is why we're put to death on sight by dens who fear us\u2014our potential.\"\n\nJulia chanced a glance at Jason, his eyes spinning orbs of green anger, his wolf a hairsbreadth from erupting. She couldn't stand the idea of what would happen to him if he burst his skin with the silver bindings.\n\n\"Don't,\" she whispered. Please don't.\n\n\"He will, if I will it,\" Harriet said softly.\n\nThey looked at Harriet. \"Why would you take us and torture some of your own kind?\" Julia asked, desperate to understand.\n\n\"Because I can,\" he answered softly.\n\nTom Harriet turned to face Jason and Truman.\n\nHis command brought worse than her imaginings.\n\nJulia cried as the bindings tightened and the howling was the only thing she heard.\n\n# CHAPTER TWO\n\nJulia could be neutral, but Cynthia was pissed.\n\nShe hated\u2014hated that pudwacker, Harriet. It went beyond the obvious kidnapping crap. Cyn was aware, very aware, that he was Alpha Red and that meant he could pretty much boss any Were around. Not great for her.\n\n*\n\nCyn took satisfaction the deepest canine punctures were a necklace of wounds around Lily's neck.\n\nIt made a smile bloom on her face like a flower seeking the sun.\n\n\"How's it feel, bitch?\" Cyn hissed at Lily.\n\nShe strode to Cyn, and the fey warrior paused just long enough to kick her in the ribs.\n\nCyn grunted, biting down on the natural yelp that threatened escape by a fraction before it erupted. She wouldn't give the heartless Sidhe the satisfaction.\n\nWhatever irritated that betraying, lying c u next Tuesday worked just dandy for Cyn.\n\n\"Cyn, God, would ya stop?\" Adi rubbed her wrists where the silver had burned her like acid. Cyn pulled a face at the ligature marks at the sight of the silver bindings decorating Adi's wrists.\n\nBastards.\n\nTom Harriet crouched down next to her with a slight bounce, cocking his head to the side and studying her like an interesting experiment inside a petri dish.\n\nCyn kicked up her chin. \"Gonna beat the hell out of a bound woman?\" She spit in his direction. It landed near his left foot, missing his expensive shoes by a fraction of an inch.\n\nHarriet's lips curled. \"Ordinarily, no. However, you bring the very worst reactions out in me. My wolf wants to clamp jaws around that skinny neck of yours and shake you until your teeth rattle.\"\n\n\"What's stopping you, pencil dick?\" Cyn challenged.\n\nA vein popped in his forehead, and Cyn braced for the worse. Deep in her heart, she knew she couldn't be a martyr for anything or anyone, like Jules had committed to doing long ago.\n\nShe was too much of a selfish bitch, for one. If he killed her, then she wouldn't have to deal with what had happened to her. Cyn centered herself, hoping for finality. She thought she was more selfless than this, but surprise... she was more human than all the Singers and Were combined. Right now, she felt pretty damned human. Cyn was beyond frustrated and helpless. She couldn't live like this.\n\n\"Don't, numbnuts!\" Truman's voice boomed out into the open space where they camped. He trained his eyes on Harriet's hand.\n\nHarriet hesitated, his fist lifted to strike.\n\nCyn watched him warily, shooting a glare at Truman, who returned her look with one of his own.\n\nHe'd spoiled a perfectly good braining.\n\nThat fist fell to his side. He breathed deeply, scrutinizing Cyn as he began to speak. \"I was top in my class at the Bureau; received honors for my grades when I studied the criminal justice system. I know what you're attempting here, Cynthia Adams.\" His eyes searched Cyn's. She gave a disgusted exhale, her face inches above the sparse grass where she lay.\n\n\"Suicide by Fed. Or in this case\u2014Were.\" Harriet stood, shaking his head as he looked down at her. \"We didn't bother with all this elaborate shit to kill you. Think.\" He tapped his temple with two fingers. \"You can't kill the fey. She's immortal. You'll just piss her off.\"\n\nCyn doubted it. There had to be some way to kill her black ass.\n\nHis gaze roved the small group, Ford cruising up to stand by his side.\n\nAll this was so overwhelming. I want to go back to where I was. Where getting her nails done and the latest pair of shoes filled her thoughts. But no. Now it was Were this, Singer that.\n\nShe looked at her chipped, shitty nails. Her hair had two months' dirty blonde grow-out. She wanted to howl for that alone. Instead, she glared at Harriet.\n\nAdi said, \"Wait a second...\" Her eyes narrowed to slits. \"I know why you took Julia. No offense\"\u2014her gaze swept Julia then went back to Harriet\u2014\"everyone wants the Rare One.\"\n\nHarriet said nothing.\n\n\"But you took us, too. Why not knock us out, take Julia, and run off?\"\n\n\"That's the $64,000 dollar question,\" Lily said.\n\nCyn rolled her eyes. \"Don't try. Don't try to be clever, interesting, or relevant. You've been in the fey mound too long. That's not even that much money anymore, you dodo bird.\"\n\nJules stifled a laugh. Adi didn't even try, letting a straightforward guffaw escape.\n\nLily's lips thinned into a slash of charcoal. \"I want to end her. I don't care if she's Red, or leverage... she is a foul-mouthed Singer that has been turned into a dog. She is of no consequence.\"\n\nCyn smirked.\n\nShe shouldn't have felt confident, given they'd caught on to her new skill set and bound her in silver. But she did. It was just too damned easy to yank Lily's chain. Cyn found she liked it. A lot.\n\n\"Not yet.\" Harriet stayed the fey with an arm. His skin was very white against the tar color of hers.\n\n\"Why?\" she nearly wailed. \"I put up with her empty head while she was friends with the Blooded Queen because I was told I must... but now? Let us do away with her.\"\n\nAdi rolled her eyes between the two. \"Let's stay on task, kidnappers.\" They looked at her. \"So\u2014you take Julia for the obvious reasons.\"\n\n\"Brood Mare,\" Julia piped in then lifted a finger. \"No\u2014scratch that. Paranormal brood mare.\"\n\nHarriet and Lily scowled at Adi, but she was unfazed.\n\nAdi swept her hand to Julia. \"Yup, that covers it. But you still haven't explained the rest.\"\n\n\"I know why,\" Truman said.\n\nHarriet's self-satisfied smirk turned into a shit-eating grin. Cyn figured that couldn't be good.\n\n\"You're Red. I'm Red.\"\n\nHeat flared in Cyn's skin when Truman's gaze skimmed over her trussed-like-a turkey form.\n\n\"Jason\u2014Cyn?\" he asked.\n\n\"Very good, cop. It shows that not all the police force is bumbling fools.\"\n\nTruman coughed out a laugh. \"Yeah, it shows I don't have to go to four years of a hoity-toity college to prove I can puzzle something through. I don't have to hold my dick to know I have one, if you feel me.\"\n\nCyn felt her eyes go round as Harriet strode to Truman.\n\nHarriet's face was thunder. \"Don't make me shut you down, cop. It'll hurt.\"\n\n\"If you think you've got the brass balls for it, try it.\" Truman's face was set in stone. He was a man of his word. It was all over him.\n\n\"Truman,\" Jason cautioned.\n\nCyn remembered Jason's caged existence while he was feral after being turned. He was Red because he'd been bitten by a Red but didn't have the Were lineage. He'd almost gone sideways when he'd changed. Not true in Truman's case. He had the genetic fabric to make the change.\n\nTruman shrugged Jason's hand from his shoulder and squared off with Harriet, the testosterone so thick in the air Cyn choked on it.\n\nInstead, Lily's droll voice broke through their posturing. \"All the talk of penises has made me realize how distracting it is to have one.\"\n\nTruman and Harriet turned to Lily.\n\nHer hand came to rest on Cyn's hair and she wanted to puke on Lily's feet. She did the second best thing. \"Get your hands off me or I'll bite your toe off. It won't kill ya but it'll be a bitch growing that back.\"\n\nLily's sour look soaked Cyn with its venom. She glared back at her. Like that bitch's dirty looks were going to matter. Duh.\n\nHarriet's gaze found Lily's, and a silent exchange passed between them. Cyn shifted her weight.\n\n\"You're right, of course,\" Harriet conceded to Lily. He cast a last glance at Truman then walked away to stand beside her.\n\n\"I am but one 'scout', if you will... who searches for Reds. If we can reclaim those that wander without a den, or worse\"\u2014Harriet's gaze sought each of theirs\u2014\"are unclaimed and killed simply because of who they are, then my bit in this life will have had value.\"\n\nLily looks bored, Cyn noted. She just knew that wench had her own agenda.\n\n\"So what's with Lily, what does she get? Because I know she's not here for any philanthropy.\"\n\nJason grunted in the background.\n\n\"No.\" Harriet's tone was short. \"The fey make pacts that benefit their people.\" He spread his arms wide, palms out. \"Like all of our species.\"\n\nHis gaze went to Julia. \"Even the Queen of the Singers, their 'Rare One', must wield a certain mercenary edge to maintain order.\"\n\nCyn didn't hear Jules argue. Hell\u2014she couldn't protest it, either.\n\nHer mind spun with the why of it all. Then she touched on something... \"So you collect the Reds and you become, what? The most kick ass den in the West or something?\" Or North?\n\nHarriet smiled. \"No. Pure Reds do not need to heed the moon's call to change. We change at will.\"\n\n\"It's the sign that a dog is Red enough if he or she\"\u2014Lily literally looked down her nose at Cyn\u2014\"can change without lunar fullness.\"\n\n\"But some can't,\" Truman said.\n\n\"Not exactly.\" Lily's pale eyes bored into Julia's. \"Now that the Blooded Queen has become, all those who have the Red blood of the Were can willfully change, if she is in proximity.\"\n\n\"So just Julia being around...?\" Adi fished for confirmation.\n\nHarriet nodded.\n\n\"It's very similar to the lowly human who has a bit of fey blood.\" Lily sniffed as if this likelihood was not only repugnant but also unlikely.\n\nCyn narrowed her eyes to slits. \"Tell us. How does it compare to a human having fey ancestry if a Were is Red?\"\n\nLily rolled her eyes at Harriet, who said nothing.\n\n\"Why... you're such a daft girl. Throwing around a few four-dollar words is not proof of intellect.\"\n\nCyn moved her shoulder in an awkward shrug. She was okay in her own skin. The strange creature that had treated Julia badly, lied, and hidden who and what she was wouldn't diminish Cyn. Only she had the power to do that.\n\n\"Just tell them,\" Harriet said to Lily. The limits of his patience finally grew thin. About damn time. Hell, hers had gone MIA about... well, from the very beginning.\n\n\"Like blood calls to like. For simplicity's sake, a summons\u2014if you will.\" Lily crossed her arms over a flat black stomach, and Cyn was disturbed to note she had an outie.\n\n\"So strength in numbers.\"\n\nLily inclined her head.\n\n\"This is a getting a bunch of the same species together for what end?\" Truman asked carefully.\n\n\"Control,\" Harriet said. \"With the Blooded Queen, we are suddenly all moonless changers. It's a powerful summons.\"\n\n\"I want to know more about this fey angle.\" Cyn slid her gaze to Lily. Cyn was suspicious; Lily's presence still didn't make complete sense.\n\n\"The fey will be summoned as well. With enough time, the status of all the Reds becoming moonless changers, regardless of blood, will be solidified forever.\"\n\nJason spoke for the first time. \"You won't need Julia.\"\n\n\"No,\" Lily answered.\n\n\"Then what happens to me?\" Julia asked.\n\nLily favored Jules with a malicious smile. \"You will then be mine to summon the humans who have fey blood.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Jules pushed her matted hair behind her ears, a helluva shiner distending her cheekbone.\n\n\"So we can rid the earth of the half-breed.\"\n\n\"Genocide?\" Truman asked in patent disbelief.\n\nCyn shook her head at the grinning Lily, who was obviously touched in the head.\n\n\"Feycide,\" Cyn confirmed.\n\n# CHAPTER THREE\n\nTharell met the unlikely source of his intel, Gabriel, the Rare One of the death bringers' Northwestern kiss.\n\n\"We have an understanding, then?\" Gabriel asked.\n\nTo say that working with a corrupt Singer, leader to a coven of the fanged, was a necessary evil was an understatement.\n\nEvery thought had been about the Rare One, the Blooded Queen of the Singers. Only her presence, then lack thereof, could be the cause of the disquiet. The sithen knew her.\n\nTrust did not come easily to the fey. However, the insurance of another faction whose interests aligned with theirs was advised.\n\nA stealthy rustle in the periphery made Tharell turn. A deer trotted within shouting distance. Somehow, it felt the men's presence, though Tharell had thrown a cape of glamour to hide them. It scampered off, skittish as a new colt.\n\nGabriel's eyes never wavered to the distraction of the wildlife. \"Your glamour?\" he asked.\n\n\"It holds,\" Tharell responded, insulted.\n\nGabriel chuckled. Tharell schooled his face to the blank neutrality for which the Sidhe courts were so well known. Though now that Queen Darcel no longer ruled, there could come to be a Sidhe the sithen deemed worthy. Tharell had hoped it would be the Blooded Queen.\n\nShe had made a vow to consider Singers as candidates for marriage in Faerie. Whether or not she would bow to that wisdom remained to be seen.\n\n\"If what you tell me is true, and William has met his end in true death\u2014\"\n\n\"It is,\" Tharell answered, already tiring of the game of words.\n\n\"Then I see no reason why we cannot ally as we search for the Rare One.\"\n\n\"She will not comply with what you offer.\" Tharell crossed his arms, and the glamor that rode the surface of his skin shimmered, settling back on the deep violet flesh like a floating covering. Only he could see it, as he owned that magick.\n\n\"There is Claire, cousin to William...\"\n\nTharell palmed his chin. Familial ties were very strong, especially amongst the fey. As strong a consideration for Singers as for the Sidhe. \"Perhaps she would return to Seattle, in the underground lair of the Northwestern, but she left under terrible circumstances. Julia was soul-meld with a Singer of royal lineage.\"\n\n\"And fey, and vampire,\" Gabriel interjected.\n\n\"Not precisely. Though it was a motley mess of ancestry to be sure.\"\n\nOnly a few could venture very far from the mound and hope to retain their power. Tharell, of course, due to his mixed blood, and maybe Domi with some extraordinary intervention or assistance. But the distance Gabriel proposed would challenge even him, as rare as some of his gifts were. And he was prepared to find out what that would be in the happenstance that some things came to pass.\n\n\"They mean to unite the Reds and it will be back to what it was two thousand years ago, when the fey were in Europe and the Reds struck fear in anyone foolish enough to travel with a moon full or gone.\" Gabriel gave a slight lift of his broad shoulders.\n\nTharell frowned, remembering the legends well. The Red Were were feared. Rare and hunted to near-extinction. Now it appeared as though distance had given them sanctuary.\n\nTheir sojourn would sicken Domi and make Tharell vulnerable.\n\nGabriel watched his thought processes with interest. \"Have we struck a bargain, Tharell of the Unseelie Sidhe?\"\n\nTharell stared at Gabriel so long the other man almost took his proffered palm back. The fey took an oath with the utmost seriousness.\n\nFinally, and with great reluctance, Tharell shook hands with the devil. His motivations went beyond this meeting, to which Gabriel was not privy.\n\nIt was the best solution amongst bad ones.\n\nJulia Caldwell would be taken again. For good, and many Singers handed over to the Unseelie in exchange for her freedom.\n\nIt was an unjust manipulation of her. He could easily apply that old human expression of \"sacrificing the few for the many\" here.\n\n*\n\nTharell could not wash the treachery from his skin as he bathed in the modern showers of Faerie supplied by the underground hot springs.\n\nThe water slid like hot, fragrant silk over the muscles of his body as he mechanically cleansed himself.\n\nThe lack of an interim ruler unsettled many of the Sidhe. Tharell agreed. But without royal blood and a slew of bodyguards, there was no peace. No one could step in without being murdered by another vying for the top position.\n\nThat was why a magical padlock of sorts had been used on the court. No one but the fashioner of the spell could undo it.\n\nOf course, like all the old magicks, it had strength in the beginning, only to fade as the timepiece of the sithen ticked. And as all knew, time ran differently in Faerie.\n\nTharell pressed his forehead against the sithen's smooth, polished rock. He simply thought of the need for a towel and a peg pushed out of the rock, a towel appearing that was a shade lighter than his skin. He knew of civility, and the sithen's low-running intelligence was sentient enough for an exchange of thoughts, though the sithen did not possess speech as such.\n\nTharell said nothing, taking the towel from the peg that had grown out of the wall. He petted the wall in quiet thankfulness for the small courtesy shown by this place where but an unspoken thought met the Sidhe's basest needs.\n\nThe peg shimmered, becoming opaque and finally translucent. Then, like water, it melted back to become one with the low wall's glittering ebony.\n\nHow much longer will the sithen be healthy without leadership? And not just any leader, but one that showed deference and respect to the fey. All fey, not just Sidhe.\n\nTharell padded into the larger quarters that gave way to an archway, hand-cut centuries before Tharell's birth. He set about getting his garments donned. His tunic came first, breeches and soft-soled shoes were custom cut and sewn for his feet. He laced them to the tops of his shins, winding the leather ties twice around his upper calf and knotting it with proficiency borne of long practice. He walked to the door, grabbing his weapons belt off a hand-hammered brass hook as he left.\n\nThere was no iron in Faerie. It was poison to the fey.\n\nHe loathed the royal singer contained within their prison, but he must deal with her. She might be what Tharell needed to survive the journey so far from Faerie.\n\n*\n\nTharell moved through the labyrinth of the sithen.\n\nIf it had been to Tharell's liking, Jacqueline would have been dead long ago.\n\nThe Singers Book of Blood forbade such a thing. Jacqueline was royalty, though her mixed blood appeared to be as frowned upon as his own. Fey, Singer, Were, and vampire. Jacqueline, reigning monarch of Region Two, had too much variation in her blood.\n\nAnd just the right amount of what mattered.\n\nJacqueline stood when she saw him, the heavily veined marble bench that had been her post disappearing into the sithen wall as she left it.\n\nTharell released a breath of resigned frustration. Half-clothed again. Jacqueline always knew when he would appear and shed her clothes at just the right moment.\n\nTharell cast his gaze away when he saw what the Were did behind her, their vulgarity part of who they were. He could not close his ears to the lustful coupling that reached him. It was always the same. And deliberately meant to throw him off balance, make him feel ashamed to watch them rut as alley cats caught in their mating.\n\nTharell squared his shoulders. They were detestable but had become necessary.\n\n# CHAPTER FOUR\n\nJacqueline allowed the Were to drive into her from behind, barely losing breath, though she did slap the invisible wall in front of herself so he would not force her face into it.\n\nShe had coerced herself to mate with Tony. They had handled it quietly. As she had Were blood and must adhere to her needs as a Singer and a royal, they had been given a ceremony of the most basic order.\n\nMarcus was required to be in attendance, and his obvious distaste of it all had brought her more pleasure than she anticipated. It was the only pleasure of the entire union.\n\nA means to an end.\n\nOf course, even though the magical borders of their fey prison were impervious to their efforts at escape, the entire bit of Faerie could be realized through scent alone. Tony was a Were and she an expert Tracker. Too bad her talents grew weaker each minute she spent in this odd but increasingly pleasant new world.\n\nTony was always aware when the one who called himself Tharell was nearing, and she cringed at what must happen. It had been Tony's idea to make themselves as repugnant as possible while also obtaining their end goal. Generally, as far as lore went, the fey were immune to sexual exploits carried out in front of them. But after much experimentation, they'd found it was the only thing that got under Tharell's violet skin.\n\nJacqueline bitterly encouraged Tony directly against her deepest instincts. \"Harder, beast. Make a show of it.\"\n\nTony complied, spearing her so deeply she felt the pain of his entry and exit, the horrible tool of his perversion buried deeply within his nature; adoring the opportunity to hurt her through sex.\n\nHe really was a terrible excuse for a Were.\n\nJacqueline ground her teeth against his roughness, the foreign urge to cry floating within reach as he gripped her shoulder. His fingertips bit into her skin as he anchored her, causing what would be magnificent fingerprint bruises to take shape by the morning.\n\nHe gasped. Tony stabbed her with a final, revolting thrust. As he finished inside her, Jacqueline plastered a smile on her face for Tharell's benefit. He struggled to cover his revulsion.\n\nWhat was the modern slang for that? Jacqueline wondered as she straightened and let down her dress. Ah yes, epic failure. She touched a finger to her chin, pondering... Or was it epic fail? No matter, disgusting Tharell was the goal.\n\nShe could hardly remember why she had made this an objective, and it disturbed her more day by day. Jacqueline wondered if she could bear it much longer.\n\nTharell cleared his throat and Jacqueline inquired, as if she had not just been having sex with the disgusting Were, \"And to what do we owe the honor of your presence?\" She watched those bright eyes, like the Caribbean Sea, flick to Tony then back to her. He was an extraordinary looking creature.\n\nAnd a dangerous one. Jacqueline never allowed herself to forget that.\n\nTony learned that lesson the hard way, early on. He had thought to outmaneuver the Sidhe and made to turn into his half-wolfen form. He went for the fey's throat.\n\nTharell had blurred into him with a move that had an edge of macabre beauty. Before Tony could take his next breath, Tharell had deeply embedded his long sword inside Tony's body.\n\nTony's eyes had grown wide, his body slumping atop the blade. Tharell had grunted as he'd extracted it in a tight jerk toward his own body. Tony had fallen on his smug face.\n\nThat had been Tony's first and last attempt to try the bounds of the prison. Now this new plan was in full play.\n\nJacqueline would get with child, and when the little wretch was whelped, Marcus would have an entire new problem to consider. They could not imprison a Singer of royal blood who carried offspring. It didn't matter that she had made a bid for Julia's life, the inept girl, or that they had discovered her contaminated blood.\n\nJacqueline was royal enough.\n\nShe curled her lips into a smile at Tharell's next words.\n\n\"I have a proposition.\"\n\nExcellent. Jacqueline smelled opportunity and it had nothing to do with her diminishing skills as Tracker.\n\nJacqueline thought she caught a whiff of a metaphorical bleed from Tharell.\n\nShe and Tony, sensing the potential for weakness, moved in for the kill.\n\n\"And?\" Jacqueline asked, feigning boredom. It was not as easy as it sounded while Tony made a production of zipping up his sizeable but now-deflated commodity inside his modern jeans.\n\nHer smile became genuine as she saw Tharell's clear distaste of Tony.\n\n\"The Rare One has been taken,\" Tharell stated in bald discourse.\n\nEven better news than expected. Jacqueline couldn't contain her glee. \"Who's taken the girl?\"\n\nTharell ignored her question. \"I will need a fey of mixed lineage who is also Singer to Hunt the Blood until she is rediscovered.\"\n\nJacqueline studied his face. Arrogant\u2014certain. She twisted around to face Tony then glanced at Tharell over her shoulder. \"Let me confer with my... mate,\" she choked out.\n\nTharell gave a stiff nod.\n\nJacqueline walked to the far corner of their \"cell,\" actually a mockery of the outside. All begotten by old magick, it was a type of indigenous glamour where a false sky with perpetual twilight lit the area. Stars that would never twinkle were cast about in the deep navy folds as tangerine inked the edges like spilt juice.\n\n\"He has asked for a Hunt the Blood,\" Jacqueline whispered to Tony, who of course, ignored the finer points and grabbed her breast.\n\n\"I could go again,\" he said, twisting her nipple through the thin blouse she had donned.\n\nJacqueline winced, trying for patience and finding none. Instead, bile churned in her empty stomach at the thought of him touching her again so soon. \"Do that again and I shall freeze your lungs, you atrocious excuse for a male.\" Though she knew not how long she could make good on that particular threat. Jacqueline hated the crude smile on his face but was relieved when his fingers fell from her.\n\n\"You need me,\" he said in a huff, folding his arms.\n\n\"True, swine, but only until your seed takes hold. After that, you are no longer necessary.\"\n\nHe leaned forward, his breath hot and rancid against her face, and she held her own against his threatening body language. \"When you have my whelp in your womb, it will not be a choice. You will be mine whether you wish it or no.\" He used the old language, forcing her to listen.\n\nJacqueline elected to ignore his threat, for now. \"Fine. Play nice is all I ask. Stop hurting me.\"\n\nTony's eyebrows hiked. \"You like it.\"\n\nHow could Tony's perversions exceed my own?\n\nShe ignored the goad. \"Tharell of the Sidhe must use us to find her.\"\n\nTony shrugged a shoulder. \"I heard. I don't give two shits and a fuck. I want out of here. The why doesn't matter. It's results, Jackie.\"\n\nJacqueline ignored his overly familiar nickname. It seemed obtuse at this point to worry over it. She flipped her palm out. \"And that is what this gives us\u2014opportunity.\"\n\nTony's eyes narrowed. \"All right, what's my role?\"\n\n\"It will be simple for you. Do not let on that there is any agenda other than the one you normally perpetuate.\"\n\nTony barked out a laugh. \"Which is?\"\n\n\"Your typical brutish behavior,\" Jacqueline answered easily.\n\nHe drove a palm around her neck and jerked her to his mouth, plunging his tongue down her throat, gagging her with it. She beat at him with her fists. Finally, in desperation, she stole his breath.\n\nHer telekinetic talent was still strong. For now.\n\nTony pulled away from her, gasping for air that wouldn't come. Her power was much diminished, dampened by the magick of the fey, the holding cell uniquely fashioned to weaken her powers. She gave it everything she had, drowning Tony in what remained.\n\n\"Stop!\" he croaked, driven to his knees. He clawed at her dress. The material wrapped around Jacqueline's ankles as he fought his body's need for oxygen.\n\n\"Jacqueline of the Singers,\" Tharell called out loudly.\n\n\"Yes?\" she asked without turning, enjoying Tony's plum-colored face. And his subservient position on the floor.\n\n\"What is your decision: Will you help in the Hunt for Blood?\"\n\nJacqueline released Tony's airway. It had drained her immeasurably in the hostile environment of Faerie. Her shoulders dropped from the exertion.\n\nTony glared up at her, his hands ringing his throat, his ass on his heels.\n\n\"I shall,\" she replied.\n\n\"Be ready tomorrow morning at dawn... or whatever time I call you.\"\n\nTharell gave a curt chin dip and with a last glance at Tony, he spun on his heel, walking away.\n\nTony grunted as he stood, using a hand upon his knee to hoist himself.\n\nBut his gaze as he watched Jacqueline spoke of caution.\n\nGood, he would do well to be cautious of me. Jacqueline needed no one. Only herself. And those underneath her. Or that was all it had ever been\u2014all she knew.\n\n\"I have wounded you.\" Tony growled in pleasure.\n\nJacqueline felt the wetness between her thighs and scowled at him. On some level, she understood that self-hate was part of her nature. As it was a part of his.\n\nWho knew what the two of them would spawn together. Many would consider the mixed genetics too diluted to introduce anything of malicious intent. Jacqueline wasn't sure.\n\nTony's hand snaked out and grabbed her wrist.\n\n\"I can do more.\"\n\nShe placed a palm against his chest to resist, but her powers were depleted.\n\n# CHAPTER FIVE\n\nSlash struggled to awaken. He'd become instantly aware of the commotion all around him. He was shedding the drug like unwanted raindrops as his consciousness ticked closer to full tilt.\n\nHe sat up in a moving truck. Five sets of eyes followed his movement.\n\nSlash opened his mouth and no sound came out. He had never been thirstier in his life. Jason Caldwell kicked a water bottle to him with his bound legs and Slash grabbed it. He took a long pull, silently capped it, and set it between his legs. A harsh breath slid out of him. Slash didn't panic easily even as he took in the apparent direness of their situation.\n\nHis wrists burned where ligature marks deeply grooved his flesh. He fought not to rub them, feeling fortunate he was unbound. He easily caught the reflective eyes of his brethren, realizing only just then that they were Red\u2014all.\n\n\"They're taking us to Alaska,\" the girl named Cynthia informed him quietly.\n\nInstead of answering, Slash located Adrianna, her face swollen where she'd been struck. His mouth tightened. She noticed his expression and looked away.\n\nOf course she did. Slash understood how awful he looked. Yet it was important he knew she was healing.\n\n\"Adrianna,\" he began, his discomfort around her acute, his desire to hide it even greater.\n\nHer face swung back to his. \"Yes?\" she asked while hiding her eyes from his gaze.\n\nWhere was that spitfire nature he so relished? \"Are you well?\"\n\nAdrianna shook her head. He crawled to her and maintained a tense two-foot distance. Silently adding his presence without throwing it in her face.\n\n\"I couldn't help anyone. Lily forced the change.\"\n\nSlash sensed Adrianna blamed herself.\n\nHe remembered it all. Very painful to be brought when the moon wasn't full; it had been a deliberate move to incapacitate. She could have done nothing. Slash was Alpha enough to change into his half-form, and once in a great while he could also bring himself if the moon was only a thumbnail in the sky.\n\nAdrianna was not Red, and she was hurting.\n\nHis gaze wandered the cloistered, stuffy dark van and returned to study her. He was ashamed he had missed an opportunity to protect her while he slept off his drugged state. \"What can I do to ease you?\"\n\nSlash bit the inside of his lip when all he wished was to drag her into his arms and kiss away the bruises on her face.\n\nA fat tear made a clean spot on the van's dusty floor as it shook its way down the highway.\n\nSlash stilled.\n\nAdrianna got up on her knees, the silver bindings tight. Blood oozed from her wrists, and he growled low in his throat in frustration that he could heal nothing.\n\nCyn interpreted the look on his face. \"I could heal her if we weren't bound in silver.\"\n\nSlash nodded. She had the same limits as he.\n\nTurning back, he watched Adrianna painfully, slowly, walk the short distance to him. She fought the lurching truck, the hard floor that abraded her knees as she drew closer.\n\nSlash sat there. He couldn't tolerate rejection. He hoped the swampy darkness of the van box's interior sufficiently hid his face.\n\nAdrianna moved until her knees met with his. She lowered her face to his shoulder.\n\n\"What...?\" Slash swallowed hard, never more self-conscious in his entire life. \"What would you have of me, Adrianna?\" Her warm breath bled through the light shirt he wore, and he suppressed a shiver. She owns me.\n\nThat small gesture tightened the invisible ties that bound them.\n\n\"Hold me,\" she whispered against him. Two words that changed his life.\n\nThe moment swelled... held. Slash let the air out of his lungs, draped muscular arms around her smaller body, and drew Adrianna into his lap. She curled up as best she could, her wrists so tightly bound she gave a little whimper when Slash adjusted her position.\n\n\"I am sorry,\" he said, feeling like an oaf.\n\nShe shook her head, her hair pleasantly rubbing underneath his chin. It smelled of sweet female. His female.\n\nSlash's hand hovered over the top of that silky hair. His eyes found Cynthia's, and he began to glance away, but not before she gave him a signal that took bravery to execute.\n\nShe had nodded her head, and Slash let his hand fall against Adi's head from her silent encouragement.\n\nA breath eased out of Adrianna, and her cheek pressed deeper into Slash's broad chest. \"Thank you, Slash.\"\n\nHis eyes burned. A heartbeat passed while he considered many things simultaneously. \"You are most welcome,\" he finally said. Slash moved his hand over her head again and again. When her breaths grew deeper, more rhythmic, he slowed but did not cease the motion.\n\nTruman and Jason gave him identical knowing looks. He ignored them.\n\nThe Alpha female he loved was tucked against his body. She had sought his protection. It was the most ancient of offerings. An Alpha female had only to submit to an Alpha male in just that way for the male to assume care over her during time of extreme duress or war.\n\nA male Were chose to accept the offering or not. Slash had no choice; Adrianna had claimed his heart long ago.\n\nIt wasn't about choice but rather letting himself fall.\n\nIn love.\n\n*\n\nSlash was driven rudely awake by a jolt as the van came to a stop. His arms automatically tightened around Adrianna and she awoke with a start, immediately followed by a groan.\n\n\"What is it?\" he asked, pushing the hair from her brown eyes. He saw her look at his face and self-consciously turned away.\n\n\"Slash,\" Adi said. He moved his face back an inch. Just enough for her to know he had heard her.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Stop that.\"\n\nHis eyebrows jerked in surprise. \"What?\"\n\n\"Turning away from me.\"\n\nSlash would have answered, but bright sunlight hit them like a slap and Slash threw a hand over his eyes to shield them from the brightness.\n\n\"Good, you're awake. I've got the bullshit babysitting duty, so come along kiddies.\"\n\nSlash stared at a Were he'd never seen before and found he instantly disliked him.\n\n\"Fuck you, Ford, and the horse you rode in on,\" Truman announced from the far corner. The two were definitely prior acquaintances.\n\nThe Were's brows dumped over flinty eyes. Unforgiving ones.\n\nHe stalked over to the corner and Truman stood up, facing his charge.\n\n\"Listen, old man, I'm here to get you to hop out of this van, mark your territory and get the fuck back in the rig, got me?\"\n\nTruman laughed and Slash had to admire his gumption because he was bound. But Slash was not.\n\nSloppy.\n\nThey must have thought, truck in motion, Were out for the count, no worries.\n\nWrong.\n\nAdi gave him wide eyes and silently hobbled off his lap. His gaze did not leave her. He promised her things he shouldn't have with that look, for he saw the reaction on her face. Slash couldn't control his expressions and didn't much give a shit.\n\nHe employed stealth as automatic as breathing. Of further help... Truman didn't telegraph Slash's approach.\n\nNot even when Ford landed a dead-center sucker punch that doubled Truman over.\n\nTruman cocked his head to the side, looking up at Ford from his knees with one eye. \"Tell ya what, you stand there and be a fire hydrant, and I'll lift my leg on you. How's that for marking territory, assjack?\"\n\nSlash grinned and shook his head at Truman's hardness. It was refreshing.\n\nFord hit him hard in the jaw, plowing the big former cop to both knees, wiping Slash's good humor on the spot. Truman spit out an impressive spatter pattern of blood that highlighted the filth of the floor. Their eyes met.\n\nIt was too late for Ford to react.\n\nSlash struck from behind, using his hard fists like hammers of retribution against Ford's kidneys. They blurred with the speed of his attack.\n\nFord pissed his pants as a result of the onslaught.\n\nThen he pissed blood, crumpling to the floor as his body struggled to heal the organ damage.\n\nSlash crushed Ford's windpipe with the instep of his boot.\n\n\"Heal that,\" he murmured, satisfied his skills of merciless and swift incapacitation still held.\n\nTruman walked himself up the wall with his palms. \"Nice bit of work there, Slash.\"\n\nSlash didn't smile or answer. His gaze was on Adrianna, still bound. Julia and Cynthia huddled together. He swept over Ford's breathless form and walked toward Adrianna.\n\n\"Let's self-congratulate later,\" Jason said. \"Right now, let's get the chicks and get the fuck outta Dodge.\"\n\nSlash thought that an excellent idea. He chanced a glance at their mutual enemy as he walked back to the male.\n\nFord lay gasping. A fish out of water, his eyes bulged like hard-boiled eggs. Slash crouched on his haunches. \"Don't come after us, Were. This is dating for me. Don't make me marry you in death.\" Slash kicked him in the ribs, and the smaller Were groaned.\n\n\"Cut us,\" Jason said, holding his wrists up.\n\nSlash dug in Ford's pocket, extracting a titanium switchblade. He went to Adrianna first, her wrists weeping blood. What he could not do before with his bare hands, he now did. He sawed at the silver. It fell away, and bone greeted him. The fine webbing had been like acid against her skin, burning away everything in its path.\n\nHe bent on one knee, despondent over the rawness of her injuries, and she shook her head, clearly miserable. \"Get the others.\"\n\nSlash touched the back of her head briefly and stood. He loosened the silver from everyone, attending Julia last, whose bonds were plastic zip ties. Irritating but not caustic.\n\n\"Ford!\" an unfamiliar voice called. Not alarmed, but inquisitive.\n\n\"Let's go!\" Jason repeated in a hoarse whisper.\n\nSlash looked at the others' wounds. Silver wounds healed slowly. Their hands had been made useless as weapons until they could heal.\n\nThat's why Ford had been cocky; he knew they'd been bound and weakened.\n\nThey walked to the back of the van just as two men hopped inside. It was on him. Slash was comparatively uninjured. He could take them.\n\nHis nostrils flared. One Were\u2014a packmaster, and one human.\n\nSlash charged forward without anything to indicate his intent.\n\nUnfortunately, Adrianna was closest to Tom Harriet, and he jerked her to him by the hair. Utterly unprepared, she screamed inside the truck from the brutality of the move.\n\nIt froze Slash in his tracks.\n\nHe had changed to his half-wolfen form as he moved from the sound of her terror alone. Harriet tsked-tsked him, shaking Adrianna, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out again. Slash growled just as her teeth met around Harriet's hand.\n\nTom grunted, backhanding her with his free hand. \"Willful bitch!\" he bellowed in pain.\n\nAdrianna slumped to the ground and Slash lunged at the Alpha that would dare injure a female under his protection.\n\nMine.\n\n# CHAPTER SIX\n\nTharell tried not to dwell on deceiving Julia. The guilt would be more powerful than he could stand.\n\nMany years had passed since he had come across one as compassionate as she was. The Blooded Queen had promised to consider gifting her people if they were willing.\n\nTharell did not think Faerie had time to wait on her decision. Other matters outside the scope of Faerie were part of his thought processes. It made his head ache like a rotten tooth.\n\n\"Enough,\" Tharell interrupted their arguing in a quiet voice of authority. It did not boom, but nearly so. Every gaze at Region One landed on him.\n\nMichael made a little motion with his arms like flapping wings. \"What? Are you going to lay more Faerie dust on us? Zap us all into comas again. Pfft... loved that noise.\"\n\n\"Michael,\" Marcus warned. \"Let him speak.\"\n\n\"Fine.\" Michael lounged up against the wall, mauling a sucker in his mouth.\n\n\"I will not lay down the weapons of the fey, nor will I use them against you in the time of our alliance.\"\n\n\"Very precisely worded,\" Delilah, Jacqueline's daughter, said.\n\nTharell nodded. \"We are a precise people.\"\n\n\"Fey are not human,\" Jen said. All her brothers attended the meeting, and Tharell looked at each one.\n\n\"Nor are you. We are humanoid. We share similarities with humankind. We can breed with them, but they are the lesser evolved of us all.\" Tharell lifted his chin and went on, \"Your Singer Combatant was severely lacking in their protection of Julia Caldwell.\"\n\nScott moved forward.\n\n\"Rest easy, Singer warrior; the Red Were are as diabolical planners as any I have ever known. We postulate they move toward reuniting all their kind. To have it as it was before the Americas became what they are today. Before my kind came from Europe.\"\n\nHe treaded more softly, though it did not come naturally. \"Domiatri and I have brought the prisoners with us. They will be under lock and key of the magick of the fey for the duration of the journey.\"\n\nJacqueline and Anthony.\n\nThey were heathens. And though Tharell understood the loathsome back-story to the female monarch of Region Two, it was difficult to hear the reports of the pain she allowed meted from her mate, a sadistic Were.\n\nBesides the rutting that they began and ended, upon which Tharell came in the middle of most consistently, whispers of rape and perversions had reached his ears. He flicked his gaze to the cuffed Jacqueline, her once lovely, dark eyes shadowed with smudges. Bruises in sizes that only fingerprints could leave, covered every place the eye could behold.\n\nAnd ones Tharell could not see.\n\nShe was proven evil, yet it turned his guts to see any female ill-used. And that she possessed the blood of the fey? More so.\n\nHowever, in the end, it was a Singer matter. As was getting their consent for her journey with him and Domiatri as well.\n\nTharell studied Marcus take in the proof of her injuries, both old and new.\n\n\"If Jacqueline goes with the fey, then I will, too. We're mated, she can't go without me,\" Tony said.\n\nTharell expected him to club his own chest like the purported caveman of eons ago. When he did, giving himself a stout punch in the chest, Tharell laughed aloud, and Tony's gaze narrowed upon him. \"What are you laughing at, you effing grape?\"\n\nTharell's smile died out like a flame starved of oxygen.\n\n\"You will not come with us. You do not have Faerie blood. You are an insubordinate, criminal Were.\"\n\nJacqueline said nothing, head bowed, eyes glazed. Jen, the Singer leader's daughter approached the apparently cowed Jacqueline.\n\n\"Hey, Jackie-baby... what are ya doin'?\"\n\nWhen Jacqueline didn't rise to the dig, Jen looked around, her gaze coming to rest on Tharell. \"What did you do to her? Not like I give a shit, but it's weird. She's so... subdued.\"\n\nThe female needed to come with them. Period. She had married the Were, a proven rapist and abuser of women from all reports. A bad choice\u2014albeit her own.\n\nTharell looked down for a moment.\n\nCould they have left the Singer female vulnerable inside her soft prison with the Were? Her powers oppressed as they are by fey magick? His gaze snapped to her form, seeing the sunken shoulders, thin frame, and beaten countenance.\n\n\"Nothing's wrong,\" Tony said defensively. \"Jacqueline's great. Right, honey?\" Butter could have melted on his tongue. He darted his tongue out and gave Jacqueline a long lick on her neck.\n\nShe flinched away from him.\n\nJen frowned, folding her arms. Scott went to his biological mother. The woman responsible for attempting to poison Julia.\n\n\"Get Cyrus,\" Scott said. The Combatant's gaze moved over Jacqueline.\n\nJen left the room.\n\nScott's accusation lay within the black depths of his eyes. \"I thought you said she would be safe?\"\n\nDomi gave Tharell a cautionary look. Tharell did not need the warning. Caution had been beaten into him. Literally. \"She is alive. You insisted the Were and Singer be held together. They chose to mate. Your leader\"\u2014he swung a hand at a troubled Marcus\u2014\"attended the ceremony. Each stipulation was followed\"\u2014Tharell grappled with the idiom most apt\u2014\"to the letter,\" he finished.\n\nCyrus, the Singer healer, rushed into the room, his shock of white hair standing on end.\n\nJacqueline, the subject of belated concern, toppled over like flower whose stem has been cut.\n\nScott caught her.\n\nTharell watched it all indifferently. Tony's face, indomitably etched with guilt and fear, told so much.\n\nTharell closely held the secret of why she would be wont to faint.\n\nScott settled her carefully on the floor. The Healer came forward, his hand hovering at her forehead and gliding down her body in a near miss of flesh kissing flesh. He did not touch her but hesitated near her pelvic region.\n\n\"Fractured pelvis,\" he said, his voice without intonation. His hand went lower, paused at the ankles. \"Contusions healed...\" His eyes flicked to Tharell's and narrowed into a glare. \"And fresh.\"\n\nTharell had done exactly as he had stated he would. No more and certainly no less.\n\n\"Dehydration, exhaustion...\" His hand returned to her lower belly, concave beneath her clothes. He lowered his palm and finally touched Jacqueline. She gave a pathetic moan and tried to bat his hand away, her mewls of fear so horrible to witness Jen raised a hand to her mouth, and she gave her father a raw look of horror.\n\n\"She is pregnant. But with this pattern of abuse, she might not keep the...\" Cyrus' gaze moved to Tony, whose gloating sneer hung from his face. \"Whelp,\" Cyrus finished softly, removing his hand slowly.\n\nScott stood, his hands balled into fists.\n\n\"Don't,\" a soft voice said from behind him.\n\nAll eyes turned as Lacey Greene entered the room.\n\nTony broke the bloated silence. \"Just like old times.\"\n\nScott hit him so hard he dropped to the ground, out cold.\n\nTharell watched it all, and then his gaze came to Jacqueline. She was the key. Without her, they could not journey after Julia.\n\nThere were too many challenges to a fey this far from Faerie. She would need to be with them at all times.\n\nShe would serve as buffer.\n\nBut first, she must get well.\n\nTime was the enemy.\n\n# CHAPTER SEVEN\n\nJulia got out of the way as a Red Were shot his fist into the scarred Were's mouth.\n\nIt should have ended the charge. It didn't.\n\nHis speed in half-wolfen form mesmerized her. He ducked the shot, and bony talons burst his fingertips. He didn't stab the Were but slashed behind and in front of himself in a spin of limbs, like the hands of a clock moving in opposite directions.\n\nBlood rose to the surface of the tall man who had come from behind Slash and on the chest of the Were that he fought now.\n\nJulia gulped when Truman, looking far more at home as a Were than he ever had as a cop, scooped up the human male and tossed him casually outside the back of the van.\n\nJulia took Adi's hand, and she gently snatched it away, shaking her head. Julia looked down at the deep cuts from the silver and nodded.\n\nIt was just one Were now against Truman and Slash.\n\nThen he changed, howling.\n\nThe gunk of his human existence splattered the inside of the box van, landing in jellified lumps that tumbled and slid down the walls to land as disgusting, jiggling dollops on the floor.\n\nIt was raining human gore inside the truck, and Julia rushed to the back to get out, Cyn at her heels.\n\nA werewolf launched himself inside as they tried to exit.\n\nJason flew at him, their wolves colliding midair.\n\nJulia didn't stick around. Her small telekinetic ability and aura reading would not protect them from a captor gone crazy.\n\nShe slid out backwards while Truman and Slash's tails gave an ominous flick as they cornered the one Were in the truck.\n\n\"Let's get out of here. They can find us once they shred him,\" Adi said, and Julia nodded.\n\n\"That's a no-shitter,\" Cyn agreed.\n\nThey used the metal handle on the sides of the truck and slid down the back.\n\nThey turned to run and Lily blocked their path.\n\n\"Hi, bitches,\" she said in a conversational tone and threw something at them.\n\nJulia watched it the way one would when deeply startled mixed with fear. She couldn't galvanize herself into action.\n\nAdi could. \"More stupid fey mojo! Let's split!\"\n\nShe grabbed Julia's hand and she slumped.\n\nFully awake. Fully paralyzed.\n\nThe glitter fell, and the numbness spread from her core to her fingertips.\n\nAdi shook her head and growled low.\n\nCyn leapt at Lily, who laughed.\n\nShe drove in talons that erupted as she leapt. One minute she was Julia's bestie, with tattered but still coifed hair, clothes, and nails, and the next she was a semi-furred Were creature.\n\nHer talons burst through Lily's other side, her dark skin rupturing like a split plum. Guts spilled from the front, and sinew and flesh hung in twisted strings from the end of Cyn's razor-sharp tips.\n\n\"Heal that up, you interfering twat.\"\n\nJulia lay on the forest floor while the noise of distant cars whizzed by, and couldn't take her eyes off Cyn. Pale blonde fuzz covered her head to toe as Lily slid off her talons.\n\nShe put a hand, fingertips finished with short talons, against Lily and shoved her the rest of the way.\n\n\"Kill that fey jerk off,\" Adi gasped from beside Julia.\n\nCyn approached them, and her pendulous breasts swung, nothing hidden from view, even what proved her female. She was comical. Lily lay behind them, gasping, and Cyn put her dangerous hands, gore to her upper arms, on her slim hips.\n\nNaked.\n\n\"Kill her, Cyn,\" Adi croaked.\n\n\"Right,\" Cyn said, and it came out, Rawght. Like gravel crunching underneath tires.\n\nShe went back to Lily and calmly centered her foot above her skull.\n\nJulia couldn't watch. She turned her face away, instead looking at Adi. Who never took her eyes off Cyn.\n\nThe skull makes a distinctive sound when breaking. To Julia, it was like cabbage being squished mixed with dry timber breaking. She would have covered her ears had she been able to move.\n\nShe could breathe, but that was all.\n\nCyn took a look at herself, and her expression filled with horror.\n\nThere was just so much a small town girl from Alaska could take. Changing into a naked half-Were and bashing a Faerie's head in was probably a little much.\n\nCyn turned to the side and threw up.\n\nThe smell wafted to Julia, and she helplessly lay there praying she wouldn't get sick and choke on her own vomit before the cavalry showed up.\n\nInstead of Jason, Truman, and Slash coming to their rescue, a contingent of ten Were surrounded the women.\n\nCyn changed back as she lay naked beside her own vomit.\n\nAdi struggled to shake off the newest Faerie dust Lily had laid on them.\n\nJulia couldn't move to fight off the Were whose snout appeared alongside her neck and took a long, pulling inhale of her scent.\n\n\"This is her,\" he said with a nod.\n\nJason growled behind her.\n\nJulia couldn't blink. Tears came anyway.\n\nThere were simply too many Were.\n\nThe Were who'd been inside the truck had healed the damage Julia's friends had laid on them.\n\nTen more had come.\n\nIt hadn't been escape for them, but a rendezvous for the Reds.\n\n*\n\n\"Careful,\" the Were that held Julia said to the one she couldn't see, who walked beside them.\n\nJulia could hear the train but not see it. Where there was a train, there was roads.\n\nShe moved a toe. It was a fantastic accomplishment. She also needed to itch her nose so badly she couldn't think of anything else.\n\nCigarette smoke clogged her nose, and she sneezed.\n\nGreen eyes met hers. They spun like Jason's and she blinked slowly, trying not to think about where he was.\n\n\"You're awake,\" the Were stated softly.\n\nJulia said nothing. Her mouth wasn't working right. Just the sneeze. Her paralysis was lifting... slowly.\n\nA second Were filled her vision. His eyes were mud struck through with moss.\n\nThe smoke thickened as she choked and coughed.\n\nA hand lashed out and the other Were went flying.\n\nTo have that violence directed so close terrified her.\n\n\"I won't hurt you,\" the Were said.\n\nSure.\n\nHe turned his face away and a snout grew, lips pulling back from teeth no longer human. The unseen Were didn't approach again.\n\n\"When I say be careful, that means not smoking next to the Blooded Queen.\"\n\nA yip reached her ears, and the Were's features bled to human again. Julia could only watch as things that should never shift looked like small moles burrowing underneath the flesh of his face, realigning his bone, muscle, and arrangement of features within human norms once again.\n\nJulia blinked, and he was a man again.\n\nThey'd been standing outside a freight car, only the roof's lip visible to her from being held in arms rather than standing on her feet.\n\nSuddenly, they were airborne, and she yelped.\n\nThey landed with a bouncing thud inside the car.\n\nHe laid her gently on something soft. Julia had never wanted to move as badly as she did right then.\n\nShe was now facing everyone with whom she'd been taken.\n\nJason, Truman, and Slash were badly beaten. Julia's eyes took in a bubble of bloody mucous trying to boil out Truman's nostril, and a deep, abiding rage welled up inside her.\n\nIt felt like something she could use.\n\nWhen Lily came into sight, looking perfect, that anger burst from her like a star escaping her chest.\n\nLily's smug look of satisfaction changed instantly to terror.\n\nIt was a supernova of power. Julia's new powers were ever evolving. She knew this. As Rare One, they'd told her they'd come randomly.\n\nSometimes random worked.\n\nBright, searing light cut through the murky car. It illuminated things she didn't wish to see, the injuries of the males who'd tried to protect them, the new contingent of Were, a tightly bound Cyn and Adi.\n\nThe source of the energy was she. It threw off the paralysis like a snake shedding its skin, and Julia sat up. Awake, energized, and whole again.\n\nLily waded through the light, her face distorted in pain.\n\n\"Julia,\" she began.\n\nJulia thought she might be trying to plead her case. Julia would never listen. She was done negotiating with anyone who mistreated her people, herself and lied to do it.\n\nShe would not allow it.\n\nJulia could control the light. She used it like a sword at Lily, who stopped looking black and began to glow. She screamed, high and tight. Lily's skin flaked into large chunks that floated like singed paper coming close to the mouth of the sliding train car door, they were sucked out like captured bugs.\n\nLily's mouth was the last thing to succumb to the combustion of her body in a yawning inferno of heat and molten consumption.\n\nHer teeth made almost no noise as they fell on top of the pile of ash that had been her body.\n\nJulia didn't pause over her remains but found her friends instead.\n\nHer husband.\n\nHis eyes met hers. One was swollen shut but the fine, clear hazel of the other was sure.\n\nOf her.\n\nThe light changed, becoming iridescent. It sparkled and fell like moving glitter on the wind. It cloaked the Red Were, healing Jason, Truman, Slash, and even Cyn and Adi of their minor injuries.\n\nUnfortunately, it invigorated the Red Were who had taken Julia.\n\nWhen he hit her from behind, the light seeped out of existence and the Were in charge of the reacquisition captured her as she fell.\n\nThe last thing she heard was Jason.\n\nHowling.\n\n# CHAPTER EIGHT\n\n\"I am Carell,\" the Red Were told Slash and the others.\n\nSlash looked around, taking stock of everyone. Tom Harriet, Ford, and a man named Tai Simon stood in the background behind ten other Reds.\n\nThey made his wolf's hackles rise.\n\nThe lore had spoken of the Reds' blood as legendary. Slash had listened to the stories but never put much merit in the validity of a sub-species of Were being any different, though he'd never pressed the secret knowledge he held. With this many Reds, their energy swam in the air, thick enough to reach out and touch. Slash felt like he could stick out his tongue and taste the difference.\n\nInstead, he looked at ways to kill them all. Adrianna was unprotected in a den of Reds. At the end of the day, he was left with that.\n\nThe Reds were very aware of her Alpha female status, and Slash keenly aware of their interest.\n\n\"Carell?\" Jason asked and distracted the leader.\n\nThe Were who had hit the Rare One, stopping her spectral light, inclined his head at the one whose smells mixed with hers but not in the way of mating.\n\n\"Let us go now, and we won't kill you all.\"\n\nCarell threw his head back and laughed from his belly. When his eye found Jason again, Slash noticed they'd washed to green.\n\nThe Were collectively shifted within the hurtling boxcar.\n\n\"She's too powerful for you to manipulate,\" Slash added. Caldwell, a rash young wolf, needed the advice. He did not understand that telling the enemy the plan was akin to slitting one's own throat.\n\nCarell cut his own growl short, swiveling his head to Slash. Slash tried to shrug his shoulders but was bound too tightly. The silver burned around his wrists. Seemed this group was a little smarter than the Were posing as Feds.\n\nCarell shook his head. \"No, her very proximity will give us what we need. If there be any blood quantum, her presence will see it rise to the surface like cream through milk.\"\n\nTruman sighed, scrubbing his face. \"You guys don't get it. Julia Caldwell is not a pawn to be moved around your chessboard. There is no winner. The only \u02bbwin' in this whole snafu is letting her unite the species. And now there's fey involvement.\"\n\n\"Was!\" Cyn said loudly, holding a finger up.\n\n\"You bashed in her head, but she came alive again...\"\n\n\"Like a zombie?\" Cyn asked Adrianna.\n\nSlash smiled despite the circumstance. Adi seemed to consider the absurd idea of reanimated humans. \"Yup, but Jules cooked her, and now she's a lump of ash somewhere.\"\n\n\"I like it.\"\n\n\"Stop this,\" Carell commanded, his eyes on fire at the two females.\n\nCyn grinned. Raising both hands, she flipped him off and Slash groaned. She was so newly turned that he didn't know if she was Alpha, but he would bet money she was. Because his luck ran that way.\n\nDownhill.\n\nCarell's eyes turned to slits as he strode to her. She was unarmed and unbound.\n\nCyn stood her ground. Slash felt the others tense.\n\n\"You defy me, female?\" Carell asked.\n\nCyn blew a stray blonde hair out of her face. \"Yeah.\" That one word said much. All of it disparaging.\n\nHe raised his hand to strike her, and Slash realized he'd taken a step toward them.\n\n\"That's what it comes down to for you guys. You can't engage me verbally, so you have to result to violence. Pathetic.\"\n\nCarell stood still, his fist frozen in the air.\n\n\"She is right. We have too few females to abuse one, even with the mouth she has on her.\"\n\nSlash checked his fists that he couldn't use. His frustration was its own demon.\n\n\"The voice of reason... fuck you very much,\" Cyn said. The other Were grabbed her by the throat, hauling her up against the side of the rail car and punching her so hard against the wall it shuddered.\n\n\"Just because a female is rare doesn't mean we will not discipline ones who need it.\"\n\nCyn's face was turning purple.\n\nTruman and Caldwell inched closer.\n\nThings were escalating inside the tight space. It wouldn't end well. Experience taught him that.\n\nAfter confirming Adrianna's safety, he'd been so busy keeping the most aggressive Were within sight that he lost her.\n\nShe sprang at the Were who held Cyn. Talons burst out before she leapt.\n\nAdrianna sunk five into his groin, and with a high-pitched keening, Carell's right hand wolf toppled like a felled tree, clutching at his gonads as the floor rose to meet him.\n\nThe Were closed in around Adrianna, her arms in front of Cyn, shielding her from their approach. Her eyes had yielded to her wolf long ago. A stub snout caught their scents, a prelude to their actions if she was Alpha enough to scent their intent.\n\nOne Alpha female against ten male Were. Unwinnable numbers.\n\nIf Slash had been unsure of his love for her before, nothing could have solidified it more than that moment.\n\nSpinning gold eyes met the green of his. His scent triggers sharpened, talons sliding out of skin in a painful tear of suddenness.\n\nShe winked.\n\nSlash's wolf decided for him. Slash ruptured his skin, revealing what he was and giving up his biggest secret in a moment of raw desperation.\n\nHe was not mixed, though it had been clever camouflage.\n\nHe was pure Red and one of the last. His position in Washington State had not been happenstance but providence.\n\nProtection of his rarity.\n\nHis wolf shucked the silver binds, his vision bleeding to the many gray shades of transition. His sense of smell let him bring every last one of the males under his dominance.\n\nInstantly. No Red of lesser than pure blood would stand against his call to their wolves.\n\nCarell fell last, convulsing on the floor as Slash tore the wolf from his body, two weeks from the moon.\n\nShin deep in the gunk that had made them human, he trotted over to Adrianna, his paws sinking into the human castoffs.\n\nShe ran her gaze over his wolf, and even as deep as he was inside the wildness that made him Were, his spirit hesitated. It was a testimony to his deep-seated self-hate.\n\nAdi bent down, but not much. She ran her finger along the scar that tore up his snout and bisected the brow ridge of his wolf. He did not flinch, though it was an effort not to.\n\nAdi looked around at the partially changed Reds, many only half bloods. Her gaze returned to his.\n\n\"You did this.\"\n\nHe gave an awkward nod, and a smile lit her face, her talons retracting.\n\nSlash could not bring females. They were immune to the summons. There would be no whelps if the female changed to their wolf during pregnancy.\n\nHe licked her hand and she wrapped her arms around his neck.\n\n\"You sure know how to impress a girl,\" she said.\n\nSlash's chest tightened, his humanness, what little remained, strung so taut it could have broken from the merest pluck.\n\nSlash forced himself into calmness. It was the only way to change back so he could tell her.\n\nSo he could break every last rule he'd vowed to uphold. Including the one about no mates from their sister dens.\n\nHe'd fucked that six ways to Sunday.\n\nAdrianna let him go when his energy changed.\n\nAnd there, in the middle of human blood, skin and sinew, Slash rose from the remnants.\n\nTall, steady and scarred. She brought him low. A slip of a girl barely now a woman.\n\nAdrianna's eyes grew round and Slash cocked an eyebrow. He had everything under control. The enemy Reds were under his command and he'd brought a volatile situation to heel, as it were.\n\nWhy, for moon's sake, is Adrianna looking at me like that?\n\nThen he became aware of where she was looking. And it wasn't his eyes, but someplace lower.\n\nSlash had forgotten his nudity.\n\n# CHAPTER NINE\n\nTharell remained impassive while the Combatant dropped the renegade Were like a sack of potatoes.\n\nAnthony Laurent grinned up at Scott. Thin red lines made his teeth look like peppermint candy inside his leering mouth, but no sweetness filled it.\n\nHe spit the blood out on the floor. \"She was a good lay, fought the entire time.\"\n\nScott slammed Tony's head into the wood floor with the flat of his palm.\n\nTony rolled over, chortling. \"You cannot kill me, Singer.\"\n\nHis wolf's eyes swam to black, obsidian holes that darkened his gaze while he looked at Scott.\n\n\"How could you... rape her and get her with child?\" Scott asked incredulously.\n\nTharell let things play out a little longer.\n\n\"Why do you give a ripe shit? The real question is: why do you care?\" Tony stood, and they squared off. \"I can't hammer sense into you, because they'll beat the shit outta me.\" He jerked his thumb behind him where Victor and the others of the Combatant lay in wait. \"But keep this in mind, chump. This is your bio-mom. Y'know, the one who poisoned Julia? The reason I was in that fey prison. She wanted all that I gave her...\"\n\nTharell made a disgusted noise when the repugnant Were grabbed his crotch.\n\nTony's gaze fell on Lacey Greene. His smile morphed into a grin. Shark like teeth gleamed white in his red mouth. He wiped the blood away with his shirtsleeve. The smear remained like a partially erased wound on the white sleeve.\n\nShe gave a small smile back, and Tony's faltered.\n\n\"It cannot be his,\" Lacey stated, lifting her chin in defiance. Tharell looked at the small female Were. Her light gray eyes dilated with excitement if one was noticing.\n\nTony tensed. \"Of course it's mine, you numb cunt.\"\n\nScott backhanded Tony so fast that it was a flash of skin in the air, Tony's cheek opening like a split peach.\n\n\"Fuck!\" Tony howled, and the Combatant circled him.\n\nMichael and Brendan held Alan. \"Let Scott clean his engine, man. Chill.\"\n\nAlan growled low in his throat.\n\nTharell shifted his weight.\n\n\"Tell the Were, Lacey.\" Everyone's eyes were on Tharell. Tony's narrowed to inky slits.\n\n\"What the hell is going on? She\"\u2014Tony gestured at Lacey\u2014\"is not part of dick. She got knocked up when I put my package where it belonged.\"\n\nAlan met this pronouncement with another low growl.\n\nTony ignored him, his gaze landing on Jacqueline, awake and sitting up against the back of a bona fide fainting couch.\n\nHe pointed his finger at the monarch of Region Two. \"She's going to pop out my whelp and there's not a damn thing you or anyone can do about it.\" His smug gaze, defiant and arrogant, swung out over the crowd.\n\nTharell gazed at the Were and almost felt sorry for him.\n\nAlmost.\n\n\"Domiatri,\" Tharell prompted quietly.\n\nDomi stepped forward. His deep blue hair shone like suspended water, waves held by his scalp instead of a shore.\n\nJacqueline flicked nervous eyes to him and Tharell nodded toward his pure-blood Sidhe companion.\n\n\"What is that expression?\" Tharell asked to no one in particular. He made a show of snapping his fingers. \"Ah, yes, Domiatri has the floor.\" Tharell swept his hand toward the fey.\n\n\"I am the father,\" Domi said without preamble.\n\nThe silence was heavy.\n\nJacqueline closed her eyes.\n\n\"Bullshit,\" Tony erupted. \"I humped her into the ground every chance I got. I brought that bitch to heel.\" Tony's low voice resonated, his open fingers clenched with certainty.\n\nScott's hands became fists of punishment.\n\n\"You cannot breed, Anthony Laurent,\" Lacey announced. \"Have you looked at your own body lately?\"\n\n\"There are deeper magicks then even you are aware,\" Domi said. \"If you had been an intellect, you would have thought before you abused one of your own kind. But therein lays the crux of the problem. You are not an intellect; you do not think but react. So you assaulted a rare female Alpha Were. She begat a Moon Warrior offspring. Those taken in violence leave a mark of retribution behind.\"\n\nReagan, Tony and Lacey's daughter, moved forward. \"Yes, Dad,\" she said, and he swiveled his head to her, scowling.\n\n\"Check it out,\" Reagan said.\n\nTony's murderous eyes found Jacqueline, and she gave a tired smirk. \"I have done what I was bid. I exchanged the horror of being with you for something I want more.\"\n\nCyrus retreated into the background. \"I assumed\"\u2014he looked from Tony to Jacqueline\u2014\"that the Were was the father. She is with child.\"\n\nLacey continued, \"He should have a mark on his hip that tells of his sterility. It can't keep him from assaulting women, but his seed will never take shape or live. He is destined to die out eventually. Reagan is the sole offspring.\"\n\nTony's terrible expression of realization silenced them. Sentenced to many centuries' existence, knowing you had a forever end, was an awful thing in the supernatural realm. To understand that end resulted because of horrible, irrevocable choices made was somehow much worse.\n\nTony lunged toward Jacqueline, and she shrank back against the couch.\n\nDomi met him with his broad sword half the length of the Sidhe's legs. He brought it in a swiveling arc, turning it into Tony's deepest part. His guts evacuated the hole in his body like a fire hose.\n\nTony fell, gathering the parts of him that sat around like wet worms in the throes of death.\n\n\"Domi,\" Tharell chided as though Domiatri had slapped him instead of gutted.\n\nHis silver eyes glittered with his anger. \"Let me have some recompense for allowing that brute to hurt her.\"\n\nThe group looked at Jacqueline. She glanced away.\n\n\"Wait a second.\" Jen stepped over Tony's guts with a lip lift of distaste. \"You had sex with this... viper? Then you let him brutalize her? I'm sort of confused.\"\n\nDomi nodded and shrugged. \"We are the fey. We don't look at sex as a terrible thing unless it is not consensual.\"\n\nJen made a noise in her throat. \"I bet.\" She looked at Jacqueline. \"I don't like Jacqueline. She went after Jules, she's slept with the world to further her power base...\"\n\nDomi held his hand up. \"A moot point. Who she has sex with is not relevant to this discussion.\"\n\n\"It so is,\" Michael said with a snort, popping his sucker out and pointing it at the tall emerald Sidhe.\n\nSingers. Tharell shook his head. \"A human point of morality. It is not one the fey ascribe to.\"\n\n\"But she didn't have consensual sex with Tony. Clearly.\" Jen pointed at the rainbow of healing bruises on Jacqueline's body.\n\n\"In the beginning, Jacqueline thought to go along with his plan to mate with her and drive us crazy with their disgusting antics,\" Tharell said.\n\n\"Bad plan,\" Brendan stated.\n\nTharell puzzled that out, finally nodding. \"Yes, as ideas go, it was not a good one.\"\n\n\"We used a simple slumber spell on the Were, and while he slept, we outlined Jacqueline's options.\" Domi shrugged his shoulders. The light from the window reflected against the bright green of his skin, as though the grass from outside had leapt onto his flesh.\n\nShe dropped her gaze from his. A smile ghosted his lips. \"She was receptive.\"\n\n\"What options?\" Marcus spoke up for the first time.\n\nDomi turned his attention to the leader of Region One.\n\n\"She must serve her time in the prison and accept Tony's attentions until the quarter had passed in which she was sequestered. By ancient law, if she were to become pregnant with a child of a pure-blood Sidhe, she could remain in Faerie and become well again.\"\n\n\"Well?\" Marcus asked.\n\nTharell caught Domi nodding in tandem in his peripheral vision. He inclined his head toward the other warrior. After all, Tharell could not breed. Only the pureblood Sidhe could.\n\n\"That's right; none of you understand the fey. You thought we were a pretty legend.\"\n\n\"Not so much now.\" Jen looked at Tony struggling to heal. He collected his guts and tried to stuff them back inside his body before his wounds closed.\n\nDomi ignored her, continuing, \"Fey become weaker away from Faerie. The more blood of the fey one possesses roughly translates into an exponential weakening as we travel further away. Tharell is a half-breed.\"\n\nA part of Tharell still bled upon hearing those words, even from Domi's mouth.\n\n\"Jacqueline even less. She carries my child. That one thing will allow me travel as if I were a human. The unborn child acts as a neutralizer of sorts. A negation of my system's weakening against Faerie's lack of proximity.\"\n\n\"So,\" Jen began.\n\nReagan silenced her with a finger across her neck and spoke in her stead. \"You got the Region Two leader with child for the express purpose of going after Julia?\" She scrunched up her face.\n\n\"Lies,\" Tony seethed, breathing heavily as he held his guts inside his healing body.\n\nTharell noticed the pulsing nest of intestines, clearly seen through the thin covering of skin rearranging and healing. More skin filled in as he watched, obscuring the grotesque reconfiguration.\n\nHe shouldn't have let Domi have his fun with the Were. It had wasted time.\n\n\"Well.\" Domi paused, tapping his chin with a finger. \"We only just discovered Julia has been taken. We sweetened the pot.\" He swiveled his face to Tharell's. He nodded. Yes, that was the correct idiom.\n\n\"Once we discovered I would need to fetch the wayward queen of the blood....\"\n\n\"Essentially, Jacqueline could mate with you for favors? And now it's freedom?\" Reagan interrupted.\n\nTharell thought they might finally understand what was at stake. \"Jacqueline will be our buffer during travel to Alaska where we will acquire the Rare One. Then, upon her return, she will return to Faerie, never to be seen again.\"\n\nHe did not understand the sudden concern over Jacqueline. The Singers themselves had come to the fey and made arrangements for her imprisonment. Tharell was puzzled they would fight for her or care about her eventual end.\n\n\"Dad,\" Jen implored, \"I can't stand Jacqueline, but this green guy let Tony go criminal on her ass and stood by as it happened. As long as his precious agenda took shape, she was collateral damage.\"\n\nDomi made a noise in his throat and stepped forward. Tharell held his chuckle at the \"green guy\" reference. If the Singer only knew how insulting she was. He sighed. Compared to the ancient fey, they were an infant species, regardless of how they viewed themselves.\n\n\"You are wrong, Singer.\" Only Domi's tight grip on the hilt of his full-gored sword let Tharell know how the exchange irritated him. \"I did not wish her harm. Do you think I could be intimate with a female and stand by and easily watch her abuse?\"\n\nThe young Singer studied Domi. \"I think so. You fey dudes, you're heavy into the \"whatever makes it work\" philosophy.\"\n\nDomi's red lips thinned like a slash of blood in his bright green face.\n\nMarcus sighed. \"I don't agree with how Jacqueline was kept, the abuse from Tony. But\"\u2014He leveled his gaze on all of them, finally landing on Tharell\u2014\"she meant to kill Julia, our Rare One. We cannot have Jacqueline as leader in any capacity.\" Marcus paused as he seemed to consider his next words carefully. \"If you promise she will not be ill-treated in Faerie, it could mean a burden of consequence is lifted from my shoulders.\"\n\nScott folded his arms and looked first at Tony, then Jacqueline, and finally Tharell. \"You won't let this happen again? What guarantee do we have?\"\n\nDomi shook his head. \"She is mated to the Were but carries my child within her.\"\n\n\"Not good enough,\" Scott stated in a bald voice. \"It didn't matter before.\"\n\nDomi glowered at Scott, his eyes flashing silver fire. \"She has most recently got with child.\"\n\n\"And,\" Tharell said, avoiding the escalation of violent potential, \"she will stop being crazy once she lives in Faerie.\"\n\n\"That's why she's such a raging bitch?\" Michael asked. They looked at Jacqueline, her pale cheeks sunken. Her exhaustion was so great, she'd fallen asleep as they discussed her. Tharell noted Domi's new position above where she lay, long fingers gripping the heavily carved wood that ran the perimeter of the couch.\n\nDelilah, who'd been listening to this entire interchange but remained silent until now, asked, \"So she's insane? Why?\"\n\nTharell gave the answer easily. \"Too much Faerie blood.\"\n\nIf a human possessed too much fey blood, such profound wanderlust would strike them that they would feel uprooted the rest of their natural lives, their very being crying out for the sithen. That perfect sanctuary and edification only Faerie could offer to those who held their ancestry.\n\nIf a supernatural possessed enough blood, their mind would slip with the want to be in Faerie.\n\nJacqueline had lived centuries without Faerie.\n\nShe was Singer, vamp, and Were enough to be distracted by the parts of her that were other.\n\nAnd fey enough to be driven insane by that missing chunk of her lineage. Whole only as long as she lived in Faerie.\n\nJacqueline would finally be coming home.\n\n# CHAPTER TEN\n\n\"We've got about a half-hour lead,\" Slash told the group. Julia's head felt like a crushed watermelon. Whatever that Were had used had scrambled her brains, but her survival instinct was still on board. She was smart enough to understand she was hurt too badly to move.\n\nJason, free of the silver bindings, came to her side. \"Jules.\" He touched her head, and she winced. \"That fucker,\" he whispered, his gaze rolling around the confines of the rail car.\n\n\"Don't,\" Julia told him. \"We don't have the time.\"\n\nShe followed his gaze to the colorful blur of the landscape as it rushed by.\n\nShe could see from his face the frustration she shared.\n\nJason gave a miserable chuckle. \"What? We gonna toss the girls out the side door and hope they land in one piece?\" Jason's palm indicated Julia. \"She's hurt. She'll never make it.\"\n\nHe stroked the hair back from her face. \"Can't you get a talent like 'floater'?\" Jason asked, trying to lighten the mess of their circumstance.\n\n\"Sounds like a turd,\" Adi said, as Slash was busy trying to cover his nakedness.\n\nJulia flicked her eyes to Slash, too hurt for laughter. He'd managed to steal a pair of pants off a Were, one of the enemy Reds now coming to without the benefit of jeans.\n\nThey were ill fitting, short, and tight, but better than naked, Julia supposed.\n\n\"Commando?\" Cyn asked with interest.\n\n\"God\u2014can it, Cyn, we've got to take a leap!\" Adi said, her hands on her hips. Julia thought there might be a twinkle of jealousy in that gaze.\n\nCyn didn't smile. Humor had always been her defense. Instead, she moved to the open sidecar. \"We can't. We'll break every bone in our bodies.\"\n\nA low groan sounded behind them.\n\n\"You'll have to change,\" Slash said with urgency.\n\nJason helped Julia to her feet. She swayed. \"I think I'm going to be sick,\" she whispered.\n\nJason helped her to the door, gripping her waist while she heaved out the side of the train.\n\nHer vomit hit the walls of the box car and ran down the side. Julia closed her eyes as a roaring pain lit into her skull like claws of pain.\n\n\"I can fix you,\" Cyn said, standing behind her.\n\nJulia didn't respond and wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her shirt. Cyn wove her cool hand between her and Jason's bodies, coming to rest against her nape. Icy, insistent energy leaked through Cyn's touch.\n\nThe headache receded. The nausea stopped revolting.\n\nA sigh of pure gratitude escaped her.\n\n\"We need to go,\" Truman said. \"If we're doin' something, let's get hot.\"\n\nHe took Cyn's wrist, and she resisted.\n\n\"No.\" She shook her head and backed away.\n\nHis hold tightened, unapologetic, yet his eyes were sorry. \"No guts, no glory.\"\n\nJulia gasped as he grabbed Cyn's hand, Truman flinging himself out of the car and tumbling down the embankment in a changing ball of sinew, flesh, and fur.\n\n\"Shit,\" Adi said in a shaky voice, even as she moved into the line of Slash's body.\n\n\"Ready,\" his voice rumbled, and Adi said nothing.\n\nSlash swooped her up and threw her ahead of himself.\n\nJulia had never seen the wind snatch a body and throw it backwards.\n\nNor had she ever seen another follow it so closely.\n\nJulia bent her head, and Jason kissed the top of it.\n\n\"'Til death do us part,\" he whispered.\n\nYeah, it was the parting bit that Julia feared.\n\nThey leapt.\n\n*\n\nThe dreams where you fall forever and never land came alive for Julia. She was in a freefall without end.\n\nWhen the end came she felt crushed, every piece of breath stolen from her lungs in a tearing vacuum upon impact.\n\nShe looked up into Jason's half-wolfen eyes and nearly cried in relief. Instead, the emotion stayed stuffed in her throat. Julia couldn't even gasp.\n\nShe was suffocating. His grip bruising, the breaking of her fall into his arms had done something to her ribcage, and her shoulder was a yawning chasm of pain.\n\nIt dangled from her side, hanging unnaturally.\n\nMore eyes joined her husband's. Cyn's were a strange green-gold. Stars burst in front of her vision like fireworks.\n\n\"She's not breathing!\" Jason said in a concerned, staccato bray.\n\n\"Here.\" Cyn laid her hand on Julia's chest, and precious oxygen filled her lungs.\n\nShe took a breath and screamed from the pain. She could breathe now but didn't want to. Ever.\n\n\"Fuck! What the hell is this?\" Jason yelled.\n\n\"Put her down, Jace... ya hurt her from the catch.\"\n\nLooking at Jason's confused expression would have been funny. None of it translated well on his half-wolf form.\n\nBut there was no humor left; the pain was like hot, broken glass every time she breathed. Julia reached out to Cyn.\n\nThey gripped each other's forearms.\n\n\"Hang on, Jules.\" Cyn released Julia's arm and pressed both hands to either side of her ribs.\n\n\"Cyn\u2014don't, hurts!\" Julia wept.\n\nJason growled.\n\n\"Pipe down, stud, I'm fixing her.\"\n\nThe pain bled to an ache, the ache to discomfort.\n\nThe first breath without pain was a slice of heaven on earth. Julia opened her eyes. \"Thank you.\"\n\nCyn gave a grim nod. \"There's the shoulder now.\"\n\nJulia's head whipped to Slash, who was suddenly there holding her arm.\n\n\"You got it?\" Cyn asked.\n\n\"Got what?\" Julia asked.\n\nSlash turned her arm and Julia shrieked as he rotated it and shoved upward, slamming the joint back into place.\n\nShe must have blacked out for a moment, because when she came to, they were moving.\n\nShe was in Jason's arms again.\n\n*\n\nJulia and Cyn returned from their little trip to wipe their parts with moss, after taking a much-needed bathroom break, when Cyn piped up. \"I am not digging this camping in the woods while we run from the freaks mode.\"\n\nJulia laughed. \"Yeah, it's getting old for me, too.\"\n\n\"I want a hot shower,\" Adi said from behind. Julia and Cyn waited for her to catch up.\n\n\"Me three,\" Cyn lamented.\n\n\"We'll be home soon,\" Julia said, though that was almost too optimistic a viewpoint.\n\nAdi shook her head, her brown hair in wild shape from their journey. \"Nah, those Reds go hard in the paint.\"\n\n\"Basketball!\" Then Cyn's face fell. \"Kev used that expression before...\"\n\nJulia couldn't take the brave one of the two crumpling. \"Ah, Cyn, come here.\" Julia wrapped her arms around her friend while she cried.\n\nCyn cried for many things, and Julia knew exactly what they were. She'd shed her own tears long ago for the very same losses. She could bear Cyn's.\n\n\"I'm sorry, Jules.\" Cyn sniffed. \"I know you've had your own cross to bear. And I should be grateful. I have you and... Jace stopped being a dick hole.\"\n\nAdi barked out a laugh. \"Oh, I don't know, there's always time for regression...\" She winked.\n\n\"No.\" Julia held up her palm. \"Negatory. I don't want any more yo-yo love life. I'm a one-man woman.\"\n\n\"You are, are you?\" Jason loomed before them.\n\nCyn smacked him in the arm. \"Stop that, you lurker, I about peed myself again. Gawd.\"\n\nJason laughed and looked to Adi. She threw her palms up. \"I like surprises. Cyn doesn't have her wolf on yet, or she would have smelled you a mile away.\" Adi waggled her brows.\n\n\"Am I that rank?\" Jason took a whiff of his armpit.\n\nJulia laughed. \"I think we're all a little ripe right now.\"\n\n\"Showers later,\" Truman announced, stepping out from behind the trunk of a tall cedar tree. \"They're going to be up our asses.\"\n\n\"Nice visual,\" Adi said in a sour voice.\n\nJulia looked around, expecting a battalion of angry werewolves to meld suddenly out of the tree line. The guys had kept a little bit of original clothing, but the Were in her group were all in various states of half-naked. And for extra fun, the weather wasn't cooperating, a light drizzle beginning to fall.\n\nSlash stood in the middle of their group, his nose in the air. His nostrils flared once. \"They're coming. We need to run.\"\n\nHis gaze took in the three women then the men. \"The females slow us down...\"\n\n\"Hey!\" Adi said. Slash went to her, and if Julia had been Adi, she'd have backed up from that huge Were. A strike of pulverized flesh like a beaten rope bisected his face. He looked angry, hard, and vicious.\n\nWhen he cupped the back of Adi's head, his expression was molten, revealing nothing and everything, utterly changing his face.\n\nHis love for Adi was plain, and Julia couldn't believe she'd missed it. Or maybe he'd been that good at hiding it.\n\n\"You know you have my greatest respect. But you are female, and they will take you. Trust in my protection.\"\n\nAdi's face flamed under his scrutiny, and he chucked her chin. \"You may bite me later for this. But for now, defer to me.\"\n\nShe glared at him.\n\n\"Please, Adrianna.\"\n\nThe smallest of the three women came into the circle of his arms.\n\nHis face grew tender with Adi against him. It completely changed the Were.\n\nMade him steely.\n\nWhere there was love, there was violence, the two inextricably linked in the supernatural world of which she was now a part of.\n\n# CHAPTER ELEVEN\n\n\"I don't know. She's malnourished and weak... I can't condone this. She shouldn't travel,\" Cyrus said.\n\n\"She is not this fragile.\" Tharell cupped his chin.\n\nPatches of deepening emerald spread over the typically aloof Domi's cheekbones. \"She is stronger than she appears.\"\n\nDomi's discomfiture amused Tharell. Only recently had Queen Darcel deigned to go forward with the acquisition of the Rare One. As self-deluded and grandiose as the rest of the pureblood Sidhe, her guts a churning mass of self-consumption, she had finally conceded the need for out breeding.\n\nWith Darcel gone, royal blood no longer remained in the courts, and a thin thread of advisers held the Sidhe together. One being the dragon-shifting Sidhe, Kiel. After the briar, he was their most stringent protector of Faerie and a logical replacement for the interim.\n\nA royal or someone of that caliber must take the throne. Subterfuge and other nefarious events could transpire in the interim. It was why he pressed this endeavor forward.\n\nHe must.\n\n\"Is there anything you can do to...\" Tharell spun his hand, and Cyrus followed the movement, swallowing hard.\n\nHe checked his impatience, his eyebrows rising.\n\n\"I can... bolster her immune system, but you must understand, she is with child, and the physical demand on the host is relentless.\"\n\n\"Like a parasite,\" Victor commented.\n\nTharell pivoted, hands loose by his side, ready. \"Speak your mind, Combatant.\"\n\nVictor smiled. Tharell knew the quality of it. A mere baring of teeth, like a wolf on a short leash.\n\n\"You have used one of our women, and I'm not...\" He seemed to think it over. \"A fan,\" he finished, the smile disappearing like it'd never been.\n\n\"None of you were worried when she was left in our care, so we entertain this line of commentary no more.\" Domi turned to Jacqueline, her dark eyes following the exchange but saying nothing.\n\n\"Nourish her, then we go,\" Tharell instructed. \"If there be any that think there is a better solution than the one I've brought forward, share it now. Or\"\u2014his gaze automatically went to the Combatant\u2014\"shut the pie hole underneath your noses.\"\n\nScott stepped forward, along with Lucius and the Feeler, Angela. \"I'm going, and Victor.\"\n\n\"We don't need another female.\" Tharell asked, \"It is true? You know the perpetrator from aura alone?\"\n\nShe nodded. Soft platinum hair curled around her shoulders, and pale blue eyes stared back into his without guile. She was telling the truth. He would have staked his immortal life on it.\n\n\"All right.\"\n\nTharell tried not to let Domi's intense gaze that followed Jacqueline disturb him. \"Domiatri,\" he called out.\n\nDomi hiked his eyebrows, moving his hand away from the hilt of his sword and knotting it with the other behind his back.\n\n\"Brother?\" he answered so automatically that Tharell held his smile in check, keeping the resolute and austere expression glued to his face like the mask it was.\n\n\"Let us convene outside.\"\n\nDomi inclined his head, and they walked out together under the watchful gaze of the Singers.\n\nThey moved down the broad steps without looking around them. Faerie's absence had not yet hindered their energy. However, Jacqueline was near.\n\n\"What troubles you, Tharell?\"\n\nTheir strides matched as they strolled, as did their height. Domi blended perfectly with the surrounding landscape. The green pastures stretched out before them. If not for the deep shock of long blue hair that carved a pathway of vibrant, deep oceanic blue between his shoulder blades, Domi would look as one with the rolling hills upon which they trod.\n\n\"You're becoming attached to the Singer, Domi,\" Tharell said.\n\nHe sighed, swiping a dexterous hand through his hair and smoothly banding it at his nape. He gave a frustrated exhale. \"Yes.\"\n\nAt least he conceded the problem.\n\n\"You know that she bears children. She will have to be shared.\"\n\nDomi was silent. They had come to a small lake, little more than a pond, where swans revolved in lazy, floating figure eights on the surface, paying them no mind.\n\n\"I do not wish to.\"\n\nDomi gazed at him with eyes that rivaled liquid mercury. \"You are the lucky one, Tharell.\"\n\nTharell held his tongue, Goddess knew he'd done it plenty of times before.\n\n\"You do not breed. You never will take a woman as mate.\"\n\nTharell had been with many females yet never to mate. A male had needs, a biological imperative that spared no species. Yet physicality was a manifestation of the body. His soul longed for edification as well. Tharell kept his own council.\n\n\"True,\" he said as the chasm of his loneliness grew with Domi's words. Not ill meant but accurate.\n\nOnly pure Sidhe could breed with the sanctioned Singers. It was a very good sign Jacqueline had gotten with child, though her mind was sick from the time away from Faerie.\n\n\"I ask you let me self-delude for this journey, Tharell. Soon enough, we will return to the sithen, the debauchery of the court and Jacqueline will become a brood mare for all that would have her.\" His eyes stayed on the lake while his heart bled silently between them.\n\n\"I will. Of course, you understand the importance of the Singers being cloudy on our motivations at present.\"\n\nDomi gave a solemn nod.\n\nThe day ended before them in a gasping loss of daylight, as though night had held its breath until that moment. And on its exhale, Domi's bright green skin deepening to emerald, his cobalt hair shedding its color and falling to night's influence.\n\nThe two fey stood shoulder to shoulder, two colored shadows, lost in their thoughts of choiceless deceit.\n\n# CHAPTER TWELVE\n\nJacqueline stretched, her stomach uncomfortably stuffed with food, and did everything she could to keep the food where it belonged.\n\nShe loathed leaving Faerie, where for the first time in her wretched existence, she felt free.\n\nFree in peace, centered\u2014right in her skin.\n\nThe shame had been acute. And Tony's brutality. When Jacqueline first accepted his idea of mating, she'd been inside the sithen for just hours.\n\nNot long enough to realize fully the affect it had on her.\n\nWith the passing of days into weeks, a change had come over her. She no longer sought violence for its own sake. She remembered her actions of the last century in a state of stunned and horrified recounting.\n\nJacqueline had been a self-serving narcissist. She had ruined her son and daughter with her indifferent neglect.\n\nWatching Scott come to her aid, despite her attempt on his former soul-meld's life, was salt in the wound.\n\nJacqueline did not deserve any pity.\n\nShe covered her flat belly with her hand. Her eyes fluttered shut while she leaned against the porch post. Domiatri at her elbow caused her to start. His aloof face looked down at her.\n\nHe had told her how it would be between them, and she had accepted what he offered the first night he'd come to her. Jacqueline remembered his words with startling clarity.\n\n\"If you do not wish to lie with me, it will matter not. But know this. The former sickness of your mind and the wellness of it now are due to your proximity to Faerie. Nothing more and nothing less. If you agree to bear a child of a pureblood Sidhe, then your reward will be to return here and suffer no longer.\"\n\nJacqueline had looked at Tony, her abuser, as he slumbered artificially but mere paces away.\n\nHer gaze found Domi's unerring silver eyes shining at her not in tenderness but want. Jacqueline understood what she was. She'd spent most of her life in machinations of manipulation. She was adept at recognizing it in others.\n\nShe'd borne two children, and this third would be with a man not really human but a parody of humanity. Her gaze roamed his bright green skin, his lips the color of pigeon's blood rubies, hair like midnight kissed by sky.\n\nJacqueline gave a single nod in answer.\n\nFaerie was a mixed blessing. It lifted the veil of her poisoned life outside of Faerie but cast a glaring light on the misdeeds of her past. In the time of this bittersweet revelation, she accepted Domiatri's offer.\n\nHe leaned near her, attempting to touch the side of her head, and Jacqueline flinched, though he didn't frighten her.\n\n\"Why do you cringe?\" Domi asked. \"I mean you no harm. I would never hurt a female.\"\n\nJacqueline knew this, but she didn't respond. Instead, her gaze sought the floor.\n\nDomi lifted her chin with his finger. \"Tell me.\"\n\nJacqueline sat up on her knees, chancing a furtive glance behind her. Tony still slept.\n\nShe placed her palms on the muscular planes of his chest and whispered the reason.\n\nAnd sometime within the telling, his hands gripped her upper arms.\n\nWhen she watched his anger overcame his good reason, he found her mouth, tenderly lifting her to his lap and kissing her as her words of abuse settled in the shadows of his mind.\n\n\"I shall not use you ill, Jacqueline.\"\n\nShe nodded and he took her out of the fey prison.\n\nIt was the first of many nights.\n\nWhen Tony began to abuse her, she but thought of Domi, and Tony would fall asleep, his lecherous assault broken before it began.\n\nDomi hadn't taken away what they'd been unaware of, but he disallowed its continuance.\n\n\"Do you remember what we spoke of?\" Domi asked and Jacqueline cast her eyes to the ground, shutting the memories away.\n\n\"Yes.\" Their tender interchanges would be no more once they returned to Faerie. She would carry his child then bear it.\n\nThen she would be open to breed with other Sidhe.\n\nJacqueline did not speak her fear. She had never loved another being in her life. Not her Singer son, Scott.\n\nCertainly not her vampire daughter, Delilah.\n\nShe had loved only herself.\n\nBut no more. Jacqueline had fallen victim to love.\n\nShe loved the green Sidhe warrior.\n\nAs he looked down at her, she could clearly see it was one-sided.\n\nJacqueline straightened. She had much to atone for. It wouldn't be easy, but she wished to apologize for the wrongs she'd committed. Starting with the new Queen, Julia.\n\n*\n\nThey were half a day into the journey when Jacqueline noticed Scott's gaze not constantly on her. Only when she was too weak to go on did they stray back.\n\nTharell's impatience was evident. Jacqueline would have done anything to keep the robust pace they wished, but she was still in a state of recovery from Tony's constant abuse.\n\nShe'd found eating repugnant.\n\nThen Domi had come to her two weeks before, and after their discussion and tacit agreement, she had immediately gotten with child. An unexpected development in its immediacy.\n\nBut the damage to her body, surviving Tony's constant tender care for nearly a month, had about done her in.\n\nJacqueline was on the mend, but she understood enough about herself to realize she would be emotionally scarred. Her first encounter with Domi had been so wrought with her fear at lying with a male that she'd witnessed his comprehension as it thinned his face into angry lines.\n\nNot at her. Tony had made her so afraid to be with another male.\n\nDomi had been exceedingly tender. Not using himself like a weapon inside her but as a tool for pleasure.\n\nJacqueline missed it. Him.\n\nShe showed none of her feelings. If Jacqueline was talented at one thing, it was keeping her expression blank.\n\nYet she watched Domi search her face quite thoroughly. Though he'd heard her response, he leaned in close to her, grasping her icy hands and frowning at their temperature.\n\n\"No harm will come to you while I take breath, Jacqueline. You know this.\"\n\nHe pulled away, and she nodded. She did know it. He had proven it when he'd arrived barely in time to stop Tony from raping her again.\n\nTharell had pulled Domi off Tony. No spot on his body had been free of blood and bruises.\n\nBut it was Jacqueline whom Tony's eyes sought with hate.\n\nThey separated the two of them after that, fashioning a wall from the sithen itself. It was sentient; the sithen could have refused the invoking of a barrier.\n\nBut it seemed the sithen had grown tired as silent witness to Tony's violence.\n\nThe Were had resigned himself to glaring at her through the clear but impenetrable wall.\n\nJacqueline had cried when Domi saved her from the attack.\n\nShe had cried into his hands, and he had caught her tears like diamonds as they fell.\n\nPieces of her soul had broken apart that day, and all Jacqueline could hope for was reclaiming them in the future. Whatever her future ended up being.\n\nDomi still waited for her response.\n\n\"I know,\" she said.\n\nHe smiled, his scarlet lips breaking over pure white teeth. \"Good.\"\n\nDomi put his large palm on her back, and they moved to the horses. He easily lifted her up and began a forward walk. It would be a long sojourn on horseback, and Jacqueline tired thinking about resuming. However, they needed to travel that way to avoid airplanes and cars.\n\nThe baby she carried only afforded so much temperance this far from Faerie. Metal, was still an issue. It was as the human's fabled kryptonite, a poison to the fey.\n\nHorses were organic. And obedient.\n\nThe one Singer female who came was Angela, and she made Jacqueline uncomfortable. Of course, Jacqueline was hyper-aware in a way she'd never been before. She girded her loins.\n\nShe did not deserve an answer to her question. \"Why do you stare at me?\"\n\nAngela rode beside her, the powerful horse rolling beneath her hips. Her face flushed slightly, her fair skin hiding nothing. \"Your aura.\"\n\n\"What of it?\" It had been the color of bruised eggplant before her fey imprisonment.\n\n\"It is no longer violet tinged with black,\" the Feeler admitted with hesitation.\n\nJacqueline was now desperate to know: was her change in Faerie certain?\n\nDomi said nothing as he rode to her right and slightly ahead.\n\nJacqueline knew he listened.\n\n\"It is a pale pink, with white at the edges.\"\n\nJacqueline sat atop the horse in stunned silence, her fingers going lax on the reins.\n\nShe knew what that meant. And she couldn't believe Angela would ascribe it to her.\n\nPurity.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTEEN\n\nThe Washington state border loomed in the distance, guarded by Canadian Mounties. The horses pitched around nervously, causing the men on their backs to tighten their grip on the reins. The horses were not dumb. An alert as ancient as any had tweaked their internal alarms.\n\nJulia watched her husband and the other two females move forward. All half-wolfen. That was what the horses sensed.\n\nIn a perfect world, they'd all be on horseback, and the horses' scent would mask the Were.\n\nThe world was not perfect. Upwards of fifteen Were trailed them by their fragrance. Eau de Body Odor, Julia thought with a thinly concealed snort. She figured they kept getting worse as they traveled. No baths, food where they could get it, sleep a luxury. It was a combo for smelly, grumpy, and beat.\n\nJason glanced at her, and she gave a tired smile back. When Julia had been taken, she'd been wearing cute but useless tennis shoes. The kind you buy for nearly free and walk to the mailbox in.\n\nThey were in tatters. Blisters covered every place she looked. They had been especially bad at the back of her ankle and alongside her toes.\n\nCyn had healed her from most of it, along with the broken ribs and dislocated shoulder, but the injuries kept returning. The Were changed, in their element out there in the forest, and suddenly there were no problems\u2014for them. Julia was a regular person who'd just walked fifteen miles on no sleep and inadequate footwear.\n\nJason lumbered back to her position. She looked up into his face, almost seven feet of half-Were and sighed.\n\n\"I smell your wounds,\" he said and she nodded.\n\n\"Likely\u2014they're driving me crazy.\"\n\nShe laughed when he put his big paws on his hips, thinking about a solution to her shredded feet.\n\nHis red downy fur covered his body as spinning green eyes regarded her. \"What?\" It came out as a growl instead of a word. Julia was feeling the lack of sleep, and it translated into giddiness. She so didn't need that, but the more she tried to stop laughing, the worse it became.\n\nShe was now the interpreter of wolf-speak.\n\n\"What? Stop the noise please,\" Slash said with more than a little irritation.\n\n\"I think she's tired.\" Jason restated the obvious with a grin that looked like a grimace on features far from human.\n\nShe collapsed on her butt and rolled around on the forest floor, holding still achy ribs, and laughed at their dilemma of being sandwiched between the foreign police and their Red Were pursuers. Not a bright spot in the entire scenario. She turned it over and over again in her mind and caught the laughter before it turned to tears.\n\n\"Jules, geez, snap out of it.\" Cyn jerked her up by the arm that hadn't been dislocated. \"Quiet.\"\n\nJulia made a supreme effort, clamping her lips together. She hiccuped.\n\nJason put his arm around her and gave her shoulder a squeeze. With his strength it almost hurt.\n\n\"We'll have to wait until a shift change. During the confusion of the change out, we'll slide through,\" Slash said aloud.\n\nTheir superior sight caught the flies that pestered the horses' tails. Julia could only make out that there were tails.\n\n\"We make the horses nervous,\" Truman commented.\n\nJulia hiccuped again.\n\nThe group looked at the horses that traveled the length of a tall fence with razor wire across the top. They flicked their tails, eyes with too much white showing as they glanced nervously around.\n\n\"Yes,\" Slash replied, unperturbed.\n\nAdi gave the first shy look Julia had ever seen on her face. Slash returned the glance with a tender expression.\n\n\"Let's take the wolves down a notch and wait. What time do you think they'll switch out?\" Jason asked Slash.\n\nSlash shook his head. \"Doesn't matter, it's now or never.\"\n\nJulia's former reckless laughter completely faded. \"Why?\" It didn't make sense. Didn't they just determine we'd be breaking through when one shift of Mounties relieves the next?\n\nJason lifted his snout. His eyes snapped to Slash then to Truman.\n\n\"They're here.\"\n\nSlash gave a snort of assent. He took in Adi, a foot shorter but with beautiful golden fur covering her.\n\n\"We have to protect the females.\"\n\n\"Love the ratio,\" Truman said. Then, \"Let's get outta here, I can smell them a mile away.\"\n\n\"What\u2014okay, that's going to be a problem. We've kept our existence under wraps...\" Julia began.\n\nSlash grinned, and his scar rippled like a wave. \"Not entirely. Someone has seen something, or Hollywood wouldn't be making movies.\"\n\n\"Julia,\" Truman said.\n\n\"Yes.\" Her gaze plunged into the deep forest. She couldn't see, and the effects of Paul fuzzing everyone's mental deliberations were fading this far away from Region One. However, if she concentrated, she could make it be white noise. Julia kept gaining finesse, and it was a great thing.\n\nRight now, she wanted to find out where the Reds were.\n\n\"We need you to be the distraction.\"\n\nJulia turned away from the forest and looked at Slash. \"What?\" Maybe she heard him wrong.\n\nJason frowned. \"No way, man... they might hurt her.\"\n\nSlash shook her head. \"Not if she acts lost, hurt.\"\n\nNope.\n\n\"We don't have much time but let's talk about Tony.\"\n\n\"Not a good idea,\" Cyn chimed.\n\nSlash went on quickly, ignoring her for the moment, \"It's as good a comparison as any.\" He had their attention. \"Tony's wiring is all crossed. Most males of all species, wish to protect females. Tony wants to do harm.\"\n\nNobody disputed it. But Julia wasn't sure how it fit, or\u2014better yet, why they were discussing it with the Reds nearly on top of them.\n\n\"The Canadian police will not go against primal instincts and hurt an unprotected, lost, and injured girl. It'll be okay and effective.\"\n\nThere was a moment of silence while everyone thought it over.\n\n\"True,\" Truman barked. \"You've made your point. Now she needs to go out there.\"\n\n\"Get rid of the shoes, Jules.\"\n\nJulia looked down at her feet then tossed the shoes aside.\n\n\"I feel them in my head,\" she said.\n\n\"Who?\" Slash asked sharply.\n\n\"The Reds.\"\n\n\"What are the dick weeds thinking?\" Adi asked with false cheer.\n\nJulia shook her head. They were hard to read. No clear thoughts in actual words; just imagery. She relayed that.\n\n\"What do they feel?\" Jason asked.\n\nEasy. \"Anger.\"\n\nA beat of silence conquered the moment. \"You better go, Jules,\" he finally said.\n\nShe looked up at him, blown away by just how much of his humanity leaked through that altered face. \"What are you going to do? They outnumber you guys three to one.\"\n\nHe smiled, and she saw Jason in there, that boy she once loved when it was simple. \"They don't have anything to fight for.\"\n\nJulia turned away before he could see her tears, though they all smelled the salt of her sadness.\n\nShe fled, her bare feet traversing first moss then patchy, sharp grass. It should have hurt; instead, it felt freeing.\n\nJulia would get home one way or another.\n\nThe horses startled at a lone person running toward them full tilt. Julia's lungs burned. The familiar ache of a run meant she was almost warm enough to go the distance.\n\nThe Mounties watched her coming and conferred briefly, then two broke away from the main group to meet her.\n\nThe steeds' rolling canter brought them nearer.\n\nThe anger burning through her brain erupted like a tooth coming in when the Reds made the mental move to attack.\n\nThe Royal Canadian Mounted Police circled her, and Julia stopped running, bending over and clutching her ribs.\n\nShe didn't turn around, afraid of what she'd see. Knowing what she'd see.\n\n\"You're approaching an international border, Miss,\" the first of the Canadian police warned when she was within hearing.\n\nShe peered up at the first officer when noise in the forest shook the ground. She ended up checking behind her after all.\n\nThe distraction Slash had hoped for just appeared. Julia bolted.\n\nShe ran so fast her heels almost kicked her own butt. Two Mounties waited on their horses, and Julia didn't slow down. She ran between them like a speeding locomotive and prayed.\n\nJulia made a running leap, her legs pumping as if she was riding a bicycle midair, and flew over the spun razor wire, her small telekinetic talent allowing her just to clear the barbed spikes.\n\nThen she fell.\n\nJulia didn't have the finesse to halt her landing, only soften it.\n\nOf course, she landed on the ribs she'd broken. What little air she'd had in her lungs departed.\n\nAt least her brain was still in her skull.\n\nShe was vulnerable when the first Red sprung over the fence and gazed down at her.\n\n\"A merry chase you've led us on, Rare One.\"\n\nJulia thought of all the snappy comebacks she could have said. Instead, she did the smartest thing ever.\n\nShe jerked her leg up and landed a foot in his considerable crotch.\n\nThe Red howled, landing on his side. Julia stumbled to her feet and ran.\n\nHe grabbed her ankle in a vise grip and she tripped, narrowly missing hitting her face on the ground. The force of the fall reverberated from her palms to her shoulders.\n\nJason smoothly hopped the fence and landed gracefully.\n\nHe swept his foot into the jaw of the offender.\n\nThe Red rocked back. He was unconscious before his head hit the ground.\n\n\"Come on, Jules,\" Jason said, sweeping her underneath his arm.\n\nA bullet whizzed over his head.\n\nJulia looked around.\n\nOh... bullets were zinging around because they were back in America.\n\nHome sweet home.\n\n# CHAPTER FOURTEEN\n\nAs a mixed-blood, Tharell tolerated the distance of Faerie better than Domi. He maintained a close proximity to Jacqueline and the unborn child she carried.\n\nScott and Lucius of the Singer Combatant wove their way expertly through the dense forests to which they kept. The Feeler, able to identify the aura of the Red Were who had taken the others, was in the middle of the tight knot of males.\n\nThe Canadian border was not far. He spared a glance at Domi, and the other warrior's watchful care over the mixed fey-Singer troubled him.\n\nIt could not end well.\n\nHe brought his mount up, and she softly neighed at the abrupt halt, as though in question. She flicked her tail in agitation. He patted the animal's side to quiet her, and the flies stayed away. Tharell thought the noxious insects an irritation he could do without and fashioned a spell of camouflage over the group. It was a trifling thing; an infant could have conjured it. Tharell believed in not wasting magick. Keeping flies away as they traveled was a frivolous waste, he readily admitted, yet the journey possessed enough challenges. It was what he could easily do, so he had.\n\n\"Tharell,\" Domi called out.\n\nTharell looked over his shoulder, Domi looking very bright against the pine-colored forest. Surreal. \"Jacqueline needs rest.\"\n\nTharell swept his gaze at the valley like emerald water before them. It was more than a meadow, a wide expanse that gradually rose to another patch of forest. He did not like the lack of cover. They would be vulnerable.\n\nHe and Domi did not fit within human norms.\n\n\"Let us wait,\" Tharell agreed. Not because he thought Jacqueline needed rest or not, dusk was at hand and he looked like a cloud of midnight in the shroud of darkness. Domi was bright but grew dark as the night deepened.\n\nTharell squinted, sighting a narrow creek. If only they had a Diviner, then they would know where the water was and if it was safe to consume.\n\nTharell felt a presence behind him. He slid off his horse and faced Scott.\n\nThe Singer was not shy. He spoke his mind quite readily, as most of his kind was wont to do.\n\n\"Speak.\"\n\n\"I'm going to, fey. I feel the presence of our Queen.\"\n\nTharell turned slowly around. \"Impossible. They were taken days ago. They should be nearing the Alaskan border by this time. We're chasing their tailwind.\"\n\n\"Yes, I'm aware what makes sense, but Lucius has the same blood summons as I. So\"\u2014Scott held up a finger\u2014\"that means she's traveling backward.\"\n\n\"Domi!\" Tharell said, ignoring Scott. \"The Combatant speaks of blood summons.\"\n\nDomi cast a glance like a hook at Jacqueline, as if to assure her safety, and came to Tharell.\n\nAs he drew nearer, Tharell had a rare pang of envy. To be a pureblood Sidhe, with the coveted bright coloring.\n\nThe only bright thing about Tharell was his eyes.\n\nDomi broke into his uncharitable thoughts. \"Tharell?\"\n\n\"Julia's escaped.\"\n\nThere was a heartbeat of assimilating this new information. \"How?\"\n\nTharell lifted his shoulders. \"The Singer Combatants have conferred and are in agreement.\"\n\nDomi's chin fell into his palm, his perfect green face puckering in a wrinkle of concentration. He turned to Jacqueline a second time.\n\n\"She is vulnerable,\" he said finally.\n\nTrue. If Julia had escaped, the Reds would never give up.\n\nThus far, the fey had managed to escape being outright enemies with the other supernaturals. However, it had been a near thing with the Singers. To begin a war with the Red Were was not good.\n\nDomi's gaze followed his own as he took in the two Combatant, Jacqueline, and the Singer Feeler, Angela.\n\nDepending on who came with Julia, it could be an unwinnable battle. The Reds were known for their abilities during engagement.\n\nHard to kill, difficult to outmaneuver.\n\n\"I will be useless, Tharell.\"\n\nScott and Domi regarded Jacqueline together.\n\n\"It's weird how different she is.\"\n\n\"I did not know her before. Only as she has been in Faerie,\" Domi said.\n\n\"I knew some of it.\" Tharell spoke to Scott's comment, electing not to expound. Tharell had a feeling her offspring would not well receive the sexual displays she and Tony put on in the beginning.\n\n\"She needs my protection,\" Domi said.\n\nTharell frowned at Domi's priorities.\n\n\"Will the Were hurt a female with child?\" Scott asked, surprised.\n\nTharell understood violence against females was taboo across all supernatural races. There seemed to be a shortage of the fairer gender inherent to some degree in them all. Tony might be the only exception, as the occurrence was quite rare. There was nothing beyond that thankless Were.\n\n\"Lets's go,\" Scott said from behind. Deep pools of shadows grew on the fields, turning their blond shoots to upside-down spider legs in the lengthening darkness.\n\n\"Yes,\" Tharell agreed.\n\nDomi gave a reluctant nod. He stood next to Jacqueline, slowly giving her water from an animal-skinned flask. She took a small pull, moving a shaky hand across her brow. Even from this distance, Tharell could see the paleness of her skin. She had not fully recovered. Had she but a few more weeks in Faerie, she might have been fully rejuvenated. As it were, she was half-undone.\n\nTharell's belly fluttered inside like a butterfly trying to escape its prison. He knew what that sensitive precursor usually meant.\n\nWar.\n\nTharell would not wait for battle to find him. Rather, he preferred to bring his sword to the fight. They would take the Rare One from anyone who would have her. Losing was not an option he entertained.\n\nTharell's horse made its way through the grass.\n\nThe tall stalks whispered along the underbelly of the beast, sounding like an endless rain which fell without cessation. The entire group rode without speaking. A cloud of precognition hung over them. He recounted the abilities of the Combatant: Scott was a Deflector of impressive ability, he wished Victor was also part of their troupe. He had heard the tale of vampires exploding under his tender mercies. Lucius... it occurred to Tharell, he did not know. It deepened his trepidation, it was a rudimentary oversight. His first priority should have been to establish the arsenal at his disposal. Before Tharell could attempt to worry about the Combatant's unknown skill set, Scott spoke.\n\n\"Julia is here... close by.\"\n\nThat's when they all saw the sky on fire, lit up by shots.\n\nGun smoke saturated the air, and it thickened all their breathing. Domi laid his hands over Jacqueline's shoulders, and she took a shaky inhale. Tharell thought it wise, as no one wasted magick on one sickened member of the group dragged along like baggage because they couldn't breathe.\n\nThe group drew tighter.\n\n\"It won't hold, Tharell,\" Domi shouted over the gunfire.\n\nGoddess help us. \"It won't matter. The spell is all that we have for her.\"\n\nDomi hauled the fragile Singer behind him. He waded into the melee of battle.\n\nTharell saw how many there were, and his mind stalled at the tally.\n\nHumans, numbering thirty were charging after a huge Were and the solitary reason behind their trek.\n\nThe huge, half-breed Red Were was barreling ahead of the small army that followed, bleeding out of several holes like a running slice of Swiss cheese.\n\nClearly, there was no time to heal the wounds.\n\nThe Rare One was riding his front like a monkey while bullets littered his back.\n\nTharell did not often encounter beauty outside of Faerie, which rivaled the sithen's magickal interiors.\n\nSeeing the Were run at top speed, his arms and powerful legs pumping as his mate clung to the front of him, was one of those times.\n\nThe humans were gaining as Jason was slowing.\n\nSome held implements that glinted silver in the night that had finally fallen around them like an ominous shroud.\n\nTharell gave a signal that made Domi move even as he gave it. The Combatant didn't wait.\n\nTheir Queen was in peril; a biological initiative began instantly.\n\nSavagery was all that was left for them to execute.\n\nThe pair turned into creatures of legend more frightening than the Were or anything Tharell had ever seen.\n\nNumbers might not matter as much as ferocity.\n\n# CHAPTER FIFTEEN\n\n\"Jules!\" Jason gasped as her head bobbed from sprinting.\n\n\"Yes!\" She managed to respond without biting off her tongue.\n\n\"Let go!\" he yelled, and she did. The hardest thing was knowing the combined forces of the US Border Patrol and Canadian Mounties were after them. Jason's blood and sweat slicked her fingers.\n\nShe trusted.\n\nJulia let her arms slip from around his neck.\n\nJason flung her in the air.\n\nHe launched her into space, and she hurtled through nothingness. She forced herself not to use one bit of talent for whatever impact she encountered.\n\nShe wasn't half as brave as she thought. Julia kept her eyes clenched shut.\n\nShe landed, blowing into a figure from behind as he caught her.\n\nThey collided into a tree.\n\nJulia opened her eyes, and the sharp scent of forest along with needles like green rain fell on her face. She coughed them out of her mouth and rolled off whoever caught her.\n\nScott looked up at her.\n\nThere was a sense of the surreal when she tried to compartmentalize his role at that moment.\n\nProtector.\n\nWith a great whooping cough, he expelled dirt, needles, and blood from his mouth. A lopsided smile accompanied a groan. \"Gain some weight?\"\n\nThe war was raging around them, but Scott had time to quip about her landing. It was wonderful and filled her with hope.\n\nJulia smiled as he bounded up, and he drew her to standing.\n\nShe'd missed him.\n\nThe music of gunfire and fists hitting their targets overpowered regular conversation. \"Are you hurt?\"\n\nShe shook her head. Scott's gaze ran down her body as though she hadn't answered, then he shoved her behind him.\n\nJulia saw what he saw in great detail. The battle was practically on their heads.\n\nTharell riveted her. Like purple water, he moved in between the humans as though they stood as debris in the river of his violence.\n\nThe fey were a thing of terrible beauty. Domi and Tharell worked in tandem like perfectly orchestrated dancers.\n\nThey moved past one another. Domi swept his weaponless arm out, and Tharell gripped it, spinning Domi behind himself in a half circle.\n\nDomi took three heads during the move.\n\nThe Mounties' blood matched their uniforms as they fell to his long sword. The red and gilded braiding littered the soil with blood and death, the earth an eager sponge for their lives.\n\nAtrocities happened before her eyes because humans had accidentally stepped into the mix of their supernatural war. It was profoundly unfair.\n\nThe Americans wore the dull moss of their station, blending perfectly with the forest that retained its color through the dusk. Three came for Tharell.\n\nThe knife entered where Julia knew a kidney to be. The only sign Tharell gave was the tightening of his eyes, glowing with ethereal blue fire.\n\nThe three who had come, including the sword bearer, fell. The human casualties grew, filling her with sadness.\n\nThe green fey was guarding Jacqueline, and Julia's lips flattened in anger. What the hell was she doing here?\n\nJulia scrambled away from Jason as the Reds suddenly appeared, running in the opposite direction.\n\nShe wasn't getting taken again. No matter what.\n\nShe would rather die than live under that again.\n\n\"Jules!\" Jason yelled. She could hear the panic, but it wasn't greater than hers was.\n\nShe sprinted as if her life depended on it.\n\nHead honcho, the one who'd played Fed but who was really the pack master of the Alaskan den, landed in front of her.\n\nTom Harriet.\n\nHe sprayed dirt around him from the abruptness of his stop, and Julia's momentum drove her forward. She executed a perfect somersault, as she'd done a thousand times as a kid, tumbling right between his legs. His seven-foot-tall half-wolfen body was the perfect height for the maneuver. When he tried to snatch her from behind, Julia reacted.\n\nShe kicked out blindly. She nailed his nutsack squarely, and he fell to his knees.\n\nJulia bounded up and raced further, the sounds of battle growing quieter.\n\nWhen she couldn't take another step because she didn't have enough air in her lungs, she stopped.\n\nJulia was in the middle of the woods.\n\nAlone.\n\nWithout the protection of the group or Jason.\n\nShe was lost.\n\nYes, she'd escaped the battle, taking out the leader of the Red Were for the moment and buying herself time.\n\nJulia looked down at her feet.\n\nBare.\n\nAn owl hooted in the distance as her stomach let out a growl.\n\nShe had just made the gravest of mistakes.\n\nAnd she had only herself to blame.\n\n*\n\n\"Where's Jules?\" Cyn asked, looking around frantically.\n\nSlash noticed the Rare One was missing and groaned. He searched for Jason. Why had he lost sight of Julia? Something serious happened, he'd bet.\n\nTruman backed up until they all formed a loose circle. Angela occupied the center. The Combatant all presented their war forms, not unlike the half-wolfen Weres' sizes but deadlier. Slash didn't know if the threat of the morphed Combatant and the fey would be enough. The humans were in various states of dying or dead, but the real threat was now approaching.\n\nAnd they knew Slash now. He'd given the secret of his pureblood status away to escape them earlier.\n\nSlash scanned the contingent of wayward Reds and found his pure blood fighting for a dominance struggle in a bid to secure the Rare One, protect Adrianna, and survive.\n\nDominance won, of course. There was nothing to be done with instinct, as deeply ingrained as taking breath.\n\nSlash did not see the pack master. The one he recalled put most of them to sleep with a well-placed dart to the shoulder.\n\nThat flat-out pissed Slash off.\n\nFight for territory, fine. But fight like a wolf, not a coward.\n\nTruman enlightened Slash to some of the players' identities. \"Listen, Ford, where's the dickhead pack master that's responsible for taking things that don't belong to him?\"\n\nLike the Rare One, Slash thought. Ford, Slash guessed, came from the half-wolfen pack that faced him. He automatically drew in front of the fey warriors, the Combatant, and Jason and Truman. \"Where is your pack master?\" Slash said.\n\nFord's eyes stared back at him like bottomless pits. \"Why? Want the job?\"\n\nSlash considered it for the length of a heartbeat. \"Yes.\" He moved deeper into the meadow to meet his adversary.\n\nWhere they were and what was about to transpire made Ford's FBI-issue look more ridiculous.\n\n\"Slash, don't\u2014there's too many,\" Adrianna said.\n\nHe didn't turn around. \"It's the only way.\"\n\nShe circled around him. His guts clenched. Her nearness possessed a scent he thought he'd never smell on a female directed at him.\n\nDesire.\n\nMixed with dominance lust, it was a perfume as heady as any he'd ever smelled. He had to exert an ugly self-control.\n\nShe put her forehead at his chest.\n\nThe talons at his fingertips remained extended as he wrapped her skull with a hand only half-human.\n\n\"Be with me,\" Adrianna whispered against him, and Slash shut his eyes.\n\nHe let the fantasy envelope him for as long as his next breath.\n\n\"There is no being unless I fight for dominance. Right here. Right now.\"\n\nAdrianna nodded, and when she didn't move, Slash positioned her away from him.\n\nIt felt like an amputation of his soul.\n\nFord's smile was cold. \"Just think, when I beat your ass, the bitch is mine.\"\n\nThe growl erupted out of the depths of Slash's body. Uninvited, unbidden, resolute.\n\nHis talons tingled, begging to gore Ford.\n\n\"No\u2014Slash, he's baiting you,\" Adrianna said.\n\nThe other Were remained silent.\n\nFord turned eyes to Adrianna. \"You're so going to like me, bitch.\"\n\nAdrianna flipped him off with a slender middle digit.\n\n\"That's about the size of yours, you dick weasel!\"\n\nSlash smiled. He enjoyed remaining quiet if the one who spoke for him had just the right words for the situation.\n\nFord moved forward. \"You will submit, female.\"\n\nAdrianna made a low noise somewhere between defiance and amusement in her throat. Then she added the middle finger from her other hand.\n\n\"Not on your life.\"\n\nSlash thought he could arrange that.\n\nFord glared at Adrianna then turned to Slash. \"It's not just me. There are others who will fight you.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"Knew you were a ball-less wonder,\" Truman told Ford as he and Slash circled each other.\n\nHis gaze flicked to Truman. \"But I'll be a ball-less wonder that's dominant to you.\"\n\nSlash reacted instantly, swinging his talons out and going for the jugular. Ford feinted to the left, and the body knives missed his Adam's apple by a hairsbreadth.\n\n\"Doubt it, chump.\" Truman crossed his arms.\n\nCyn sighed. \"I don't want to see him naked, and be underwhelmed and all that.\"\n\nFord looked at her, and Slash struck again, piercing the vulnerable part of the body where thigh meets crotch in a precise strike.\n\nSlash did not liken himself to a brutal fighter unless necessary. He would not tire himself when there were more Were to fight.\n\nCutting the femoral artery was effective.\n\nRapid.\n\nFord moved in for an obvious charge and stalled, a surprised look overtaking his face.\n\nThe other Reds shifted and muttered nervously.\n\nSlash approached confidently as a river of blood shot out of Ford's body.\n\nFord didn't react when all four talons burst out the back of his neck. He was too busy dying from blood loss.\n\nHe careened backward, and Slash, a grim reaper without a scythe, jerked his talons. They came out of Ford's neck in a thick suctioned pop of flesh.\n\nThe talons sliced again, punching Ford with the knives that tipped his fingers.\n\nThen nothing.\n\nSlash stood.\n\nHe flung his right hand at the waiting Reds who would take the one hope the species had of unification.\n\nDrops of blood and sinew from Ford's body fell like plops of gruesome rain. Some landed on the Were themselves.\n\nThey made no move to wipe away the proof of the Alpha's death.\n\n\"Any takers?\" Slash asked.\n\nTwo more broke from the ring of Reds, a pureblood Red amongst the challengers.\n\nSlash's heart ticked faster.\n\nHis eyes fixed on Adrianna.\n\n# CHAPTER SIXTEEN\n\nJacqueline stayed behind Domiatri.\n\nShe tried to imagine what she would have done before.\n\nNow she used Domi as a shield, whereas in the past, her very evilness would have sufficed.\n\nShe held two perspectives. One from before Faerie, and she would always think of it as such. The second was after.\n\nAfter Tony assaulting her every day, her muted Talents became apparent and she'd been defenseless. When her fey blood while living outside the sithen affected her, everything had been a plan of treachery. One of deception. At the time, it had seemed clever to mate with Tony and force all the other species to give them a reprieve through her matrimonial alliance with him.\n\nNow they were mated.\n\nAnd Jacqueline's self-loathing was acute but for the small glimmer of hope that her life might mean more than being an outcast, forever known as attempted murderer of Julia Caldwell, the Rare One.\n\nThe old Jacqueline, her talents those of a Deflector, a telekinetic, and a Tracker, would have slaughtered everyone in her path.\n\nShe was no longer that woman.\n\nShe lifted her chin and moved out from behind the protection of Domi's emerald body. He put an arm around her waist and snagged her against him. \"Do not even think it, Singer.\"\n\nA sob caught in her throat. She had finally been brave enough in her useless life to try to help another, only to find that Domi's protection would not allow it.\n\nIt crushed her newfound soft interior.\n\nThen Domi did something he had never done in all their couplings to get her with child.\n\nAs the Reds approached, circling them like sharks, he pressed a light kiss against her forehead.\n\nThe heat from his mouth upon her skin, the seduction of the breeze that blew between the supernaturals was tenderness on fire.\n\nJacqueline reveled in it.\n\nThen he released her. \"Go,\" he whispered into her ear.\n\nTheir gazes locked.\n\nHis hands hovered at the top of her head, her eyes on the silver of his.\n\nDomi's palms flowed over her, never touching. They paused at her belly then flowed to her feet. Domi grasped her ankles, his hands brands of fire. She touched hair she knew was navy but looked like oil running down his shoulders underneath the veil of night.\n\nHe leaned into her hand briefly. \"They will not find you. Use your talent to Track. Locate the Blooded Queen.\" He kissed her palm and stood, towering over her.\n\nHe'd cast a spell over her, a cover of glamor. She could feel it as it rode over her skin. When she shifted, a shimmer followed her.\n\nJacqueline took a deep breath, coming between Slash and the two new challengers for position of pack master.\n\nThey didn't look at what they could not see.\n\nJacqueline headed toward the girl she would have murdered.\n\nIt felt like a lifetime ago.\n\n*\n\nJulia gazed around. It was d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. Different woods, same problem. This time she wouldn't be drinking any water out of creeks. She shivered from the possibilities.\n\nLeaving Jason had been a bad move.\n\nShe heard a rustling and turned.\n\nThe Red Were stood before her.\n\nPuffs of smoke from his nostrils measured his breaths. They flared as the weather cooled, showing his position.\n\nHe looked all recovered from the foot-to-the-testies maneuver she'd managed.\n\nJulia tensed, ready for a flight that would prove unsuccessful. There was no outrunning a werewolf.\n\nThe pack master of the Reds would be even more powerful.\n\n\"Wait,\" Harriet growled, talons faintly glowing as he raised his palm in supplication.\n\nJulia didn't like being the queen of anything else. She blew it off, focusing instead on the potential for violence that emanated from him like a fragrance. Always high amongst the Weres, she figured it was even more so with a Red.\n\n\"I don't know, but as off-balance as my Talents have been coming, I wouldn't risk it if I were you. And\"\u2014Julia cocked her head to the side\u2014\"you could kill me with another one of those well-placed hits.\"\n\nHarriet bled back to his human form, and Julia's lungs deflated from the breath she'd been holding. It felt better to see a six feet tall guy in front of her, even naked, than the half-wolfen, seven feet of contained violence staring out of the gloom just a moment before.\n\nShe kept her distance anyway.\n\n\"I'm Tom Harriet.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"Then you understand that I'm not actually here to harm you. I work for the FBI.\"\n\nJulia snorted in the dark. His gaze latched onto her. He didn't fool her; he could count the hairs on her head. From his vaguely reflective gaze, she understood the wolf ran just beneath the man. She briefly touched on the memory of Slash and his big pureblood Red reveal. She'd not seen it but had heard. Tom Harriet was a Red.\n\nHe cocked one of his eyebrows.\n\n\"It's just\"\u2014she folded her arms\u2014\"what does that matter? Obviously, the feds aren't aware you're a supernatural.\"\n\n\"Some are not,\" he conceded.\n\nJulia shifted uneasily. How deep did the world inside the world go?\n\n\"Whatever organization that humans are in control of, we have infiltrated.\"\n\nJulia shrugged. \"You being a fed holds no weight. I've had authority figures of every flavor turn out to be not what they really were. You're no exception.\"\n\n\"It doesn't matter.\"\n\nWhen had he come closer? Julia stepped back.\n\n\"You were never meant to leave Alaska. Lily was meant to keep you under her care until you became, then you were to assimilate into the Alaska den.\"\n\n\"I love that everyone had my life planned from the beginning. I was the only one not privy to the agenda.\"\n\n\"It's the way it is. Your parents made a choice.\"\n\nJulia's heartbeat raced.\n\n\"So it's true? I do have a sister....\"\n\nHarriet nodded.\n\n\"Where is she?\" She relaxed her hands out of fists so tight they'd left crescent-shaped indents on her palms.\n\nTom's smile was immediate and brilliant. Julia kept her gaze on his face, never straying. He held up his index finger and wagged it back and forth. \"The Sidhe warrior was clever to use the cloning spell to fool the Singers. But I will say nothing of her whereabouts unless you come with me.\"\n\nThat awful moment in Julia's life was worse in some ways than any before it. To realize her true family still lived in this plane of existence.\n\nShe'd been an orphan so long that she had long buried the hope of any family.\n\nThe Red Were was dangling the proverbial carrot.\n\nShe hated him for it.\n\nAnd at the same time, Julia passionately hoped it wasn't a lie.\n\nShe didn't have time to scream. He wrapped his hand around her throat, closing her windpipe. He'd been that fast.\n\nShe struggled.\n\n\"Shh,\" Tom whispered beside her ear. \"Someone else is here.\"\n\nJulia's eyes bulged. They moved in a panic to whoever had appeared.\n\nFriend or foe? she wondered. And on the heels of that, Jason's name whispered through her mind like a reverent prayer.\n\nHer gaze latched on to the small female figure that glided outside the border of trees.\n\nJacqueline.\n\nDefinitely foe.\n\n*\n\nJulia gave a squeak, and Tom dropped her.\n\nShe fell, hands at her throat instead of breaking her fall. The shock of the rough landing thrummed up her spine like an electric current. Julia sucked lungfuls of precious oxygen as Harriet gave her his naked ass.\n\nSlow learner.\n\nTestie tap time. Or double tap.\n\nJulia staggered to a standing position. She kicked the Were in his butt with her bare foot. Her toes might have curved a little as her foot came back.\n\nHe howled, reaching between his legs, but didn't move far.\n\nIt was the distraction she meant it to be.\n\nHe whipped around, arms spread, talons sliding out and conquering the flesh of his fingertips in a brutal shift.\n\nJulia threw up her hands to defend her face, and the splatter of his humanity rained down on her.\n\nShe dropped her arms, and a large wolf stood before her.\n\nTrouble stared back in the form of a red fur coat and green eyes.\n\nJulia kept the Were in sight while also trying to find Jacqueline.\n\nNot far enough.\n\n\"Julia\u2014wait!\" Jacqueline said and the wolf turned, it's swimming green gaze swinging between the two women.\n\n\"No,\" Julia said. \"I don't want to hurt you. But I will, because you don't do mercy. And this guy\"\u2014Julia pointed at the now-changed Harriet\u2014\"this guy, he's certainly not my buddy.\"\n\n\"I know it will be hard to convince you of my sincerity.\" Jacqueline turned her palms outward in a defenseless posture, wary eyes on the Were.\n\n\"Impossible,\" Julia answered.\n\nJacqueline dropped her hands. \"I am sorry... I tried to murder you.\"\n\nJulia laughed aloud. Is she serious?\n\n\"I was not well when I... attempted that.\"\n\n\"Is this where you claim temporary insanity?\" Julia made no move to temper her sarcasm.\n\nJacqueline shook her head.\n\nJulia's brows cinched. This was beyond weird.\n\n\"This is where I escort you back to the group. Domiatri wished for me to Track you. It was twofold. I would be safe, and you would be found and returned.\"\n\nJulia opened her mouth to tell her to piss off when Harriet pounced on Jacqueline.\n\nJulia should have let her die. She was a proven murderess.\n\nBut Julia's instincts said something was off.\n\nFor one, Jacqueline wasn't that good an actress.\n\nWhat if she isn't acting?\n\nJulia steeled herself, racing toward the werewolf and her killer.\n\n# CHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n\nSlash faced the half-blood Red. He couldn't help his feelings of vulnerability with the two facing him.\n\nJust a natural part of dominance struggle.\n\nSlash had encountered Reds before, of course. During turf wars but mainly as rogues.\n\nNot now.\n\nThat was as organized a plan as he'd ever seen. They had banded together and made themselves a force to be reckoned with.\n\nIt was up to Slash to free them of their current Alpha's position of pack master.\n\nAnd put himself in it.\n\nThe Were that went by the name of Tom Harriet was missing. Slash was primed to use the volatile circumstance to his advantage.\n\nThey circled one another. The half-breed Were taunted Slash in an attempt to distract him.\n\n\"I'm going to take that Alpha bitch when I'm through with you.\"\n\nSlash duly noted he wasn't dealing with a major intellect. \"That worked so well for Ford.\"\n\nThe half-breed's eyes rounded when Slash attacked. He uttered the last word while Slash was already moving.\n\nSlash did something different than he'd done against Ford. The pure-blood was watching them.\n\nMemorizing his movements for when they fought.\n\nThe Were bled as he moved. Colored, sliding flesh blurred like a smeared watercolor painting. Both Were shifted from human to half-wolfen forms, their fists readying.\n\nIn Slash's case, he drove his left fist, knuckles pointed where he wanted them, into the opposing Were's solar plexus. It robbed him of breath as Slash did the same with his other hand to the male's neck.\n\nImmobilizing him, it assured that his breath would not return. Slash forgot about Cynthia and Adrianna. He ignored Truman and Jason watching what he was about to do.\n\nWhile the Were's eyes stood like poached eggs in his purple face, Slash lashed a foot into the male's chest, grasping his enemy's left arm.\n\nHe pressed with his foot and twisted the gripped arm. With a sickening pop, Slash tore it from the socket.\n\nHe used the ball joint like a bony hammer, beating his adversary as he fell.\n\nThe skull cracked first.\n\nBlood spray, shards of bone, and gray chunks of brain matter flew in a spatter pattern ahead of where his body began to fall.\n\nBreathing came too late as death met the second Were he'd killed in the space of hours.\n\nSlash threw the arm with which he'd just bludgeoned the Were and turned to face the new threat.\n\nThe Reds who stood behind him backed away, casting wary glances at Slash.\n\nHis small group was quiet behind him.\n\n\"You are a pure-blood,\" the Alpha stated as fact.\n\nNo use denying it. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"It has been years since I've seen that kind of fighting.\"\n\nSlash smiled, and the Alpha cocked his head.\n\n\"Let me get you up to speed then.\"\n\nSlash attacked.\n\n*\n\nJulia landed on Tom Harriet's back. Her one-hundred-fifteen pounds wasn't going to do much, but she gave it her all.\n\nHe grunted, tossing her off.\n\nShe grabbed what clothing remained on his body. A stubborn button-down shirt still held by one torn sleeve.\n\nJulia gripped it like a rope, as though her life depended on it.\n\nThen they were both airborne.\n\nJulia's arms spun out at her side, trying to break yet another fall.\n\nMiraculously, she didn't land but floated.\n\nJulia's eyes opened, and she beheld Jacqueline. She stretched her arms out at shoulder height.\n\nGradually, she lowered Julia.\n\nThey stared at each other. \"What in the hell is going on?\"\n\nJacqueline smiled at Julia's question. \"Let's chat when we gain some distance from the Were.\"\n\nJulia's gaze found him, an unconscious lump of odd, broken body parts.\n\n\"He'll mend,\" Jacqueline said.\n\nJulia was aware.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Jacqueline said quietly.\n\nJulia gave up the mental struggle and conveyed her true thoughts. \"I don't trust you.\"\n\nJacqueline glanced down. \"I know,\" she spoke to the ground.\n\n\"Before we run off together\u2014by the way, worst idea ever,\" Julia paused, \"what's happened? I mean, you've had it out for me, tried to murder me... now I'm okay?\"\n\nJulia watched the older woman's face.\n\n\"I have enough fey blood that I've been sickened with never being in Faerie. These past weeks I was in the prison, I began to...\" She flung her palms out then gripped them and wrung them.\n\nJulia was beginning to feel sorry for her.\n\n\"Become self-aware. The alliance with Anthony Laurent seemed foolhardy. My past methods I viewed as horrible, motivated by the near-insanity of whatever was happening to me. I felt as though I'd been drowning without knowing. Finally I saw a way to move to the surface.\"\n\nJulia stared at her.\n\nJacqueline leaned closer and Julia fought to remain where she was.\n\n\"I no longer take in water\u2014but breathe.\"\n\nJulia let out a shaky exhale. \"Okay.\" She looked at Harriet again. Still snoozing.\n\n\"Is he gonna be...?\"\n\nJacqueline nodded. \"I do have experience with my talents. I have not killed him.\"\n\nJulia chuckled. \"Why?\"\n\nJacqueline's eyes searched her own. \"I could not bear it.\"\n\nJulia narrowed her eyes. How real is this change of heart? \"And Tony? Could you kill him?\"\n\nJacqueline remained silent for a heartbeat. A small tremor washed over her. \"For him, I could be persuaded to make an exception.\" She put her hand over her still-flat belly protectively.\n\nStill a little bit of Jacqueline under that new veneer. But she also had someone else to think about. Scott and Delilah's half-sibling. A child born of the fey, also Singer and Were. It was probably a new precedent, even for the supernaturals.\n\n\"I am with child,\" Jacqueline murmured.\n\nJulia put her hand to her mouth. \"Who?\" Oh my God. \"Tony?\" She searched Jacqueline's face.\n\nShe shook her head. \"No. Domiatri,\" she answered softly.\n\nHoly crow.\n\nThey didn't really have time to explore her revelation.\n\nJulia made up her mind. Their conversation hadn't taken long, and there was obviously too much at stake. \"Let's go.\"\n\nJacqueline nodded then looked at Julia's feet. \"That will be a problem.\"\n\n\"Don't really have an option. My choices were limited while we were running from the world.\"\n\nJacqueline chanced a glance at Harriet. He flicked a finger.\n\n\"Let us go,\" she said. \"My telekinetic talent is excellent, but he is also a Red Were and pack master to a renegade den from Alaska.\"\n\nGood point.\n\nThere probably had never been two people so at odds with each other, now forced to compromise to survive.\n\nJulia didn't have time to worry about it. Jacqueline was pregnant, Harriet was dangerous, and her husband could find her if she were a needle in a haystack.\n\nThey ran.\n\n# CHAPTER EIGHTEEN\n\nThe newly revealed pureblood Red Were attacked the Alaskan den's dominant Alpha, but Tharell kept one eye on the enemy.\n\nTen Reds in that pack held court behind the two who soaked the earth with each other's blood. He gave Domi a significant look. Be watchful, it said.\n\nDomi nodded back.\n\nTharell moved forward, capturing Lucius' and Scott's eyes. The female Feeler, Angela, noticed his staring and shook her head.\n\n\"He's not one of them.\"\n\nTharell knew exactly who had taken Julia. He had gone off to lick his wounds and heal.\n\nHe would be back. In the meantime, Slash asserted his dominance in a bid to take over the pack while its master was not there, a savvy move by Were standards. Tharell had judged the scarred one as everyone had, broken because of his obvious wounds. He now surmised that Slash felt he had nothing to lose. That type of supernatural was dangerous, for they were willing to risk much to get what they needed.\n\nSlash pinned the Were beneath him. His own blood dripped down in a steady stream onto the other Were's face.\n\n\"Don't kill me,\" the Were said, his arms straining to keep Slash's hands from tightening around his throat even further.\n\n\"This is like a tap out moment,\" Cyn said from the sidelines, and Tharell frowned at the commentary.\n\nSlash squeezed his fingers.\n\n\"...Second...\" the other Were wheezed.\n\nTharell saw the minute hesitation in Slash's throttle.\n\n\"Think he wants to live,\" Truman commented in a droll voice.\n\nSlash lifted the pressure slightly. The Were coughed, drawing breath, sucking in blood along with oxygen. \"I will be your second...\" A coughing fit ensued, and Slash sat back on his haunches, hands at the ready.\n\n\"We'd be unstoppable, you and I\u2014both purebloods. There aren't enough of us for you to kill me.\"\n\n\"I don't know about that,\" Adi said in a voice as dry as the Sahara desert.\n\nSlash didn't look away. He ignored everyone's comments, seeming to weigh the Were's words.\n\n\"I don't need anyone,\" Slash said, and Adi snorted in the background. \"Hey!\"\n\nSlash quirked his lips. \"Almost no one,\" he amended. Slash stood. The palm he offered to the Were beneath him was human again.\n\nTharell breathed easier when he took it.\n\nThe supernatural tide had turned. Eleven Red Were under their command was a sight better than eleven after their true death.\n\n\"I am Ezekiel,\" the defeated Were said.\n\n\"I am Slash.\"\n\nThe two Reds shook hands, blood their only clothing.\n\nThe ten Reds who accompanied Ezekiel removed clothes from a duffel, and Slash used what was given to him.\n\nTharell thought the Alpha blushed, once nearly covered, when the young female Were said softly, \"Oh... I was kinda liking the view.\"\n\nThe scar on his face deepened to a red lightning strike with his embarrassment, though he didn't respond to her comment.\n\nAdi smiled as though satisfied with a battle won.\n\nTharell looked around. He thought battles were only preludes.\n\nAnd war was coming.\n\n*\n\nSlash backed away from Ezekiel, locating Adrianna. Satisfied she was as safe as possible given the circumstances, he looked at the faces of those who stood waiting.\n\nJason came forward, frantic. \"Julia's gone\u2014Jacqueline's gone.\"\n\nScott scraped a hand through his hair. \"Damn, that is so bad.\"\n\n\"Perhaps not,\" Domiatri said, and Slash glanced his way.\n\nHe went on, \"I sent Jacqueline to track the Blooded Queen. No harm will come to her from Jacqueline's hand.\"\n\nSlash heard Cyn's laugh of sheer disbelief in the background.\n\nScott was in his face instantly. \"How do you know? Do you know what dear old Mom is capable of?\"\n\nDomi ignored the enraged Combatant and answered a question that hadn't been asked. \"I know that she laments her past and wants only to stop the persecution.\"\n\nScott made a rude noise in the back of his throat and paced away, only to pivot back a moment later. \"You can buy into whatever she's selling. But Lucius and I will be getting Julia back.\"\n\n\"Me too,\" Jason said.\n\n\"I don't believe there is any argument in the reacquisition of Julia Caldwell,\" Tharell said thoughtfully.\n\n\"Then what the eff are we waiting for?\" Jason bellowed.\n\n\"Good question,\" Cyn said.\n\nSlash read Tharell easily. \"There's the small matter of Tom Harriet.\"\n\n\"He isn't a small matter.\" Ezekiel put his hands on his hips. \"He will not go quietly. He will not submit to you or anyone.\"\n\nSlash shrugged and restated the obvious. \"That doesn't matter.\"\n\nHe swept his palm at the two Combatants, two mixed-blood Reds, albeit younglings by Were standards. Then there were the Sidhe warriors, Tharell and Domi.\n\nNot to mention he'd single-handedly made sure of his dominance over the pack that now stood within speaking distance. He was bone tired, and that didn't help.\n\nHowever, Slash didn't think they had much to worry about from Harriet for the moment.\n\n\"It will matter. He is somewhere other than here. If he is not here, he is pursuing the same thing you are\u2014and closer to his quarry.\"\n\nHis people shifted uneasily behind him. Only the fey kept still.\n\n\"He won't hurt the Rare One,\" Slash stated. None of the supernaturals would compromise what Julia Caldwell represented through maiming or death. It defeated the entire reason for claiming her.\n\nYet... \"What aren't you telling us?\"\n\nKarl Truman stood beside Slash. He wasted an eye flick on the Were then turned his attention to Ezekiel.\n\nTruman interjected. \"It's the Feebie angle, right?\"\n\nEzekiel looked at the new Red. Finally, he nodded. \"If allowed, Tom Harriet will fashion a manhunt the likes of what you've never seen, spreading lies to close the net of capture around Region One, expose the fey... whoever needs to be outed to make this agenda come to fruition.\" He raised his fist and coughed thickly into it.\n\n\"Follow through kind of guy?\" Truman asked.\n\nHe dropped his hand to his side. \"So much. More than any of us could say. We have the scars to prove it.\"\n\n\"He's a brutal pack master?\" Slash grew uneasy with the picture of Harriet taking shape.\n\nEzekiel's eyes flashed in the gloom. \"Very. But that is not his best thing.\"\n\nSlash didn't like the sound of that, but he had to ask. \"What is?\"\n\n\"Subtlety.\"\n\n\"And Julia's out there with Jacqueline. With a crazy-ass smart Were whose sole goal is to capture her and take her to Alaska.\"\n\n\"He will,\" Ezekiel assured them.\n\n\"They have to get through Jackie-baby.\"\n\nAll eyes turned to Cyn.\n\n\"Here's the thing, guys.\" She rolled her eyes, and they could all see what color they were, despite the low light. \"Jacqueline's supposedly gone through some \u02bbmetamorphosis',\" she began, clearly in a state of disbelief. \"But no matter how much she's supposedly changed, I'm willing to bet there's still a fat streak of bad in her. I think she'll give Harriet a run for his FBI money.\"\n\nCaldwell angrily scrubbed his chin. Finally, he looked up. \"Jules is running on not having very many talents. And those she does have? They're random and of varying levels...\" His worried eyes despaired, and Slash felt for him.\n\n\"Let's go find them,\" Scott decided for the group. Jason threw his arms in the air like no shit.\n\nLucius turned to Angela. \"Do you see a remnant? Can you see anything?\"\n\nA Feeler could see auras, the fingerprints of a supernatural. No two auras were alike.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nHe gripped her shoulders. \"Do you see the Singers?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"No. I\u2014it is easier to see an aura of a host who is actively malicious in their intent.\"\n\nJason walked away.\n\n\"Caldwell!' Scott yelled, jogging to catch up.\n\nJason turned to Angela. \"Can you see Tom Harriet's aura? The remnant?\"\n\n\"Oh yes,\" she responded.\n\nJason stood still for a moment. \"What does it look like?\"\n\nAngela shivered. \"Evil,\" she answered.\n\nSlash strode after Caldwell. That had been answer enough.\n\nIf Harriet wanted a war, then he'd come to the right male. War was Slash's natural state of being.\n\nUnfortunately, something had changed when Adrianna had shown interest in him.\n\nHe hated the weakness. Slash hated the uninvited emotion that knocked at the door for entrance.\n\nHope.\n\n# CHAPTER NINETEEN\n\nJacqueline was fully aware that Julia Caldwell did not trust her. She could not say she would feel any differently had their roles been reversed.\n\nJulia broke into her thoughts. \"Do you know where the hell we're going?\"\n\nJacqueline didn't bother lying. It wouldn't help their tentative and hopefully auspicious alliance.\n\n\"I do,\" she answered, moving quickly through the dense underbrush. She couldn't help feelings of weakness. That she so soon forgot what it was like to be pregnant irritated her. It should have been unforgettable.\n\nShe tried not to view the fetus as a parasite and couldn't quite come to terms with it. The tiny group of cells inside her continued to grow, sucking the very life from her weakened body without mercy.\n\nJacqueline moved stoically forward, matching the shoeless Rare One stride for stride. She answered Julia's earlier question. \"I feel the sithen... it calls to me.\"\n\nShe caught Julia stealing a glance in her direction at the comment and elaborated, \"Domi has told me that all those, supernatural and human alike, who possess a great enough portion of fey blood, will feel the summons of Faerie.\"\n\n\"Domi?\" Julia asked, narrowly avoiding the backlash of a small alder branch as she pushed it aside.\n\n\"The Sidhe warrior,\" Jacqueline replied quietly.\n\n\"The green fey? The father?\"\n\nJacqueline, breathing heavily, nodded to save energy.\n\nThe women moved out of the tree line and came upon a small town.\n\nBlaine, Washington, Jacqueline read. Ahead was a small restaurant named Bob's Diner. The B in the neon sign flickered in a disquieting way.\n\nShe cast a glance at her and Julia's terribly disheveled clothing.\n\nHer stomach made up her mind, heaving in a roaring growl.\n\n\"God! Was that your stomach?\" Julia asked.\n\nJacqueline turned, vertigo capturing her. She looked straight at Julia's face and saw her mouth moving. The tunnel of her vision narrowed, and Jacqueline felt as though she was drowning.\n\nMotes danced before her eyes.\n\nJulia reached out.\n\nDarkness engulfed.\n\n*\n\nJacqueline's stomach gave a low, wail-like growl, and Julia turned to her, asking if that could possibly be real. Whose stomach growls that way?\n\nA pregnant woman's, apparently.\n\nJacqueline was ghost-like in her paleness. Dark eyes stood out like depleted black marbles, their luster gone.\n\nJulia took a step toward the smaller woman, her enemy.\n\nThose dark eyes rolled up in their sockets.\n\n\"Oh no!\" Julia cried. It was the worst time and place for a fainting spell.\n\nJulia caught her, and they fell to the ground together. She broke Jacqueline's fall, rolling her over onto the soft shoulder between road and forest.\n\n\"Wake up,\" Julia said a little frantically. They couldn't be out there in the open. It was entirely too possible, with everyone on their tail, they'd be discovered. And Julia was very aware of her special vulnerability. No shoes, her talents all in a knot.\n\nNo, best to drag Jacqueline back into the borderline of the woods.\n\nJulia put her ear close to Jacqueline's face, not hearing breath.\n\nShe leapt to her knees in a panic, straddling her, and hovered her hand over Jacqueline's mouth.\n\nWarmth caressed her skin. She was alive.\n\nJulia eased out a shallow breath. Her laugh sounded like a sob. It was surreal that she was tasking herself with keeping Jacqueline alive.\n\nHer attempted murderess.\n\nHowever, Julia could see Jacqueline's aura. She didn't know for sure, but she didn't believe those could lie. An iridescent white to pinkish color swirled around her like ribbons of cotton candy in the wind.\n\nShe wasn't the Feeler Angela was but enough to bolster her confidence that they could at least seek refuge together without Jacqueline trying to do her in again.\n\nJacqueline's eyes fluttered open.\n\n\"What has occurred?\"\n\n\"You passed out.\"\n\nJacqueline covered her eyes with the back of her forearm. She began to cry, the tears wetting her sleeve.\n\nOh wow, just\u2014wow.\n\n\"Hey.\" Julia patted Jacqueline's arm awkwardly while covertly scanning the area. \"It's okay... Jacqueline.\" Julia ignored the current weirdness and took Jacqueline's arm away from her face. \"Let's get some food, then when the batteries are recharged, we'll figure out where we are and get someplace safe.\" Julia tried on a smile she didn't feel and forged onward. \"And Jason and the others will be right after us.\"\n\nJacqueline sat up and rubbed her eyes. \"I feel so foolish.\"\n\n\"Don't\u2014\" Julia began, but Jacqueline put a palm up.\n\n\"I wish that I could be somewhat as I was before. But now, I am nothing but a weak, clinging mess.\"\n\nJulia didn't know how to respond to that. \"Well, I think you're a tired, weak, disoriented and very hungry pregnant woman.\"\n\nJulia stood, offering her palm. \"Come on.\"\n\nJacqueline stared at the proffered hand.\n\n\"I think everything will look better after a meal.\"\n\nJacqueline took her hand. The two women made a beeline for the diner.\n\nTwo pairs of eyes followed them.\n\nOne set turned away, as he replied into his mic, \"Subject spotted and identified. Repeat, subject positively identified.\"\n\nHis well-tailored arm dropped into his lap, setting the binoculars to rest on his thigh as he looked at his partner.\n\n\"Gotcha,\" he said to himself.\n\n*\n\n\"Do you have human currency?\" Jacqueline whispered.\n\nJulia nodded. \"I know it's totally weird, but Lily, the imposter\"\u2014Julia paused in a small huff of memory\u2014\"used to insist I always carry a $20.\"\n\nJulia showed Jacqueline the corner of green inside her pocket. \"Can't believe it survived intact.\"\n\nThey walked through the diner's front door, a bell announcing their entrance.\n\nMany local gazes drove down their bodies in curious perusal. Julia felt horribly conspicuous with her bare, and rumpled appearance. In fact... \"Hey, let's use the restroom.\"\n\nJacqueline gave a grateful nod and the two walked into the women's restroom.\n\nJulia couldn't believe how awful she looked. Not a patch of skin without grime. She was afraid she'd make a clean spot if she scrubbed her face.\n\nShe did anyway, beginning with her feet, taking her time.\n\nShe looked up into the mirror, and Jacqueline's amused expression greeted her. It was the first genuine bit of anything close to happiness Julia had seen on her face. \"What?\" Julia asked, cleaning between her last two toes.\n\n\"You're aware that your feet will become dirty yet again.\"\n\nJulia laughed. Awesome point. \"Yeah, I know. But it feels so good to get all the ick out.\"\n\n\" \u02bbThe ick'?\" Jacqueline asked with a slight frown.\n\nJulia laughed again. \"Y'know, all the dirt and crap.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Jacqueline answered quietly.\n\nJulia looked at Jacqueline's face. She took her foot off the bathroom sink's rim and tore off a sheet of brown paper towel. She ran the hot tap and put the sheet underneath the water. She took it from under the hot spray and pushed a dollop of shimmering pink soap from the dispenser onto the towel.\n\n\"Come here,\" Julia instructed.\n\nJacqueline moved with docility, closing her eyes when she reached Julia.\n\nJulia began at her forehead. She ended at her neck. \"There,\" she said, surveying her handiwork.\n\nJacqueline opened her eyes. \"Thank you.\" She looked at the floor, and Julia threw the towel away and opened the bathroom door.\n\nShe didn't turn around, giving Jacqueline a moment to compose herself.\n\n\"Let's go get some grub.\"\n\nJacqueline leaned back with a satisfied burp that she tried to hide with a palm.\n\nIt didn't work very well. Julia laughed, her guts protesting after the inhaling of the meal.\n\nA thought broke through Julia's mental shielding she'd been mastering so well.\n\nThis is divine.\n\nIt's good, isn't it? Julia responded in her mind.\n\nJacqueline's eyes widened. \"That is... very untoward, Julia.\"\n\nOh... rude. \"Sorry,\" she mumbled. \"I just heard... I heard your thoughts.\"\n\n\"Were they bad?\" Jacqueline asked shyly.\n\nJulia shook her head with a small laugh. \"Nah, they were a lot like mine.\"\n\nThe tension leaked out of Jacqueline's shoulders.\n\n*\n\nThe women surveyed the table littered with empty plates and ketchup beginning to gel with air exposure. Metal cups that contained the extra shake they'd been unable to choke down sat between them.\n\nOne lone fry lay on Julia's plate. Jacqueline eyed it with interest.\n\nJulia laughed. \"Go ahead.\"\n\nJacqueline picked it up and tossed it into her mouth, chewing happily. Interesting, when Jacqueline wasn't evil, she was okay to be around.\n\nHelps when she's not trying to kill me.\n\nThe bell sounded behind them, and two men walked in. Julia's face must have changed, because Jacqueline stopped mid-chew. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"Looks like we've been discovered.\" Her voice sounded morose even to her.\n\nJacqueline did not turn around. \"By whom?\"\n\n\"The FBI,\" Julia whispered.\n\nJacqueline put her palms flat on the table, and her nostrils flared. When she opened her eyes, they met Julia's.\n\n\"No.\" Jacqueline shook her head. \"They are Were.\"\n\n\"Posing as agents?\"\n\n\"I do not know. It sounds like that might be the case.\"\n\nGreat.\n\n\"Maybe they're not looking for us.\" Julia dared to hope.\n\nJacqueline sighed. \"They are Reds.\"\n\nHope fled along with her appetite.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY\n\nSlash stayed forward, Adrianna following close behind. He took in the myriad of scents present in the forest, widening the gap with that of the corpses they'd slaughtered to escape.\n\nA familiar scent caught him, grinding his progress to a sharp halt.\n\nHis new pack slowed behind him. Yips, soft howls, and snuffles met his ears. The Were were all in their half forms, the Combatant were keeping up nicely, and the Unseelie Sidhe were taking up room at the back of the group.\n\nThe Singers' Feeler, Angela, slid off a Were's back. She was the only one in the group that struggled to keep up, her talents not of the strength or speed variety. It necessitated a carry.\n\n\"Harriet is somewhere nearby,\" Slash told the group at large.\n\n\"His scent, you mean,\" Truman corrected.\n\nSlash gave the new Were a hard look. \"Perhaps.\"\n\n\"Let's keep moving. It's him against us. He'll lose.\" Jason was already moving toward Julia's and Jacqueline's scents.\n\n\"I smell adrenaline dipped in fear,\" Ezekiel murmured.\n\n\"I see pieces of aura that mix,\" Angela added.\n\n\"Whose?\" Cyn asked.\n\n\"Jacqueline... and the Rare One.\"\n\n\"So they are together,\" Domi said.\n\nThe fey seemed to think it very important they all understood his planning prowess.\n\nSlash remained unconvinced. If they scooped up Julia in their net and Jacqueline hadn't harmed her again, then he might think better of the fey. But for the moment, Slash thought the Faeries to be an unknown for potential violence.\n\n\"I don't like leaving Tom Harriet as a loose string,\" he said, catching his breath from the run.\n\n\"I don't either, but getting Julia is most important. Let's worry about that chump after we've got her safe.\" Jason lifted his eyebrows, and Truman slapped him on the back.\n\n\"You're right, kid, but I'm with Slash on this one. I think it's a mistake not to flush this puppy out and work him over. He stole Julia. He's a pack master\u2014\"\n\n\"Was,\" Adrianna interrupted.\n\n\"True... but he didn't get the memo on that, sweetheart. He still thinks he's top dog.\" Truman turned to Angela, his eyes moving from their natural blue to his wolf's green. \"Do you see his aura? Maybe we lucked out and he bit it.\"\n\nCyn laughed.\n\nSlash frowned. The Were spoke differently and with much slang. A few curse words seemed universally understood, but this male used a metaphor every other phrase. It irritated him.\n\n\"No,\" Angela said shortly. \"He is very much alive.\"\n\nThe group was silent except for the Reds, who circled the area, eager to move, wherever it might be.\n\nSlash put his hands on his hips, absently scratching at the itchy material that barely covered him.\n\nIf the females had not been around, he'd go nude. But they were, and only one Were was in charge of packing clothes. They'd hit a thrift store as soon as they got to the nearest large town and suit up with used clothing.\n\nHe looked at the females and felt a pang of envy. Females could do a quarter-change. It meant all the speed without the looks and burst clothing. The ability was present for the contingency of pregnancy. They could not shift into fully wolves while carrying young. It was protective of the species and their procreation.\n\nOnly the eyes appeared wolfen, glowing and luminous. They shone back at Slash from the two women.\n\n\"We're going to need a supply run. Adrianna,\" Slash called, and she jerked her face up, her normally brown eyes a light gray. Her wolf swam just beneath her surface; Slash could see it. Hell, his wolf could smell it.\n\n\"Don't, Slash,\" Adrianna said.\n\nHe flushed. He'd been thinking too hard about her wolf, and it wanted to come out. \"Sorry. I\u2014\" He looked at her, remembered his ugly mug, and looked away. \"We'll need clothes and food.\"\n\nAdrianna turned to Cyn. \"We've gotta get clothes for the dudes, and groceries.\"\n\nAs if on cue, several stomachs voiced their empty displeasure.\n\nCyn laughed. \"Men.\"\n\n\"Let's go,\" Jason said.\n\nSlash reluctantly turned away from where Tom Harriet's scent was strongest.\n\nHe left, Truman following where Slash's gaze had been, seeing nothing. Though his nose said differently.\n\nIn the darkness, Harriet watched them leave with guarded relief. His task force should be closing in.\n\nHe'd already thought about this contingency.\n\nNo one became a packmaster of his caliber without brains.\n\n*\n\n\"Okay, here's what we'll do,\" Julia began.\n\nJacqueline held up her palm for the second time they'd been traveling together. \"Your talents are sporadic, yes?\"\n\nJulia hated to reveal anything confidential to Jacqueline, but now they were in danger. The greater evil and all that. Julia reluctantly nodded.\n\nJacqueline silently searched her face. \"Do not be embarrassed. We all must become.\"\n\nYeah.\n\n\"This is what I propose. The FBI shall not want witnesses to see they are Were. I assume they're after you. I will sacrifice myself to give you time to\"\u2014Jacqueline waved a small hand around\u2014\"make your fortuitous escape.\" She arched her black eyebrows delicately.\n\n\"No way. They'll hurt you.\"\n\n\"They can try,\" she said quietly. \"Yet, they are Reds. They will be loath to hurt a female of Were blood. And they will scent I am with child. There has never been a documented case of a Were harming a female with child.\"\n\nJulia's gaze went to Jacqueline's. \"What about Tony?\"\n\nShe regretted it the instant the words were released.\n\nThat dark gaze slid away from her and looked out the window, her expression terrible to witness. \"I think it is a fair assessment to say he does not fit within the norms of the typical supernatural male.\"\n\nJulia's eyes flicked to the two behind them.\n\nThey were coming their way.\n\nShe leaned forward. \"Maybe he's something new.\"\n\nJacqueline brows came together.\n\n\"You guys didn't know much about the fey and look, there's an entire mound of them. All I'm saying, is Tony could be something else besides just Were.\"\n\nJacqueline didn't answer.\n\nA hand landed on their dinette, shaking the salt and pepper holders.\n\n\"Ladies,\" the one on the left said. They wore identical suits, their eyes buried beneath dark and slightly reflective lenses. Julia figured if you couldn't see their eyes, then they were soulless.\n\nThey flashed their badges.\n\nOf course, the ID looked authentic. Tom Harriet, the Red Were pack master from Homer, Alaska, was legit, too.\n\nJulia wiggled her cold toes underneath the table.\n\n\"You can make this easy,\" Leftie said smoothly, his strong hands a shadow of muscles rippling like disturbed water over his skin as he slid his badge home.\n\n\"Or you can make it hard.\"\n\nJulia scowled. Her belly was full, and all she wanted was a nap and Jason.\n\nHome.\n\nRegion One was a dysfunctional mess, but she belonged there.\n\nJulia looked at Jacqueline.\n\n\"Hard,\" Jacqueline purred in an obscene word. The jagged edges of the old Jacqueline showed like a slip underneath a dress.\n\nObviously a deliberate choice, her switching gears still surprised Julia.\n\nLeftie's gaze slid to Jacqueline, his nostrils flaring hard. \"We don't want to hurt you.\"\n\n\"That's what you two thugs think, but in the end, robbing someone of their freedom is the very worst thing you can do to your fellow beings.\" Julia stood. She'd left the \"human\" part out.\n\nJacqueline stood as well.\n\nRightie's nostrils swelled as he took in their scent. \"She is pregnant.\"\n\nLeftie sighed. \"That complicates things greatly. You're a mongrel, but you have enough Were to preclude us from doing what we must to assure your compliance.\"\n\nJacqueline opened the pathway of their minds.\n\nJulia's mouth parted in a little O of surprise. Jacqueline had been working to keep her out since their earlier interchange.\n\nI will cause a scene and you run. I am a powerful telekinetic. Trust in me.\n\nTrust?\n\nYou must.\n\nThat was the truth.\n\nOn my signal.\n\nJulia wondered what it would be.\n\nWhen Leftie reached for Jacqueline's small wrist, the air by Julia moved. Jacqueline drove him through the first wall. The drywall sheet buckled, collapsing quickly to allow him to travel into the 1950s cinderblock behind.\n\nHe blew through the huge cement bricks, pots and pans clattering to the floor.\n\nJulia recognized a clear signal when she saw it and took off.\n\nShe heard the sound of flesh being slapped and didn't look back.\n\nTrust in me.\n\nShe felt like a jerk leaving Jacqueline.\n\nJulia could only hope she was as defensible as she claimed.\n\nShe leapt down the stairs and into the arms of Leftie.\n\nHe locked strong arms around her in a bear hug. Julia sneezed from the spray of concrete dust plumes that exploded in her face.\n\nThen a wash of blood as someone tore his arm off.\n\nA sharp bark sounded, cut off with the prize in hand. Jason casually threw the limb behind him.\n\nJulia's relief was so acute she wanted to sob.\n\nInstead, she yelled, \"Save Jacqueline!\"\n\nShe had never uttered stranger words.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE\n\n\"What?\" Jason yelled over the screaming patrons behind them.\n\nThe diner was emptying, screaming eaters running for their cars in a stampede.\n\nSo much for being subtle and preventing humans from getting a load of the supernatural turf wars.\n\n\"Jacqueline! She's in there with one of the Bozo-the-clown Feds!\"\n\n\"I'm not leaving you!\"\n\n\"Jace\u2014she's pregnant...\"\n\nHis eyes widened, then he shook his head. \"Let the jolly green giant get her. He's the one that knocked her up; he can figure it out.\"\n\nAs though summoned, Domiatri came rushing past them in a green streak.\n\nJulia went to go after Domi, but Jason held her back. \"No effing way. Let green boy take care of Ms. Jekyll and Hyde.\"\n\nJulia tore out of his grip. \"I get it, but she tried to save me back there.\"\n\n\"It's about damn time! You're not going. Your preservation instincts are about zero so I'll protect us both.\"\n\nA noise like a million eggshells being ground startled them, and they turned together.\n\nA large tank rolled down the street.\n\n\"What the hell?\"\n\n\"I think it's a firepower thing.\"\n\n\"Run!\" Jason yelled and jerked her after him. She ran full out, bare feet punctured by small rocks.\n\nJulia didn't know tanks could be so loud. The gun rotated on the turret, grinding its shrieking ambition.\n\nJason ran to where the others had gathered.\n\nJulia made out Tharell easily, the only purple man on the street.\n\n\"The witnesses will be gone in any event,\" Tharell said in a droll voice as a boom that rattled Julia's teeth went off.\n\nTruman jerked Cyn and Angela, putting them behind him. \"What the blue hell?\"\n\nJulia scanned the environment for Adi and finally saw her next to Slash.\n\nThey raced toward Julia and Domi, and a limping Jacqueline brought up the rear.\n\nLike agitated ants, men in military uniforms poured out of the top of the tank, their guns aimed at the four who hadn't made it across the road and into the patch of woods.\n\nJulia screamed a warning. Adi had begun to lag. Slash tucked her underneath his arm and ran with her as if she was a clutch purse.\n\nBullets sprayed dirt at their feet as they ran.\n\nBut the real horror was the careful aiming at the diners. As if slapped by a giant hand, the bullets drove into them from behind, flinging them forward like broken dolls. They landed face first in the dirt and gravel.\n\n\"No...\" Julia whispered.\n\nShe didn't realize she was crying until it dripped off her jaw.\n\n\"Those merciless fucks,\" Truman said.\n\nTharell regarded him. \"It is the way the humans deal with that which they do not understand.\"\n\nJulia turned to him in a fury, grabbing the once beautiful warrior's tunic and shook him.\n\nIt was like trying to shake a solid concrete wall. \"Do something!\" she screamed into his face.\n\nTharell gave a grim smile of acknowledgement. \"I will try.\"\n\nThe Sidhe made complicated gestures in midair.\n\nA minute slipped by, and more people fell like cut trees. Julia could taste metal in the air and realized it was their blood.\n\n\"Hurry,\" she said.\n\n\"It must be done properly,\" Tharell answered without looking at her.\n\n\"What, for the love of God?\"\n\n\"The spell,\" he said, and suddenly Julia could feel the magic in the very air. It rushed past them and raised the small hairs on the back of her neck.\n\nJulia gasped when the charged force struck the militia.\n\nInstant chaos ensued. They ran into one another; some shot randomly. The remaining survivors, seeing the confusion, took off. Many remained motionless in a pool of their own blood and bits of their bodies.\n\n\"What's wrong with them?\" Julia asked.\n\nAdi reached them with Slash at her side and Domi half-carrying a beleaguered Jacqueline.\n\n\"Who gives a ripe good shit, let's get outta here!\"\n\nDomi chanced a glance behind him and smirked, giving Tharell a full wattage smile. \"Nice work, Tharell.\"\n\n\"I couldn't have you bleeding out there and ruining your perfect skin...\"\n\n\"I'll heal,\" Domi responded dryly.\n\n\"What are they doing?\" Julia asked as one of the soldiers tripped over his feet into a graceless pile on the ground.\n\nA Red Were strode to the fallen man and kicked him in the teeth. The soldier's head ripped partially off, canted at an awkward lean as he fell from his knees straight back.\n\n\"Okay... let's go.\"\n\nThe stares of approaching Reds met Julia's comment. \"Oh my God!\" she yelled and began to run.\n\nJason yanked her back. \"Shh, Jules, they're okay.\" He stroked her hair as they drew nearer.\n\n\"They're under me now,\" Slash said.\n\n\"How'd that happen?\" Julia tried not to let the caterwauling in the background distract her. Holy smokes, I'm gone for a few hours and the Reds surrender?\n\n\"Fight for dominance,\" Adi replied casually.\n\n\"It was way worse than that. More like fight to the death,\" Cyn said. \"These guys\"\u2014she jerked a thumb in the general direction of everyone but she and Jason\u2014\"make nothing out of all the 'I almost killed ya' moves.\" She rolled her eyes. \"Really? It's more like a sport.\"\n\n\"It is not a sport, female. It is the Were way,\" a Red said and immediately Julia knew he must be important within the hierarchy of the pack. He had a way of speaking with authority.\n\nA low growl split Slash's lips, and a hard glance from the Were who had just spoken shut him up.\n\n\"That is Ezekiel.\"\n\n\"Zeke.\"\n\nSlash leveled the smallest chin dip she'd ever seen at the Were and turned to Cyn. \"We'll explain this on the way.\"\n\n\"Great, 'cause, I'm dying to get out of here before more winners show up to kill defenseless Americans. Not. Cool.\"\n\nJulia cast a glance at Jacqueline. She looked positively haggard. Domi's eyes met hers. His gaze held assurances she didn't think he could really give. Jacqueline seemed to barely be hanging on.\n\nJulia quickly appraised the group. Twelve new Were, all varying degrees of Red-blooded wolves. Tharell, Domi, Jacqueline, Adi, and Cyn followed closely behind, and as she turned away Scott, injured but managing, was there, held up by Lucius and Angela the Feeler at his sides.\n\nThey took their mixed bag of supernaturals and beat feet out of there.\n\n*\n\nSlash kept the pace deliberately hard. Only when Julia stopped them did he pause in his objective to put distance behind them.\n\nHer feet were ribbons of gore. Filthy, bleeding, the soles torn from her travels.\n\n\"Oh my God, Jules,\" Cyn said.\n\nJulia nodded, gritting her teeth.\n\n\"Can you heal her?\"\n\nCyn studied the Rare One's feet.\n\n\"I'll try, but it seems these reoccurring injuries are their own kind of stubborn.\"\n\nScott crossed his arms, his healing abilities as Combatant having restored him perfectly. \"We need to find some place to hole up.\"\n\nCyn laid her hands over Julia's wounded feet, and she gasped from the pain.\n\nThen groaned in pleasure as they began to mend.\n\nCyn shook her head. \"This is the best I can do. We need to find some shelter... and some goddamned shoes.\"\n\nShe sat back on her haunches, flinging her hands up. \"Was it those flimsy Keds?\"\n\nSlash couldn't help the lift of his lips. It appeared to be a well-worn argument between the two. Apparently, some things didn't change.\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nJulia and Cyn looked at her Nikes on her own feet, dirty but intact. \"Spend the money on footwear.\"\n\n\"Coming from the UGG devotee,\" Julia said, rolling her eyes.\n\nAdi piped in, \"Those stand for fugly in my opinion.\"\n\nTharell put up a hand. \"Though I appreciate the efforts at levity, I do like the suggestion of lodging, running water, and extra garments.\" His gaze went to Julia's feet. \"And footwear.\"\n\n\"Where?\" Zeke asked.\n\nSlash searched the geography. Judging by the mountains to the east, they were coming close to Bellingham. \"Twenty more minutes of walking and we'll spit ourselves out in Bellingham.\"\n\n\"Big city?\"\n\nSlash thought about it. \"Big enough. Ample camouflage, numerous eateries. We should be able to get what we need.\"\n\n\"As long as Jules gets some shoes.\" Jason picked her up.\n\n\"Put me down,\" Julia said, indignant.\n\n\"Nope. We're not gonna undo Cyn's work. Don't worry, that little bit of weight you've packed on won't slow me down.\"\n\nJulia sputtered, and the males shared a good-natured laugh.\n\nSome of Slash's tension dissolved. The place of respite couldn't come soon enough.\n\nThere they would have plenty of time to dissect the new threat.\n\nSlash felt he knew.\n\nHe hoped he was wrong.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO\n\n\"It is time,\" Praile told Tony.\n\nHe slid the curved saber across the scarred surface of the table between them.\n\nTony didn't touch the thing. He was as fucked up a supernatural as any he'd ever encountered. Intellectually, he understood that. He'd embraced what he was long ago.\n\nPraile didn't give a shit.\n\nThe dark metal glimmering in the shadowed room he shared with the demonic was a tangible reminder of his mixed blood.\n\nPraile folded his muscular arms against his bare chest. His stubby horns rose from a skull free of hair. Not all demonic males possessed a tail. Praile did, a nod to his breeding amongst Hades' otherworld creatures.\n\nNot of this world but on another plane of existence.\n\nTony reached out, gripping the finely honed wood. It was narrow where it met the arcing swath of metal, flaring to a deep triangle at its base.\n\nCarved runes he couldn't read, but caused a thrum of electricity when his fingertips traced over the etchings, deepening his anxiety by the moment.\n\n\"Why now? After hundreds of years, I need to fulfill my duty?\" Tony wheedled.\n\nCoal black eyebrows like slashes of inky pain dropped over glowing red eyes. A slow smolder lifted off Praile's skin, his agitation manifesting into a broil. He placed two palms on the table that separated them.\n\nTony shifted in his seat, containing his nervousness badly.\n\nPraile said nothing at first, and the silence tore at Tony. He swallowed the brick inside his throat, his anxiety lodged and painfully sliding down to settle uncomfortably in his churning stomach.\n\n\"Because there are few who survived this world with demonic blood. Werewolves, with their shifting abilities, are uniquely suited vessels for what we offer.\"\n\nTony didn't say what he was thinking.\n\n\"Where do you think your evil impulses stem?\" Praile asked, though his question did not require a response. He straightened. \"Do you think your assaults against females, both Were and non, have been accidental?\" His eyes narrowed to slits of fire. \"After all, it is against your primal nature to harm females, yet you have proven an aptitude of great finesse in this regard.\"\n\nTony looked at a point above Praile's shoulder.\n\nThe demonic moved into his direct vision, his eyes like embers, low and burning.\n\n\"No,\" Tony answered in quiet resignation. He should have known the demonics would never release him from his obligation to them.\n\nPraile knotted his hands behind his back, nails black-tipped and shaped like short talons.\n\n\"You will do this thing. Then, when you are done, we will have decimated the one species that stands against our objective.\"\n\nTony raised an eyebrow. \"What about the fey?\"\n\nPraile laughed from his belly, clapping his hands together in glee. It startled Tony so much he almost dropped the saber.\n\n\"We do not concern ourselves with the Unseelie Sidhe. The immortals are Faerie bound and do not pose a threat. The strongest of them is weak without their precious sithen. No.\" Praile shook his head. \"We eradicate the Singers, vampire and force-breed the Were that can produce more of the blood of Hades, and soon our kind will rule this world as well.\"\n\nTony's guts sprouted spots of fire like acidic flowers in bloom. He swallowed his slow terror. \"What about the Reds?\"\n\nPraile's smug happiness disappeared as soot cleaned from a mirror. \"They are only a problem if banded together.\"\n\n\"When we met last, you told me they were the ancient transition between Hades and the supernaturals of this world.\"\n\n\"I know what I have said\u2014every word,\" Praile hissed and Tony flinched. He didn't want to experience the bloodlust of this particular demonic, a torture better executed than any he'd ever survived, ever again. Blood and magic indebted Tony to whatever Praile would have of him.\n\nPraile tapped the blade, and a drop of ebony blood sprung from his injured skin. He sucked it off in a long and noisy pull.\n\nTony neutralized his expression when the fork of Praile's tongue trembled against the oozing blood.\n\nThe demonics were disgusting.\n\nOf course, Tony was as well.\n\nHe liked his brand better.\n\nPraile opened the wound further, running his finger down the entire length of the two-foot-long blade. He rolled his glowing eyes up to meet Tony's. \"Kill every one that you come across; men, women and children.\" His black eyes bored holes into Tony. \"Kill their pets if they have them.\"\n\nTony opened his mouth. The Singers' plethora of talents, diverse and in varying degrees of strength, made them dangerous.\n\nIt was suicide.\n\nHe seemed to sense Tony's question. \"You will be lucky to survive, yet I care not. The metal of this saber is proof against most talents. You were bred for this.\"\n\n\"Who is immune?\"\n\n\"Watch your tone, demon cast off.\" Steam rose from Praile's mouth with his words, though the surrounding air didn't warrant it.\n\nTony stayed silent. Better he say nothing than have his tongue torn out.\n\nPraile grinned, his teeth black chips of banked night, the only color his divided red tongue. It was a grotesque sunset inside his mouth.\n\n\"The Rare One, of course, and any who have blood of the Red.\" Praile made a disgusted sound in the back of his throat.\n\n\"What talents are immune?\" Tony pressed. Praile's eyes sharpened inside the small, murky cottage that held him.\n\n\"You will know when you cannot use magick to assist in the genocide we bring to this contingent of Singers.\" Praile smoothed his hand down the blade, cupping it.\n\nHe jammed his palm on the blade, the curved and sharpest part slicing so deeply into his flesh, the skin on the backside of his hand stretched in the shape of the blade.\n\nPraile's lips parted in ecstasy, and a low groan of pleasure slid out of his mouth, steam escaping. The affect was immediate on his lower region, his disgusting penis stiffening. The smolder of his skin filled the small house that served as prison to the Singers.\n\nBlood like ink washed the blade and ran in creeping rivulets across the table to Tony. Tony jerked to a stand, watching the river of the demonic's blood crawl to tremble at its edge. The drops fell, hitting the ground with a splat. Like acid, the blood smoldered, eating at the wooden floorboards in an etching that grew deeper by the moment.\n\n\"My blood seals the fate of those who come into contact with it. Do this well and live. Fail, and suffer torture, Anthony Daniel Laurent.\"\n\nTony made a wide berth around the spilled blood.\n\nPraile backed away from the blade, a blood trail falling to drive through the floorboards. Tony curved his hand around the wooden hilt. The magic of the ancient runes, mixed with Praile's blood, swept over him.\n\nTony swung his head back, and a hoarse cry of revulsion laced with lust escaped him. No longer his own master, he controlled the blood that was a part of him. Praile had called it to the surface.\n\nVery much like the Singers who would die by that blade's magic.\n\nTony lowered his chin, and he leveled a stare at Praile, who was already shimmering to opaque, his evil deed complete.\n\n\"Why do I have to do your dirty work?\"\n\nPraile's smile held no happiness. \"Understand that we have been forbidden to interfere directly with the humans and supernaturals. Much as our counterparts.\" He said with weighted reluctance.\n\nAngelics. Tony knew they existed only because he was part-demonic.\n\nPraile hated to admit limits. His own especially.\n\nHe became ghost-like, the insane smile, pinned on his face like a mask.\n\nTony went to the door.\n\nOf course it was locked.\n\nHe stepped back and kicked it open. The door flew off the hinges like a tooth succumbing to periodontal disease. It hung off the bent metal, the jamb's gums weakened beyond holding.\n\nThe two Combatant guards turned, startled. The pretty boy Victor would be a pleasure to end.\n\nTony raised the blade.\n\nWhen they both lay dying, blood poisoned from Praile's contamination, he kicked them in the crotch like the dogs they were.\n\nVic-boy wasn't looking too good.\n\nTony was suddenly bolstered, his evil nature sliding into place like a long lost friend.\n\nFound again and embraced.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE\n\nTharell easily found the low-slung rock formation that signaled the entrance to potential shelter. It seemed to wink at him from a knoll surrounded by madrone trees. They grew toward the sky, throwing themselves from between the rocks. Burnt orange twigs sought the clouds like fingers. Gracefully sweeping boughs of western red cedar whispered against the small cleft of shadow that stood as a door to the observant.\n\nIt would be beyond cozy with the size of their group.\n\nHe stopped in front of the four-foot-tall opening.\n\nSlash delivered a hard look that felt like a slap.\n\nTharell answered the unspoken accusation. \"I am aware we need supplies. I cannot obtain those for you. Obviously.\" Tharell swept a palm down his body.\n\nHe held partial court in looks to what the humans called African Americans, though the nickname struck Tharell as humorous.\n\nBlack people. A low chuckle slipped out.\n\nSome fey possessed skin so true a black its blue highlights shone in any light. Tharell would have preferred that. He enjoyed becoming invisible against his surroundings, and his mixed heritage was only good for blending with the sithen walls when called for. However, his eyes were so vibrant a blue he kept them closed until the enemy's breath was upon his skin.\n\nFaerie was beautiful and edified his fey blood. But it was also a place that, by its very design, was full of danger, treachery, and subterfuge.\n\n\"Fine,\" Slash responded after a moment. Slash deserved careful watching. All Were were rash creatures, but this particular male used his head far more that Tharell liked.\n\n\"I will go. You and Domiatri can stay with the females, and the rest will go.\"\n\n\"Ah\u2014no,\" Cyn said, clearly indicating the idea was dumb.\n\nTharell quirked his lips. The other species were entertaining. It eased his loneliness and allowed him not to be under the constant disdainful tolerance inside Faerie. Tharell liked their patent indifference of his lineage more than he ought.\n\nHe breathed deeply of the human's air, finding it fine as he schooled his emotions into that tightly contained steel box within his mind.\n\n\"I'll go\u2014you boys look like... I don't know, George of the Jungle or something.\" Cyn pointed at Jason, Truman, and Slash, who'd all gone through numerous changes. Clothing hung over what modesty required and no more.\n\nShe glanced at him, and her beauty momentarily struck him. Though she was a Singer, and he would never have a chance at offspring, her steely wits and personality, balanced on a seesaw of fragility, created an interesting intersect.\n\n\"And rainbow guys\"\u2014Cyn gave him a pointed look, and he experienced an uncommon emotion.\n\nHe was embarrassed. By a Singer female.\n\nTharell narrowed his eyes on her, his earlier admiration like amnesia.\n\nShe laughed at his expression. \"You guys will be nailed in a hot minute. That leaves all the non-Were.\"\n\n\"You guys are volunteered.\" Her eyes took in the rest of the group. \"Anybody have cash?\"\n\nSilence.\n\nCyn put her hands on her hips. \"Are ya kidding? I'm digesting my spine.\"\n\nTharell dipped his head, hiding his mirth.\n\nCyn blew hair out of her face, fitting her chin into her palm. \"Okay, I need some fuel. I don't want to be Robin Hood or anything, but we'll have to dumpster dive at McDonald's.\"\n\n\"I'll go,\" Julia said.\n\n\"No.\" Jason turned to Cyn, pointing at Julia's feet. \"Size seven-and-a-half.\"\n\nJulia crossed her arms. \"That's romantic.\"\n\n\"No,\" Cyn said in a huff. \"We look like a dog's butt.\"\n\n\"Amen,\" Adi agreed.\n\nTharell frowned. Canine buttocks?\n\n\"But he remembers my shoe size.\" Julia smiled.\n\n\"Anyway,\" Cyn said, rolling her eyes, \"I'll take the Combatant dudes and Angela, we'll bust into town, snag threads, and get ten million burgers.\"\n\n\"I don't know if that's feasible,\" Lucius said with a frown.\n\n\"Me either, but I'm motivated. Let's book.\"\n\n*\n\nCynthia looked around. Dumb effing place. None of the stores screamed Used Clothes. She'd die twice for a Ross. Huh.\n\nThe Golden Arches beckoned. \"Let's go,\" she said to the Combatant. She didn't know any of them, but the one chick was a mouse. Cynthia never heard what words she said, just squeak, squeak, squeak.\n\n\"'Kay.\" Cynthia put her hands on her hips. \"Do you guys get off the rez that much?\"\n\nAll three pairs of eyes stared blankly back at her.\n\n\"Wow.\" Cynthia rolled her lip inside her mouth, teeth lightly mauling. \"You're going to stand out like a turd in a swimming pool. It'll be bad.\"\n\nScott said, \"We don't have money, and we're all starving.\"\n\n\"Noted, pal.\" Cynthia leaned forward. \"I'll go order, and you two make a commotion.\" Cynthia nodded, but Lucius shook his head. She frowned.\n\n\"We're supposed to stay off the radar, not present ourselves on a platter as a spectacle for humans to witness and remember.\" Lucius was trying to make her see reason. She got that.\n\nWasn't gonna happen.\n\n\"Listen up,\" Cynthia replied to Scott. \"You need to figure something out while I pretend to order.\" She dropped her fingers from imaginary quotes.\n\nScott paced away from the group, and Cynthia watched him jog around the building.\n\n\"I think I want a shake,\" Angela said randomly.\n\nCynthia barked out a laugh. \"It'll melt.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" she replied in a small voice. \"I've never been outside of Region One.\"\n\nCynthia tried to close her mouth. She couldn't. Never been to McDonald's. It was a tragedy of epic proportions.\n\nAngela had big puppy dog eyes.\n\nScott ran up, saving the moment.\n\n\"We can go through the back. You order, and Lucius and I will break the door down...\"\n\n\"And steal cheeseburgers from McDonald's.\"\n\nScott grinned. \"It is somehow funny.\"\n\nCynthia agreed but was too hungry to laugh. The guys went around back while she and Angela walked to the counter.\n\nA young woman with blue hair and scarlet lips approached the front, the D was unraveling in her scripted name tag. \"May I help you?\"\n\nCynthia tried not to stare at the horrible Rainbow Brite look. There'd been no full-length mirror for this chick. She flicked her eyes to Angela, who was similarly blown away. \"I'd like thirty double cheeseburgers and the same amount of water bottles.\"\n\nFuck fries.\n\nThe smell of grease alone formed a river of saliva. She swallowed hard.\n\nThe girl's eyes stayed glazed. \"What?\"\n\nCynthia leaned forward and repeated the order. She was so proud of herself for not strangling her on the spot.\n\n\"You're going to have to wait.\"\n\n\"I thought this was fast food?\" Angela asked, genuinely puzzled.\n\nOh boy. \"It is, but... maybe it's not so fast when you ask for that much.\"\n\nDee, of the nauseating neon-blue hair, said, \"Do you want fries?\"\n\nCynthia shook her head and cast her gaze to the floor before she cracked up. They were dirty, hungry, and the sudden urge to laugh might turn hysterical if she allowed it.\n\nThe door burst behind Dee at the same time Angela gripped her arm in a brutal hold.\n\n\"Ow!\" Cynthia exclaimed, trying to tear her arm out of Angela's vise grip.\n\nThen Cynthia followed her eyes.\n\nAnd met those of Tom Harriet.\n\n\"Oh shit.\"\n\nTom Harriet rushed forward, a streak of flesh-colored paint in the air, with the Weres' breathless speed.\n\n\"\u02bbOh shit' is right,\" he replied before gripping her neck, his manic eyes set on the Combatant behind her. Cynthia felt the breath trapped in her lungs. Her feet left the ground to dangle beneath her.\n\nShe used the distraction of the dudes behind her and brought her knee into his crotch. She aimed for it to go through his body to his head.\n\nHarriet howled, dumping Cynthia.\n\nScott and Lucius leapt over the counter.\n\nBlue hair shrieked and ran as Cynthia's head rapped against the floor.\n\nI will not faint, I will not faint, Cynthia chanted.\n\nThen she did.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR\n\nCynthia rolled over and puked on the McDonald's floor. 1980s terracotta titles with uninspired black grout became obscured with vomit more bile than anything.\n\nAngela put her hand on Cynthia's shoulder, and she shuddered.\n\n\"How long was I out?\" Cynthia asked.\n\nAngela hauled her to her feet, and she swayed. Angela's grip tightened.\n\n\"Seconds.\"\n\nCynthia focused her blurry vision on her. Not so mousey after all.\n\nShe looked behind her and saw Harriet struggling to rise. Her gaze skipped around the building.\n\nIt was mayhem in motion. Customers were screaming and piling up at the door.\n\nCynthia looked at the cheeseburgers lined up, to-go orders in various stages of assembly. Eff it, she was hungry. The Combatant dudes could figure out Harriet, and she'd suck up the grub. Cynthia hiked her ass on the top of the counter, sliding across it, and bounced lightly on her feet.\n\nShe grabbed the first thing she saw and stuffed a handful of fries in her mouth. Angela followed right after.\n\nThey decimated the large fry.\n\nThen Cynthia took a huge, two-handled McDonald's bag and stuffed all the to-go boxes inside. She swept in a combo of quarter pounders with cheese and even a yogurt parfait.\n\nThe whole kit and caboodle plopped into the bag.\n\nSomeone seized her hair from behind. It felt like the roots were on fire.\n\nShe dropped the bag of food, and that pissed her off on principle.\n\nCynthia cracked her elbow into the head of whoever grabbed her.\n\nA satisfying but gross blood spray hit her neck. Splatter like drizzling rain slid down her right arm.\n\nGawd, she needed a hose-down. She was going to qualify for hazmat apparel soon.\n\nCynthia looked into Angela's wide eyes. \"Reds,\" she whispered.\n\nGreat.\n\nSome dudes whose energy was not human entered the restaurant. Cynthia knew the difference now that she was Were. That tingling live wire felt like insects feasting on her skin.\n\n\"Shit,\" she said.\n\nCynthia scooped up the bag and ran out the back door, Angela in tow.\n\n\"Grab the food!\" Cynthia shrieked.\n\nAngela jerked up the second huge bag of food, the yelling customers in the drive through cursing after them in an impressive blue streak.\n\nNo refunds, Cynthia thought.\n\nThey ran, leaving Lucius and Scott behind. It was shitty.\n\nIt was also their only choice.\n\n*\n\nSometimes great shit happened when you least expected it. Like your enemies begging for their lives.\n\nAnd killing them for sport.\n\nThe movies always portrayed murder as a slick, clean occurrence. The killer moved through people like a change of underwear when, in reality, it was a messy business.\n\nOnly Tony's eyes were free of blood. He was careful to keep them closed on an arterial swipe.\n\nThe blade had swung true, magically sharpening itself as it deftly cut down every Singer in its path.\n\nMarcus, father of the miserable band of siblings, had been the most difficult to cut down.\n\nHis talents had been formidable. But ancient metal of the saber had been proof against even that Singer's powerful royal blood.\n\nHe scowled when he thought of the few who'd escaped.\n\nTony was vaguely insulted that his daughter had thought he'd kill her. His vanity was entirely too rich a tapestry to allow for that. After all, through the union with the bitch, Lacey, Reagan was still part of him.\n\nA demonic, though she remained unaware. It would be that way until Praile or one of the others in his league decided her time had come to work for the legion that populated Hades.\n\nTony sighed, his exhaustion so acute he had to force himself to stand upright. The slaughter of so many had numbed his dominant arm.\n\nHe'd lost count after one hundred.\n\nHis elbow felt like a loose hinge as it hung from his side, and the saber was an anchor. Tony dared not let it go.\n\nInstead, he moved through the old Victorian mansion in which Region One had been headquartered. He reached the kitchen, stepping over a couple of bodies.\n\nHe opened the fridge, and it hit something solid.\n\nMarcus' dead son... What was his name? Tony shrugged. Who gives a ripe fuck? He rolled the body away from the door and peered inside.\n\nSeveral items interested him as he scanned the interior. He locked on the meat and mashed potato leftovers and, with fingertips embedded with dried blood, he pulled out what he needed.\n\nTony carefully set the food dish on the counter and tore off the plastic lid. Taking a solid whiff and finding it unspoiled, he set the long blade on the granite counter top and dug in.\n\nWhen he licked his fingers clean, the flavor of murdered Singers was like a wonderful underlying aftertaste.\n\nA condiment.\n\nTony chortled to himself, an empty sound in the stillness of a house once full of life.\n\n*\n\nJulia clutched her belly. The pain was ferocious, like a storm of glass inside her guts, slicing her to bits.\n\n\"What\u2014Jules? Talk to me!\" Jason knelt beside her.\n\n\"It's\u2014something's wrong back home.\"\n\nJason's face would have been comedic if she wasn't so certain something terrible had happened.\n\n\"What? Home like... Homer?\"\n\nShe shook her head. \"No. Home as in, Region One.\"\n\n\"Okay...\"\n\nJason obviously didn't consider the Singers' Pacific Northwest Region home yet.\n\nJulia did. As queen, apparently her blood knew where it belonged. And right now it was living up to its namesake.\n\nIt was singing. And it was a melody of despair.\n\n*\n\n\"We need to go,\" Julia argued with Slash.\n\nHe shook his head. \"We need food, drink. Us leaving before the other Singers have returned is a recipe for sure disaster.\"\n\n\"Gah!\" Julia threw her hands up. She didn't want to leave before Cyn, Scott, and the others returned with the food.\n\nShe looked down at her feet. Her heart told her something terrible was happening.\n\nOr had already occurred.\n\nJust then, Cyn ran into the small clearing in the middle of the stand of trees.\n\nShe held out the food, and Slash took it. She bent over, sucking in big lungfuls of breath. \"I\u2014\" She coughed. \"Here's the food, but we left Lucius and Scott behind.\"\n\nJulia stepped forward. \"Why?\" Her heart raced, its beating only slightly less audible than her voice.\n\n\"Reds,\" Angela replied, gasping.\n\n\"Damn,\" Slash said in a voice thin with anger. \"I was afraid of that.\"\n\nJulia gave him a sharp look. \"Afraid of what?\"\n\n\"The Reds finding us before we could get out of here.\"\n\nSlash had revealed he was a pureblood, and her husband was also of mixed Red ancestry. Julia hesitated then asked slowly, \"What does this mean for us?\"\n\nSlash held up a finger then handed her a cold cheeseburger and grabbed one for himself. He uncapped a water, taking a long pull. It leveled half the water gone. He tore off a third of the burger and chewed for about three seconds then swallowed the entire chunk.\n\nThough tasting horrible cold, it was the best food she'd eaten in some time. It was even more important to the Weres. When in starvation mode, a Were did not consider sensory pleasures of heat and taste. Sustaining life was the highest priority.\n\n\"What it means is the Reds will take the Combatants and torture them until they tell them where you might be.\"\n\nJulia stalled out, her food a lump in her stomach. \"I... oh, no.\"\n\nSlash shrugged. \"It's what we sign up for during war.\"\n\n\"But this is not war, not really.\"\n\nSlash shook his head like close enough.\n\nJason set his hand, warm and vital, on the small of her back\u2014a comfort.\n\n\"He's right, Jules. It is what it is. That's why you couldn't be sacrificed by going with them.\"\n\n\"You are the queen. We needed supplies, so the beings who were the least strange-looking secured what the entire group needed.\"\n\n\"So now I have to assume that Scott and Lucius are being tortured.\" Julia felt sick and set the half cheeseburger down.\n\n\"It's not like I don't care,\" Cyn said between bites. \"It's that the responsibility for our protection was on them. I was in charge of getting the food.\"\n\nJulia stared down at her dirty feet. They became blurry.\n\nEverything did when she was crying.\n\n\"Come on, babe\u2014maybe they're just late.\"\n\nJulia swiped angrily at her tears and shook her head. \"Nope. That's not the way our luck runs. Right now, we need to eat and get back to Region One.\"\n\nTharell, Jacqueline, and Domiatri looked to her, as did the rest of the Weres.\n\n\"Can we leave a trail for Scott and Lucius if they don't find us right away?\" she asked Slash hopefully.\n\nTruman spoke up, his cheeks distended with the food. \"No way, that's a bread crumb trail for the Reds to find.\"\n\n\"How do you know they'll try?\" The edge of despair clouded Julia's judgment, making her itch to react.\n\n\"I would,\" Truman said.\n\nGreat.\n\nJulia finished her cheeseburger. Talking was useless. Their band of allies was now fractured, and something miserable had gone down in her Region.\n\nShe knew it.\n\nThe half-naked Weres and Sidhe followed her, Scott and Lucius somewhere unknown.\n\nJulia was worried, yet what awaited them when they arrived on the Olympic Peninsula bothered her even more. She knew what Scott was capable of. He had a chance to defend himself. Lucius, too.\n\nNo matter how much Julia tried to calm herself and rationalize that a Singer population with that many, possessing the talent array they did, would be safe, she couldn't.\n\nJulia ignored her bare feet. Her suffering was small compared to what those faithful to her might be enduring.\n\nShe trudged on, Jason at her side.\n\nThe sole comfort.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE\n\nTharell took the rear position, listening to the discussions of what occurred at the eatery. It certainly wasn't a nod toward subtlety. They had decided against the other Reds going because of lack of wardrobe. In the end, they would have had the nose to identify the Reds who attacked Lucius and Scott. Instead, they were now down two warriors for the remainder of the journey.\n\nIt troubled him.\n\nDomi glanced over his shoulder at Tharell. The look was enough. Domi was on point. Nothing would approach them without the other Sidhe alerting him and that eased Tharell. Though the issue of Jacqueline remained, Tharell would not address it with Domi prematurely. Timing was critical for his long-range goal.\n\nActually, Domi allowed great flexibility in the relationship. It was not Tharell's place to remind Domiatri that Jacqueline was a brood mare for the Sidhe. However, the lines of the other male's body indicated he would not welcome any suitor other than himself. Unyielding. Relentless.\n\nIt did not bode well. The fey were not known for sharing what they considered valuable.\n\nThey kept to the tree line, floating the perimeter like silent, uninvited ghosts.\n\nYet not without cause.\n\nThe Reds stayed at the front, and the four women traveled in the center. The pulse of Faerie synced with Tharell's every heartbeat. He knew it grew stronger for Domi, but it was a distance from the Singer's lair. He took the Rare One's misgivings seriously. Her blood tied her to every Singer in the world because of what she represented. If her feelings of disquiet centered on her homeland, then they were to be heeded. The Red Were, Jason, her husband, was young in his knowledge of what it was to be a Singer while also an infant in terms of being a werewolf. They could not count on him to understand or react to the things that occurred.\n\nHe would be a good fighter, as all werewolves were.\n\nWhen they had walked two hours, they finally came to rest. Tharell strode past the loose knot of women, Jason close by Julia, and stood beside Domi.\n\n\"Where is Jacqueline?\"\n\nDomi shot him a sideways look and answered, \"She attends to her needs.\"\n\nA long blue chunk of hair swept forward as he scanned the environment after Jacqueline.\n\nBathroom. Tharell dipped his chin in tacit acknowledgement. He laced his hands together behind his back. He asked the question while no one but Domi was present. \"How long?\"\n\nDomi closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. \"Close,\" he answered in a whisper.\n\nTharell narrowed his eyes in the direction of where Faerie felt strongest. Like a thread that slid through his body, it tugged at his inner being.\n\nJacqueline returned, coming to stand beside Domi. He whispered something against her temple, gently pushing hair away from her face as he did. She gave a small nod and tentatively wrapped an arm around his waist. Domi pressed her against his side. Tharell was glad of her presence; it kept Domi from sliding into an abyss of madness.\n\nHe would be quite glad of it when they were inside the sithen once again. Though an unhealthy environment for Tharell, it was the one he knew. Better to see the evil as it came at him than be taken by surprise.\n\nLow voices of anxiety began to ripple through the small group and sent the Sidhe to the front of the line.\n\nJulia was doubled over.\n\n\"What is this?\" Tharell asked, but Cyn hovered next to Julia with her hands pressed against the Rare One's back.\n\n\"We're close, and it's bad,\" Julia said though her voice was lost to the ground. The earth absorbed the words but none of the fear in them. Terror trembled in the air like the smell of rain.\n\n\"What? What's bad, Jules?\" Jason asked in a low voice, his hand on his wife. His gaze was everywhere and nowhere.\n\nTharell felt his restlessness. It matched his.\n\n\"Death,\" Julia moaned.\n\n\"Let's go,\" Jason said, hauling Julia up by the armpits. \"Hang on.\"\n\nJulia wrapped her arms around Jason's neck, and he melted to half-wolfen. It was all the finer attributes of the change without the mess. Tharell suffered a pang of envy. Would it be that he could change into something more desirable to look upon, his troubles in the Faerie court would lessen considerably.\n\nJason grasped her hands at his throat with one of his own. His attention turned to Tharell and Domi. \"Can you two keep up?\"\n\nTharell silenced his many biting remarks. Instead, he simply nodded.\n\nHe glanced behind him, and Jacqueline was on Domi's back, legs wrapped around his waist.\n\nTharell surveyed the group with sharp eyes. The Reds had all changed to half-forms, the last of their clothes discarded like scattered leaves.\n\nAngela and Cyn rode on the back of the female Were, who had completely changed.\n\nTharell had not realized the moon was so close to full.\n\nThey ran, the shadow of uncertainty sharpening as they did.\n\n*\n\nTharell and Domi arrived first at the edges of the bloodbath. He instantly took in what it was and stopped the Rare One before she could see the pieces of her people spread like flung and spoiled meat upon the land.\n\n\"Let me through!\" Julia spat, and Tharell gripped her.\n\n\"No.\"\n\nJason fingers bit into Tharell's deep violet skin. The Were's downy red fuzz looked like fire upon amethysts. \"Don't touch her, fey.\"\n\n\"I will if I must. Go ahead of me and see what it is. Tell me you wish for those memories to burn brightly inside her head forevermore.\"\n\nJulia's lips thinned as Jason released Tharell and cautiously walked around where he and Julia stood.\n\nThe howling came next.\n\nMournful and complete, it was more acknowledgement than mere words could ever have been.\n\nJason was human when he returned, his skin greenish, his eyes wide with the beginnings of shock. Tharell moved aside.\n\nTharell heard his words, but they weren't enough to express a horror without description. \"Jules\u2014baby,\" Jason began, moving hair behind her ear. \"They're dead, baby...\"\n\nShe sucked in a breath, her hand briefly covering her mouth. \"Who?\" Her gaze probed his.\n\nJason shook his head and gave a rough exhale. \"Everyone, I think.\"\n\n\"What? Brendan, Michael\u2014oh my god\u2014Jen!\" Julia screamed and took off running in the direction of the house where she'd been given temporary sanctuary.\n\nTwice she fell, the grass so slick with blood she couldn't keep her footing.\n\nTharell raced after her, easily keeping pace. \"Do not... Julia, I beg you. These are your people. You cared for them.\" He grabbed her arm and yanked her backward.\n\nShe slapped her palms against his chest.\n\n\"I want to know!\" she screamed.\n\nHe shook her once, hard enough to rattle her teeth. \"You do not want to remember them this way.\"\n\n\"What way?\"\n\n\"Dismembered,\" Tharell said simply.\n\nJulia's head hung. Then she shook it. \"No\u2014they can't all be dead.\"\n\nTharell brought her into the shadow of his body. \"Not all, my queen. Most.\"\n\nShe beat him with her fist. \"No! I don't believe you.\"\n\nTharell understood Julia did not want to believe. It was very human of her.\n\nHe held her hands together with one of his own as she struggled against him. He must make her come to an understanding.\n\nTharell sensed something and looked up as Jason approached, his face filled with dark thunder.\n\nHe ignored the Were, concentrating on the words he must imbue to the Blooded Queen. \"You do not want this memory. If you must look upon them, promise me you will let me take it from you afterward.\"\n\nAfter a beat of silence, the Rare One's mate tackled him, rolling them into the gore at their feet.\n\nHis loyalty was not to her mate.\n\nTharell did not hold back.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX\n\n\"Stop!\" Julia shouted. Her breathing was deliberately shallow, a self-preservation tactic. The dead all around her were fresh, the blood so thick it overpowered all other senses.\n\nJulia couldn't smell the forest, the grass, flowers... The scent of blood that saturated the air was so strong it tasted like metal vapor.\n\nTharell and Jason, the sounds of their fists a collision of raw meat, looked up at the sound of her yelled plea.\n\nShe drove a shaky hand through her long hair, a tangled and dirty mess. Julia repeated herself. \"Stop.\" Her eyes stayed on them. \"They are dead, and I am tired.\"\n\nShe took in the tangled fey and Were and sighed. All species' males battled it out. No one actually resolved anything with words. Out loud.\n\nThe two stood, their bodies hopelessly covered with the remnants of the newly dead. Jason shoved Tharell.\n\nJulia had never seen a man slap another. It rocked Jason's head back, and a low growl erupted like boiling water from his lips.\n\nTharell's azure eyes flashed on Jason.\n\nDaring him\u2014warning him.\n\n\"Look!\" Cyn cried, and Julia turned. The blood of whomever her best friend kneeled beside soaked her to mid-thigh. Julia ignored the men's posturing and ran to her.\n\nShe tripped over a severed leg, owner unknown. Her hands bit into the slick soup of death at her feet, and she jerked upright. A sob broke away from her like a chunk of her soul. Julia plowed forward, the bits pressing between her toes, and it took all she was not to make more of a mess with the gorge that rose inside her.\n\nShe fell on the opposite side of the body from Cyn.\n\nMarcus. Julia covered her mouth, trying to stifle the sadness that threatened to pour out.\n\nThen his eyes opened.\n\nJulia gasped, landing on her butt and instantly soaking her pants. \"Can you help him?\"\n\nCyn shook her head. \"I can heal, but this...\"\n\nShe didn't say more.\n\nMarcus' body did not exhibit one uncut surface. That he'd survived so long was a miracle.\n\n\"I can make him feel better...\" She gave a small lift of her shoulders. Cyn's eyes conveyed their miserable situation eloquently, wide and shiny with tears none of them had time to shed.\n\n\"So we can ask questions,\" Julia clarified as the others came to stand behind her.\n\n\"Yes,\" Cyn confirmed.\n\nMarcus' pain-filled eyes rolled in his head, looking between the two women.\n\nHis slight nod was the only indication he knew what their plan was.\n\nCyn lowered her palms to his chest.\n\nA shuddering breath took hold of him, wracking his body. A spasm shook his torso and more blood oozed out.\n\n\"I am dying,\" Marcus stated from a throat that was no longer working perfectly.\n\nJulia ripped a tear off her cheek with a finger. It burned her skin, scorching her heart. \"Yes,\" she answered.\n\nMarcus nodded. Julia grasped his hand. \"I am sorry.\"\n\n\"No. This is not of your doing.\" He tapped Julia's lips to silence her then dropped his hand to his ruined chest.\n\nJulia did not look down, could not.\n\n\"My children?\"\n\nJulia and Cyn's eyes met over his body.\n\nWhen Julia glanced at Marcus' face, his eyes were closed.\n\n\"Scott is alive.\" Julia didn't have the heart to mention the possible torture of his one living child by the Reds of Alaska.\n\nMarcus' face hardened, becoming resolute. \"Listen closely.\"\n\nThe survivors moved around him in a loose circle, but his eyes remained focused only on Julia.\n\n\"It was Anthony Laurent.\" He coughed, and blood-tinged phlegm landed beside him.\n\nCyn made a choked noise and Julia gripped his hand tighter, her throat clicking with a hard, awful swallow. \"How...\"\n\n\"He had a blade cleansed by the blood of the demonic.\" He took a rattling breath. \"It is proof against all Singer talents but a handful.\"\n\nDomi and Tharell exchange a portentous glance.\n\n\"Demonic?\" Julia whispered.\n\n\"Like the fey, they are an entity we assumed did not need consideration.\"\n\n\"Until now,\" Cyn offered, and Marcus nodded.\n\n\"It has been a thousand years since the last appearance.\" Marcus ended on a wheeze.\n\n\"Like Jules being the Rare One,\" Jason said from behind him.\n\nMarcus slid his gaze to Jason.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nHe closed his eyes, as did Cyn. She opened her own and looked a Julia. \"He doesn't have long.\" To Marcus, she said, \"I'm sorry.\"\n\nHe covered her hand with his. \"It is more than I'd hoped. To be able to speak with the queen, to transfer my knowledge to her. Preparedness is key.\" He coughed and more blood fed the hungry earth beneath him.\n\n\"Hear me,\" Marcus began again. \"The demonic may only use those who possess the blood of Hades. They cannot influence or manipulate humanity directly. But Were, especially the Red, even without demonic blood, can be used as vessels of destruction. Tony must have demonic blood and a debt of that lineage has been called in.\"\n\n\"Why kill the Singers?\" Cyn asked.\n\nTharell spoke for the first time. \"Where there is the blood of the demon, there is also its counterbalance; the blood of the angelic.\"\n\n\"Angel's blood?\" Truman asked in disbelief.\n\nMarcus nodded. \"As Singers are an offshoot of humanity, those who possess the blood of the Singers might also have that of the angelic. Being Singer does not automatically guarantee the lineage.\"\n\n\"But if all Singers were dead, then there would be no angelic blood,\" Julia guessed.\n\n\"Singer-cide,\" Adi said from behind Cyn's shoulder and Julia nodded sadly.\n\n\"By killing the known Singers, the natural enemy and protector of all supernaturals, the potential for peace is lost forever.\"\n\n\"So we're not really human?\" Julia pressed and Marcus' eyes fluttered shut.\n\nPlease do not die before I have this answered, Julia thought. Then guilt heated her face in a blush that burned along her skin. Marcus lay dying, but she wanted the answers. Even knowing how badly she needed those for a chance of resolution didn't make it any more justifiable.\n\n\"When was anyone going to tell me I was an angel?\" Julia asked aloud.\n\nMarcus' eyes snapped open. \"You are not heavenly but of heaven. The blood of the angels is most strongly entrenched inside you. You are the hope of all that is good.\"\n\n\"No pressure,\" Truman muttered in the background.\n\nJulia silently agreed with the sentiment.\n\n\"What do I do?\" she asked.\n\n\"If I had that answer, I would have anticipated what was coming.\" He breathed deeply, his face tightening in pain.\n\nCyn shook her head.\n\nMarcus was fading.\n\n\"I should have married the three, for protection from this.\"\n\n\"It is too late,\" he said softly.\n\nHe gasped, trying to sit up. \"You are the Rare One; through you, peace can be realized.\"\n\nMarcus' hands fell away from hers. \"Yet not without bloodshed and death.\"\n\nHis eyes glazed over, hands dropping from his chest to the blood-soaked grass on either side of his body. His palms faced toward the sky as though asking for forgiveness from an uncaring power.\n\nKarl Truman hunkered down beside the dead leader of Region One and closed Marcus' unseeing eyes with gentle fingers.\n\n\"We might have bigger things than the Reds finding us,\" he said as he stood.\n\nJason held his hand out to Julia, and she took it.\n\nShe couldn't baby herself any longer.\n\nJulia gazed out over the massacre of her people. Their severed body parts littered the ground as far as the eye could see. A sea of blood buried the green of the grass in a scarlet river of decay and violence.\n\nHeat rose from her feet, driving up her body like a flame without end.\n\nJason caught Julia as she wailed against his shoulder. The sound lifted the heads of wildlife caught in the melody of her sorrow. A chorus of absolution, grief, and determination buried in a song of which even the lowest of the creatures heard and took note.\n\nA plan began in the part of her brain not consumed by sadness. It wasn't perfect\u2014it wasn't even right.\n\nBut it was what she must do.\n\nJulia would enlist the vampires.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN\n\nThe blistering shower she'd taken still warmed Julia's skin. Running shoes firmly encased her damaged feet, scraped raw of the abuse from outside Region One.\n\nJason stood by her side as a first guard of sorts. The survivors were downstairs. The house escaped being a mausoleum by a millimeter. When they'd heard shouts for help, most of the Singers must have run outside and had been summarily cut down. They had found Brendan's body in the kitchen and buried him.\n\n\"I don't understand why the sheer numbers didn't just take that prick down. Overwhelm him,\" Jason said.\n\nJulia shook her head, sad and puzzled. Though the idea had occurred to her as well. Over and over. \"I don't know. There must be some magic to that sword beside demon's blood.\" Just saying the name demon felt wrong. Filthy.\n\nJason blew out a ragged exhale. \"We need to track Tony down and kill his ass.\"\n\nThere'd been enough killing, but for Tony she'd make an exception.\n\n*\n\nTharell and Domi had cast a spell like a great magnet of death.\n\nThen they had asked Julia where she wanted the remains.\n\nWhen they posed the morbid question, Julia's thoughts had turned to the lake, a beautiful spot that calmed her. She'd told them where, and they dug a horrible, necessary trench where they interred the unidentified parts. They closed the wound of the earth, every drop of blood and sign of the physical bodies collected as if summoned by an unseen force.\n\nTharell and Domi had cast a powerful spell of death attraction inside the mass grave, and the parts of Julia's people had responded like a summons.\n\nShe hadn't wanted to but felt she owed it to the murdered Singers. She had watched as the remains crawled and trembled along the grass as though dragged by invisible pulleys. It slid off the house and over every surface to which it clung then made its gruesome way to the resting place.\n\nIt was a vision that, when Julia was old, haunted her just as strongly as when it happened.\n\nShe continued to braid her hair, thinking about how she could bring up what she needed to do, remembering what she wanted to so badly forget.\n\n\"What, Jules?\" Jason asked, taking an escaped wisp and tucking it behind her ear.\n\n\"I know how to find Tony.\"\n\nJason sighed. \"It's been one day, Jules. Lucius and Scott are still missing, the Reds unaccounted for.\" He gave her a level stare. \"There were ten Combatant, now there are two left, and we don't know where the hell they are.\"\n\n\"Victor was never found.\"\n\nJason rolled his eyes. \"Okay, GQ might still be okay. But doesn't his blood know where you are or something?\"\n\nJulia lifted the corners of her lips at Jason's utter lack of indifference about the Singers. Her smile waned at what it'd mean to bring him in as her king. He didn't seem ready.\n\nReally, she wasn't ready, either.\n\nJulia sighed.\n\nJason pulled a face. \"What\u2014Jules, you gotta know that just us staying alive is the main thing here.\"\n\n\"I do.\"\n\nShe met his hazel eyes, filled with concern and longing. Julia knew, as sure as she stood before him, Jason wanted to go back to the way things had been. But the past was lost like sand through fingers.\n\nHe knotted his brow. \"I'm sorry, all those people...\"\n\n\"Singers,\" Julia corrected softly.\n\n\"Yes, Jules\u2014Singers.\" Jason raked a hand through his hair. The absence of his hands on her, as well as his acceptance of their new life, left her cold. \"I'm sorry Tony wasted them. But it is what it is. There's not a thing we can do to take it back. Going after Tony right now is begging for worse things to happen.\"\n\n\"Maybe.\" Julia lifted her chin, giving him steady eyes. \"Or maybe he's going to go from one Region to the next, slaughtering whoever he can find.\"\n\nJason folded his arms across his muscular chest. The sunlight streamed through her bedroom window, hitting his hair just right, making it appear blond when it was too sandy to qualify. She noticed it needed a trim.\n\nShe pushed distracting thoughts to the side. \"I want to call vamps in.\"\n\n\"What?\" Jason said, his arms falling to his sides. \"No fucking way.\"\n\nJulia stood up from the vanity where she'd been plaiting her hair. \"I think I can make it work, with William's kiss.\"\n\n\"Oh yeah,\" Jason said sarcastically, \"the vamps are so trustworthy.\"\n\n\"They won't have the problem with the metal.\"\n\nThey regarded at each other for a moment in mutual consideration.\n\n\"Why?\" Jason asked.\n\nJulia sucked in a breath. \"Because they're dead.\" Then let it out slowly.\n\n\"Ya sure?\"\n\nNo, she wasn't. \"I don't know. In theory, it sounds like it'd be worth a try.\"\n\nJulia leaned forward. \"Don't you think it's odd that all we have left are a few Singers and Reds?\"\n\n\"Reds who are up our asses,\" Jason countered.\n\n\"That's true. But there's also the fey.\"\n\nJason shook his head, refolding his arms in semi-defiance. \"Nah, they're okay, but I'm not sure I'm buying what they're sellin'. Don't trust them.\"\n\nJulia laughed. \"You don't trust anyone.\"\n\n\"Kevin. I trusted him.\"\n\nJulia looked at Jason while they paused to remember their friend. The first casualty of many.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Julia whispered as their fingers intertwined.\n\nJason pulled her against him. \"Let me protect you, Jules. It's all I can do for now\u2014all that I am.\"\n\nShe laid her head against his chest. The ache in her soul was more than a bruise; a crushing wound of grief.\n\nIn the absence of hope, darkness bloomed like a black orchid.\n\nDark, final. A night without day.\n\n*\n\n\"He has killed almost all the Singers of this Region. Therefore\"\u2014Tharell paused for effect\u2014\"I do not see any reason to hold to our bargain.\"\n\n\"I still want the Rare One.\"\n\nTharell scooped the water, spreading it again to capture the image perfectly. A ripple across the surface of the lake spun, taking the shape of a circle.\n\nGabriel's image sharpened, the water the mirror of their communication.\n\n\"Be that as it may, I am not the transporter of this. Now that this colony of Singers has been decimated, the demonic will move on to Region Two. The logic of evil never wavers.\"\n\nAn expression of distaste spread across Gabriel's face. \"Our intelligence suggests the leader of Region Two has been subdued, she is of sufficient Sidhe descent that she is no longer necessary.\"\n\nTharell did not like Sidhe business leaving Faerie. And here were the most intimate of secrets traveling to this corrupt coven of vampires. Someone was leaking things they should not be.\n\nThey would be found, but that was for a different day.\n\nTharell kept his face clear of his thoughts. \"That one Singer female, though she has sufficient blood quantum to breed\u2014\"\n\nGabriel laughed. \"No.\" He shook his head, golden red hair slithering over broad shoulders. \"The demonic is raging across this great land, taking out any supernatural in his sights. He can heal everything but a killing blow. How long do you think it will be before he pays Faerie a visit with his special metal?\"\n\nTharell did not respond immediately. He had said nothing when the Region One leader had spilled truths with his dying breath.\n\nNor was Gabriel aware that angelic blood would cure all their ills. The Singers would make the Sidhe indestructible. Perfect. That had been Queen Darcel's hope as she died knowing her model for purity was imperfect.\n\n\"Only vampire can overwhelm the rogue werewolf.\"\n\nTharell smirked. Bastard. \"For a price.\"\n\nGabriel possessed a great deal of angelic blood. He was a Rare One as Julia. Tharell would have never known it with how strongly he negotiated his evildoings.\n\nHe knew not if Jacqueline would survive what they planned.\n\nTharell did not know if he would.\n\nIt was a death sentence, for life in the world of Faerie and a debt closed.\n\nTharell, his heart too heavy to break, wiped the surface of the water. That smug satisfaction fixed on Gabriel's face shattered with the ripples of the lake.\n\n*\n\nJulia asked around, but the few Singer survivors and her group hadn't seen Tharell.\n\n\"Why do you want to talk to him?\" Jason asked, kissing her knuckles to take the sting out of his question.\n\n\"I was supposed talk with the Sidhe and invite them into an alliance where we could talk about intermarrying.\"\n\nJason gave her his full attention.\n\n\"And now everyone's dead. And I want to reach out to William's former kiss and see if they want to chase after Tony and kill him before he does in more of the Singers. So the treaty is on hold.\"\n\n\"And the fey don't bargain,\" Jason said slowly.\n\nJulia shook her head. \"I've read about them\u2014myth only. But oath breakers are killed.\"\n\nJason held her hands tighter, his eyes narrowing. \"What about extenuating circumstances?\"\n\nJulia shrugged. \"No such thing. We find Tharell and see what our options are. Or be held to a promise I made, not understanding all the Singers would die.\"\n\n\"No all.\"\n\nJulia sighed. \"No, not all.\"\n\n\"You're very ruthless, Jules,\" Jason said, only half-joking.\n\n\"More than I want to be.\"\n\nA small rustle in the tall grass caught their attention. A dark silhouette made slow progress from the lake. The gait and carry of the broad shoulders were unmistakable, but the bruised plum of his skin, a deep violet smear against the pressing twilight, was most distinctive.\n\n\"Speak of the devil,\" Julia said.\n\n\"Yeah.\" She gave Jason a sharp look.\n\nIt sounded like he meant it.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT\n\nTharell caught sight of Jason and Julia at the crest of the knoll. The great Victorian homestead rose behind them like a yawning pursuer.\n\nHe was not comfortable with his uneasy alliance. Gabriel lacked integrity in so many ways. And Domiatri would never forgive him. However, if Tharell could enlist the largest coven of the Pacific Northwest region to aid him in bringing down the demonic werewolf, the cost of one would be justifiable.\n\nTharell needed to progress a contingency plan he never imagined to employ. Yet he must.\n\nHe had struck the deal. There was no going back. He was fey, and the fey did not lie. Tharell would not be an oath breaker for all the wishes on earth.\n\nJulia drew nearer, and Tharell leaned down into her embrace, guilt striking him like a lashing wave against rock. In her solemn eyes he saw she pressed through her grief.\n\n\"Now that my dead have been buried, we should discuss our promise.\"\n\nTharell inclined his head in agreement. \"I am pleased you understand the importance of an oath with the fey.\" At his words, guilt hardened like an uneaten yolk in his belly.\n\nShe gave a sad laugh.\n\nIt deepened his disquiet about his choices.\n\n\"There aren't enough of my people to negotiate with. However, I've found another option that might satisfy what I'm trying to do and save other Singers from...\" He hesitated in the face of her remorse.\n\nTharell watched her struggle, tears sliding out of the corners of her eyes like a diamond river that has burst its damn.\n\n\"Blooded Queen,\" Tharell began, and dropped to one knee before her, \"I know your sorrow.\"\n\n\"You can't know dick, Tharell,\" Jason spoke for the first time.\n\nTharell's crisp blue eyes met hardened hazel, unwavering and distrusting.\n\n\"I have been in war, Were. Many have died\u2014legion.\" Tharell dismissed him. He had never warmed to the Were. That was the problem with a turned Singer. They were unpredictable and maintained much of their humanity. A distinct disadvantage.\n\nHumanity did not overly impress Tharell. Their apathy killed any respect the fey might have for them. Now, the Singers were another matter entirely. The talents they possessed alone put them in a different league, one parallel to the Sidhe.\n\n\"Jason,\" Julia hissed and Tharell rolled his lips together in a grim line to cover his smirk. The story of this Were was of being in the state of Feral for too long. When he erupted from his fugue, and he had been lucky to do so, he had gained none of the knowledge or history of either lineage.\n\nIgnorant and angry, Jason Caldwell was a ticking time bomb of spontaneous decisions and reactive conduct.\n\nIt might prove useful. Others' emotions were malleable.\n\nTharell sensed they had not joined as a female and male, their energy remained separate. Julia was still pure; claimed by the paper of human law; not body and soul. He knew of her vulnerability. Yet with the chaos of Region One's slaughter, coupled with escaping the rogue band from Alaska, that fact had been overlooked.\n\nIt would not be for much longer. And the Reds that had not submitted to the newest pack master, Slash, would regroup and attack again.\n\nIt worked well for Tharell, as so many agendas going on at one time would additionally camouflage him.\n\n\"I think I will contact William's kiss and, if I can manage it, we will ask their cooperation in finding Tony. Only his death will stop this... butchering.\"\n\nSplendid, Tharell marveled. Gabriel of the Northwestern would send his troops to locate the interloper, and if Julia could secure it, she would also recruit the Southeastern. They would shred Tony.\n\nThe demonic threat would end, and he would make his payment to Gabriel. Faerie would have a bevy of Singers to take the threat of extinction away and fulfill his illicit pact.\n\nHis eyes found Julia's. Keeping her hands in his, his gaze slid with wary consideration to Jason. He towered over her. \"That is a wise choice. I accept.\" He cocked his head. \"Region Two is in Montana?\"\n\nJulia nodded.\n\n\"Let us assemble a caravan.\"\n\nShe frowned slightly at the expression. \"I'll reach out to the vamps.\"\n\nJason stalked away, and Julia turned toward him while Tharell gave a broad smile they did not see.\n\n\"I don't like it!\" Jason yelled, throwing up his hands.\n\nJulia strode to him, grabbing his bicep. \"Do you have a better suggestion?\" Her small figure vibrated with anger and the urgency of the truly committed.\n\n\"I don't have the effing time to consider how much I don't want to ask for help. I don't have the luxury. The Singers that would have had better ideas are gone. I found out we have angel's blood. That somehow heaven is on earth, and we're all here to make the wrong right. How can we not save their lives? Tony might already be there!\" Julia said, her face taut.\n\n\"God!\" Jason shouted to the heavens. \"When can this be over?\" He grabbed Julia against him. \"I don't want to give you up. I don't want that jackass getting his talons on you.\"\n\n\"He can't kill me.\"\n\nJason pulled away from her. He looked at Tharell.\n\nTharell nodded, speaking the full truth for once. \"She is proof against the metal of the blade he carries. It will not work against a full-blood.\"\n\nJason gripped her arms, spinning her to face him. \"You're an angel.\"\n\nJulia quirked her lips. \"I don't feel like one.\"\n\nTharell circled around the pair. Jason tensed.\n\nTharell hated Jason Caldwell's instincts. It made everything he necessitated accomplishing more of a challenge. \"When something has a choice, do you choose good or bad?\"\n\nJulia blushed, a lovely peach color washing across high cheekbones, her whiskey eyes flashing in the low light of impending night. \"Good, I guess.\"\n\n\"Would you sacrifice your life for another?\"\n\nShe lifted her chin. Surer now. \"Yes,\" she answered with an imperceptible hesitation.\n\nTharell's eyes narrowed. \"Do you love more than hate?\"\n\nResolute. \"Absolutely.\"\n\nJason shrugged in apparent agreement. \"See Jules\u2014full angel. Must be cool to be you.\" Jason said it with admiration.\n\nThough Julia appeared to feel unworthy of the title, humility was also the stamp of the purer bloods. So rare.\n\nSo valuable.\n\nTharell squeezed her shoulder. \"I think you've made a wise choice. The vampire will require payment.\" He cupped his chin, pondering as Jason looked on with a sour expression. It was clear he did not like another male's hands on her. \"You might offer an unbroken alliance, citing your truce via their former leader, William.\" He spread his palms out as if that was the obvious choice.\n\nJulia nodded slowly, a tentative smile lifting her mouth. \"Thank you, Tharell.\"\n\nTharell hardened the seed of tenderness he held for her. He could never allow it to germinate. \"Do not thank me until Tony's blood blankets the land of the Singers.\"\n\nJulia frowned at his words.\n\nThe best lies hid within partial truths. The fey were expert in that area. Tharell's mixed lineage made it even more so.\n\nHe watched the two walk away.\n\nWhen Jason Caldwell turned and gave him the glance he expected, Tharell nodded once.\n\nJason's expression was speculative.\n\nTharell would not win over the Were. That was an absolute. He had seen to the protection of the Rare One for too many years.\n\nTharell put his hands on his hips and looked to the sky. The sinister encroachment of sunset was a wash of blood that leaked over the dying clouds like a sinister encroachment.\n\nHis plan solidified within the confines of his mind, the methodical order of events clear. Julia communicating to the other arm of vampire in this region was fortuitous. He had not anticipated the move, and it would aid the groundwork already laid after two decades of careful planning. As the humans liked to say, an alignment of the stars.\n\nIt was the same for the supernaturals and truer than the lowly humans could ever know. There was but one chance every one thousand years or so. And as when the Jewish carpenter died on the cross, the celestial climate had been portentous. As it was again.\n\nThe Singers had grown complacent when they should have gathered in large numbers. The fey had watched the heavens whisper what was to come, and paid heed to the opportunity. Now it was at hand and Tharell the catalyst, a queen on the chessboard of fate. How powerful a piece she was. Moving in any direction, coveted and stealthy, she was renowned for taking out all the players.\n\nTharell would not gain pleasure from what he must do. However, one did not always control their life's path. His first loyalty must be to his sovereign.\n\nPraile would pay in the coin that Tharell wished to have most.\n\nVengeance.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE\n\nJulia was relieved that Tharell had given the nod to her communication with the vamps. Ten adopted Reds added to Slash, Jason, and Karl Truman. Cyn and Adi were hard-hitters, not weak girls to scream and wail when the tough things needed doing.\n\nScott and Lucius stood missing. Tom Harriet of the FBI was bent on having her.\n\nShe was determined to elude him.\n\nJulia didn't want any more death, but she wouldn't allow herself to be captured again. She bit down on her sadness over the potential of Scott coming home only to find his family wiped out.\n\nThen there was Jacqueline, the strangest thing of all. If he were to return whole, then maybe, just maybe, they could have a relationship. Though for the life of her, Julia couldn't even see Jacqueline as the same woman she'd been before.\n\nThe green Unseelie Sidhe warrior shadowed Jacqueline constantly. Julia supposed it was the rarity of children in Faerie. The little bit of Faerie culture she'd experienced had been frightening. She couldn't imagine a child living in the torture as norm for anyone who dared stray from what was acceptable in Faerie.\n\nThey had not located Reagan or Delilah.\n\nHas Tony killed his own offspring? Had Delilah escaped because she had been vampire enough to negate the power of demonic blood over magic metal? Further... what had happened to Alan and Lacey Greene? Many were missing, but the sheer amount of bodies now buried near the lake convinced her that Tony had killed most of the Singers. The method of their murders had made it impossible to identify everyone. A sad truth.\n\nThey had only Cyn as a Healer. Julia didn't have to be told they were in an insecure position with regard to injury. Few Singers had escaped, and maybe their talents had left them able to defend themselves. Or blood purity. Her remaining band of friends and few subjects may or may not survive the siege against Tony. Julia would not be directly responsible for their deaths, even more motivation to contact the kiss.\n\nJulia massaged her temples. She tramped down the static, like a fire begging to start, of people's constantly buzzing thoughts, a low-grade headache that wouldn't go away.\n\n\"How do you propose to contact the vamps?\" Jason asked, kicking a small rock with the toe of a borrowed sneaker. It shot across the yard in front of the huge house and launched off a tree trunk, a bare spot where the bark fell away, marring the surface. She turned to him, frustrated.\n\nHis earnest face stopped the scathing comments she almost made. Julia was sad, tired of the constant fighting, worried about Two, and frantic about securing help so more people would not be killed.\n\n\"I don't know,\" she admitted.\n\n\"Listen,\" Jason said, roughing his hair with irritated fingers. It stood on end, and Julia smiled at the familiar gesture. \"I say we go back to the last known place William was held.\"\n\nJulia stopped walking. \"I don't know where that is. And\"\u2014she shrugged\u2014\"who knows what has happened in the weeks after William's death?\" She looked into his eyes. \"They could have a new leader and I come, hat in hand and say, 'Hey guys, sorry William's gone, and your torture of him to get to me didn't work, but I need you to go kill a bad werewolf'.\" Julia made a sound of pure disbelief. The words were utterly ridiculous when she said them.\n\nJason slung an arm around her shoulders. \"It's solid, babe. It just takes guts.\" He paused and she glanced up at him. \"Let's take the fey dude...\"\n\n\"Tharell?\"\n\nJason made a face. \"Yeah, I guess... and he can act as a go-between. Put his ass out there since he thought it was such a great idea.\"\n\nJulia didn't want to owe the Sidhe any more than she already did, but she wanted to save the other Singers. Tony was traveling on foot; that much they knew from his tracks. The Reds had followed his prints to the road, where they disappeared.\n\nSomeone had given him a ride, she bet. While she stalled, intimidating herself out of the toughest part of solving this mess, Tony was heading east.\n\nThe good Samaritans who gave him the ride forfeited their lives doing it. Knowing Tony, he'd done it at night so they wouldn't have caught the blood.\n\n\"Okay. Enough with The Dumb of us running around until our feet fall off.\"\n\nJulia laughed. That'd been brutal but unplanned. Cyn had made the worst of it better, but they still ached from the abuse.\n\n\"Right?\" Jason leaned back and thumped his chest, and she laughed harder.\n\n\"So true.\"\n\n\"So where's a set of proper wheels at this joint?\" Jason looked around as if a great 4x4 would pop out of the ground. \"I say we four by it to where the fangs live, get the A-Okay, then chase after Tony's murdering ass. Is there a better tracker than another Were?\"\n\nThere had been, Julia thought.\n\nHe searched her face and grimaced. \"Sorry, babe. That didn't come out right.\"\n\n\"No.\" Julia looked down for a moment. Then she lifted her chin. \"But it's the truth.\"\n\n\"That's my girl,\" Jason said.\n\nShe gave a watery smile and answered, \"I've always been your girl.\"\n\nHe held Julia while she cried.\n\n*\n\nA truck in the huge shop reminded Julia of her 1977 Blazer left in Homer.\n\nShe ran her hand down the side then flicked a fingernail against the tires' deep treads.\n\n\"Look familiar, Jules?\" Jason asked, not requiring a response.\n\n\"Yeah,\" she said anyway.\n\n\"All these wheels were here, and dipshit Tony didn't take a one.\"\n\nA stealthy noise made Jason liberate a knife he wore clip-tucked in his front pocket.\n\nIt glinted as he flipped it closed when he recognized the figure.\n\n\"He was likely possessed with the influence of the blade.\"\n\nJason relaxed his posture as Tharell went on, \"A blade rendered magical by the blood of a demonic casts a powerful thrall over those of the right lineage.\"\n\n\"Sounds like we're all just whores to genetics.\"\n\nTharell's expression was unreadable, but he answered with more feeling than Julia normally heard from him. \"Crudely put but accurate.\"\n\n\"Well whatever, it's time for us to find the fangs and get on the road. The sooner we do in old Tony boy, the faster we can move on.\"\n\nJulia's gaze went from Tharell to Jason.\n\n\"What?\" Julia asked Tharell.\n\n\"The fey do not like metal.\"\n\nJason jerked his chin back, confused. \"Why not? I mean, we can be to the vampire coven in forty-five minutes if we go hard.\"\n\nTharell's Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. \"I can manage it, but Domi could not.\"\n\nInteresting, Julia thought.\n\n\"So you're a no-go?\" Jason curled his lips into a smirk.\n\nTharell appeared to rise to the bait, his forearms curling into tight slabs of muscles and his fists like clenched hammers. \"I will bear it.\"\n\n\"Good thing,\" Jason said, giving him a guy clap on the back with his open palm. \"Let's get everyone that'll fit in this thing and take off.\"\n\nTharell glowered at Jason, straightening his back where Jason had struck him.\n\nJulia had a fleeting premonition as something flashed across Tharell's face. She couldn't identify it, but she almost recognized it.\n\nIt had felt a little like Tharell was biding his time.\n\nJulia was interpreting his impatience for her to fulfill her promise. It saddened her that Tharell could not understand the deaths of so many made his timeline longer.\n\nPeople had died. That was more important than a race of supernaturals threatened with extinction but that still survived.\n\nHer people had almost been wiped out.\n\nThe two weren't comparable.\n\nJulia could not be everything to all.\n\nA handful of survivors decided to accompany them. No one was really in charge of her direct safety. Julia felt a sense of relief. She'd never loved all the pomp and circumstance surrounding the Combatant. Fate hadn't been kind, but she lived another day.\n\nThey hadn't found Lucius, Scott, or Victor, the remaining Combatant. Slash, Truman, Jason and Tharell were joining them.\n\nThough the men didn't like it, Julia insisted on Cyn coming. If someone got hurt, there was no way to speed recovery. She was their lone, surviving Healer.\n\nThe potential for something to go wrong was high. Julia was just going by historical precedence.\n\nNothing had been easy.\n\nOr free of violence.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTY\n\nTony lay in the center of the highway, a rural intermediary route that fed to Interstate 90. He was all about getting his ass to Montana, murdering all the Singers he could, and moving on to the next region.\n\nPraile would be proud, if anything as evil as him could feel pride.\n\nTony waited, succumbing to his acute senses. He'd do anything to shift to his wolf but that wouldn't work. He needed to let precious minutes slide by to make better time. Sacrifice the now for the later.\n\nNight had fallen and he was finally in a position to mask himself. Blood dried and flaked off his clothing and skin. Only his eyeballs were free of it. It didn't bother Tony in the least but it would give the human he hoped to steal a ride from pause.\n\nThat's why he'd waited under cover of the woods until it was too dark to see anything with detail. A human's weak eyesight would never be sharp enough to see what covered him, but a wolf would smell the blood almost five miles away. A Were's nose so sensitive that it could smell the tenor of injury.\n\nMurder was exciting. The blood Tony wore was akin to a dinner bell clamoring. He didn't want that, either. What if stupid, rule-follower Manny is still around? He didn't want Lawrence and Manny catching on to who and what he was. It would go badly. Manny he could dispose of, but Lawrence The Alpha? Short of using the blade, Tony didn't think he could put him out of his misery.\n\nSo he waited. The pebbles of the old asphalt road, not re-covered for years, dug into his back. His soaked clothing molded to each tiny stone as they pressed uncomfortably.\n\nFinally, his sharp hearing captured the noise for which he'd lain there hoping.\n\nA car was drawing nearer.\n\n*\n\nThe stupid human didn't see him. He was going to have to fake a resurrection or something to get their vehicle to stop. He certainly didn't have time to heal the damage from a car running over him.\n\nTony flopped like a fish, his senses carefully noting the heat of the car's headlights as they sliced over his body. The faint aroma of rubber as the tires bit the nubby black road and pressed to a skidding stop about six inches from his arm.\n\n\"Fucking close,\" Tony grumbled.\n\nHe cracked an eyelid, playing dead. A couple of old geezers peered at him over the dash.\n\nThe man swung the heavy car door open, and Tony was relieved the thing hadn't flattened him. Chrome shone like strips of silver along the fins of the 1960 Chevy Impala that sat idling in the center of the road.\n\nWhat the fuck? Is this old dick not going to get out and check on me?\n\nSome humans had a drop or two of Singer blood. It made them wary, intuitive.\n\nFigured he'd get the one in a thousand.\n\nHe slammed his eyelid shut.\n\nThe old guy shambled over toward Tony, his own heartbeat so loud he could hardly hear the old fart over it. It always roared like a lion before he killed others.\n\nHe felt the press of air before whatever the old guy held touched him.\n\nTony snapped his hand out, latching onto something smooth.\n\nHe opened his eyes, and the man's widened.\n\nThe blood, Tony surmised. He's gotten a load of that.\n\n\"Tessa!\" the codger screamed. \"Gun!\"\n\nFuck this, Tony thought. He grabbed the end of a cane and twisted it sharply, easily breaking the old man's grip.\n\nTony stabbed the cane backward, envisioning driving it through his stomach to the other side.\n\nBreath wheezed out of the guy like a popped balloon. He wrapped his gnarled hands around the cane, and Tony sat up.\n\nHuh. Tony grinned. The cane had speared the old fuck, and his guts were now decorating the back. Nice.\n\nTony bounded to a standing position and roundhouse-kicked the old man with every ounce of his Were strength. He spun, tottering to a splat on the ground like a bowling pin. His chrome dome pegged the asphalt and bounced once, smacking the surface a second time. It cracked like an egg.\n\nBrains spilled over the black surface like an underdone breakfast, leaking out over the road.\n\nHe did a pivoting swagger, facing the wailing banshee in the background, and the first spray of bullets penetrated his chest like spears of chucked salt.\n\nTony opened his mouth, but the damage disallowed breathing at the moment. He toppled backwards.\n\nWhat the hell is that noise?\n\nHe realized his body was trying to heal the shot. Not one bullet but effectively hundreds.\n\nShotgun.\n\nFuck me.\n\nTony sat hard on the ground. The impact traveled his spine and landed in his skull with an instant, sickening headache.\n\nMore worrisome still were the twin barrels of a sawed off shotgun leveled at him.\n\n\"Don't do it, you dumb old bitch.\"\n\n\"I'm not old, and it's you that's the dumb one. Lying out in the middle of fucking nowhere and killing a man who was there to help.\"\n\nTony looked at her and his spirits dropped like a rock. Could his fucking luck get worse?\n\nShe lifted the shotgun and flung the butt into his chin. It rocketed him back six feet, and he landed on his back.\n\nStars like tossed diamonds mocked him in a velvet sky.\n\n\"I'm the Alpha female he picked up.\"\n\nHer grin was like the wolf that she was.\n\nThe next stab of the butt had Tony's head spinning. \"Fucking bitch!\" he slurred.\n\n\"Sticks and stones, 'tard,\" she said conversationally.\n\nPraile burned inside his skull, almost enough to keep him conscious. He passed out as she dragged his body by one arm across the road.\n\nIn the end, a rogue Were female had taken him by surprise.\n\n*\n\nTessa hauled the Were to a ditch and kicked his body into the gully that flowed with a foot of water, though it was the height of summer.\n\nThis little journey had been sketchy at best, and now she had an additional mess to worry about. She generally didn't concern herself with humans. The old man who'd given her the ride hadn't been a neutral acquaintance.\n\nWhen the male Were had casually murdered the human male, a surge of irrational anger had surprised Tessa. He was a dumb human.\n\nHowever, no one had ever shown her kindness. She was an unprotected, unmated female Alpha, and no male let her forget it. But this old human had trusted her.\n\nSomehow, Tessa had failed him.\n\nShe would not fail him now.\n\nTessa left the unknown male in the ditch. It was more than he deserved. Much more.\n\nIf she had the balls, she'd drown him. Tessa looked at the water inside the swale and hesitated.\n\nThen her gaze found Gus. She could already smell the decay beginning on his body.\n\nHe deserved a burial. He had been a good human.\n\nShe reluctantly left the Alpha male and went to Gus. She easily lifted his limp body and swung it over her shoulder. Tessa opened the back door of his vintage car and carefully arranged his body in the back. With a final glance at the Were, she slid into the driver's seat and took off.\n\nTessa should have smashed his offensive skull in. Or noticed that the murder of many lay like a cloak of dried venom over every bit of his body. Subduing the threat, and Gus dying, had simply gotten her too wrapped up. It was what she did.\n\nIt was what she'd had to do.\n\nTessa would again.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE\n\nTharell proceeded ahead of Julia and Jason. The pretense he maintained grew thin. Though the fey did not typically embrace luck, the Were could not smell a lie on a Sidhe. Their flesh simply didn't exude a detectable emotive scent. However, the Were were astute to the body's subtle tells. Tharell had not lived centuries atop centuries to learn nothing of other supernaturals. Because of his mixed blood, he could manage distance from Faerie better than others could.\n\nHe was sharp to the alert of vampire proximity.\n\nVampires could bring true death to the fey. They had always been mortal enemies. It had been most interesting that a distant Sidhe had chosen to lie with a vampire to produce the mixed-blood, Delilah. If they had ever allowed Tharell to choose a mate, she would be a temptation. There was something so attractive about dallying in the forbidden.\n\nA pungent smell touched him, and he held up a hand in a halting gesture.\n\nFootsteps ceased from behind, and Julia stood beside him. \"Have you found them?\"\n\nTharell nodded. He had endured almost forty minutes in the accursed metal vehicle, holding onto his churning guts by a thread. When he could finally exit, he'd felt instantly well. The steel tomb of the vehicle coupled with the jarring ride across moving terrain had been a challenge.\n\n\"They lie beneath us.\"\n\n\"Something smells like snake piss.\" Jason wrinkled his nose.\n\n\"An apt analogy,\" Tharell murmured. He lay on his side on the forest floor. He could hear the death bringers rise for the night like tunneling earthworms seeking the surface.\n\nTharell leapt to his feet and backed away, grabbing the Blooded Queen as he did.\n\n\"Hey!\" Jason followed the movement and anticipated where Julia would be as Tharell swung her away from the area. Jason gathered her against him before Tharell's slow spin left her.\n\nThe Red Weres stepped back as a group.\n\nThe earth began to roll. The blanket of grass and rocks that dotted the surface undulated as though a large serpent did indeed live beneath the plot of soil.\n\nVampires burst through the earth. Large gaps like dirty mouths yawned from the ground, allowing the undead to eject like rockets. Tharell forced his hand away from the dagger at his side with monumental effort. His skin crawled with the need to slay the death bringers.\n\nHe held his instincts in check. Constantly reminding himself of the end result.\n\nThe goal: infiltration of Faerie.\n\nThe vampires held nothing in check. They assailed the intruders of their territory with a unity borne of purpose.\n\nAn eerie light shone, leveling the vamps that rushed the group.\n\nIt came from Julia, spectral, perfect, and dominating everyone within range.\n\nTharell fell to his knees before it. It was captured sun. Fissures of jewels lay mercy to its glitter, shards of light speared the supernaturals all, and the vampires cried into the heat of it.\n\nTheir shrieks and howls were painful even to Tharell.\n\n\"Stop,\" Julia commanded softly. Tharell dared to look at the Rare One, and she stood shining. The light was integral to her being, and she looked the part of the blood she carried.\n\nAngelic.\n\nTharell's demonic blood boiled in direct response, her purity water to the oil inside his veins. He reveled in the contrast, drowning in his shame, claiming emotion so strong he thought he would never feel again.\n\nThe vampires crawled to Julia's feet for her subjugation, laying their heads between hands cupped as though in prayer.\n\nThe light dimmed then finally grew dark.\n\nTharell allowed himself a single, shattered breath. The first of a half-dozen he forced into his starved lungs.\n\nHe had never endured anything so terrible. His gaze went to his skin. A light smolder evaporated as quickly as it rose. Tharell darted his eyes around to see if anyone had witnessed the evidence of his lineage, but all eyes were on the vampires.\n\nRelief left the tips of his fingers and toes tingling.\n\nJason was the only one who remained standing; the rest of the group were daze. Shaken.\n\nJulia began with one word. \"William.\"\n\nThe vampires' heads rose from the pillows of their hands.\n\nWhen she had finished speaking, the vampires no longer lay on the earth's floor but stood at her side.\n\nTharell shook his head. Julia Caldwell was fulfilling her role as every supernatural bible said she would. Even the book of Faerie mentioned her coming, and the opposition that would present itself.\n\nTharell sometimes wished the small things in the millennia since his birth had not grown so large in his mind or so black in his heart.\n\nTharell steeled himself for what would come to pass.\n\nHis thoughts broke as introductions were made. The one who seemed to be the leader confirmed it. \"I am Brynn, William's second. We knew of his death when our power was depleted.\"\n\nTharell lifted his eyebrows. The news puzzled him.\n\n\"When he died, it made you weaker?\" Julia asked.\n\nBrynn surveyed the group. He was counting his numbers as less, Julia's sheer talent range and identity necessitating his submission.\n\nHis answer was an unhappy \"Yes.\" His black gaze fell on each of them. \"However, we regain what we've lost day by day. We rest at day and feed at night.\"\n\n\"On anything?\" Truman asked. Even Tharell could hear the human sarcasm in his tone. He found it interesting how the newly changed Were so often wore the shadow of who they had been in their previous life.\n\n\"No,\" Brynn said softly. \"It must be humans.\"\n\nJulia sighed. Tharell watched, saying nothing. Jason put his arm around her.\n\n\"I am sorry, not for what we need to consume to live, but that you're bothered by it,\" Brynn said. He and the five others of his small kiss kept their eyes on the warrior.\n\nNot a good development.\n\n\"No,\" Julia responded softly. \"I stayed with the Seattle coven for over a year. I know what it was.\"\n\n\"Gabriel?\" Brynn inquired and Julia nodded.\n\n\"He's the bastard that started all the trouble with your coven. If it hadn't been for him being in bed with your leader, William might be alive right now.\"\n\nTharell didn't correct her, though William had been dead the instant he stepped inside Faerie. No Sidhe would allow a death bringer to live within. They were too opposite, enemies for centuries. The bite of a vampire was disastrous, as Queen Darcel learned firsthand through the hybrid, Delilah.\n\nBrynn cupped his chin, alabaster skin slightly shining in the paleness of the moonlight like polished bone. \"None of us have the blood of the Singer; there are no shifters. Much of what we've lost has been by your hand.\"\n\nJulia shook her head. \"I can't deny that when you entered our lands we used lethal force.\"\n\nBrynn barked out an unhappy laugh. \"Yes, very lethal.\"\n\nTharell knew of the burning corpse's flesh. The Singers believed in fire as a cleanser.\n\n\"Remember, your leader tortured William to find me.\"\n\n\"I do.\" His gaze remained on the Rare One. \"I have agreed to the alliance. There was much potential in William's leadership now lost. Though the sacrifice was worth it.\"\n\nJulia bowed her head. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"There are not enough Singers to lose every Region to a wolf gone mad. As vampire, we understand the potential shift in the food load if the highest blood quality is suddenly expunged from existence.\"\n\nJulia looked ready to make a scathing comment at the comparison to livestock when the Red Were broke in.\n\n\"A demonic,\" Slash said, and Brynn turned to him with a nod.\n\n\"Worse. But it doesn't matter. If the Were bleeds, he can die.\"\n\nHe could bleed, Tharell knew.\n\n\"Once true death is upon him, the strength of the metal is no longer fueled by his genes. He is gone. The blade will grow dim and be no more powerful than regular metal.\" Brynn looked around him, gauging the understanding of his words.\n\nJulia inhaled deeply in relief, and the Were and vampire regarded each other as tentative allies. It might be the time Tharell needed.\n\nNow to find a surface of water and convey to Gabriel what had transpired. If he played things perfectly, it would seem as though the two covens had previously allied, and they would be blamed. If more were killed, then the babe Jacqueline carried would go to its calling.\n\nTharell couldn't anticipate every eventuality, and part of his future was yet unwritten. However, sometimes the inherent excitement of living lay in the very unpredictability of an uncertain future. It was all Tharell truly had. The only color of living.\n\n\"Where is Region Two?\" Brynn asked, and the vampires gathered around him shifted in readiness.\n\n\"Montana,\" Julia said. Tharell could taste her reluctance to give away the location of another Singer retreat.\n\nHowever, it was the lesser of the evils. Knowledge of the vulnerable Singers' location was critical to assist in the protection of the indefensible.\n\nTharell smiled, made his excuses, and wandered off before the untenable car trip to Region Two began.\n\nHe would find water while the vampires moved ahead with their part and secured the perimeter of the Singer fortress of America's north central region.\n\nTharell would leave forthwith.\n\nRight after speaking to Gabriel through water and magick.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO\n\nTony rolled to his side, his body shaking with injury and chilled by the cold water of the ditch. He heaved anything that remained inside his stomach into the weeds.\n\nBitch, he thought in uncharitable reflection. Though realistically, he was lucky to be alive. He had only himself to blame. Tony should have smelled a female Alpha five miles away. But no. He'd been so intent on killing the old jag up, he'd royally fucked up what should have been a simple carjacking. Now a female Alpha had handed him his ass, and he had jack shit to repair the multiple chest wounds from the shot with which she'd sprayed him.\n\nTony scabbed his way out of the ditch, his talons pushing out in sluggish response to the small surge of survival adrenaline that remained. It was more than surviving. He had to consider Praile.\n\nIf Tony didn't continue east and slaughter every Singer in his path, the end that Praile saw through would be worse.\n\nEternal.\n\nThings never shut down in the hot place. Praile was creative in his ministrations for those who didn't tow the fucking mark.\n\nLying in a ditch, evacuating his guts on the side of the road, was definitely not the follow-through that would free him of his obligations.\n\nTony would have to kill and feed. Then he would have to get his ass over to Two and get those Singers dead.\n\nHis thoughts touched briefly on Jacqueline, now knocked up by the jellybean fey. Fucking Unseelie.\n\nShe'd been a tender morsel to dominate.\n\nTony growled, jerking himself out of the ditch. No use crying over spilt lust. There'd be more females to hate on. Right now, it was Praile's agenda or he'd never have another thing to toy with. It'd be endless agony.\n\nBeing a bully had its plus side, but an even bigger bully was in charge now.\n\nTony moved into the forest, weaker than he'd ever been.\n\nHe sighted a small herd of elk. Hunger overcame all other instincts.\n\nHe ran.\n\nKilled.\n\nAnd hungered no more.\n\n*\n\nJacqueline tried not to cling, alternately loving her newfound kind streak and hating the new weakness. It seemed she could not be both.\n\nThere was a reserve in the way Domiatri treated her, as there was from the rest. Even the vampire had given pause when introductions had been made. Jacqueline understood. She'd tried to kill their blood messiah. The vampire looked at Julia Caldwell as the savior of their kind, the refresher of humanity's precious blood load.\n\nBefore, Julia had been a target for Jacqueline to take out.\n\nJacqueline had been deep under the influence of withdrawal sickness. Even now, though her proximity to a fey mound had always been too distant for her to understand what it could have meant for her to be closer, she felt slightly ill.\n\nBut she was making it possible for Domi to exist in this realm longer than a day. He siphoned, or borrowed, from her other genes while she grew weaker.\n\nThey needed to return to Faerie.\n\nHer hand went to her belly. She was suddenly afraid. Fear felt foreign to Jacqueline, accustomed to being the intimidator. Not the intimidated.\n\nDomi took her elbow, and she startled slightly. \"I do not like having you near Tony again.\"\n\nShe spoke the truth, \"He does not look to kill me but to kill Singers of the purest blood.\"\n\nDomi wore his disquiet like clothing, though he nodded his assent. \"I will find Tharell, and he can search out the vagrant without me. I feel Faerie's call and need to protect my offspring.\"\n\nJacqueline frowned, thinking of his wording, trying not to remember Tony's use of her. \"What of Tharell lasting outside of Faerie? Won't he sicken?\"\n\nDomi gave a rough exhale, pegging his hands on strong hips. \"He will, but it is not a quick thing. As a Sidhe, I cannot spend an inordinate amount of time away from the sithen. It is a kind of sustenance as well as a sentient being. It is fuel for well-being. Your presence affords more time, but it is not an indefinite thing.\"\n\n\"But not for Tharell?\" Jacqueline thought it odd Tharell was so terribly second-class inside of Faerie.\n\n\"No. He is not pureblooded Sidhe. He possesses enough for immortality, but it is not enough...\"\n\n\"For acceptance,\" Jacqueline finished.\n\nDomi's shoulders slumped. His smooth green flesh was like grass with fresh dew and shone slightly in the deepening night. Soon he would look as the trees did in the wind, shadows of soft black that moved with the rhythm of nature.\n\nHis face fell into solemn lines. \"It is not of my choosing. Tharell is a great warrior and has been a good friend. Many do not understand his composition does not make the man but his deeds.\"\n\nJacqueline worried her teeth at her lip. \"So we'll return to Faerie?\"\n\nDomi gave a sudden grin, the white of his teeth so startling in the gloom she took a step back. Something in that smile smacked of maleficence, as well as an abiding sadness shrouding him. He seemed utterly pleased to have rescued Jacqueline from her mistreatment by Tony and her evil nature was in large part a manifestation of fey sickness. Or the lack of Faerie to \"feed\" her.\n\nJacqueline understood Tony needed to be stopped. The evilness remaining inside her rejoiced at the very idea of witnessing his demise. But a greater need overtook petty concerns such as vengeance. Her child that she carried, the first one she thought of with tenderness, was counting on her to survive. For the first time in memory, it mattered to Jacqueline that something besides herself was depending on her.\n\nNow Domiatri would confer with Tharell, and she would return to Faerie. Not to be left with her torturer but to live there while her belly swelled with Domi's child. She had been assured just how important her Singer's blood would be to the people of Faerie.\n\nHowever, not a great deal more had been expounded on. It lay with her like uneasy tidings, half-told, lesser understood.\n\nRuling as a Singer of royal blood did not motivate her. No great reception waited for her at Region Two. Her subjects loathed her. She'd ruled with a tyrannical fist. They'd obeyed out of fear, not respect. Tony would have arrived, and the Jacqueline from before would have responded as she always had: putting her best people forward to die while she escaped.\n\nHer face grew hot with thoughts of the past. All she could do now was go forward. Staying at the conquered Region One was out of the question. Jacqueline did not wish to face Scott when and if, he returned. Or her vampire daughter, Delilah. Jacqueline would not be welcome if she returned to Region Two.\n\nDomi correctly stated that Faerie was her best option. He'd been too diplomatic to say it was her only option.\n\nHe scattered her thoughts as he stood beside her. \"Yes\"\u2014he cupped the back of her head\u2014\"we'll go. Even if I must \u02bbpull rank', as the humans say.\"\n\nJacqueline nodded, and he slid his hands from her head to her shoulders. She watched him walk away in search of Tharell.\n\nShe was bereft.\n\nJacqueline hated these new feelings of neediness.\n\nShe turned, and half a dozen eyes fell on her like beads of hate. They burned along her skin like fire ants.\n\nThe Singers who remained would never accept her either.\n\nJacqueline swung around in the opposite direction so she would not feel their hate any longer and walked slowly to the Singer mansion. She would eat and find a quiet room until Domi returned. She had made amends with the Rare One; the remainder would always hate her. Jacqueline could do nothing there. However, she didn't need to be around so many that wished her ill.\n\nJacqueline had a new life to think of. And though Domi did not love her, he acted on her behalf and it was more than she deserved.\n\n*\n\nTharell palmed the water, and Gabriel's face distorted then faded from the disturbed pool he had made with the gesture. He could not call back the things now set in motion.\n\nHe stood as Domiatri approached. Tharell grieved, and a wound seeped that would never heal.\n\nHowever, he remained without choice.\n\n\"Tharell?\" Domi asked, the moonlight turning his dark blue hair to silky ink in the low light. His eyes flashed silver, reflective like the wild animals of this region.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Suspicion had crept into his tone.\n\nAs well it should. The weight of old magick thickened the air, and the vibrating hum of its use could still be felt. As a full-blooded Unseelie Sidhe, Domi would sense it as though a woman had just applied perfume and left the room. The fragrance lingered.\n\nThey did not allow Tharell to use the greater ancient magicks, though he was Sidhe enough to perform them all, or allow his mating. They did not want his genes passed through.\n\nHe was not too much a mongrel that Queen Darcel hadn't wanted a taste of mixed-flesh in her bed on occasion. On many occasions.\n\nHowever, Tharell had never spilled his seed in the deepest part of her. Not one drop.\n\nHe was not half-breed enough to be put anywhere but at the front lines of war. Tharell had fought and bled for Faerie but never been a part of the jeweled collective.\n\n\"Contacting the Northwestern coven,\" Tharell answered carefully.\n\nDomi thrust his chin back in surprise, and his sword cleared its sheathing. \"Tharell, we are here to assist the Blooded Queen.\"\n\nTharell felt ill for the betrayal and confusion on his friend's countenance.\n\nTharell shook his head sadly, his own hilt growing warm in his palm. \"No, you are here for that calling. I am here to guide my brethren to Faerie.\"\n\nA beat of ominous silence held portentous weight. The kind stagnant for only a moment before it erupts and boil over a pot left too long on a stove.\n\nUnderstanding filled Domi's eyes, but it was too late. Tharell dove at his friend, looking to wound fatally. He had a plan, the only one with mercy out of everything he had built thus far.\n\nDomi's sword made a whistling sound as he threw himself backward to avoid the metal of Tharell's blade, his arms sprung wide for balance.\n\nTharell had feinted.\n\nHe drove the hilt into Domi's femoral artery and hauled the blade upward, severing half the leg in one go, groin to hip.\n\nDomi did as everyone does when his or her leg is half-cut off. He fell.\n\nTharell grabbed that beautiful long hair and hauled the warrior to the water's edge.\n\nDomi's lifeblood was rushing out in an arcing spray. He clawed at Tharell as he spun behind him.\n\nTharell clapped a hand over Domi's mouth, just as a short dagger slid between Tharell's ribs.\n\nThe pain staggered him, yet he hung onto the hair and shoved the other Sidhe into the cool lake.\n\nStrong fingers crushed his forearms.\n\nBlood like octopus ink pulsed in time with Domi's heartbeat and pooled around them as they struggled against each other.\n\nBubbles rose.\n\nSilver eyes regarded him with a betrayal that needed no vocalization.\n\nA thousand years lived, and Tharell had never felt his misdeeds as powerfully as he did this one.\n\nThe second slice of his blade separated Domi's head from his body.\n\nTharell let go of the hair he'd always admired and wished for from afar.\n\nDomiatri's body bled as his head bobbed on a lake far from Faerie.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE\n\n\"Who will stay?\" Julia asked. She looked at the small group then put a thumb to her chest. \"It's not going to be me. Tony's out there, and we need all the man\"\u2014she glanced at Cyn and Adi\u2014\"and woman power we can get.\"\n\n\"We stop that tool and save Two,\" Adi agreed.\n\n\"We Reds can stop him,\" Slash said. Thirteen Reds would accompany them, including Jason. No one knew for sure if the Reds would be able to withstand whatever magic was at work on the blade Tony wielded.\n\nTharell was just walking up. Julia's internal tally for the Tony hunt automatically included him, Jacqueline, and the green Sidhe.\n\nShe looked around at the clean grounds and couldn't help the memory of her people's gore rising inside her mind. She closed her eyes against the red tide of their death, but it remained.\n\nIt was all very premeditated, the planning of Tony's murder. Though it couldn't be helped. He'd slaughtered nearly everyone in One. Julia didn't reflect on the people she'd personally lost. It must wait for later.\n\nThrilled to leave thoughts she couldn't dwell on behind, Julia thought of Scott and Lucius. She turned to Angela. \"Do you feel anything?\"\n\nThe girl shook her head.\n\n\"It's not like that. I can only know things if they're right here.\" She brought a palm up in front of her face.\n\nScott. Julia was no longer soul-bound. But she mourned his absence and worried about what the Reds might be doing to him while they stood around planning Tony's murder. She couldn't spare their resources to save two Combatant when a hundred Singers were in jeopardy.\n\n\"So the vamps have gone ahead, and Tom Harriet is still out there with who knows how many more Reds...\"\n\n\"And some important peeps are unaccounted for,\" Cyn reminded her. Julia already knew. Reagan, Delilah, Manny, and Victor were only a few of the important supernaturals not dead.\n\nThey were also not there.\n\nJulia blew out a slow breath, tired to the core. Small wisps of hair settled around her face. Eyes that had never regarded her before as someone who provided answers now looked to her.\n\n\"Okay, I think we need to get going and meet the vamps in Montana.\" Julia looked at the assembled faces. \"Who's rested enough to take three of our SUVs and start driving tonight?\"\n\nThree hands rose, one Truman's.\n\nJulia smiled. \"Truman and...\"\n\nJason squeezed her shoulder, and she pressed her face against his knuckles.\n\n\"Jason and...\"\n\nBrynn stepped forward. Julia gave a slight gasp. \"What?\"\n\nThe Reds circled the lone vamp.\n\nShe couldn't keep the surprise out of her voice. \"Why didn't you go with the others?\" She assumed he would have headed up the reconnaissance with the other four.\n\nHe narrowed his eyes at the Reds. \"Back off. I mean no harm to the Rare One.\"\n\n\"Right.\" Jason's body tensed around her like clinging vine.\n\nJulia gave a short laugh. \"I'm their ultimate food goddess. I think it's okay.\"\n\nBrynn smiled at her joke, and his fangs appeared. \"I don't require sleep, just no sunlight.\"\n\nOf course, Julia thought. \"You sent them ahead...\"\n\n\"And I will drive until dawn.\"\n\nTruman harrumphed and they turned to him. \"Not bad for a bloodsucker.\"\n\nBrynn's grin widened as he gave a slight bow. \"Yes.\"\n\nThen he hissed.\n\nThe Reds retreated.\n\nVenom dripped from his fangs, the skin of his face stretched taut with his emotion. \"I am not endlessly patient.\" His eyes bled to cruelty, meeting theirs for a flat endless second. \"Let's go.\"\n\nJulia swallowed hard, remembering William.\n\nShe followed along with Jason.\n\nBrynn pivoted in their direction. His eyes held humor and challenge. \"For those of you who aren't afraid.\"\n\nJason raised his middle finger. \"Not of you, vampire.\"\n\nBrynn lifted his lips in a smirk, the tips of his fangs flashing and disappearing instantly. \"Good.\"\n\nJason dropped his hand but not his guard.\n\nCyn and Adi rode in the last SUV as the Reds, Singers, and lone vampire made their way to Montana.\n\nThough none realized they ran nearly parallel with Tony. They presumed to chase him.\n\n*\n\nTony stuffed the body of the hotel guy in the trunk of the car he'd stolen along the way.\n\nJust humans this time, thank moon.\n\nThe owner of the shabby thing had balked at Tony's look.\n\nTony had laughed when he got a load of his own reflection later. He appeared to have bathed in a tub of blood then rolled in a vat of mud and walked around for a day letting it dry to a cracked, desert-like finish. There was also the issue of his holey attire. And not the religious variety. Tony thought more mottled, half-healed skin showed than clothing. The bitch's shot had shredded his clothes and peppered his skin with badly healing pockmarks, filthy and punctured.\n\nThat's probably why the guy picked up the phone mere seconds after Tony walked through the doors to his cheesy motel lobby.\n\nThe proprietor had been a startled owl with glasses so thick his eyes appeared as big as a toad's.\n\nTony had jerked the receiver from his hand and ripped it out of the wall in one motion. He'd been sufficiently spooked, trying to scramble away. A burst of talons through his back slowed his momentum considerably. With a jerk and hop, Tony leapt behind the desk in full evisceration mode.\n\nHis kills were so messy. Even he could admit the fault there. It didn't bother him.\n\nSo now, Doug was stuffed inside the trunk of the stolen vehicle. It nearly made up for the supreme fuck-up with the surprise Alpha bitch.\n\nA pale and fleshy arm dangled like a swinging pendulum.\n\nCouldn't have that. Tony casually swiped it back inside the cramped space.\n\nHe whistled, making his way back into the lobby and hit the No Vacancy sign. That accomplished, he tore the keys to the front door off a loose nail.\n\nThe nail skittered across the old linoleum floor as Tony spied a vending machine filled with pastries.\n\nPerfect. Sugar was always a ready solution to faster healing.\n\nHe strolled to the machine and, using a discarded shirt\u2014Doug had most recently lost the need of it\u2014blasted a hole through the glass with said shirt wrapped around his knuckles. Glass shards clinked like frozen rain on the battered floor.\n\nPastries of every variety poured out at a trickle that became a geyser. Tony scooped up an armful and went to the first available room.\n\nAfter eating ten slightly stale delicacies, he cut his gore-soaked clothes away and took a scalding shower.\n\nHe padded naked to the middle of the room and decided he'd need new threads.\n\nHe twirled the master keys on his finger, counting twenty-two rooms.\n\nSomeone would be a close fit for clothing. Time to shop.\n\n*\n\nJacqueline grabbed Tharell's arm, stone beneath her grip. \"You say Domiatri elected to return to Faerie and you would go on alone?\"\n\nTharell nodded.\n\nA frown puckered her face. It was beyond odd. Domi had made it clear he would discuss their early return to Faerie with Tharell. That Tharell would go on\u2014without them. Jacqueline relayed this.\n\nHis eyes became hooded. \"We do not have time to discuss the details. The Blooded Queen and half the Reds have already gone for Two\u2014your old headquarters,\" Tharell reminded her unnecessarily. It stung. He held the door open to the large car, sweeping a dark purple hand at the empty space. His palm was light lavender.\n\nShe suddenly felt like crying. Her newfound emotional well was terrible, exhilarating, and ultimately exhausting.\n\nTharell continued, \"It is I who should have qualms about re-entering this horrible transport of metal. You will be safe. Domi prepares a place for you and his unborn child in Faerie even as we speak.\"\n\nJacqueline hesitated while Tharell calmly waited by the door. He made it sound so logical. However, her old nature struggled to the surface. Something did not feel right. Jacqueline rolled her lower lip between her teeth.\n\nTharell's grip on the car door, so tight that his normally purple-hued skin looked whitish-lavender in the harsh porch light, gave her further pause.\n\nJacqueline did not like it. She took a final scan of the surrounding fields that bled into the woods. Finally, her gaze fell on the lake.\n\nThe last place she'd seen Domiatri.\n\nWith a sigh, Jacqueline hiked up into the offered seat. The Reds squished inside lifted their lips in a show of distaste to sharing a vehicle with a known traitor.\n\nJacqueline turned from their accusation, looking out the window as the vehicle pulled away. She had never felt more alone. Before, Jacqueline had only herself, and it had been enough, solidarity with only her. She'd not been self-aware enough to notice. Now she was hyper-aware of her place in this world.\n\nIt was lowly.\n\nTharell sat in the front seat as Brynn began to drive.\n\nHe gave her a look she thought meant a show of support. Instead, it deepened her feelings of disquiet.\n\nHis next words made it worse. \"I shall take care of you until you meet with Domi once again.\"\n\nJacqueline did not respond, looking at the passing scenescape. Her eyes once again sought the black lake where she had last seen Domiatri as it disappeared from view.\n\nDomi, why did you go and not even say goodbye?\n\nDomi apparently had not felt he owed her even that.\n\nYet, she had wanted it.\n\nJacqueline put a palm to the glass as though she could touch the warrior who had not given her the word of closure she needed most.\n\nHer forehead stayed against the glass until the last Red fell asleep.\n\nSleep never came for her.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR\n\nSlash knew something was afoot with the purple fey warrior. He hadn't been war-torn and buffeted not to notice the subtle signals. But for the life of him, he was unsure the motivation.\n\nIt did not benefit the fey to kill Julia. She was the Blooded Queen, and everyone wanted her alive. He took her off the list of potentials. His thoughts mulled over the possibilities of what else there was.\n\nThe facts presented themselves. Tony had gone bat-shit crazy, was obviously part demonic, and had a blade juiced up with the blood of a high demon. Those were nothing to fuck with. Slash understood very few supernaturals possessed any immunity to demonics.\n\nThen there was the counterpart, aware that the blood of the angelic ran through Singers' veins. Terrific.\n\nSlash drummed his fingers on the stiff, borrowed jeans as he drove.\n\nIf Tony was truly demonic and wielding a weapon charged with a high demon's blood, their collective gooses were cooked. Unless Julia could somehow dampen its power.\n\nSlash chuckled. He clenched his hand around the steering wheel, making it creak in protest. Julia was basically an angel.\n\nHis smile faded when he wondered what Tharell's angle could be. His mind turned over the different scenarios a second time. Slash touched on the females, always critical to every scenario. The only species with equal numbers of genders were the Singers.\n\nAn epiphany struck him.\n\nThere were few females making their way to Region Two.\n\nSlash knew a trap when he saw one.\n\nSomehow, the females were key. He'd like to take the easy road and settle on Julia, but that was too simple and obvious. He had already dismissed her as the focus.\n\nIf not her, then who? Adrianna\u2014his wolf flinched at anything to do with her\u2014was nothing exceptional except her position as an Alpha female. That was distinctive to the Were, but not important to demonics. Cyn was both Singer Healer and newly turned part Red Were. Interesting combination but again, not exceptional.\n\nWhat could it be?\n\nJacqueline came to mind, but he dismissed it. She was pregnant by an Unseelie Sidhe, and with such a mixed lineage, she couldn't be anything but a mess of genetics for a demonic.\n\nIt must be Julia.\n\nHowever, how could Tony hope to combat what he'd have to assume was coming after him.\n\nUnless...\n\nSlash's eyes widened.\n\nThere'd be a huge welcoming party from Hades.\n\nThe Reds could hold their own. Slash rubbed the scar that bisected his face like a talisman. It ached sometimes, usually when blood would be shed.\n\nHis own.\n\nAnd that of others.\n\n*\n\nJulia's eyes slid open. Sleeping against Jason had been wonderful, but now she was paying with a crick in her neck. She moved, and his arm slipped from around her.\n\nShe lifted her chin and gave him a sleepy smile.\n\n\"Hey you,\" Jason said and kissed the tip of her nose.\n\n\"Hey.\" She cupped her hand over breath she was sure was all kinds of bad.\n\nHe smiled. \"For better or worse, Jules. I bet my mouth smells like ass, too.\"\n\nJulia laughed. \"Nice.\"\n\nHe tucked her in, squeezing her against his side, and her ribs protested the movement. She shoved her arm behind him, feeling his muscles clench, and he laughed and arched his back.\n\n\"Still ticklish?\" she asked in an evil voice.\n\nHe nodded, a dimple disappearing as quickly as it came. \"Yeah, thanks...\"\n\n\"We're coming to the end,\" Brynn announced without inflection.\n\nThe pale dawn began to suffocate the darkness.\n\nBrynn drew Julia's gaze.\n\nHis skin was smoking.\n\n\"Oh my God,\" Julia said, \"we've got to get you in the ground.\"\n\nHe gritted his teeth, and Julia wanted to clap her hands over her ears at the sound. \"Yes,\" was all he said.\n\nShe was a shitty leader. She should have thought this through and known that Brynn would blow up. So dumb. Julia looked around the dim guts of the car, her eyes lighting on a folded canvas tarp. \"Pull over.\"\n\nHe didn't argue. He'd begun to smell like simmering flesh.\n\nBrynn jammed the gearshift into park as the tires sank into the soft gravel at the shoulder.\n\nHe hopped out of the car as Jason and Julia slid back.\n\nBrynn barely made it to the ditch before he threw up.\n\nBlood splattered like a can of thrown paint. Fresh scarlet coated the ditch and halfway up the embankment. Droplets hit the trunk of a nearby tree and slowly scrolled down the deep ridges on the bark.\n\n\"What the hell?\" Jason yelled, throwing himself at the vampire.\n\n\"Drag him around back,\" Julia yelled, running for the trunk. It was an older model with a handle on a single swinging door. She tore it open, so thankful it was unlocked she could barely stand it.\n\nJason half-dragged, half-carried Brynn around the back. His skin had cracked in small fissures like shattered glass. The cracks deepened before her eyes and begun to run further.\n\n\"Get him underneath this.\" Julia threw up the corners of the canvas and Jason positioned the poisoned vamp underneath.\n\nHe gave a rasping sigh as they cut off the growing light.\n\nJulia tucked the canvas around Brynn's body as the first rays hit the SUV like a slap.\n\nJason half-fell against the side of the black rig. He plowed his fingers through already disheveled hair. \"Goddamn... that was cutting it close.\"\n\nJulia nodded.\n\n\"I can't believe I saved a vampire.\" He shook his head. \"How many shades of bizarre is that?\"\n\n\"About as weird as us racing against Tony to save our people?\"\n\nThey shared a look of tense disbelief.\n\n\"Let's go.\" He seated her beside him in the passenger seat.\n\n\"Are we almost there?\" Julia asked and Jason smiled, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. Scabs from fighting scraped along her skin.\n\n\"You're like a kid.\"\n\n\"I only wish.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he said with more than a touch of sadness. \"True that.\"\n\nHe put the truck into gear, and they pulled away.\n\nJulia glanced behind her.\n\nBrynn's blood stood like an unmarked crime scene. She turned to face ahead before grief took hold and never let go.\n\nShe still had a job to do, and she couldn't let the abyss of sadness take over.\n\nLives were depending on her.\n\n*\n\nTony kicked the severed limb inside the door and slammed it tight, putting weight against it to secure the latch. He didn't bother locking it.\n\nHe untucked one lapel from the borrowed coat and sighed. Fucking finally.\n\nHe strode to the stolen car just as sirens began to wail in the background. He wasn't much for speculation, but he assumed someone had gotten too clever for their own good.\n\nTony frowned. Ten rooms had been occupied.\n\nWho'd squealed?\n\nHe paused for a moment. Tony didn't have many of those to waste. He jogged to the other nine rooms and kicked in the doors of each. His nose did its job, finding nothing but decaying meat.\n\nHe was stumped.\n\nA woot from a siren that was closer still alerted him his seconds had run out.\n\nDammit. He hated there might be a potential witness. He scanned the scene, seeing nothing, missing nothing.\n\nHe sprinted back to the running car. Tony leapt inside and slammed the shifter into drive, putting the clutch practically through the floorboards.\n\nGravel sprayed as the wheels turned and finally grabbed asphalt.\n\nTony whistled as he crossed the Idaho-Montana border.\n\nA lone female Were had been left behind. She hung up the receiver from her call to the human authorities. The rogue Alpha male had slaughtered her human guardians.\n\nHe had not scented her, as Taliah had not entered her change. It had been a near thing.\n\nShe could hear the human officers.\n\nA tear slipped out as she surveyed her beloved male guardian, his body discarded as a heavy weight against the door, an arm missing and driven between him and the door.\n\nTaliah looked for any escape and found it in the bathroom window.\n\nShe heard shouts and was scared.\n\nShe must use her rare talent or be interrogated about her own kind. Yet phoning the police had distracted the insane Were.\n\nHer wolf would not help her in this situation.\n\nBut the bird inside her would.\n\nShe muffled the cry of pain that escaped, ending in a note of a birdcall.\n\nA snowy white dove spread its wings, turning its neck as eyes like ebony crystal found the window, open enough to allow a small body to move through.\n\nTaliah sprung to the ledge and, looking out, flew through the hole and toward her den. She needed to warn her people that a murderer approached them.\n\nThe cops never saw a pure-white bird make a deliberate slow circle above their heads before moving east.\n\nThe carnage distracted them too much to notice.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE\n\nA terrified group greeted Julia and Jason.\n\nThey were also looking awfully ready to lynch Jacqueline.\n\nJulia walked into the middle of some bad blood. There simply wasn't time to deal with the backlash against their leader. Tony was coming, and Brynn's vamps were near. They hid for now as the day was at its height.\n\n\"I say we jail her forever,\" one tall and icily beautiful man, who looked eerily like Victor with his dark blond hair and pale gray eyes, said. He drew closer, and Jacqueline retreated a step. Julia knew firsthand how powerful Jacqueline was, but she was no match for a crowd of talents fueled by adrenaline and emotion. Bad combo.\n\nJulia put her hands to her temples in a hopeless attempt to ease the ache of the mind-noise that coursed through her brain in a numbing sea of static. She let her hands drop and walked in front of Jacqueline, facing the new group.\n\n\"Listen up!\" Julia blasted out, and Cyn chuckled somewhere. She plowed forward into the silence of their surprise. \"My name is Julia Caldwell...\"\n\nNoise erupted again.\n\nJason put two fingers to the edges of each side of his mouth and gave a whistle so shrill Julia cringed.\n\n\"Shut up,\" Jason said and instantly, three large Singer males fenced him in.\n\n\"Don't even think it, dudes,\" he warned.\n\n\"I am the Rare One,\" Julia said, hoping for things not to escalate further.\n\n\"We know who you are,\" the one who looked like Victor said.\n\n\"Are you a relative of Victor?\"\n\nHis face flooded with surprise, and he nodded once. \"He is my brother.\"\n\nGreat. And the bad hits just kept on coming.\n\n\"And she\"\u2014he jabbed a finger in Jacqueline's direction\u2014\"is the reason he is no more.\"\n\nOh boy.\n\nJulia put up her hands. \"Listen, I know there's a lot of hate for Jacqueline....\"\n\nCheers interrupted her comment, and Julia frowned. \"But she's a changed woman... and a pregnant one.\"\n\nThe crowd grew quiet, and Tharell showed himself.\n\nEveryone backed away at his appearance, the rush of whispering uneasy. Julia sensed the undeniable energy of talents readying themselves.\n\nThings were getting out of hand. Tharell had just revealed himself like an alien and the Singers of Region Two were getting aggressive.\n\n\"Listen! Please!\" Julia begged and two more whistles and a nod from Jason let her speak. \"There is a rogue werewolf who carries a special blade dipped in the blood of a demon and he's killed most of...\" She stuttered to an incoherent stop. The grief threatened to swallow her.\n\nJulia slowly lowered her head to her chest. She couldn't contain her shaking. She couldn't say the words\u2014they were so horribly final.\n\nTharell finished for her. \"The Singers of Region One are now dead.\"\n\n\"Not all,\" Slash interjected, and Julia lifted her head as she frowned at the look he shot Tharell. It wasn't friendly.\n\nTharell leveled his own stare at Slash and gave a long blink. Julia guessed that was his silent agreement. However, she wasn't too sure with Tharell, he was hard to read.\n\nJulia collected herself like a broken teacup and looked out over the hundred or so faces. The thrum of their likeness was like a battery that powered her. Mainly men, some women and a few children gazed back at her.\n\nThis was all so hard. Laying all the details out. The deaths, the oncoming murderer. Jacqueline the Unpopular returning, Tharell cropping up looking all... purple.\n\n\"We have not heard of this\"\u2014Victor's brother began, indicating Tharell. \"And the threat of a demonic has been so rare and so long ago, it is no longer mentioned. It's not part of the public consciousness. As far as our blood, we have always known it is anchored in the heavenly.\"\n\nJulia was swimming upstream with a group motivated the right way but not awake to the mortal danger coming toward them. A terrible storm was ready to tear them apart, and she was the only one in the know.\n\n\"He's going to kill us all,\" Julia said.\n\nThere were gasps and murmurings but not the panic she thought they ought to have, considering there had been a mass killing in their neighboring Region. She and Jason exchanged an anxious glance.\n\n\"I am Gallagher, and am one of the oldest at this Region,\" Victor's brother introduced himself.\n\nJacqueline spoke up for the first time. \"I have suffered at the hands of this Were, and he has a void where compassion would normally be. We are in grave danger.\"\n\nA nearby Singer scoffed at her comment. \"Whatever acts he has committed against you are deserved.\"\n\nJulia had had enough. The feeling of surrealism descended as she took on the role of defending Jacqueline. Again.\n\n\"Rape?\" Julia stepped forward in challenge, her gaze surfing the crowd.\n\nThe male Singer backed away and stuttered, his face filled with the blood of embarrassment. \"No, I did not know...\"\n\n\"Then shut the fuck up, why don't ya?\" Adi said. \"Jacqueline's had a case of The Dumbs for about... I don't know, forever. But now she's changed, she's sick because she hadn't ever been to Faerie, and now she has.\" Adi squinted her hazel eyes at the crowd, daring them. There were no takers. She went on, \"She got knocked up by a green Sidhe warrior, and she doesn't want to be queenie anymore. So now you guys have Julia, so get over yourselves.\"\n\n\"I really like her,\" Jason said with a grin.\n\nJulia did, too. She got things said, summed up, and thrown out there for immediate consideration. That's what they needed.\n\nGallagher frowned, cupping his chin. \"She was forced by this Were?\"\n\nJacqueline kicked up her chin. \"Not in the beginning. When I first arrived at the Faerie mound, I was as I've always been. I allowed the vile wretch to use me in the hopes we could make the fey uncomfortable enough to release us.\" Her face grew pink, and she added quietly, \"To cause more mayhem in a bid for power.\"\n\nThere were mutterings of assent to this. Her people had known well the temperament of their leader.\n\nShe linked her hands together in a knot that appeared so uncomfortable Julia flexed her own fingers.\n\nJacqueline spoke to the ground. Her voice was a natural contralto, sultry and evocative. No one had trouble hearing her next words, \"When the environment began to work on my... sickness, his attentions became violent against my person.\" Her head rose. \"As I was no longer willing to play his game. And... my talents did not work in Faerie. The magick prevents talents from working correctly.\"\n\n\"You did nothing to help her?\" the Singer who'd first commented asked Tharell in a sharp voice.\n\nTharell nodded. \"When we became aware that the Singer was suffering at the hand of Anthony Laurent, we intervened.\"\n\n\"Who's \u02bbwe,'?\" he asked.\n\n\"Domiatri,\" Jacqueline stated quietly, \"The father.\"\n\nGallagher put his hands on his hips. \"This is all very untoward. A male claiming to be the mythological Faerie has come in our midst, while a Rare One we've only just heard about claims Region One is effectively no more. And a contingent of Red werewolves stands around making noise of defense and war. And our former leader was held in some kind of prison where she was abused then further assaulted by another male of your species, only to later become pregnant with the fey's offspring.\"\n\nHe frowned, then his face took on a new expression of disdainful amusement. Gallagher threw his head back and belly laughed. \"Forgive me if I am not, what would you call it, ah yes, 'on board' with all that you have relayed.\"\n\nGallagher looked around at the faces of the Singers. As Julia opened her mouth, he raised a hand to ward off her comment. \"And where is this other fey... Domiatri?\" he asked with a lilt of aggressive disbelief.\n\nTharell's entire face changed. The first genuine smile Julia had seen on his face in days, spread and stayed in a happy freeze.\n\nIt gave her the creeps.\n\n\"Why\u2014he is dead,\" Tharell stated, and Jacqueline turned to him, paling before Julia's eyes.\n\n\"What?\" Jacqueline asked, hand to chest. \"This is not funny, Tharell.\" She dropped her hand, and Julia saw a fine tremble to her body. Jacqueline was nearing the edge of whatever threads kept her together. Unraveling before their eyes.\n\nWelcome to my life, Julia thought.\n\nTharell looked down on her, his humor fading to nothing. \"No, but it was necessary.\"\n\nJulia let that comment percolate for about one second before terror shredded her as a many-bladed Chinese star.\n\nJulia's hair spun into her eyes, momentarily blinding her as she swung toward Jason. He was already moving, dragging her behind him as talons slammed out of his fingertips in a painful burst of rendered flesh.\n\nSlash leapt to Julia's side as well, hauling a bewildered Adi behind him as Jason shifted into a wolf, his human shell splattering around her. Julia barely had time to react but managed to throw a telekinetic shield around herself. The bits of him hit the surface invisibly and slid down in front of her as though a thin sheet of glass molded to her body covered her.\n\nShe let the entire thing go, and what remained of Jason's human body was chopped meat at her feet.\n\nShe stepped over the circle of his remnants and his wolf moved by her side.\n\nJulia was too late to stop him. He'd played the card so well that it seemed only Slash was ready.\n\nTharell held Jacqueline by the throat and jerked her backward. Her dark eyes, so like Scott's, were so human in that moment as they regarded each other.\n\nFear reigned supreme in Jacqueline's gaze, where only power and bloodlust had before.\n\nTharell taking Jacqueline to parts unknown was certainly a concern.\n\nBut the demons which bled out of the surrounding forest and circled the group really got Julia's attention.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX\n\nTharell scanned his surroundings and instantly assessed the options available to him.\n\nThe demonic had arrived in large enough numbers that the skin of the Singers who possessed sufficient angelic blood began to pale to partial transparency.\n\nTheir blood was reacting to the threat of their counterpart.\n\nVeins appeared on nearly three quarters of the Singers. The thin map work of circulation, lined in silver instead of the human species' blue, brightened and disappeared in time with their heartbeats.\n\nIt pulsed inside their skin like metallic lace.\n\nTharell smiled. He surmised they'd never faced their mortal enemy, their true place in this world unknown until now.\n\nYet their blood knew and summoned a response as ancient as it was automatic. The Blood Singers stood amongst the demonic in beautiful contrast. Had Tharell chosen another path, what was about to happen would have grieved him.\n\nThe Rare One was a thing of shining beauty. Her veins shimmered like small rivers of gold, lighting her unusual eyes from inside like golden flames, her hair a mane that floated like a cloud of gold as she glided into the circle of the Singers.\n\nThe demonic could not look upon her. She was as the sun, and they were weak before her light.\n\nJacqueline made a gurgling sound and Tharell sighed, loosening his hold.\n\nThen she launched him fifteen feet behind her and into the nearest tree trunk.\n\nTharell hit the old growth tree, and it did not yield.\n\nThough he was immortal, it still hurt like Hades to plow into a tree at thirty miles per hour.\n\nHe shook himself like a wet dog, picked himself off the ground, and walked toward her.\n\nTharell fell.\n\nHe looked down.\n\nBoth legs were broken, and one arm hung askew.\n\nHe snapped his face toward Jacqueline from his position on the forest floor, and she smiled. A little bit of the woman he'd first been acquainted with was peeking through the edges of that smug smile.\n\nTharell had underestimated his quarry.\n\nHe looked to the demonic nearest him and gave them telepathic orders.\n\nTheir black eyes slid away from Tharell and to the wayward Singer.\n\nPregnant with the one child that could ruin the demonic.\n\n*\n\nJacqueline was gratified. She had spun the traitor off her back like the garbage he had proven himself to be.\n\nHow dare he murder Domi? The pit of her stomach swarmed in emptiness, and she elected not to feed it with her ready despair.\n\nIf Jacqueline had been honest with herself, and she was never one for introspection, she would have realized she loved Domiatri. Jacqueline knew he did not feel as she. But he had treated her with tenderness, protection and respect. She had never known it.\n\nNever deserved it.\n\nShe felt a pang of guilt, remembering it could have been thus with Victor, but for her vile temperament.\n\nThere was no time to consider these thoughts, though they had run through her mind instantly.\n\nThree demons approached in a loose triangle as Tharell lay in a broken heap, trying to repair the damage she had wrought. She wasted a smile on him.\n\nThe wretched botch. He deserved everything she had managed against him.\n\nJacqueline gave no more attention to the whys behind his treachery. Tharell would pay.\n\nShe had mastered that in her past life, and the expertise had not left her, only the motivation.\n\nHeat like liquid fire beat along her skin, and Jacqueline inhaled deeply. The feel of burning from the inside did not subside. It was everywhere and nowhere specific but flowed through her, ice and fire that dove and spread through her flesh as the demons drew nearer.\n\nShe glared at the demons. Their blood flowed through skin that was different shades of scarlet.\n\nVeins flowed through their bodies like ink spilt over a parched river. Small horns decorated their heads, and whipping tails shook behind some of them like rattlers caught in a corner.\n\nThey were all male and similar in stature to her own species' warriors, though which one she could now claim lay in question. But first and foremost, she was of royal Singer blood, and that afforded certain talents and strengths the others did not possess.\n\nThe demonic moved aggressively against the Singers. Empty-handed, they did not have obvious weapons to use against their enemies.\n\nJacqueline looked around her. Many of the Singers' skin were now paper-thin, translucent and pale.\n\nSilver veins pulsed to shininess.\n\nTheir heartbeats, Jacqueline thought. Their circulatory system gets bright when their heart beats.\n\nShe brought her own hands up in front of her face.\n\nSilver veins edged with ebony glittered like roads of thread through her skin.\n\nWhen the first demon reached her, she turned the hand at which she'd been gazing and used her telekinetic abilities.\n\nA forked tongue shot out of its mouth, hissing as it blew backwards.\n\nJacqueline straightened and prepared for the next onslaught. Her heart caught in her throat.\n\nHer eyes widened as the one she had thrown into the forest rolled in a graceful somersault off the trunk into which he had slammed. He was instantly on his feet, the tail riding behind him like a macabre instrument of balance. He crouched low, facing her at approximately thirty feet away, and hissed, the black tail shaking in his anger.\n\nJacqueline's memories tumbled one over the other in a handful of seconds.\n\nShe would never be taken alive.\n\nHer life would no longer be lived only for evil. Jacqueline laid a hand over her belly and an answering pulse lit beneath her flesh as if in agreement.\n\nThere was someone else besides her.\n\nShe did not think of Domi. Could not.\n\nJacqueline moved her hands to her sides loosely and readied for battle.\n\nThen Tony appeared and her stomach dropped.\n\n*\n\nTony ditched the car on the road, tearing off the plates and spinning them into the opposite side of the road. The trees sucked up his garbage graciously, the tops of the forest latching onto the twisted metal in a loving embrace.\n\nHe smiled. He walked to the car and jammed a busted broom handle against the accelerator and the back of the driver's seat. He slammed the POS into drive, and it took off down an embankment that dove into a ravine.\n\nTires spinning, it launched off in a lurching Superman dive.\n\nGravel, water from a swollen river below, and broken limbs showered in reverse as the car nose-dove into the shallowest part of the river below.\n\nTony waited, seconds sliding into a minute, and the gas tank cooperatively blew. Tony instinctively covered his face as it grew hot from the burning wreckage.\n\nFan-effing-tastic, he thought with satisfaction. Good old Doug was laughing to pieces down there in the trunk. Literally. Of course, the dead had no humor. It was too perfect.\n\nHe laughed at his cleverness and backed away from the inferno.\n\nAfter about a quarter mile outside the immediate scent reach, he caught the one smell he'd been hunting before trashing the burning evidence.\n\nSingers.\n\nAnd one in particular: Jacqueline.\n\nThe grin on his face reflected his satisfaction.\n\nIt fit him perfectly as he'd slipped his human skin to go to wolfen the instant his nose guided him into the thickest part of the woods where his prize lay hiding.\n\nTony ran, the small animals of the forest moving like water split by a ship's prow. They scampered as he tore through their habitat.\n\nWhen he arrived where the Singers and demonic fought, he wore their small bodies to mid-shin.\n\nIf they did not move out of his way, he ran them into the ground.\n\nIt was this vision that filled Jacqueline's eyes when her gaze found him. He knew what she saw from the tenseness of her body.\n\nFucking weird, Tony thought. As he looked around at the Singers, he noticed they wore some kind of silver all over their skin.\n\nHe squinted, looking closer, and realized it was the blood coursing through their bodies.\n\nTony took in Praile's minions, and his bowels squeezed into a hard rope of tension.\n\nNo way was he going to fuck this up.\n\nHe raised the blade coated with the blood of a high demon and waded into the melee.\n\nIt was time to do the master's work.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN\n\nJacqueline stood stunned for all of three seconds as the fighting exploded all around her.\n\nDemons attacked the Singers and they fought with their talents.\n\nTony blew through two Singers with the blade.\n\nHe was moving closer to her.\n\nShe swung her gaze frantically about her as horns and talents locked. One demon used his tail, with a bulbous end spiked everywhere, as a mallet and he bashed in one Singer's head. Pulverized skull with brain matter blew apart like a bomb exploding, and the Singer fell to his knees.\n\nJacqueline stumbled then ran. She sought the Rare One, proof against the horrible strength of the blade. She could only Deflect as she ran and did so now, robbing some of the demonic who would assault her by making false visions pop up to confuse and disorient. Jacqueline could do so much more if she could only get to Julia.\n\nSweaty hands, hair, and limbs were everywhere as she slipped the grip of two demonics, only to be caught by a third.\n\nShe screamed as though death itself had captured her. And maybe it had.\n\nGallagher was suddenly there and she cried out in warning. Talons like knives of death lay against her skin and the Singer's blood shrieked in protest, shining like silver fire through his skin. The demonic that held her hissed at the vision of the shining Singer in front of him.\n\nThen Gallagher took his head with a sword swipe. The breeze as the blade swung through the meat of his neck allowed Jacqueline's release.\n\nGallagher caught her and a look of understanding passed between the two.\n\n\"I am sorry,\" Jacqueline shouted into the vacuum of noise.\n\n\"My sovereign,\" Gallagher responded, and Jacqueline sobbed in the middle of battle, when her life was at stake.\n\nIt was terrible timing, yet emotion was always without thought.\n\nHis sentiment meant that much. He was her only link to Victor, whom she had treated abysmally while under her rule.\n\nHe grabbed her about the waist and lifted her from where she had fallen.\n\nThey looked into each other's eyes, and he smiled. It was grim and tired but genuine.\n\nThen his mouth made a soft O, and Tony leaned over Gallagher's shoulder. \"Surprise, bitch!\"\n\nTony jerked the blade out of Gallagher's back and he slumped to the ground. Jacqueline spun away, running as if the devil was in pursuit.\n\nHe was.\n\nThe nightmare had found her.\n\n*\n\nJulia did not need her werewolf guards. The pool of red demonic swirled away from her, moving to her people, and she instinctively batted her hand in their direction. They bucked, arcing their bodies and falling where she flung energy.\n\nGold filtered out of her pores. It was full daylight, and her skin was soaked with what looked like glitter.\n\nIt was sweat. She was stunning the demons with her sweat.\n\nA shape whirled past, sprinting for her life. Jacqueline.\n\nTony was in hot pursuit.\n\n\"Julia, no,\" Adi yelled as Julia took off running. Jason and Slash accompanied her.\n\n\"Yes,\" she threw over her shoulder, doubling her speed. Julia moved in behind Tony, and he heard her.\n\nShe ran straight into the blade.\n\nIt was an agony for which she had no words.\n\nTony shouted in glee like a banshee wail of a warrior celebrating victory.\n\nJulia floated.\n\nHer hands wrapped around the blade of their own accord.\n\nTony's face froze.\n\nShe pulled it out of her gut and fell backward.\n\nJason tore forward, the dirt from his claws spraying her torso.\n\nShe watched as though out-of-body. Jason did not perform the obvious attack.\n\nTony readied his blade.\n\nHe moved around his body, going low and took out his balls with a talon swipe.\n\nTony shrieked.\n\nSlash moved in and took the front.\n\nTony stood bellowing to the heavens, the saber forgotten at his feet while his fellow Weres made him a soprano.\n\nJacqueline came to Julia's side and dropped to her knees.\n\n\"I am sorry,\" Jacqueline said for the second time in a matter of moments, pressing her hands on the swamp of blood Julia's wound had become.\n\nJulia searched Jacqueline's face as a hiccup erupted. It tasted like a penny in her mouth. \"I know,\" she whispered.\n\n\"I would do anything to take it back.\"\n\nJulia nodded. She could see that. See her remorse as plain as the sun shining on the blood everywhere, so red in the sunlight.\n\nJulia closed her eyes, and when she opened them, it was like a camera shutter.\n\nTharell stood behind Jacqueline.\n\nThe damn of Julia's telepathy burst, and she shouted her warning to Jacqueline, Lay down.\n\nJacqueline's eyes widened, but she didn't hesitate. She folded her body against Julia, the side of her face pressed against Julia's heart. She put her hand against Jacqueline's head, and Tharell moved in, stepping over a crotchless Tony being torn apart by the wolves.\n\nThe women lay together, and Tharell tried to scoop Jacqueline up.\n\nDomiatri appeared behind Tharell, his blade moving so quickly it was only a streak of silver in the sunlight. A sparkle, and it was there and gone.\n\nA red line appeared in the perfection of Tharell's violet throat, a stunned look overtaking his expression.\n\nThe ripple of pink scar tissue at Domi's throat convulsed as he swung his leg out in a stabbing strike at Tharell's head.\n\nIt came off in a spinning leap, landing on the ground beside where Julia lay.\n\nJacqueline flinched, tightening her hold around Julia, unaware that Domiatri lived and fought behind her.\n\nJulia used strength she didn't possess and turned to see Tharell's blue eyes staring back at her from his decapitated head.\n\nThey blinked.\n\nJulia screamed as she bled, the poison of the demon's blood making its way to her heart as the battle raged on around her.\n\n\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\n\nTHE END\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# ANGELIC BLOOD\n\nA Blood Series Novel\n\nBook 5\n\nNew York Times Bestselling Author\n\nTAMARA ROSE BLODGETT\n\nAll Rights Reserved.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2015 Tamara Rose Blodgett\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.\n\nwww.tamararoseblodgett.com\n\nTRB Facebook Fan Page\n\nCover Design: Claudia McKinney\n\nEditing suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing\n\nSynopsis\n\nJulia Caldwell lies in the middle of a battlefield dying of wounds inflicted by the newest enemy of the Singers\u2014the demonic. When Fae, Were and vampire collide in alliance against a common enemy other than one another, the demonic brings turmoil beyond what any of the supernaturals can imagine.\n\nAfter the genocide of the Singers of Region One, they will be forced to move into hiding. Jacqueline has redeemed herself and carries a progeny of importance and strength that the new enemy wants at all costs. Who of the Fae can be trusted after Tharell's treachery\u2014will the rogue Were damage or assist the remaining Region One Singers?\n\nCan the greatest secret of their blood save the Singers from extinction and close the wound the demonic has made in a world run by humans, and ignorant of what lives among them? Or will fate decide evil deserves to rule instead of good.\n\nDEDICATION:\n\nElias Carter Blodgett\n\nYou don't know it yet, but you changed my life....\n\n# CHAPTER ONE\n\n\"Jules!\" Jason screams, sliding toward her like a runner at home base.\n\nJulia looks up at him, holding her guts inside her body. \"Oh, God\u2014no!\"\n\nJacqueline rises from behind Julia's torso, where she'd lain to avoid Tharell's body.\n\nShe wears Julia's blood.\n\n\"Looks like someone has lost their head,\" Slash comments dryly, stepping over Tharell's body. His humor leaks away when his eyes catch sight of Julia.\n\n\"Julia\u2014what can we do?\" Jacqueline asks, ignoring everything else.\n\nA demonic blurs past them, its tail sailing into the head of a Singer with well-practiced precision. Julia's veins flash golden at its nearness.\n\n\"Fuck!\" Jason rages, leaping to his feet as he puts his back to her protectively.\n\n\"Cyn,\" Julia croaks.\n\nJason whirls around, understanding blooming on his features.\n\nI need Cyn.\n\nHe nods, peering into the thick of the battle. \"I can't see her!\" he shouts then sprints into the fray. Julia fights to remain awake, but her eyes feel buggy in their sockets, too wide and dry. The pain sharpens her senses, helping her stay alert\u2014and alive.\n\nA bubble of blood forms from her lips, and Julia feels herself beginning to slip. She's still mortal, still vulnerable\u2014and so very tired.\n\nHer eyes meet Jacqueline's. Julia sees the knowledge of her death reflected in them. Julia holds herself in position, avoiding Tharell's head, which was no longer attached to his body, beside her.\n\nI can hold on a little longer. Julia closes her eyes and concentrates on her breathing.\n\nIn.\n\nOut.\n\n\"Jacqueline,\" Domi says from behind Julia.\n\nJulia cracks open her eyelids, and Jacqueline stills, her eyes growing wide. The demonic rushing toward them is gaining momentum. Julia is vulnerable and wounded\u2014vulnerable to true death, as William would call it.\n\nJulia's eyes bulge, and she licks dry lips.\n\nThe blood bubble on her lips pops with a soft smack, and she not dare move her hands from where her organs pulsate beneath her fingertips.\n\nDomi turns casually, clotheslines the devil's warrior, and crushes the red flesh around the demonic's windpipe.\n\nAs the demonic folds to his knees, the saber in Domi's hand flashes downward, cutting the head from the soldier of their mutual enemy.\n\nThe twang of swords and weaponry is the dark orchestra that plays for them.\n\nJacqueline's mouth hangs slack as she turns slowly to look at Domi, then at the demon lying still at his feet. Finally, her eyes come to rest on Tharell.\n\nJulia knew of Tharell's comprehensive duplicity against Domi, but there Domiatri stands in emerald splendor, proud and tall. His throat is bisected by a rope-like scar. He steps over the demon, shooting an indifferent glance at Tharell's body before he faces Jacqueline.\n\nJulia swallows her groan\u2014her hands are drenched with her own blood.\n\n\"Domiatri,\" Jacqueline breathes in shock as Slash picks up the sword that the castrated Tony let drop.\n\n\"Nice work on the devil,\" Slash says casually. But there is nothing casual about his restless gaze as it travels the field, looking for other demonics. He seems resolved to protect her until Jason can get back.\n\nJulia clenches her eyes shut. Where is Jason? Only Cyn can fix the mess of her body.\n\nSlash toes Tony's corpse, and Julia breathes against the pain in her gut. The sounds of men striking each other is like listening to slabs of meat being tenderized.\n\nJulia's stomach roils against the metallic fragrance of blood and death in the air and the sounds of flesh succumbing to fists and blade. Her limbs grow numb as her vision narrows to gray edges and a black center.\n\nJulia drags in raw breaths.\n\nDomi scoops Jacqueline against him. \"Tharell thought to murder me.\"\n\n\"I know,\" she replies.\n\nJulia's skin begins to pulse golden-silver, shining like a beacon as one of the demonic approaches.\n\nShe tries to roll away and can't manage it.\n\nIt hisses, driving its tail toward her as blood pumps out of her body, but Slash turns, catching the end of the whipping rope-like appendage with the borrowed saber and cutting it off. The deep-red stalk fishtails sickly and falls. Inky blood spurts out of the amputated stump as the demonic shrieks.\n\nJacqueline sinks to her haunches beside Julia as Domi swings his own sword and takes off the horned head. A warm hand covers her own blood-slicked ones.\n\nThe sudden silence that falls is peaceful and heavy, like scarlet snow that never lands. The demonic are losing the battle, and the shine of Julia's skin dulls as the second demon's life ebbs as it lies a few feet from her in a pool of black blood.\n\nJulia knows with perfect certainty that she doesn't want to die in this thankless field of war and death.\n\nThe salt of Jacqueline's anguish splashes on Julia's face. Gasping her last breaths, Julia watches it all as though she's no longer in her own body.\n\nOut of the corner of her eye, Jason emerges like an oasis in the midst of a forever desert. Cyn is wound tightly around his back as he dives between the last brandishing fists. Blood arcs, spattering them as they charge between the opposing forces.\n\n\"Do not go, Julia. Your people need you,\" Jacqueline says, rubbing Julia's icy hands as though the motion will repair her. More unshed tears fill her dark eyes, which are so like Scott's.\n\n\"I do, as well,\" she adds in a whisper.\n\nJacqueline, her enemy no longer, clutches Julia's hands while her fey lover fights off the remaining demonic behind them.\n\nJason lurches beside her, his wolfen form casting a shadow over her, and dumps Cyn at Julia's side.\n\nCyn's eyes widen in horror at what Julia assumes is the mess of her body. \"Jules... oh, God\u2014no.\"\n\nJulia closes her eyes and Cyn's presence is a salve to her body, but not her words.\n\n\"I don't know if I can fix this,\" Cyn despairs.\n\nJulia's eyes open to painful slits while Cyn's gaze roves her body. Julia's hope flees when she sees those expressive eyes.\n\nThe saber christened with demonic blood is going to slam dunk Julia into death. Tears riot down her face. Jacqueline holds one of Julia's hands while the other is in Jason's tight grip.\n\n\"Come on, Cyn. We haven't come all this way to back out now.\"\n\nCyn drags her finger underneath both eyes, swiping and flinging tears away. She inhales deeply and replaces Jacqueline's hands with her own. With a sigh, Julia lets hers slip apart, and they fall onto the grass. The air is cold compared to the heat of her injury.\n\n\"Oh, Jason.\" Cyn's voice trembles, sounding mournful.\n\n\"Don't you fucking die on me, Jules,\" Jason commands fiercely.\n\nJulia doesn't promise anything\u2014or even speak\u2014because glorious warmth floods her stomach and spreads, leaking through her body like a bath of fire. She feels as though her body is melting into the grass, though the clangs and charge of battle still grow.\n\nNothing is more silent than death.\n\n\"That's it, Cyn!\" Jason sounds desperate.\n\nJulia relinquishes her ownership of this life, which was always a gift, not something she could expect to always have.\n\nIf she's the Rare One, she'll get through this. If she's not, Julia is convinced she was never meant to be anything to anyone. Julia's exhausted to her marrow.\n\nShe wants so much more from this life. She knows she has a sister somewhere in the Red Den of Alaska, and Julia wants Jason as a woman wants a husband.\n\nMore, Julia wants to actually live, not merely survive from one catastrophe to another. Like a candle flame in jeopardy of being blown out, she feels her soul flutter with indecision. Julia's will to live hangs in the balance.\n\n\"No\u2014Jules. Help me here!\" Cyn screams.\n\nJulia's eyes flutter open to find her people quietly gathered.\n\n\"The demonic?\" Julia chokes out, her eyes frantically searching for the deep-crimson bodies, black horns, tails, and the soulless eyes.\n\nNone still stand. Their dead bodies litter the ground at her peoples' feet, and the Singers' skin doesn't shine. The beautiful veining that surfaced before and during the battle was nothing more than a warning of their mortal enemies proximity.\n\nCyn's hands clench over the wounds, and Julia's body arches against the grass as she gasps. Life fills her body where death sought to claim her. A thread of warmth runs to her fingers and toes. Her eyes sharpen, and her heart begins to beat a strong rhythm again. She rises up on her elbows, Jason's large hand at her back, and glances down at her belly.\n\nDried blood flakes on a deep scar that turns pink as she watches. Jason's eyes meet hers over the knitting wound. He puts his knees behind her back, and she leans against him. His hands lock around hers, and he bows his head, unable to hold in the shuddering exhale of relief.\n\n\"Tony has failed.\" Domi's lip curls in satisfaction as he looks at Tony's body before moving on to Tharell's headless corpse. \"Tharell failed, as well,\" he growls.\n\nSlash gives a satisfied snort. \"Still like how he lost his head.\" He gives Julia an apologetic glance, and Julia's lips turn up.\n\n\"It's okay, Slash.\" Julia doesn't miss Tony. His demise makes the earth a better place. Bright sunlight splashes over them, making Domi's deep-green flesh appear to sparkle with luminescence. It's somehow wrong to have a beautiful day as witness over this much death and bloodshed.\n\nJacqueline's eyes are round, shocked. Julia tries to sit up, but her core flinches at the motion.\n\n\"Julia\u2014no way.\" Cyn's hands are splayed on her healing stomach, and Julia chokes up as Jason comes up behind, lifting as he stands with her cradled against his chest.\n\nHis body is covered with the light-red down of his wolfen form. The green discs of his eyes slow their spinning.\n\n\"The demon fuckers are gone.\" His voice sounds like falling gravel, making Julia flinch. \"Our blood won out!\"\n\nJulia tips her head back against his shoulder, and he smiles, flashing rows of dangerous teeth.\n\nJulia nods, still weak. \"Where? How?\"\n\nWith laser focus, Slash eyes Tharell's body with a consideration bordering on hate. \"I say we pop Tharell's head back on and see if he can't tell us.\"\n\nJulia shakes her head, ignoring the pain of yet another betrayal. \"Too dangerous.\"\n\nSlash pulls Adi from behind him, and she approaches Julia.\n\n\"This affects all of us now, Julia. We've won the battle, but not the war. The demonic left and ducked into their little fire hole or whatever. But they'll be back. We got a stay of execution because Tony dropped the ball...\"\n\n\"Or balls,\" Cyn cackles behind her hand.\n\nJulia smiles. Cyn's already recovering her sense of humor. If she were in Cyn's position, Julia didn't think she would be capable of laughing at anything.\n\n\"I say we stake him,\" Brynn says.\n\nJulia blinks. The sun has sunk behind the trees, but the vampire stays in the shadows, offering his opinion safely out of the dangerous final rays of daylight.\n\nBoth Cyn and Jacqueline wear Julia's blood. As if she's made of glass, Jason carefully lowers Julia to the ground. Then Cyn's hands fall away from her body, revealing smooth unscarred skin, healed perfectly except for a black smear to the upper left of her belly button. It itches, but she's alive.\n\nJulia inhales deeply, painfully, as she looks at the loss all around her. The casualties of her people fill the field.\n\nBut more bodies of the demonic lay testimony to the Singers' victory.\n\nHer eyes come to rest on Tony last. His sightless eyes seem to gaze at her through a fog as if accusing her.\n\nShe tries to feel guilt or remorse, but she can't. This is the being who massacred nearly all the people of Region One. He raped Jacqueline and Lacey Greene. He was the horror that had plagued her and many others from the beginning, and now he's dead. Julia releases the breath she was holding, and the throbbing of her belly is her only physical distraction. She slowly lowers to her butt, exhausted.\n\nJulia turns to Brynn, William's successor. \"Stake Tharell?\" she asks.\n\nDomiatri comes into Julia's field of vision as Jason comes underneath her again, and she leans back against his knees. A knotted rope of scar tissue is a light-mint line across his neck. It appears to shine in the whitewashed daylight. Julia realizes it's healing before her eyes. The bumps integral to the scar tissue begin to smooth, and the shine begins to fade. Domi's skin rights itself in color, becoming grass green again where the pale-mint of the scar had bisected his throat. It's hard to look away.\n\n\"It will not be true death for Tharell until his body is burnt to ash.\"\n\nAll who are gathered look at Tharell, whose mouth is a gaping hole of silent screaming.\n\nJulia backs away, and for the first time, she recognizes what she hadn't noticed before while pain rode her.\n\nTharell's alive.\n\nShe says the thing that damns any chance of her claiming to be the angel she supposedly is.\n\n\"Do it.\"\n\nThe men move forward to collect the pieces of Tharell, stepping over the fallen Tony as they do.\n\n*\n\nTharell\n\nTharell's agony is so acute that he has no voice for it. No sound emanates from his ruined body to articulate his pain.\n\nDomiatri has pinned his palms and feet to the ground with stakes a full foot in length. The agony of iron courses through his tortured body as it fights to heal the constant affliction of metal.\n\nThe scarred Were assists Domi in his torture as, for a fey as pure as Domi, touching iron ore would have been akin to handling acid.\n\nTharell understands he will reap what he has sown. Intellectually, he understands his part of the deceit. He did not want to do what he did. However, blood dictates all. Humans need it to live, and supernaturals are governed by its crimson pull.\n\nA crude approximation of a reattachment of his head has Tharell's tendons and muscles stinging as they reassemble pathways severed by the decapitation.\n\nHowever, the pain is nothing compared to the condemnation he receives from every quarter, every set of eyes set against him.\n\nThe blame is deserved, of course. None knew the black blood that flowed within his veins is master over all others because the angelic blood is dominant to those Singers who possess enough of it. Tharell closes his eyes in weary resignation.\n\nA moment later, his face rockets backward with a slap, the sound of which fills the meadow. Though he does not cry out, Tharell groans from the worst physical misery of his life. A Sidhe warrior would rather die than admit weakness.\n\nTharell meets the dark gaze of the death bringer head on.\n\nOf course they would use him, the strongest of all supernaturals.\n\nThe vampire Tharell had been a part of finding smiles down at him coldly. \"Ah, to have a fey to torture,\" the vampire muses happily.\n\nTharell readies himself.\n\nHowever, Julia is the one who comes to stand before him. His demonic blood riots in warning at the proximity of an angelic, especially one as pure as she is.\n\nNatural-born enemies.\n\n\"Blooded Queen,\" Tharell manages from his healing throat and around the searing heat of his punctured palms and feet.\n\n\"You've been crucified,\" she says almost absently, though her eyes seem dull to any pleasure due to his pain.\n\nHe tries a nod and finds it unmanageable. \"It appears that way.\" The irony of his physical positioning does not escape Tharell's notice.\n\nJulia's golden hair is plaited, and many of the hairs have escaped the braid. Her eyes flash, and her veins, their power awoken to his ancestry, pulse like liquid gold and silver, mingling at the surface of her skin with every beat of her heart.\n\nIt is a standoff. Tharell knows Julia will want answers. And only he can decide their worth to him. He could always die again by her hand, to be resurrected again and again.\n\nHis immortality has proven to be his greatest weakness.\n\n\"I will confess the reasons for all my deeds for one thing in return.\"\n\nHer eyes hold his in the bright light of the rising moon.\n\nShe gives a small despairing laugh. \"Like you've got a bunch of options?\"\n\nTharell has never seen so much grief in one gaze. He waits as the seconds pound by.\n\n\"What is it?\" Julia finally asks with bald distrust.\n\n\"Kill me when I am through.\"\n\nJulia stares at him for a full minute. She swipes at her face, flicking away a lone tear like a gem of resignation.\n\n\"Done,\" she says so softly that only the Were gathered nearby could have heard her.\n\nTharell hears her answer perfectly.\n\nHe begins to talk, knowing that a quick death by the Blooded Queen's mercy is better than the torture Praile would inflict upon him.\n\n# CHAPTER TWO\n\nJulia\n\n\"I am a vessel,\" Tharell admits, grimacing. \"We who possess the blood of the demonic all are.\"\n\nJulia crosses her arms, wincing at her still-tender stomach. Cyn did a lot to alleviate the worst part of the wound, but when she gets closer to Tharell, Julia's mostly-healed injury flares like a lit match. She tries to dismiss the black smear that remains on her pale skin like an evil smudge. Its presence tugs at her subconscious.\n\nShe backs away, and the biting pulse lessens. \"Don't lie.\"\n\nAs Tharell raises his head, the horrible scar like a streak of lavender lightning bulges across his throat, and Julia swallows her gorge.\n\n\"The fey do not lie, Blooded Queen.\"\n\n\"Oh, horseshit!\" Cyn yells, tramping over to where he lays. She moves to her knees, careful not to soak them in the continuous seep of blood that courses out of the pads of Tharell's palms. \"You lie by omission, you fucking grape. You made us believe there was some kind of treaty between the Singers and fey, and the entire time, you were just some lackey of the demonic, doing the plotting prick program.\"\n\nAdi flashes a smile at Cyn. \"Not to sound dumb, but who's your leader?\"\n\n\"That's Michael's line,\" Julia says sadly, looking down to hide her tears. Jason puts his arm around her, and she looks up, way up into his changed face. His green eyes rotate slowly, and though it's hard to ascribe human emotion to the partially changed, Julia thinks he looks sad.\n\nNone of the Were have changed back to human\u2014that's too dangerous. Holding the wolfen form doesn't take the energy that full wolf form does. And the majority of Weres can't achieve full form unless the moon is full.\n\n\"Let's not take all day here,\" Truman says, dumping another demonic corpse on top of the others.\n\nWe've got a pile of demons. Julia shudders and squelches a bubble of laughter.\n\n\"We don't want to be caught with our drawers around our ankles, swapping spit and shit.\" Julia frowns at Truman's comment, though it's the truth. Point for him.\n\n\"It does not matter. You can kill me. Burn me to ash and sprinkle my essence in a swift-moving river to rid me from this place.\" Tharell's azure eyes latch on to Julia's, and she shivers in Jason's protective embrace. \"But Praile will come for you. He will use whoever and whatever has the blood of his kind to serve him.\"\n\n\"I'm tired of this douche,\" Jason growls in his strange part-animal timbre.\n\n\"Why?\" Domi asks suddenly.\n\n\"We do not have time for this, Domiatri,\" Jacqueline reminds him quietly.\n\n\"We don't have the time to kill his ass, either,\" Truman says thoughtfully. \"We need to beat feet outta here.\"\n\n\"I can do it,\" Brynn offers.\n\nTharell gives him a neutral look.\n\nJulia knows it'd be impossible for her to be as calm as Tharell appears if she were presented with certain torture and death. That composure speaks to the nature of Tharell's existence.\n\nShe pushes stray hairs out of her face, more for an excuse to do something than for neatness. \"I promised I would,\" Julia says. Everyone looks at her, and she feels her face grow hot.\n\n\"He tried to kill Jolly Green over there,\" Jason says from above her. Domi frowns at Jason.\n\n\"Guys, let's not set up a testosterone palace,\" Cyn remarks, throwing her arms up. \"We still kill grape-boy, but on our own timeline, Julia didn't say when she'd do him.\"\n\nJulia flinches.\n\nIgnoring her, Cyn goes on, \"Let's get together the Singers who want to come back to Region One. The Tony threat is gone, because he got his weenie chopped off.\" She flashes a grin and lets out a manic chuckle. \"A great trend to dissenting dudes.\"\n\nAdi snickers, and Julia dumps her face into her hands. Cyn is alarmingly practical, and it's somehow not cool right now, with Tharell being staked and a bunch of dead demons piled up on a death hill. It's too gross to be real. Yet it is.\n\nSingers need to be buried, and the rest need to get back home, or what's left of their home.\n\n\"Cyn,\" Julia says.\n\nCyn lifts her shoulders. \"All right, I know the whole dick comment was a little over the top...\"\n\n\"At least we know where ya stand,\" Truman says thoughtfully, shooting her a wary glance.\n\nAdi laughs.\n\nJulia looks between the two. \"Enough. Thank you for healing me.\"\n\nCyn rolls her eyes. \"Of course, doll. Like I wouldn't have?\" Her palms flip out and away from her body. \"Doy.\"\n\n\"But I need less sarcasm and more action.\"\n\nCyn huffs, crossing her arms. \"I say leave the demons for the vultures\u2014and wonderful Tony. That's better than that mongrel deserves. We get whatever Singers want to come back to the Region One stomping ground.\"\n\nA tear races down Julia's face, and she gives it an angry rub. She has no time for grief. \"I want to take stock of survivors.\"\n\nDomi turns to her. \"I can bury the dead.\"\n\nTharell clears his throat. Domi frowns.\n\nJulia presses the heels of her hands in her eyes, hoping to erase the vision of everyone casually discussing things over Tharell's staked body.\n\nBut he's still there when she lets her hands fall. The bodies of the dead still cant in an unbalanced way in the center of a field that was awash with blood during daytime and is now black tar all around them.\n\n\"No way!\" Adi says, looking from Tharell to Domi. \"This guy\u2014this guy is such a backstabber.\" She narrows her gaze at Tharell, whose expression remains neutral, despite the horrible pain he must be in.\n\n\"We need him for speed. To bury the dead.\" Domi admits.\n\nJulia rolls her bottom lip between her teeth. It's so unfair. But she can't leave the dead Region Two Singers to have their bones picked clean by scavengers. She just can't reconcile that move, not with everything else.\n\n\"Can he be...\" Julia puts a hand on her forehead, tired to the bone. \"Can he be contained?\" she finally asks.\n\nBrynn steps forward as darkness swallows the daylight and the moon's brightness sharpens above them. The two mingle in a kiss of time, twilight bridging night and day, and a smolder plays over his skin.\n\n\"That's better,\" he says, looking around at the darkness, where the daylight still leeches at the edges of the field. \"I can handle the fey.\"\n\nDomi frowns. \"What assurance do I have that you'll not make a try for my life or Jacqueline's?\"\n\nHer fingers tighten around Domi's forearm, and Julia's eyes go to Brynn's face. But it's blank, like William's could be, every feature outlined as if it were carved in bleached ivory.\n\nBrynn's fangs elongate, shining like ready knives. \"None.\"\n\n\"Ah, I don't know,\" Cyn says, her eyes following the fey-vamp verbal ping-pong match with interest. \"Brynn might not be a team player, Jules.\"\n\n\"We can't do much better than this. He was William's guy, right?\" Truman turns to Julia for confirmation.\n\n\"He was William's second from the Southeastern Kiss. There's no motivation for allegiance, really,\" she confesses.\n\nBrynn gives her a look so weighted, she stops breathing.\n\n\"What?\" Truman barks.\n\n\"No vampire would harm the Rare One.\" He looks at each one of them, and Julia fights to make out his eyes in the swelling darkness. \"In fact, it's my belief that Praile of the demonic is not the only one making a bid for the top echelon of supernaturals.\" Brynn spreads his hands to the side.\n\nAll eyes move to Tharell. \"Let me up, and I will help for as long as my life serves a purpose.\" His bright gaze moves to Julia. \"And then you will kill me.\"\n\nJulia shakes her head in vague denial and his crisp blue eyes narrow on her.\n\n\"It must be by your hand. You gave your word.\"\n\nI can't do it.\n\nJulia's throat constricts, her breaths squeezed like frozen gasps inside her throat.\n\nDomi strides over to stand next to Tharell's prone position and jerks out each stake with a meaty, wrenching suck. Tharell's face tightens but not a sound emerges from his lips. Domi steps away, and Tharell stands without assistance. Holes fill with fresh, pale-lavender flesh, and his unearthly blue eyes blink slowly.\n\nJulia clamps down on her emotions. There've been too many traumas in a short span of time. She'd almost been murdered, countless more Singers had died, and that meant the death of so many from the one place where she was beginning to feel as though she belonged.\n\nShe blinks, realizing her lashes are wet. Jason gives a few soft, comforting snuffles against her neck.\n\nEveryone backs away from Tharell as though he has the Black Plague. His eyes meet each of theirs.\n\n\"I deserve your disdain.\" His voice is low and full of emotion. \"But if Praile comes again, he can force me to do his bidding. He could compel anyone who has sufficient blood of the demonic. And the Red Were are not immune to being used by the Master's summons.\"\n\nTruman harrumphs in disbelief.\n\nTharell lasers a look of pure certainty at Truman. \"Believe that I lie\u2014I care not. Why should I warn you? What does it gain me?\"\n\n\"Why not?\" Cyn says. \"You're obviously a stand-up dude.\"\n\nTharell's brows cinch.\n\n\"Not,\" Adi adds with a smirk.\n\nDomi and Brynn step forward. \"We take care of the dead Singers and find the ones who still live and wish to accompany us back to One\u2014and faerie.\"\n\nDomi's and Tharell's eyes lock in a battle of unspoken words.\n\n*\n\n\"Julia,\" Jacqueline calls.\n\nJulia stops, Jason a shadow beside her.\n\n\"I wish to find Gallagher. Perhaps he survived the blow.\"\n\nHer head bows, and Julia knows, as sure as she's standing there, that Jacqueline's guilt is all for Victor. His brother is wounded and possibly dead, and Victor still remains unaccounted for.\n\nJacqueline can't atone for all the bullshit of her past. But she has a right to try.\n\nJulia sighs, knowing she can't do anything about the epic mess. But Gallagher would be an important addition to One, though his desertion would leave Two leaderless. However, since all of One is decimated, the whole of Two would be better off returning with Julia than trying to piece together the Swiss cheese of their region. Their regions are more protected if they stand together than if they are apart.\n\n\"Let's try to find him. And\"\u2014Julia's eyes meet hers, though in the thick of the night, she can barely see anything but the whites\u2014\"I want a head count of all the Singers who still live and whether they want to come with us or not.\" She adds, \"Convince them.\"\n\nJacqueline smiles as though she has a secret.\n\nJulia thinks Jacqueline is perfect for the job. Part of what made her Jacqueline still peeks out through all of the changes since her time within faerie.\n\n\"Jules?\" Jason rubs the back of her neck, and she wants nothing more than to sink against him, revel in his closeness, and enjoy the fact that she didn't die today.\n\nBut she can't. She has a duty to her people\u2014and maybe a sister she doesn't know. But the thought of finding a sibling is a faraway wish. They're all still in survival mode.\n\nNot to mention Scott and Lucius. The list goes on. Julia doesn't have time for the pity party she wants to throw for herself.\n\nThe dead are being entombed by a corrupt fey. Though her people have been annihilated, her promise to faerie still stands.\n\nShe's hungry, tired, and still healing. She's also in charge.\n\nJulia says none of what she's thinking. Instead, she walks after a weary and pregnant Jacqueline in search of the one Singer she believes can help her and whatever Singers they can convince to accompany her.\n\nJulia's not sure she would come if she were in their shoes. Violence holds claim to her, and death follows.\n\nNot a great combo for a long life.\n\n# CHAPTER THREE\n\nTessa\n\nTessa drives until she's nearly out of gas.\n\nA 1950s neon sign flashes from a few blocks away as she heads up highway 99.\n\nGas-Food, it blinks. Well, part of it blinks. The G is missing in the first word. It's creepy. Tessa is somehow reminded of the Psycho movie from the 1960s.\n\nShe was a whelp in those days. Sometimes, Tessa doesn't think the longevity of being a Were is all that hot\u2014like now, when she's hungry, tired, and broke.\n\nShe'll have to steal soon. Tessa hates that routine.\n\nJust because she can take from the humans doesn't mean it sits well with her.\n\nThe gravel crunches under soft tires that need air. Tessa squints. Dawn is rolling over the Olympic Mountains, wrapping them in the sherbet tangerine of daybreak.\n\nShe can't believe the place is open. She parks by the air pump. Swinging the door wide, she begins to exit the low-slung car. \"Ah!\" Tessa turns to pop the glove box and rummages around.\n\nThe air pressure gauge in hand, she measures each tire. She fills all four tires, her eyes ceaselessly scanning her surroundings. Things are quiet for the moment as the hush of dawn adds to the false stillness. Tessa suspects the quiet before life begins a new day, is present for another reason besides daybreak.\n\nStanding, Tessa swings her long ebony braid over her shoulder and jams a hand in the front pocket of her jeans. She extracts a crumpled ten dollar bill. She opens her hand, where a fifty-cent piece glows. As she holds it, the flesh of her palm begins to burn as if she's waving her open hand over a candle flame. Turning, she sets it on top of the roof of the vintage Impala. Carefully, using only her fingertips, she flips it.\n\nThe coin has the year engraved on it: 1964.\n\nSilver.\n\nFigures. Tessa can't wait to pass it into the currency of America. She's amazed it didn't burn a hole through her jeans.\n\nSilver is poison to her kind, but Alpha females have some immunity. If she'd been male, the silver would have behaved like a burning ember inside her pocket.\n\nMaybe their immunity had something to do with the importance of young. Tessa is always partially immune to silver while in quarter-change form.\n\nFemale Were are not plentiful, hence, her nomadic lifestyle. As soon as Tessa came of age, her pack began a bidding war for the right to mate her.\n\nKnowing they would fight over her like what they were\u2014a pack of wolves\u2014Tessa decided to split before they had the opportunity. Now she's been rogue for two decades.\n\nShe's killed more males that she wants to admit.\n\nStill, they were all deserving of death. Most were rogue like she was. But that did not give them the right to force her to mate with them.\n\nTessa trusts no male.\n\nShe exhales in a harsh burst, blowing the tendrils of hair that escaped from her braid out of her face. She can't allow herself to think of her slain packmaster father. He would not have allowed the bidding war.\n\nSadness tightens her body.\n\nHe would have given his only daughter a choice.\n\nHer pack had robbed her of her freedom, along with her grief over his death. Tessa didn't have the luxury of mourning her father. He'd been challenged as packmaster by the one male who presumed victory would kill two birds with one stone. Tramack believed he would rule... with Tessa at his side.\n\nAs though I could ever forgive my father's murderer.\n\nTessa touches the heels of her palms to her drenched eyelashes and breathes deeply until she calms herself from a memory that is twenty years old.\n\nThe pain never seems to lessen.\n\nIt could, if not for Tramack's endless pursuit. His scouts seek her incessantly. Tessa manages to stay out of their sight for two years at a maximum before they find her again.\n\nShe lowers her hands and stares at the gas pump without seeing it. Finally, she punches in the pre-paid amount at ten dollars and fifty cents. She slams the old-fashioned lever and begins to pump the gas, her All-Star bright-red sneaker resting on the concrete curb that holds the pumps.\n\nThe gas pump chimes really quickly when all you have is ten bucks. Too quickly.\n\nTessa sighs, slipping the nozzle back into the holder, and shoves the lever down. A light breeze lifts the small hairs on her forearms.\n\nA bird cries a warning.\n\nTessa's head jerks up, and her nostrils flare. Tendrils of hair swirl around her face, obscuring her acute vision.\n\nThe tiny hairs that humans ignore as a warning to imminent danger rise at her nape.\n\nShe ignores nothing.\n\nTessa moves away from the pumps, her eyes scanning the pocketed shadows of forest that are everywhere the eye can see. The gas station's yellow fluorescents cast a sick glow on the sidewalk that creates an uninspired strip at the entrance.\n\nShe sucks in huge lungfuls of crisp mountain air, closing her eyes and isolating her senses to just those of scent.\n\nTessa holds herself still.\n\nLayered and comprehensive, the smells of cedar and Douglas fir needles, rich earth, lichen, asphalt, humans, and small forest animals drift over the olfactory regions of her nose.\n\nTessa chuffs in little bursts of air then parts her lips, taking breath through both her nose and mouth simultaneously.\n\nThe radar of scent surges out like big ripples and pings out at the odor of the large animals\u2014felines, elk, and mountain goat.\n\nBeyond that, the Pacific Ocean cleanses her palate, and she exhales.\n\nInhaling more deeply, she holds the air inside her lungs, and on this exhale, she smells something out of place.\n\nMud.\n\nHer eyelids flip open.\n\nTwo men exit the forest. Tessa takes their measure, her heartbeat ticking faster. Her nose flares frantically.\n\nShe smells only the mud.\n\nThen she sees them clearly. Beyond the black border of the forest and in the first light of day, Tessa understands why she can't scent them. She would laugh if the situation weren't so dire.\n\nThe Were are covered in the mud of the tidelands. That was why the smell of the sea was so strong.\n\nIf she hadn't been so busy cataloging, she would have known the ocean shouldn't smell so close. Tessa had become complacent. She hadn't been thorough and got caught with her panties down.\n\n\"Hello, Tessa,\" says one of the two.\n\nThey're obviously guards.\n\nTessa slouches against the car, crossing her sneakered feet at the ankle.\n\n\"Hey, boys.\"\n\nThe one who spoke raises a brow. \"We're glad we could get a chance to talk to you.\"\n\n\"I'd think my answer would be obvious by now. Or did the other two dogs I put down not let you know my thoughts on the subject?\"\n\nHe scowls, casting a glance at the dumb pup all but wagging his tail beside him.\n\n\"Byron,\" he says, twirling a finger in the air. The quiet one moves wide, making it impossible for her to see them both straight on.\n\nDammit.\n\nThe handle of the car door is a foot away from her hand. Tessa's palm itches to touch it.\n\nOr her palm itches because of the silver coin she held for a few seconds.\n\nThe silver coin!\n\nTessa's finger twitches. The Were who thinks he can just swoop in and take her notices.\n\n\"Clever camouflage.\" She says to distract him, but she means it. She had almost no warning. Birds were sometimes helpful.\n\nTessa frowns and glances up at the tree for just a moment, catching sight of a snow-white bird. Her frown deepens.\n\nStrange. But Tessa doesn't have time to think about the bird. The two Weres are closing in.\n\nHer gaze finds Byron, who is half her age, inching closer. She looks for anyone who can help her.\n\nThe human at the cash register glances outside.\n\nTheir eyes meet.\n\nShe hasn't paid.\n\nDon't come out here, she screams inside her head. Of course, he doesn't listen.\n\nAbout sixty-five and portly, he shuffles out. \"Hey, miss?\"\n\n\"Yes?\" Tessa replies without taking her eyes off the Weres.\n\n\"You gonna pay?\"\n\n\"Yup,\" she answers. But she's not a hundred percent on that.\n\nByron inches closer.\n\nTalkative looks at the heavyset cashier and narrows his gaze on him.\n\nSome people don't have any instincts of self-preservation. This human is definitely one of them.\n\nThe cashier's eyes widen. What he sees is a six-foot-three-inch man covered in mud. To Tessa, he reeks of rotting sea vegetation. A human at that distance would have only his sight.\n\nAnd the Were is a pretty weird view.\n\n\"What's going on here?\"\n\nOh boy.\n\n\"What's going on, human, is you're going to march your fat ass back into that dilapidated store and pretend you didn't see us.\" A cruel smile lights his face like an old-fashioned camera bulb exploding.\n\nTessa's pulse quickens, and Talkative's nostrils flare as his face briefly turns in her direction.\n\nShe's had calls that were closer, but not by much.\n\n\"Listen, you're on my property. She hasn't paid, and I'm not letting two thugs who don't know what the inside of a shower looks like get in the way of me getting gas money owed. Go pack sand.\"\n\nTalkative growls, and his skin shifts like liquid. His bones morph into a melting candle wax of sloughing skin as his face changes into wolfen.\n\nHe shakes like a wet dog, scattering clumps of tideland mud, both dry and wet.\n\nTessa's eyes tighten in pain as she performs her own quarter-change from the sloppiness of her human form. She dropped it once she arrived at the gas station, letting her guard down.\n\nInstantly her ears, nose, and eyes become more. More sights reach Tessa, who can now pick out seaweed as small as a thread clinging to the Were.\n\nShe can smell the soap he uses underneath the sea muck.\n\nHis wolfen gaze falls to her as if she's his prey. The slow spin of yellowed irises rotate faster as he believes his quarry is almost his.\n\nThe cashier takes a hard look at the shit going down and hightails it back inside the store.\n\nSmart man.\n\nTalkative turns to her, now seven feet of striated muscle in motion. A coat of nutmeg-colored hair covers every bit of him as his short snout lifts, snuffling a few times to gather more of Tessa's scent.\n\nA bell jangles, and the man comes back out and cocks a shotgun.\n\nTessa intuits everything. Action. Consequence.\n\n\"No!\" she screams.\n\nShe thought he'd agreed and retreated, finally seeing the potential for his death by their hands.\n\nBut he's a typical human. Have gun, will kill.\n\nTalkative can't move fast enough. The buckshot does, riddling the Were like a seven-foot-tall slice of Swiss cheese.\n\nTalkative slows but doesn't stop. He launches himself at the porky cashier and tears out the man's neck upon landing.\n\nBlood shoots up like water from a broken fountain, and bloodlust momentarily distracts him.\n\nTessa's head snaps to the right as Byron rounds the gas pump island. She moves quickly, snapping her fingers up to the coin on the roof of her car. I might only have one chance.\n\nIn quarter-changed form, Tessa has increased senses, speed, and strength. She uses that now, when only the car's length separates her from Byron.\n\nShe sprints to the trunk as he's at the hood.\n\nShe launches the coin with everything she has, and her hand-eye coordination is perfect in her changed form.\n\nThe edge of the coin slams into the middle of his forehead, and he howls. Instinctively, Tessa slaps her hands over her ears.\n\nThe coin burrows, doing the work for her as his skin parts to the most abhorrent substance to a Were. Tessa watches his skin burn, the edges blackening and folding open like the petals of a dying flower.\n\nShe backs away as blood spills.\n\nHis brains are next, and the coin doesn't disappoint. Like a horrible flat missile, it keeps seeking its target. There's no great healing that can arrest its progress. Male Weres can't heal from silver damage.\n\n\"Oops,\" Tessa breathes out as the river of what was inside his skull flows down his face. She begins to back away. Someone suddenly grips her upper arms from behind.\n\nSmelling rancid mud, she slams her head backward. She's almost six-feet tall in her quarter-change form, and she uses that height, hopping as she flings backward. Tessa headbutts Talkative.\n\nHe staggers backward and she runs.\n\nTessa slips in all the blood and falls on her ass so hard her teeth snap together. He lurches toward her, and she rolls to stand.\n\nA snowy bird that looks like a dove but isn't glides down in a loose spiral. The bird is a spot of purity in the blood that covers the asphalt. Talons splay.\n\nTessa grips the asphalt. The congealed blood is thick under her short fingernails. She pushes off, trying to put distance between herself and Talkative.\n\nThe bird screeches, high and brilliant, above and forward of her position.\n\nThe talons are sharp and big in Tessa's vision as it swoops closer. She ducks, and the bird flows over her head, lifting the loose hairs on her head and missing her by inches.\n\nThe screaming tells Tessa it has found its mark.\n\nShe stumbles forward and glances over her shoulder.\n\nThe bird's white feathers are covered in blood, and it carries an eyeball hanging by a gruesome tail of sinew.\n\nThe bird caws, slinging the orb off its talon. It spins in the crisp morning air and lands with a thud on the pavement. Puke threatens, but right now, it's survival of the fittest.\n\nTalkative grabs the bird's body, and it cries in alarm. Tessa rushes the Were, who tracks her with his one good eye.\n\nThe bird dips its beak and takes his other eye while he's distracted by Tessa's approach.\n\nThe Were lets go of the bird and drops to his knees, howling.\n\nTessa hurtles forward, knocking him down. She grits her teeth as she slams his head into the asphalt.\n\nOnce.\n\nTwice\u2014bone shatters.\n\nThree times.\n\nHis brains spill onto the asphalt.\n\nTessa wrenches her head to the right and sees Byron lying in his own brains, motionless.\n\nA sigh escapes her, and she stands, trying not to shake. Tessa moves to push hair out of her face, and a bit of skull clings to fingers, which are covered in sticky gore with bits of dirt and granules of asphalt. She gulps.\n\nHer eyes avoid the bodies. Instead, Tessa looks for the bird\u2014and sees a Were instead.\n\nBarely out of welphood, she stands before Tessa as naked as the day she was born.\n\nBreathe, Tessa.\n\nThe day simply can't get worse. \"I'm Tessa.\"\n\n\"I am Tahlia.\"\n\n\"Are you\u2014did you?\" Tessa doesn't know what to say, and it's a damn miracle there aren't more witnesses. At least there's that miracle.\n\n\"Yes. I am a Wereshifter.\"\n\nTessa had heard the legends. She'd just never seen it in the flesh.\n\nOr feather.\n\nTessa eyes skate over the gruesome wreckage then return to the naked Were.\n\n\"You saved me.\"\n\nTahlia nods. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nShe smiles, and Tessa is struck by the girl's beauty. \"I could scent their intent.\"\n\n\"You're naked.\"\n\n\"I am,\" she gestures to herself. With a little laugh, she adds, \"I had to escape something in a hurry, so...\"\n\n\"You can come with me,\" Tessa gestures to the car. \"I'll change the plates out at the next larger city.\"\n\nShe blinks once, very slowly. \"Thank you.\"\n\n\"I have clothes,\" Tessa says.\n\n\"Okay.\"\n\nTahlia is stoic the entire time.\n\n\"Do you remember what you do when you change?\"\n\nTessa doesn't. Once in human form, most Were do not remember what occurred while they were in their animal forms.\n\nShe nods. \"Every bit.\"\n\nHer full, perfect lips tremble as she shivers slightly in the cool air.\n\n\"Come 'ere,\" Tessa says.\n\nTessa wraps her arms around the smaller girl. \"It'll be okay,\" Tessa says.\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nTessa tries not to feel guilty about the lie she just told the vulnerable girl.\n\nAnd she fails.\n\n# CHAPTER FOUR\n\nSlash\n\nSlash maintains the rear of their morose little expedition with ease. The Singers and supernaturals alike, who have not seen their fair share of war, look the same: shell-shocked or just plain shocked.\n\nThe Homer cop turned Red, Karl Truman, trudges along like it's any other day. Fighting to right the wrong is all that sort of male appears to need.\n\nThe Rare One continues on at her husband's side, and he maintains his wolfen form, as all the Were do.\n\nMany of the Singers needed more healing than the handful of Healers could attend to, and they remain in need of more healing, rest, and food. There won't be much of that for the next few hours, though.\n\nBrynn is the only vampire who remains. He's a shifty fanged fuck if Slash is any judge. And Slash believes he's a fine judge.\n\nTom Harriet still lurks in parts unknown, and he will certainly make another try for the Rare One. Julia will not be safe until the threat of the Reds from the Alaska den is over.\n\nAnd now the demonic threaten her, as well\u2014the fey.\n\nAnd as much as Slash is loathe to admit it\u2014the Singers are angelic. Not all, but some. Those Singers who manifested the telltale veining that pulsed like liquid gold and silver have been duly cataloged. It appears that roughly one in three are \"angelic.\"\n\nThe angelic Singers were more successful during the siege of the demonic, and more of them survived.\n\nSlash holds in the sigh of disgust at the memory of the pyre and the thought of Tharell, like a dog on a chain, waiting impatiently for his demon master's return so he can bite the first Singer who is near.\n\nSlash voted for Tharell's immediate death. Whatever answers the Sidhe can supply are outweighed by the need for the group's safety. Tharell is a loose cannon. It seems more prudent to put him down like the dog he's proven himself to be than to keep him around. And the Unseelie warriors have proven tremendously hard to kill.\n\nSlash spares a glance at the green Sidhe, Domiatri. A thread of scar tissue remains at his throat. Slash guesses that after another day, even that will be gone. Slash didn't ask how he managed to fetch his head after it was chopped off.\n\nThe fey piss him off on principle.\n\nAdrianna pops up beside him, striding quickly, matching his longer gait. He slows for her.\n\nSlash understands she is a crippling weakness in his otherwise-iron-clad defenses.\n\nHe is also desperately in love with her.\n\n\"Hey,\" she says softly.\n\nSlash says hello back, keeping his face in profile, relieved she's on the good side of his face. Adrianna doesn't seem to notice that Slash is purposefully hiding his face.\n\n\"What do you think about all this?\" she asks.\n\nSlash takes a painful, dry swallow. Her nearness is undoing his thoughts.\n\nSlash remains vigilant, scanning the surrounding area for threats.\n\n\"Slash,\" Adrianna says, reminding him that she asked a question.\n\nHe forgets his looks for a few seconds and braves a glance at her, his nostrils flaring subtly.\n\nHer hair is everywhere, messy from the battle and their pace. Her hazel eyes are very wide and bright. Slash wants to count the freckles that are so like captured gold flakes in pale skin running over the bridge of her nose.\n\n\"Slash,\" Adrianna says again.\n\nSlash realizes he stopped walking, and he stares at her.\n\n\"I made my piece known during our brief talk,\" he replies, referring to the group decision to bring Tharell.\n\n\"Pfft,\" Adrianna sounds off, beginning to walk again, and a breath of relief eases out of his tight chest. \"You didn't make your piece known. You insulted the vamp and the fey.\"\n\nSlash shrugs. The fey? And what of them? They were corrupt, wanting to siphon off the Singers' numbers and literally bring hell to earth with what Tharell did using his demonic connection. No. Slash is not inclined toward forgiveness or camaraderie.\n\nHe smiles, and the scar tissue on his face tightens.\n\nAdrianna, seeing only the good part of his profile, smiles in return. \"True. However, I don't care. The fey are a part of anything that involves what they can get.\n\nSlash allows a snort, and it comes out like a snuffle. \"And the Were aren't?\"\n\nHe looks over his shoulder at the Were who survived the massacre and he is not surprised to see Zeke give a microscopic chin lift when Slash's scrutiny rolls over him.\n\n\"We are. But we're cleaner about it.\"\n\nA dark-blonde eyebrow lifts. \"That makes it better, hmm?\"\n\nNo, but it is easier. Slash remains silent under what he perceives as her condemnation.\n\nAdrianna sighs, grabs his hand, and slings his entire arm over her shoulders.\n\nSlash's heart races, and his palms tingle at the unexpected contact.\n\nHer nostrils flare. \"Do I scent fear on you, Slash?\" Her question is serious, her voice coy.\n\nHis feelings are a dangerous game.\n\nNo use lying. \"Yes.\"\n\nSlash keeps walking, his arm around the female Alpha Were he would mate if allowed, if he were not marred.\n\n\"Of me?\" she whispers.\n\nHe nods.\n\nHe guides them deeper into the edge of the forest. The caravan of supernaturals continue to walk toward where members of Region Two are waiting to drive them back to One, to the false perception of safety.\n\nSlash relaxes in the shadows, his ugly mug hidden from Adrianna.\n\nHe turns to face her fully, his large hands cradling her face. \"I cannot have you, Adrianna. You must wait for someone from your den who is worthy of you.\"\n\nSlash's self-loathing has never been deeper, wider, or more intense. He has to break it off with Adrianna and take away the hope of their being together. Slash can't handle her eventual rejection when another Were decides he wants her. And that Were will be whole and perfect, without the scars of war on his mind\u2014or his face.\n\n\"Oh Slash,\" Adrianna says softly, cupping her smaller hand over his and he scents things that confuse him.\n\nTruth.\n\nDesire.\n\n\"I have found a male worthy of me. And there is no other,\" she says in the ancient language, and it fingers a chord like a guitar string inside Slash, as though a melody has begun playing just for him.\n\nThe Singers claim their blood sings to the vampire and Were alike.\n\nSlash believes certain blood ties are just as strong between the right pair\u2014the perfect mating pair.\n\n\"Adrianna, I'm broken. Can't you see it?\" His eyes implore her to see what is so obvious, to heed reason.\n\nShe shakes her head, sending her ratty hair, stained and dirty from fighting at his side, sliding over shoulders.\n\nSlash smiles.\n\nMy brave girl.\n\n\"You're not gonna do this, Slash.\"\n\nHe frowns. \"Do what?\"\n\n\"Hide\u2014sacrifice.\"\n\nHer hand leaves his and she slides her arms around his neck as her fingers grip his nape.\n\n\"No,\" Slash says in a panic, beginning to pull away, his hands dropping from her face.\n\n\"Yes,\" she says, \"a million times, yes.\"\n\nThen the softest skin he has ever felt brushes his lips, feathering over the scar tissue like heated silk. The barest breath of moisture flicks at the seam of his mouth, and his lips part against his volition.\n\nSlash forgets the promises made to himself.\n\nHe forgets he is in the middle of a dangerous return to Region One and that others besides him are in danger.\n\nAnd most importantly, Slash forgets how fractured he is. In Adrianna's arms, he is whole.\n\nShe moves to her tiptoes, gripping his neck more tightly and hanging off him.\n\nWith a groan of consent, Slash bends down and lifts Adrianna off her feet. She's above him now, her legs around his waist, her fingers grasping the fuzz of hair that covers his head. Her thumb lands on one of the horrible scars on his skull, and he can't pull away. He doesn't want to.\n\nShe kisses him deeply, her tongue diving inside his mouth, and he moans, hardening helplessly against her. She laughs softly against his mouth.\n\n\"I knew you liked me.\"\n\nAnd that's where it ends for Slash.\n\nHe loosens her hold on him, gently letting her slide down the front of him, every hard inch in stark relief. He is embarrassed by his obvious arousal, but there's nothing he can do. He is a male Were, and she is the female he desires.\n\nThe only one.\n\nHe captures her wrists behind her back as his forehead touches hers. \"That's the thing I'm trying to explain.\"\n\nShe speaks to his chest. \"What? What is it Slash. You are the Were for me. You've always been.\"\n\n\"I don't like you,\" Slash says.\n\nTheir eyes meet.\n\n\"What are you saying?\" Her gaze looks uncertain now, and shadows of doubt linger in the lightest part of her eyes.\n\n\"I don't like you\u2014I love you,\" Slash says so quietly, his words are barely more than mouthed syllables.\n\nHumiliated, he turns his back on Adrianna. However, now that she knows he's serious over her, she'll back off. He's too much work. Slash understands this.\n\nHe feels a tap on his shoulder, and he stubbornly stays facing the woods, his arms folded. He stares, memorizing every furrow of bark, every pine cone, and each needle.\n\nThen Adrianna is standing before him.\n\n\"Hey!\" she shoves him in the chest, and he takes a step back, frowning. \"You\"\u2014she pushes\u2014\"don't get to play father confessor then give me the cold shoulder.\" She slaps his chest again, and he grabs her arms.\n\nShe bares her teeth, and his wolf responds, growling.\n\nSlash tightens his hold, taking deep breaths to steady his animal. The urge to dominate her and take her as his wolf wants to causes him to throb painfully.\n\nHe looks away, but he can't bring himself to let go of her. He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to. Dammit, I'm trying to do the right thing. The honorable thing. Why can't she see it?\n\nHe asks her fiercely, \"Then what would you have of me?\" He looks down at the beautiful mouth he just kissed and falls off the precipice of reason. \"Since you already have my heart.\"\n\nShe runs a finger down the worst of the scarring of his face and he flinches. \"Look at me, Slash.\"\n\nHe barely lifts his chin, his nostrils flaring at her heady scent. He needs to get the hell out of here, and fast. Or his wolf will act for him. It's so close to the surface of his skin he can see the microscopic movement of his flesh rippling.\n\nHer hazel eyes drill into his. And his wolf likes the dominant display of the female\u2014his female.\n\n\"I love you, too, you big damn dope.\" She takes her finger away and punches him in the arm. \"I'm not going anywhere, and I don't give two shits and an eff if you have scars. Or if you've killed a legion of Were in battle. Or that you're not in my pack.\"\n\nSlash's chest is so tight, he can't draw a single breath. His emotions drown him, clogging his airways.\n\nAdrianna puts her hand on his chest then grips his shirt in her small fist. \"Hear me, Slash.\"\n\nHis eyes pull to hers.\n\n\"Lawrence can stick it up his ass. I want you.\"\n\nSlash covers her hands with his own, and the steel bands around his chest loosen. She renounced her packmaster so easily.\n\n\"Female, you\u2014you ease me.\" And she does, so much. If only Slash didn't feel guilty for this moment of stolen happiness.\n\nAdrianna's grin is fierce, and certain. \"I know.\"\n\nHe smiles back, but it feels a little sad around the edges. \"For how long will you be with me? I am not casual in my affections.\" It's such an understatement, it's utterly ludicrous to voice.\n\n\"Duh. Slash, I get this. You're old-school. I couldn't like another wolf if he bit me on the ass.\" She laughs.\n\nSlash growls at the thought of any Were touching her, especially there.\n\n\"You goofball,\" she sinks against him, laying her face against his muscular chest.\n\nHe holds one of her hands between their bodies and wraps his free hand around her back, pressing her tightly against him.\n\n\"Don't you know? I've always been yours.\"\n\nHe lays the unscarred side of his face against the top of her head.\n\n# CHAPTER FIVE\n\nPraile\n\nPraile's long ebony tail is held high. It twitches, making a slight whistling sound as it whips to and fro.\n\nThat usually happens when Praile's irritated. He's highly irritated now.\n\nPraile grasps Anthony Daniel Laurent by the hair. He shakes Anthony's head slightly. The eyes have already glazed over with the whitish icy-gray shroud of death. With a disgusted snort, Praile chucks the severed head onto the pile of bodies.\n\nHe sees Tony's prick like a blackened flesh noodle and holds in a laugh.\n\nNot bad. Judging by the wound, it was torn off his body by teeth. Praile snickers, not bothering to contain his glee. He taps a taloned finger on his chin, considering. He might not have done as well.\n\nPraile is a systematic high demon who is not wont to being dramatic. But jerking Tony's penis off with his teeth would have come with a certain amount of satisfaction, though the action was a tad intimate for his taste, which ran to the female persuasion.\n\nAs humans have assumed for millennia, there is no pleasure to be had in Hades. But there is much to be had on this plane. Praile's sharp eyesight takes in the nuances of death all around him.\n\nOne important instrument of advancement and justice is missing\u2014the death saber. It brings death to nearly all supernaturals. Praile scans the bodies\u2014they're all demonic.\n\nThe Singers must have buried their own.\n\nHe whistles in the fifty-HZ range of ultrasonic frequencies that only canines can hear, and three demons swivel their heads in Praile's direction. He jerks his jaw, gesturing for them to join him.\n\nThey move. They're obedient. That is good, because the consequence for disobedience is swift and unyielding\u2014very much like hell.\n\nLazarus comes first. His unflattering pale-red skin and unadorned tail notwithstanding, he is the very best high demon Praile has ever known. He will kill anything, and he is built perfectly for the strenuous physical demands of their kind: to torture anything that breathes.\n\nAnd he is so exacting about it all. His name always makes Praile take hidden jest\u2014it's an apt nickname. Lazarus can bring most back from true death. Oh, the irony!\n\nPraile speculates Lazarus has a little Singer blood. That Healer part of him is handy during torture in the hot place.\n\nPraile hides his giddy expression with difficulty, loving his own humor. After all, Praile is his own biggest fan.\n\nHis brow furrows. The Master will not find the minions' failure to kill all the Singers humorous or appreciate their inability to capture the two most important females in a thousand years.\n\nYet, Praile finds it all so droll.\n\nHe longs for a true challenge and to have more freedom on this plane to torture, maim, and antagonize. After all, what fun is being a demon if one cannot spread darkness and cruelty?\n\nPraile folds his muscular arms. \"Speak,\" he barks at Lazarus. He smirks at his second-in-command, silently daring him to address his abhorrent interaction.\n\nBut Lazarus is too clever to take the bait, which causes Praile a perverse joy. One must take small joys whenever they are presented.\n\nPraile sulks quietly at Lazarus's utter lack of reaction. Lazarus is self-contained in a way that is rare of the aggressive demonic, and it pains Praile.\n\n\"Some of our soldiers have escaped. The others have met true death.\"\n\nPraile casts a glance at the low demons who accompany him and Lazarus. He dismisses them when they lower their eyes in subservient deference.\n\n\"What of the Angelic Blood?\"\n\nLazarus heaves an exhale of disgust. \"She is not here.\"\n\n\"Really?\" Praile asks sarcastically, stepping into his second's space. Fool.\n\nLazarus doesn't flinch.\n\nSo brave, Lazarus. \"I know that,\" Praile spits.\n\nI so loathe relying on others, however necessary.\n\n\"I scent the High One's blood.\"\n\nPraile whips his head back in Lazarus's direction, flaring his nostrils. He tastes the truth of Lazarus's words on his tongue. \"Really?\" he says without the sarcasm he'd employed earlier.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nPraile runs his eyes over Lazarus. What a shame he doesn't possess the fine deep-scarlet skin that his kind finds so beautiful. It's also unfortunate that Lazarus cannot have the tail that ends with an appendage of weaponry.\n\nHis eyes narrow at Lazarus. It might be just as well that the other demonic is lacking, for Praile would be even more jealous of Lazarus than he already is. Praile hates his own perceived lack of gifts.\n\nLazarus's keen sense of smell rivals that of the Were. It is so acute, he can scent emotions, where Praile can scent only a lie. Lazarus can take every drop of life out of anything that draws breath and give it back at will. He has also animated the dead for his bidding.\n\nUseful attributes in a demonic.\n\nThat bit was something to see. Commanding the dead, as a demonic, is a rare gift. But Lazarus is ugly. Certainly, with his sculpted face, square jaw, and tall muscled body, he might appeal to some demon females as a pity fuck.\n\nPraile is picky about his dalliances, though. He cocks his head. Actually, he's discerning about everything. He shrugs.\n\n\"Is she wounded?\"\n\nLazarus nods, serious and, as usual, humorless.\n\nPraile licks his lips. \"Do tell.\"\n\nLazarus makes loose fists. \"She has a piece of us inside her.\"\n\nPraile chortles. \"Excellent.\"\n\n\"The High One is still mortal?\" Praile's gaze searches Lazarus's.\n\nLazarus smiles, showing bright, ugly white teeth. \"Absolutely.\"\n\nPraile lets out a sigh of relief. All is not lost.\n\n\"Idiots, they should have wedded her. Were, vampire, and Singer. And the Angelic Blood would be untouchable. Though it would be a great source of amusement to kill all who served her,\" Praile muses.\n\nLazarus does a poor job of containing his irritation.\n\n\"Let us fetch the death saber. We can't have that in the wrong hands, though I am most pleased Anthony managed to pierce the Angelic Blood before his cock and balls were chewed off his worthless body.\"\n\nThe low demons mewl from their safe position several feet away from Praile.\n\nHis grin widens, showing off his ebony teeth to perfection.\n\n\"You two\"\u2014he swings a black talon-tipped finger toward two of his minions\u2014\"clean up the mess of your kind and go to hell.\"\n\nA giggle bubbles in Praile's throat, and he barely suppresses it. He gives Lazarus a sidelong glance to ascertain if his second noticed his slippage.\n\nLazarus meets his eyes but finally ends the staring contest.\n\nIt is well-known that high demons have a propensity to slide into madness after middle age. At over seven hundred years old, Praile is no exception. Yet he must finish the Master's most important work.\n\nThe High One shall be slain.\n\nThe abomination growing inside the belly of the mixed-blood royal Singer shall be sacrificed in Hades, as prophesied.\n\nA child destined to have the blood of all cannot be allowed to survive\u2014or save the Angelic Blood through the gift of immortality.\n\nThe last task of the Master is a tall order.\n\nPraile is just the demon to fill it.\n\n# CHAPTER SIX\n\nJulia\n\nA mansion even more grand than Region One's rises on a perfectly shaped knoll like a jewel that's lost its luster. Its paint is peeling, and the once-grand dame stands in testimony as a shell of her former self. It deepens Julia's depression. If she can make it through the next day, she'll be so thankful.\n\nJason and the other Were get practical and melt back into full human form, Cyn and Adi stay in quarter-change form, though. Julia would stay that way all the time if she were a female Were.\n\nShe admires Cyn's and Adi's versatility in a world that is harsh on the subsect of humanity that dwindles under their noses.\n\nAll these groups were co-existing with her for her entire life, and she'd never known.\n\nSlash and Adi walk together toward the front entrance, where the large oak door stands open.\n\nSlash gives a look at the Were, and the Reds, including the new Alaskan Red, Zeke, jogging to his position.\n\n\"What is it?\" Julia whispers, suddenly feeling the weight of silence that surrounds them. This, where Jacqueline once reigned, is the first region headquarters Julia has ever been to, other than her own.\n\nShe swallows the lump of sadness suddenly lodged in her throat. The one that Marcus put there, the same one she gets thinking of Scott, the sole survivor of Tony's massacre.\n\nIn truth, Scott survived only if Tom Harriet and his goons didn't kill both him and Lucius. She breathes through the painful thought of Scott being expunged from this earth. Julia can't imagine the world without him in it. Julia doesn't know what that sentiment means for her\u2014or for Jason.\n\n\"It's all about the recon, babe,\" Jason says, laying a kiss on her forehead.\n\nShe leans against him, her body fitting perfectly against his.\n\nA whisper of an exhale slides out of her tight body. \"Right,\" she says, and even to her own ears, she sounds unconvinced.\n\nJason cups the back of her head with his hand. \"I don't blame ya\u2014it's been a thing. This whole entire last week has been nothing but one calamity after a-fucking-nother.\"\n\nI agree. Though Julia doesn't bother saying it out loud. There's really no need.\n\nJulia's tension remains, though she knows she's safe in Jason's arms while the Were file through the house.\n\nHer eyes meet Jacqueline's. Julia stalls when she sees the slight swell to Jacqueline's belly.\n\n\"Hang on,\" Julia says, walking toward her.\n\nJacqueline turns to her.\n\nDomi's silver eyes glitter at Julia, and she decides she won't be unnerved by it. Barely.\n\n\"Hey,\" Julia says a little breathlessly, her hand straying to where her stomach wound was a day ago.\n\n\"Hello,\" Jacqueline replies in her smooth voice. She glances at Julia's palm on her stomach. \"How does your wound fare?\"\n\n\"It's okay, I guess.\"\n\nJacqueline frowns. \"That's more evasion than reply.\"\n\nJulia gives her a crooked smile. \"Can't pull much over on you.\"\n\n\"No.\" Jacqueline gives a minute shake of her head.\n\n\"It feels weird to be your friend now,\" Julia blurts then almost covers her mouth.\n\nJacqueline nods. \"I know exactly what you mean.\"\n\nDomi moves behind her, lifting her dark hair away from her neck so he can lay his palm at her nape, and though Julia doesn't think she's aware, Jacqueline tips her jaw into the small embrace. Domi's eyes soften at the gesture.\n\nOh, my word, there's some stuff going on there.\n\nStay on task, Julia. \"I noticed you're looking all pregnant.\"\n\nTheir eyes catch and hold. Jacqueline glances away first. \"Yes,\" she says in a low voice, \"Domi postulates there's an accelerated pace of gestation.\"\n\n\"Ah. Okay,\" Julia replies slowly, looking from one to the other. \"Is this normal? I mean, for a fey baby?\"\n\nDomi lifts his chin. His navy hair, like midnight liquid, gleams as it slides over his shoulders. Not a hair is out of place. They've battled and haven't showered or eaten. Everyone is beat, yet Domi looks as fresh as a daisy\u2014except for that healing scar at his throat.\n\nJulia tears her eyes away from the scrutiny of his neck and he smiles at her blatant curiosity. She feels her cheeks heat. Nice, Julia.\n\nShe glances at the Were moving in and out of the house then looks back at Domi and Jacqueline.\n\n\"No,\" Domi says in a voice so melodic, it doesn't sound natural but like spoken music. \"We think the babe is special.\"\n\n\"Of course it is,\" Julia says, giving Jacqueline a tentative smile.\n\n\"What Domi means is that the genetics of the baby are dictating some unusual beginnings.\"\n\nJulia stares at Jacqueline. \"You mean, like some kind of one-of-a-kind kid?\"\n\nJacqueline smiles so suddenly and naturally, it startles Julia. Sadly, the woman smiles so infrequently that the expression sits oddly on her face. \"I forget your way with words. But yes, we believe the baby will be... very unusual.\"\n\n\"He will be fey, Were, vampire, Singer, and angelic,\" Domi says with a casual lift of his shoulder.\n\n\"Oh, well, no big deal then,\" Julia says with a small laugh. \"Like Heinz 57, guys.\"\n\nThey give identical puzzled expressions, and Julia laughs again. \"You guys. Okay, are we sure all that mingling of cool genes is the reason for Jacqueline to have a speed pregnancy?\"\n\n\"It is conjecture,\" Domi admits.\n\nJacqueline rubs her cheek against his fingers, and his shoulders relax. \"It sounds like the right fit, as you would say,\" Jacqueline says.\n\nTheir eyes meet again. It is what Julia would have said. Jacqueline's intuition is uncanny.\n\n\"Are you sad about going back to faerie?\"\n\nJacqueline's eyes round, and she grips Domi's hand. His eyes harden, his irises unpolished diamonds.\n\nWhoa.\n\n\"No. I can be who I was meant to be in the mound, near the sithen. Without it, I am the Jacqueline of old.\"\n\nDon't want that.\n\n\"Hey, Jules,\" Jason says from behind her, his eyes wary on Jacqueline, and for good reason.\n\n\"All's clear. They're rounding up the rigs now.\"\n\nJulia turns to say goodbye for the moment to Jacqueline, but her dark eyes stay locked on the old headquarters where she formerly reigned. Silent tears are streaming down her face.\n\nDomi turns Jacqueline to face him, lightly gripping her shoulders. He passes one hand over her face, and when it comes away, he cups his palm beneath her jaw.\n\nHer tears fall in perfect teardrop formation, tinkling together inside his palm in hardened clear gems.\n\n\"What? What did you do?\" Jason asks. The awe in his voice matches Julia's feelings.\n\n\"Tears are precious in faerie. We do not waste emotion. Some can be collected.\"\n\nJacqueline gives him a tremulous smile, rolling her bottom lip between her teeth to stop the shaking.\n\n\"That's the coolest thing I've ever seen,\" Julia says under her breath as Jason takes her hand.\n\nDomi gives a small shrug. \"It's a parlor trick.\"\n\n\"No,\" Julia say, meeting his eyes, \"You took her sadness and made it your own.\"\n\nDomi says nothing, assenting to the truth of the words through lack of reply.\n\nHe pockets the jewels of Jacqueline's sadness, and she places her hand over where they lay.\n\n*\n\nThe car ride is terrible. The black, unmarked SUVs are luxurious, built to last, and anonymous. They riot through the night like oil-slicked bullets.\n\nBut Julia knows what awaits them at the Region One headquarters\u2014emptiness.\n\nThe voices of the children will be absent. Scott and Lucius are unaccounted for. The beautiful lake that is filled with swans, is now surrounded by a mass grave.\n\nHer only consolation is that the murdering jerk-off is dead. But what's happened to the Greenes? And what about Reagan? Delilah?\n\nJulia can't sleep on the way home. Tumultuous thoughts spin inside her brain on an endless cycle. Wedged between Adi and Jason, she leans her head against Jason's shoulder. The men have the door, as they so succinctly put it. It was super-funny to Julia when they said the women would be in the middle and they should ride on the outside, in case of disaster.\n\nUh-huh. Adi said it best: \"Me, Tarzan. You, Jane.\"\n\nSlash scowled. Then had brightened when Adi scolded him.\n\nMen.\n\nThey broke every speed limit and stopped for gas only once. The Were moved around outside, and Tharell lay gagged and bound in the back of one of the SUVs.\n\nJulia swore she could feel his eyes on her through all that disastrous metal that he hated so much.\n\nDomi threw up. Even with Jacqueline and his unborn child offering a buffer of sorts, the metal of the car was too much for him.\n\nThey finally arrive and everyone pours out of the vehicles after they park in the gigantic circular drive in front of the Victorian.\n\nWarm lights don't illuminate the windows.\n\nThe house stands like four corners of stark in the middle of grief. A symbol of what was.\n\nJulia stays in the car. She looks at the training barn, then away. She remembers when Michael made the pile of manure to contain Scott and a smile hovers on her lips without becoming.\n\nScott.\n\nJulia shivers at the thought of her soul-meld. Guilt and indecision shake her to the core. Getting out of the rig is accepting that she's back, in charge of a new beginning with a future that's completely unknown.\n\nShe doesn't know if it's the beginning she wants.\n\nJason comes back to the SUV and leans against the open door. He braces his biceps against the door frame and leans in. \"What are you doing here, looking all sad and shit? We're here. Let's clean up, eat some grub.\"\n\nJason reaches forward, cups her chin, then slides his fingertips from her temple to her jaw. She catches his hand as it retreats.\n\n\"Come on, Jules,\" Jason says, pulling her out of the vehicle.\n\nShe follows, his hand warm in hers.\n\nJulia ignores the ache that plagues her belly.\n\n# CHAPTER SEVEN\n\nTessa\n\n\"Holy mother of the moon, that was a damn mess back there,\" Tessa says, throwing her eyes to Tahlia then back at the road.\n\nTahlia's as quiet as the tomb.\n\n\"Hey listen, honey\u2014I'm just running blind here. You gotta give me something to go on.\" Tessa heaves a sigh, flipping her wayward braid out of the way. \"I mean, who do you belong to?\"\n\nTahlia's fingers worry at her borrowed shirt that's at least two sizes too big. She's a wisp of a girl. Dark skin and hair frame eyes so deep a blue, they're almost violet. The shock of her curly hair misses frizzy by a millimeter, but her exotic blend is obvious. She's unique for a Were. There are Were of every race, but it's very rare for a mix. And a mix as lovely as this girl\u2014Wereshifter\u2014is unheard of.\n\n\"Tell me something,\" Tessa pleads.\n\nTahlia seems to decide something, though her face is like carved stone. \"I am of the Lanarre.\"\n\nLycan royalty. Good gravy. \"What?\" Tessa shrieks, gripping the wheel to maintain control and not run the car off the road.\n\nTahlia winces. \"That is why I said nothing.\"\n\nTessa narrows her eyes on Tahlia. \"I understand some of the protocols. You're a whelp.\"\n\nHer chin lifts in the first defiance Tessa's seen out of the girl. \"I am of age.\"\n\nTessa flicks her eyes over Tahlia once, shifts her eyes to the road, then comes back to her. \"No way.\"\n\nA light blush spreads across the girl's cheeks.\n\n\"You would be held by human guardians while traveling away from the pack.\" The Lanarre often bred humans to act as their guardians from one generation to the next.\n\nTahlia inhales a shuddering breath that sounds both hollow and grief stricken.\n\n\"What?\" Tessa breathes, automatically lifting her foot off the accelerator.\n\n\"They were murdered.\"\n\nSomething doesn't make sense. And we're going to flesh it right out.\n\n\"A rogue Were...\" Tahlia's wide eyes move to Tessa in apparent apology.\n\nTessa dismisses her trepidation curtly. \"It's okay. I know what I am.\"\n\nShe sighs in relief then continues, \"He came and slaughtered everyone in the rented domicile where we lodged.\"\n\nHotel.\n\n\"You speak strangely,\" Tessa interjects.\n\n\"I speak as I am meant to.\"\n\nOkay. Wrong tactic.\n\n\"Go on,\" Tessa encourages, rolling her hand in a circle.\n\n\"My human guardians were allowing me to watch the television.\" Her eyes spark. \"It is strictly forbidden,\" she admits in hushed tones.\n\nUnreal. Talk about living in a bubble. But Tessa remains rapt, saying nothing.\n\n\"The guardians are just extraordinary humans. They do not share our senses.\"\n\nTessa nods. Of course not.\n\n\"We had the television turned up quite loud for my guardians benefit.\" That made sense as what humans thought was the correct volume would sting a Were's sensitive hearing.\n\n\"I\u2014\" Tahlia wrings her hands, which bleed to white under the pressure.\n\nGuilt, Tessa realizes.\n\n\"Don't,\" Tessa interrupts, putting her hand over the girl's. \"There was nothing to be done, nothing you could have done.\"\n\nShe bites her lip, and fat tears fall straight from her eyes to her clenched hands.\n\n\"I needed to use the restroom and excused myself to\u2014ah!\" She tears her hands from underneath Tessa's and covers her face. \"I listened and did nothing!\" she yells.\n\nTessa grits her teeth against Tahlia's shame. She empathizes. Tessa pulls over onto the soft shoulder, letting the old car idle.\n\nShe takes Tahlia's hands into her own. \"Listen up, Tahlia. There's no way you could have done anything but get dead.\"\n\nTahlia nods reluctantly. \"I understand.\" She bites her lip. \"But it does not make it any easier to suffer the truth. They are still gone from this earth, Tessa.\"\n\n\"You saved me, and I didn't matter.\"\n\n\"Everyone matters,\" Tahlia answers softly.\n\nThey share a look and a sudden laugh.\n\n\"You know how to make short work of Weres,\" Tessa says.\n\nA tentative smile graces her full lips. \"They were not of good intent. And my animal does what I cannot.\"\n\n\"No shit?\" Tessa says, and the girl's eyes bug. She gives Tahlia a speculative look.\n\n\"You know, you're kind of sheltered.\"\n\nTahlia shakes her head. \"Not really. My duty is set. It has been ordained since my infancy.\"\n\nTessa wracks her brain for memories of the fabled Lanarre, but all she comes up with is that they are the elite of the Were, all Alphas. Anyone born a Lanarre is automatically an Alpha.\n\n\"What duty?\" Tessa asks.\n\n\"My duty to the Lanarre,\" she replies slowly, as if Tessa is a dim-witted child.\n\nTessa relaxes in the seat, giving Tahlia steady eyes. An idea, an ugly one, forms in the back of her mind.\n\n\"What were you doing out of the safety of the Lanarre, traveling with your human guards?\"\n\n\"I was traveling to meet my chosen.\"\n\nOh, my moon.\n\n\"What chosen?\"\n\nTahlia tries to put a blanket over her disgust of Tessa's lack of knowledge. \"Are the ways of the Lycan so diluted that the packs no longer know how we came to be? Our history.\"\n\nTessa shrugs. \"I guess not.\" She was usually too busy running from Tramack to concern herself with Lycan history.\n\nTahlia makes a noise in the back of her throat. \"My chosen is the male who will be my mate.\"\n\nTessa gulps back disgust. \"You're telling me this is some kind of arranged marriage?\"\n\nTahlia lifts a shoulder and eyebrow simultaneously. \"Were do not marry, as you know.\"\n\n\"Right,\" Tessa acknowledges, \"but to mate a male Were\u2014\"\n\n\"Lanarre,\" Tahlia corrects.\n\n\"Uh-huh. Sight unseen? Do you have a choice?\"\n\nThe girl's delicate brows pull together. \"Why do I need one? He is my chosen.\"\n\nRepeating it over and over again doesn't make it a great plan in Tessa's view. \"What if he's a sadistic pig?\" Tessa asks.\n\nA laugh erupts from Tahlia's throat. \"Are you having me on? You are very negative, Tessa.\"\n\nYes, yes I am. It kept her butt safe for more years than she could count. And this arranged mating thing? It stinks to high heaven.\n\n\"I have a question of you,\" Tahlia says.\n\nTessa hikes her eyebrows. \"Shoot.\"\n\nThe girl gives a slight frown. \"May I smell you?\"\n\nTessa's chin juts back. \"I guess\u2014but weird.\"\n\n\"Humor me.\"\n\nShe sounds so old for a whelp.\n\nTahlia leans close, rising to her knees as she moves in, then takes a whiff of Tess from neck to crotch.\n\nA human would blanch at such a gesture.\n\nIf asked, it's not an exceptional thing among Were.\n\nBut of all the things the girl could ask about, she chose scenting.\n\nTahlia sits back against her heels.\n\n\"You smell of him.\"\n\nHuh? \"Who?\" Tessa searches her face in the growing shadows. She sees everything. The time of day or night doesn't matter.\n\nGooseflesh rises at the expectation of the revelation.\n\n\"The one who murdered my guardians.\"\n\nFuck. Her heart sinks.\n\nTessa knew she should have drowned that crazy Were in the ditch.\n\nShe leans away from Tahlia, collapsing against the back of the driver's seat.\n\nNow who's the guilty one? If she had followed her instincts, Tahlia's guardians would be alive. And according to her gruesome testimony, a lot of other innocents would be, too.\n\nTessa closes her eyes.\n\n\"Tell me why the murderer of my human guardians scent is all over you.\"\n\n\"I should have killed his ass when I had the chance.\"\n\n\"Tell me,\" Tahlia commands intensely.\n\n*\n\nThe women sit in the silent car when the last word from Tessa echoes within.\n\n\"That is an awful tale.\"\n\n\"Not as bad as me letting that screwed up male live.\"\n\nTahlia draws a painful sounding inhale. \"You could not have known.\"\n\nTessa shoots a sharp look at Tahlia. \"He almost killed you.\"\n\nA slight smile lifts the corners of her mouth. \"There would have been a wrath unlike any the Lycans would have known at my death.\"\n\nDo I hear a smug note to that comment? Tessa searches Tahlia's face. No, she stated it like fact.\n\nMaybe it is.\n\n\"I am the princess of my people.\"\n\nHigh Alpha female.\n\n\"Oh, shit,\" Tessa breathes in reply.\n\nTahlia nods. \"Yes.\" Then, she says, \"You have very colorful language.\"\n\n\"Yup.\" Tessa turns to her, ignoring the relevance of that last. \"Do you want to mate with this guy?\"\n\n\"Drek?\"\n\nTessa nods. \"Is he the... prince of something.\"\n\nTahlia's lips curl. \"High Alpha male.\"\n\nKnew it. \"Yes, him.\"\n\nHer eyes slide away from Tessa. \"Of course.\"\n\nHell no she doesn't.\n\n\"Is he an okay guy, like...\"\n\n\"I do not know if he is a \u02bbsadistic pig.'\" She gives a little grin, ducking her head, and Tessa laughs. The girl has a great sense of humor buried underneath all the layers of propriety.\n\n\"Okay, so can we just do whatever? Stick together? Or do you have parents or what?\"\n\nHer face smooths.\n\nTessa knows masked sadness when she sees it.\n\n\"I do not know my parents. Only my guardians. One to guard and one to take care of me and teach me the ways of the Lanarre.\"\n\nThat's awful.\n\n\"Okay,\" Tessa slaps her thighs, knowing the girl essentially just lost the only caregivers she ever knew. \"So let's take the long way.\"\n\n\"The which?\"\n\nTessa grins, throwing the car into gear. \"Let's show up when we feel like it.\"\n\nTahlia bites her lip and Tessa realizes that's her nervous tell.\n\n\"They will search for me.\"\n\nTessa snorts. \"Have at it, guys.\" She turns and relaxes against the seat. Tessa hears the seatbelt click.\n\n\"I think I like you, Tessa.\"\n\n\"I like you, too, Tahlia. I always think people that save my life are the best.\" Tessa winks at Tahlia, and a shy smile ghosts her lips.\n\nNeither one of them have a friend in the world.\n\nBut it looks like they have each other.\n\nThings could be worse.\n\n# CHAPTER EIGHT\n\nPraile\n\nThe barbed end of the lash checks the top layer of his skin and peels it away like sliced cheese.\n\nPraile gnashes his black teeth together as a layer of smoldering mist hovers above his flesh.\n\nPraile always smolders when his emotions run high.\n\nThe lash whistles a high note at the return. It sings as it returns to meet his flesh.\n\nPraile bellows as the thirteenth lash strikes deep, ringing its poison-tipped metal on a vertebrae in his fileted back.\n\n\"Halt,\" a low voice says from behind Praile. His head bows to his chest. Rivulets of sweat burn a pathway through his scalp and pour down to fill the wounds the barbed lashes have made on the entire length of his spine.\n\nPraile dare not turn. The next lash might paralyze him. Yes, he could heal it, but the vulnerability of not feeling or being able to move would be his undoing as his skills of self-healing were greatly limited. Healing is not one of his gifts.\n\n\"I believe Praile has learned a valuable lesson this day,\" the Master comments.\n\nHe has learned nothing except if something were to go ill, Praile will suffer. However, The Master has taught Praile well, and he emulates the Master.\n\n\"Release him from his bindings.\"\n\nTwo of the low demons appear at either side of Praile and unshackle him. One dares to meet his eyes.\n\nThe gaze of the low contains a measured triumph. He is pleased by Praile's punishment.\n\nPraile grins, marking him for later, and he bows his head, scuttling away.\n\nRun faster, minion.\n\nThe Master slithers to Praile, the swish of his robes is all that Praile hears.\n\nPraile feels real fear, which is rare. His gaze drops, concentrating on the hem of the Master's robe. The Master's feet are grotesquely disproportionate. Long cracked black toenails that are so long, they nearly curl.\n\nThe Master always smolders.\n\nA black mist rises from the flesh of his feet. His toes wiggle and Praile flinches.\n\nThe Master chuckles a dark note of contentment into the hot cavern where torture, death, and discipline are meted.\n\n\"You are a good slave to the cause, Praile. However, when you called the Were to destroy our enemies on earth, the one who was most important to be slain runs about unharmed. And the Blood Babe lives inside the womb of a crafty Singer. One who is a female after my own heart.\"\n\nPraile hears a dull thump as the Master's meaty fist thumps his own chest.\n\nThe lump in Praile's throat shifts, stifling his breathing.\n\n\"I am entrusting you to find this Singer that is with child. The child.\"\n\nA talon touches the fleshy part of Praile's chin, and he winces, though it does not hurt.\n\n\"Bring her to me.\" The Master's rancid breath bathes Praile's face.\n\nPraile turns away, for even he cannot bear it.\n\nThe Master laughs at his discomfiture. \"Kill the Angelic Blood, the High One. Do not hesitate. Do not tarry. Bring me the whites of the Angelic's eyes.\"\n\n\"Yes, Master,\" Praile whispers.\n\n\"I will make your death last for an eon if you fail me in this.\"\n\nPraile knows. He nods.\n\nThe Master's hands thread through his hair, slowly squeezing like a vise. \"Are we clear, Praile?\"\n\nHis meaning is utterly clear as the Master's fingerprints begin to burn into Praile's scalp.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nHis grips tightens to the point of screeching pain, then he abruptly releases Praile's head.\n\nPraile bites back his relief and begins to control his breathing, concentrating only on that.\n\n\"Lazarus will heal your wounds\u2014yet not perfectly. You should feel the pain as a reminder of what yet needs accomplishing.\"\n\nPraile lays his palms against the heated stone in front of him, trying not to notice the lost talons embedded in the wall from failed escapes by the masses tortured before him. The black blood has faded over time to a washed-out charcoal. It fills the grooves and divots of the nearly black rock.\n\nPraile groans as he straightens, keeping his eyes away from the Master. To look upon him is sure insanity. No one has ever cast their eyes upon the Master and lived to tell of it.\n\nTheir screams were silenced.\n\nPraile shudders as a talon caresses the most grievous wound at his back.\n\n\"I will see to it.\" Praile's agony drips from each word.\n\nThe talon sinks deep, and Praile bites the inside of his cheek until the rich taste of copper fills his mouth as he suffers through the inspection of the fresh wound on his back.\n\n\"Good.\" The talon lifts, and Praile nearly weeps in relief.\n\nPraile's shoulders slump as the Master exits the chamber. He stays in the same tense position until Lazarus appears at his side.\n\nPraile's hate for Lazarus burns brightly. But Lazarus does his job.\n\n\"This will be more painful before it heals, Praile.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes. Get on with it.\"\n\nFingers dig inside the wounds, and Praile squeals like a pig brought to slaughter. The pain is so acute, he forgets to breathe\u2014or think. He arches to escape the probing fingertips, but nothing will relieve him.\n\n\"Hold him up,\" Lazarus murmurs.\n\nLow demons, whom Praile does not know, hoist him by the armpits as the searing healing begins.\n\n\"Stop,\" he moans.\n\n\"No,\" Lazarus replies.\n\nPraile is sure he hears a smile in that one-word reply.\n\nHe opens his mouth to convey the pain Lazarus will incur for his joy at his master's pain.\n\nBut the pain is too great. It rips at his brain, and all falls to blackness.\n\n*\n\nThe demonic can camouflage their bodies. If the demonic did not have this ability, humans could easily call them out. Though Praile's skin is the coveted deepest red of his kind, it is well outside of human norms. And when he is rife with emotion, he smolders and small stubby horns sprout above his head. Though they are a sign of beauty for the demonic, they are an instant warning to humans that he is other.\n\nLazarus does not have horns, beautiful dark skin, or a tail weapon. He can be camouflaged easily and fit in nicely among humankind. Lazarus, with his horrible white teeth, hornless head, and lackluster tail, has less to hide.\n\nHe is the perfect lackey.\n\nPraile will need to remain calm. High demons have a more difficult time hiding what they are.\n\nThree days have passed since the Master's punishment. Lazarus healed Praile three quarters to right, and no more, according to specific instruction.\n\nPraile cannot mask his stiffness. Though the deepest wound is sealed halfway, it seeps through the ridiculous human costume he is forced to wear. The cotton button-down shirt is sticking to the wet wounds of his back, and it pulls as he takes breaths.\n\nPraile holds up his palm, and Lazarus slows, putting large hands on his denim-clad hips.\n\n\"Wait.\"\n\nLazarus cocks a light red eyebrow. \"If you need rest...\"\n\nPraile rolls his eyes. \"Of course I need rest!\" he bellows into the still night air. \"It is not about rest, Lazarus. Our Master requires this task completed in a timely way.\" Praile pants, trying to straighten. Unable to manage it, he hunches once more.\n\n\"Flag down a human vehicle so that we might make haste to where the Angelic resides.\"\n\nLazarus frowns. \"It is a risk I advise you not to take.\"\n\nPraile straightens, hissing as the material of the shirt sticks to his tender back. \"Duly noted. Now flag. Down. A. Human.\"\n\n\"What if the human possesses the devices of sanctity?\"\n\nDrat.\n\n\"Crosses and the like?\" Lazarus prompts as though Praile needs a reminder.\n\nPraile's brows drop like bricks above his eyes, and a lazy smolder begins above the bare skin at the back of his hands. \"It is unlikely, with so many humans in thrall with evil, that we will come across the random practitioner.\"\n\n\"There is the matter of an Angelic among humanity.\"\n\nPraile staggers toward Lazarus, looking up at the taller male, hating his stature. \"You let me divine which human is a threat to us.\"\n\n\"My discernment\u2014\"\n\n\"Your discernment is a tool in my arsenal, Lazarus\u2014do not forget that.\"\n\nLazarus allows a rare show of emotion, his lips curling as he bares his teeth. \"You do not let me,\" he says.\n\nLazarus makes his way from the forest where the portal of Hades empties to the highway, and which the human masses use to scurry from one ant hill to the next.\n\nPraile narrows his gaze at Lazarus's broad back.\n\nI will be watching you. Praile follows, making his slow and painful ascent from the gulley toward the highway.\n\n# CHAPTER NINE\n\nSlash\n\nSlash remains on edge. Though the fey disposed of the gruesome remains of the decimated Singer population, the taste of death lingers over Region One like a stench that will never be cleansed.\n\nZeke of the rogue Alaskan Were stands at Slash's side. \"So many dead can't be so easily covered up.\" His nose wrinkles.\n\nSlash grunts his assent and paces away. \"What are our numbers?\" He turns back, and Zeke shrugs.\n\n\"Bad.\"\n\nThat's what Slash was afraid of. The demonic killed nearly half of the Region Two Singers, leaving roughly fifty behind. And half of those are children. As is typical, Slash wants hard numbers for fighters. Many are unaccounted for.\n\nWhat of Lawrence and Manny?\n\n\"Do we have a superb tracker? Can we know for certain who is dead?\"\n\nZeke shakes his head. His exotic looks are unusual for the lower forty-eight, though Native Americans were plentiful where Zeke's pack ran in the north. \"Our numbers are down by half, too. Our best tracker\u2014gone.\"\n\nSlash remembers something. \"Jacqueline, the Singer from Two, she's a Tracker.\"\n\nZeke nods slowly, but his brows drop low over his eyes. \"Do we want to use her? She is with child and has\u2014what should we say?\u2014bad blood.\" Zeke laughs at the inside joke.\n\nSlash can't bring himself to.\n\nZeke studies him for a moment. \"You're a serious wolf.\"\n\nSlash nods. \"Serious times are afoot, Red.\"\n\nZeke stares at him for a second more. Instead of answering, he melds into his wolfen form.\n\nSlash's laugh sounds like a bark, as he's changed, as well. Athletic pants expand to fit his increased girth and height, though he doesn't wear a shirt. \"Perimeter sweep?\"\n\nZeke nods, and his stubbed snout causes Slash to wonder what he must look like in this form. That brings him back to his embarrassment over his scarred face.\n\n\"Let's go,\" Zeke growls from a mouth that no longer manipulates human speech perfectly.\n\nSlash swings his snout in the direction of the Victorian mansion, scenting Adrianna through the water as she showers.\n\nGuards, both Singer and Were, pepper the front of the grand home. The lone fang, Brynn, accompanies them.\n\nDetermining Adrianna is safe, Slash nods at Zeke. Then they race to the edges of the hundred-acre property.\n\nRunning the perimeter is the final pursuit of security before each night falls.\n\nSlash can't rest until he knows both his own wolves and his adopted group are safe. Then, and only then, will he lay down his weapons, eat, and clean up.\n\nSlash blurs through the scenery, his powerful arms punching the lone branch as it sweeps forward to snap at him. Leaves and forest debris pad his swift gait. A fallen old-growth log feeds the saplings that are nourished from its rich decay. He leaps over the belly of bark and wood rot with ease, his keen eyes at Zeke's back as he travels just ahead.\n\nRoads form a crude square around the property. Two parallel side roads run like wide railroad tracks that flank the sides of the land and Highway 101 claims the forward section.\n\n101 is exactly where they were all picked up by Tom Harriet and his immoral pack of Reds. The only Singer spared was the aura reader, Angela.\n\nNot a single Combatant remains alive, though Scott and Lucius are unaccounted for.\n\nZeke stops so abruptly, Slash all but slams into him. He evades him by inches, rolling into a half-executed somersault and catching his forward momentum with an outstretched arm against a small tree trunk. It bends then breaks, flinging Slash through the undergrowth. He slows and barrels into a massive tree trunk.\n\nPine needles rain down, and the scent of the forest is thick in his nose. He breathes, and they choke him. Slash ungracefully spits them out and glares at Zeke.\n\nZeke holds out his palm, his talons still short from his change to wolfen. Slash slaps his palm inside Zeke's and rises.\n\n\"Thanks for the warning.\" Slash glares, baring his teeth.\n\n\"If you smelled what I did, your ass would've puckered too.\"\n\nSlash ignores him, flaring his nostrils hard.\n\nNo. It can't be.\n\nHe turns back to Zeke, who shrugs.\n\n\"When was the last time you scented a Lanarre?\"\n\nSlash awkwardly folds his arms, and sap causes them to stick together. He casts a sharp glance at Zeke. \"Since whelphood.\"\n\n\"That's right.\" Zeke nods, his burnt orange downy hairs making him look vaguely on fire. \"I can't say I ever have.\"\n\nIt's instinct. A Were knows Lycan royalty.\n\n\"Female,\" Zeke says, and Slash nods.\n\n\"Scenting a Lanarre in this area doesn't make a great deal of sense,\" Slash growls. \"They're always under guard. They're pure Were, from which we all come.\"\n\nZeke shrugs. \"They all take a shit every day like the rest of us. Nothing special.\"\n\nSlash's lips pull into a grim smile. \"It might be a little more than toilet habits, Zeke.\"\n\n\"A female doesn't pose a threat, and I don't smell wounds. I say we leave her be.\"\n\nSlash cups his chin, fur mashing down under his hand, and slowly shakes his head. \"I don't think so. A female out in this rural area is illogical. They lock down their females. No. I say we investigate and make sure she isn't in danger, then we leave it be.\"\n\n\"Fine, but it could be a can of worms.\" Greenish-gold orbs slowly spin, revolving slightly faster with Zeke's emotions.\n\nSlash chuckles, dropping his hand. \"I don't know about the Alaska dens, but when is it not a can of worms?\"\n\n\"I don't scent any males.\"\n\n\"True,\" Zeke says. His chin lifts as he gazes at the dying sun. \"Let's do it quickly and get back to One. I could eat the ass out of a hippo.\"\n\n\"Nice choice of words.\"\n\n\"Do you feel less hungry?\"\n\nSlash didn't. He thought he could eat the asses out of an entire herd. \"No. I'm starved, too. The wolfen form is a bitch to maintain for this length of time. It sucks energy.\"\n\n\"That's in short supply,\" Zeke finishes.\n\nSlash leads the way this time, scrapes and bruises from his rough landing repair and fade as he makes the steep climb toward the highway.\n\n*\n\nTessa\n\nSo much better, Tessa sighs mentally as her urine stream finally ends. She's had to pee like a Russian race horse for the last hour.\n\nShe smirks at her ladylike thoughts while using a napkin from the last gas station to wipe. She tosses the napkin to the ground and kicks leaves over it. A pang of guilt spurs her to help mother nature in its pursuit to return everything to the earth.\n\nTessa scans the deep gloom of the forest. Her eyes rise up the small incline to where the car sits on the soft shoulder of Highway 101.\n\n\"Tahlia,\" Tessa softly calls.\n\n\"Yes,\" she answers.\n\nTessa's shoulders drop. She can't believe how fast she feels responsible for the Lanarre female.\n\nTessa needs that like she needs a hole in the head.\n\nIt's not enough that Tramack is up her ass, sniffing around for a good place to dry hump her leg. No-oh, I've got to take in a stray Were female. Not any Were female, but a Lanarre princess.\n\nDumb, Tessa. Really dumb.\n\nIt is what it is.\n\n\"Come here.\"\n\nTahlia moves between two huge fir trees. She's so quiet, Tessa's not sure if she would hear her had she not been directly in front of her and within sight.\n\n\"You're quiet.\"\n\n\"Stealth movement is a very important part of my training.\"\n\nTessa cocks an eyebrow. \"This is so weird. Really. Forgive me, but if you're this important princess\u2014\"\n\nTahlia folds her arms, looking very close to a rant.\n\nIgnoring her, Tessa goes on, \"Then why teach you all this combat stuff?\"\n\n\"I am female, nonetheless\u2014I have skills the Lanarre wish to develop. Not one Lanarre's importance is ignored. Whatever aptitude they possess is built upon, harnessed.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" Tessa says.\n\nTahlia releases her arms and shrugs. \"I'm not making this up. The Lanarre feels responsible for all Were. We must be excellent in all things. Otherwise, we're unworthy of the title of ruler of the Lycan.\"\n\nOh, moon.\n\n\"So what happened?\"\n\nTahlia's eyes lower, and she presses her beat-up sneaker into the moss, making a tread indentation. \"We cannot be responsible for all wrongdoing or for all Were falling away from the principles of Lycan.\"\n\nTahlia's head jerks up, and she plants her legs far apart, fists ready and loose at her side. She morphs from delicate to fierce in seconds.\n\nTessa turns around slowly and sights two Were, both in wolfen form.\n\n\"Stay behind me, Tahlia,\" Tessa warns, her voice low.\n\n\"I am a better forward fighter,\" she comments casually.\n\nTessa turns to tell her what's what.\n\nShe is gone.\n\nTessa feels the breeze over her head and as Tahlia flings herself over Tessa's head.\n\n\"No!\" Tessa screams and charges the males.\n\nTahlia lands in front of a seven-foot-tall Were whose deeply scarred face has the most tender hard eyes Tessa has ever seen.\n\nHe's seen too much, is Tessa's lone thought before Tahlia launches herself at the other Were male.\n\nTahlia's hand is a blur.\n\nShe steps away from that Were and moves in on the scarred one.\n\n\"Forgive me,\" he says in the heavily graveled voice of the wolfen form then hits Tahlia at the side of her neck.\n\nShe falls in a silent heap.\n\nThe other Were is on his knees, four trails where talons swiped across his throat bleeding.\n\nHis esophagus shines like a slick cream worm in his throat.\n\nTessa moves in before the scarred Were can hurt Tahlia more. The girl is already coming around.\n\nTheir eyes meet from her prone position, and she kicks her leg up, narrowly missing the scarred one's nutsack.\n\nHoly moon, this is so bad.\n\nTessa hits him full speed, and he grabs her forearm, spinning her off behind him with her own momentum.\n\nTessa lands on her ass with a hard thump. Her wind is gone, and she lies on her back, unable to breathe.\n\nI have to change. Like yesterday.\n\nTessa's body shifts to the quarter-change seamlessly, and her lungs fill. They're just slightly bigger, better, and more proficient at oxygen intake.\n\nTahlia is pinned against the scarred Were, her back to his front.\n\n\"Don't hurt her. She is Lanarre,\" Tessa says as a last resort. She's not sure what these males know about the species. Her own knowledge was pretty inadequate. But if they know anything, they know not to fuck with the Lanarre\u2014ever.\n\n\"We know,\" the scarred Were says. \"We are not here to harm, but to help.\"\n\n\"Could've said,\" Tessa replies as the deepening gloom tests her improved vision. She does manage to make out that he is Alpha\u2014and a Red. There's no hiding that sunset-colored fur.\n\n\"This one didn't give us the chance. My second heals a grievous wound.\"\n\nTessa rolls her eyes. Tahlia's wide eyes are on hers. \"He'll live, and my moon, don't you know better than to sneak up on two females?\"\n\nHis face shows surprise.\n\n\"Don't look at me like that, Red. We were out here taking a tinkle, and you guys sidle up? Moon help us.\"\n\nHe scowls. \"If I let you go, are you going to give me a new blow hole?\" the scarred one asks.\n\n\"What? Are you a whale?\" Tahlia asks in a sulk.\n\nTessa laughs.\n\nThe other Were is on his hands and knees, massaging his throat. \"That fucking hurt.\"\n\nTahlia harrumphs, and the injured Were glares at her.\n\n\"What pack are you from?\" Tessa asks tersely.\n\n\"I won't harm you,\" Tahlia says.\n\nThe scarred Were backs away so quickly that Tessa can't track the movement, even in her quarter-change form.\n\n\"I'm Slash, from the Southeastern.\"\n\nTessa can't hide her relief.\n\nSlash frowns at her curiously. \"I take it that's a good thing.\"\n\nShe nods a little too quickly. \"A very good thing.\"\n\n\"Tramack from the Western hunts me.\"\n\n\"You're rogue?\" the injured Were asks, standing, the surprise evident in his voice.\n\nThe furrows from Tahlia's expert swipe fully close, and the skin remains shiny with fresh scar tissue.\n\n\"Are you going to judge?\"\n\nHis eyes glitter at her. \"Not yet.\" But his gaze shifts to Tahlia.\n\n\"We are here to help. We can't do that when you attack us,\" Slash explains logically.\n\nTessa puts her hands on her hips. \"We are female.\"\n\n\"Clearly,\" the other Were says. His lips pull into a sardonic tilt, and he performs a little bow, though the cough from his abused throat ruins the effect. \"I'm Zeke.\"\n\n\"Well here's the thing, Zeke. Tramack of the Western is hunting me and has declared me his intended. There's a bounty on my head, and he means to collect me. This Lanarre's human guardians were slaughtered by a rogue male that I should have killed. She was traveling to...\" Tessa looks at Tahlia, wondering how much she should say.\n\nTahlia nods. \"Go ahead. It is fine that anyone knows.\"\n\n\"Tahlia is traveling to mate her chosen.\"\n\nBoth males look at Tahlia. \"She doesn't look old enough to mate.\"\n\nTahlia kicks up her chin. \"I am of age.\"\n\nSlash snorts in the background, and Tahlia gives him her best dirty look, which Tessa thinks is quite good.\n\nZeke thumbs his chin thoughtfully, running the digit back and forth across the downy bright-red fur. He's handsome.\n\nHe's also Red. Tessa's running for her life without a plan.\n\nI don't need a male.\n\nWhen she looks up, his thoughtful glance has narrowed to her face. His nostrils flare once, and he smirks.\n\nThe insufferable pig. Tessa fumes, thinking he might have guessed her mild interest as she fights to behave casually.\n\nSlash spreads his arms away from his body. \"We can offer you temporary shelter and protection until you figure out what you want to do.\"\n\nTahlia looks her age as she rolls her lip between her teeth, indecision painted on every plane of her face. \"The Lanarre will look for me.\"\n\nHer eyes slide to Slash then land accusingly on Zeke.\n\nSlash's brows draw together. \"And you will be under our protection.\"\n\n\"You are a stubborn female,\" Zeke says to Tahlia.\n\n\"You have no idea,\" Tessa mutters, thinking about their brief acquaintance.\n\nTahlia frowns at her.\n\n\"It's true!\" Tessa defends.\n\nInstead of answering, Tahlia leads the way, heading in the direction from where the Were popped up.\n\nTahlia gives Tessa the barest smile as she walks by, as if she holds a secret.\n\n# CHAPTER TEN\n\nJulia\n\nJulia has been dirty before. But after being bit, beaten, and bruised, a shower has never felt so good. She dries off and carefully combs through hair, which hasn't seen a brush in a couple of days. Julia tosses on a T, jeans, and shoes that don't aggravate her feet, which are still healing from the cross-country trek.\n\nThe few hours since they arrived with the Region Two Singers were not easy ones.\n\nThe Were are complaining that the grounds feel like a graveyard. Their acute sense of smell picks up every single thing. Every death. Every wound.\n\nThat stirs an idea. Julia can't discern one dead body from another. But it's critical that she know if Victor is dead. And what of Reagan and Delilah?\n\nThen there's Tharell. He claimed he was instructed to deceive the Singers\u2014and ultimately betray William\u2014and, ruled by the black blood of the demonic, he had no other choice. He broke his pact with the Northwestern coven by not delivering Julia to them.\n\nGabriel, Julia's mind whispers, then on the heels of that name, Julia remembers Claire. A longing for Claire swamps her, as does a yearning for William. He was deeply self-contained. As it turns out, he was her ultimate protector.\n\nJulia is sitting by herself in the room she's occupied since the first day she arrived at Region One. The cracked doorknob and hole in the wall stand in testimony to tempers\u2014attacks.\n\nNow everything's different. Jen, Michael, and Brendan are gone.\n\nScott.\n\nA silent tear files its slow way over her still-warm skin from her shower. It plops on top of her tightly knitted fingers.\n\nShe'll never hear a wise-ass Michael belittle someone with his scathing sarcasm in between lollipop licks. Julia won't listen to the sibling fights Jen adored stirring up.\n\nBrendan won't be making any more manure piles or phantom holes for the stray vamp to fall into.\n\nThey were sort of a family; the only one she had. When all hope was lost and she thought Jason was dead, they were there for her in a way only Jason and Cyn had been.\n\nJulia hiccups, and a sob pops out like a bubble of sadness. It bursts in the silent room, filling the space with her loss.\n\nNow her family is Jason, Cyn, and Jacqueline\u2014of all people.\n\nJulia slowly raises her head and plops her chin in her hand. There is her hidden sister in Alaska. But for now, the people who remain\u2014the Singers\u2014will need her.\n\nJulia stands at the edge of the bed. After wetting a cold washcloth and blotting her tear-streaked face, she makes her way downstairs.\n\nThe kitchen is filled with women and a few industrious guys, making great-smelling food. Dishes being clanked and set out for people are the noises of comfort and gathering.\n\nSaliva pools inside her mouth, and Julia realizes she hasn't eaten in twenty-four hours.\n\nJacqueline sits at the table, one hand on her belly, her chin perched on her fist.\n\nCyn stares at Jacqueline with clear suspicion.\n\nJulia smiles. Some things remain the same.\n\n\"Jules!\" Cyn cries, running to her. Julia has seconds to see that Cyn has somehow styled her hair, and is wearing cute clothes before she hurls herself in Julia's arms. They dance in a circle and finally Cyn releases her.\n\n\"So happy you're finally done wallowing in the shower. I thought you were setting up camp. Is there any hot water left?\"\n\nJulia blinks.\n\nCyn frowns.\n\n\"Hello. Maybe you need more sleep?\"\n\n\"On-demand hot water heater,\" Jason says, walking into the kitchen and pressing a light kiss on her forehead. Julia glances up, grateful for his presence. He squeezes her shoulder, and Julia still feels as if she's in some kind of shock-induced fog. Julia's hand comes to rest on her stomach, where she was stabbed.\n\n\"Food time,\" Jason says, striking his palm against his washboard abs. He jerks open the fridge door, hangs on the top, and juts his face forward like a pecking hen.\n\nJulia walks over there and pulls the fridge door out of his grasp. She shuts it, opens it, then shuts it again.\n\nJason's brows come together, and he retreats a step. \"Babe, what are ya doing?\"\n\nJulia sucks in her lower lip. \"Michael said the key to finding food in the fridge was to look three times.\"\n\nThe room falls silent.\n\nJulia bursts into tears.\n\n\"Come here, babe,\" Jason pulls her into his arms and she sobs against his broad shoulder.\n\nAgain.\n\n\"Let 'em go, baby. Let 'em go.\"\n\nJulia sniffs, wiping her tears against his hard chest. \"Sorry,\" she says, shaking her head, her damp hair making him wet where her tears don't. \"I'm having a hard time still.\"\n\n\"That's okay. It'll take time.\"\n\nA big commotion of voices burst all around them, and Julia looks up.\n\nBeaten and torn, Scott staggers into the kitchen.\n\nWithout thinking, Julia runs to Scott. He gives her a weary smile.\n\nHis lips are cut, one eye is swollen shut, and a deep open wound bisects the other eyebrow.\n\n\"Julia,\" he croaks, and she wraps her arms around his waist.\n\n\"Ah!\" she cries as they begin to topple like a clumsy, half-cut tree, and Julia stumbles under his weight.\n\n\"Come on, Hulk. Don't crush the queen, pal.\" Jason puts a hand underneath his arm and scoops the larger man to an upright position.\n\nCyn walks slowly toward them. Her eyes meet Julia's, and she gives a small shake of her head.\n\nJulia looks down and sees Scott's femur gleaming like a fanged tooth hanging from his upper thigh.\n\n\"Heal him,\" Jacqueline says from behind Cyn.\n\nCyn turns, hands on hips. \"You're still bossy. And y'know? I think I wouldn't be if I were in your position. Like I wouldn't dig in and get it figured out and stuff.\"\n\nJacqueline just stares.\n\n\"Gah!\" Cyn says. \"Fine, but this is going to be a hold-him-down moment.\"\n\nJason guides a limping Scott to the flowered fainting couch in the front parlor and carefully lays him down. Scott's skin is chalky with a green cast.\n\nJulia moves to his side, drops to her knees, and grabs his hand. He winces.\n\nShe looks down and sees he's completely missing two fingernails.\n\n\"Oh, my God, Scott!\" Julia cries, covering her mouth with the hand that's not holding his. \"What did they do to you?\"\n\nScott licks his dry lips. One beautiful, dark eye rolls to meet Julia's. \"Less than they did to Lucius.\"\n\nJulia's shoulders shake with her effort to be strong. This is what a leader has to deal with, these cold facts. But more tears come, collecting at her jaw and dampening the thin long-sleeved T-shirt she's wearing.\n\n\"Where is Lucius?\" Angela asks quietly as she steps up behind Julia.\n\nShe didn't hear.\n\nScott's gaze meets Angela's over Julia's shoulder. He closes his eyes, and Angela cries out, rushing from the room.\n\n\"Okay, boys, hold stud-boy down while I set this break.\"\n\nJulia's eyes hold Cyn's. \"Are you\u2014do you know what you're doing?\"\n\nShe smiles, shaking her head. \"Hell, no. But my hands do.\"\n\nThat'll have to be good enough.\n\nCyn's expression goes serious. \"Take a hike, Jules. You're not gonna like the noise he makes.\"\n\n\"It's okay, Julia,\" Scott says.\n\nJulia leans forward to kiss his forehead, but can't find an uninjured area.\n\nScott squeezes her hand, trying to comfort her.\n\nShe covers her ears when Scott begins to scream.\n\nJulia doesn't leave or look away from his uninjured eye.\n\nHis screams fall blissfully silent when he passes out from the pain.\n\n*\n\nPraile\n\nPraile's wounds weep and fester underneath the ill-fitting human clothes. Further, he must expend an inordinate amount of energy to maintain some form of camouflage.\n\nHe must expend more precious energy than Lazarus, who has only a tail and a minor bit of skin cover to effect. His eyes, teeth, and even his nails fall within acceptable appearance for a human male. How Lazarus manages to look so undemonic is a mystery. Genes\u2014always a crapshoot, as the humans say.\n\n\"Hide the bodies,\" Praile commands the two low demons who accompanied him and Lazarus. Hardly more than drones, they can take only one form.\n\nPraile has chosen homeless men. It is a little bit of an inside joke, but he must take the small doses of humor when they present themselves. They're like medicine, especially of late.\n\nIf Praile uses his ability to see things through his human eyes, he sees how the demonics would appear to humans.\n\nLazarus will appear handsome.\n\nPraile grunts as the low demons drag the old couple out of their respective car seats and into the woods.\n\nAn age-old trick. Well, not entirely. The tactic is as old as cars, and those have been in existence for just over a hundred years. However, it's been very handy to lie in the center of the road and appear helpless.\n\nThat had been Lazarus's job. Praile was unwilling to re-open wounds that were healing badly.\n\nHe is ecstatic the Master cannot access his thoughts. If he could, Praile would be dead twice over. Everything he has thought since the thirteenth lash has been of the most evil and vile variety.\n\nHis thoughts have been especially uncharitable toward the Master.\n\nLazarus says nothing, cradling his hand, which he broke while stopping the car that last inch.\n\n\"That'll set wrong,\" Praile says, stating the obvious.\n\n\"Yes,\" Lazarus reluctantly agrees through his teeth.\n\nPraile doesn't smile but marginally contains how pleased he is to see the stoic Lazarus feel pain. After all, he is not healing Praile fully. Praile doesn't care that the Master has tasked Lazarus with doing a partial healing\u2014he still blames his second.\n\nThe two low demons return to the soft shoulder, hunched and mindless as the bees he thought of earlier.\n\n\"Good,\" Praile says. \"Get in the back.\"\n\nThe two slouch inside the back of the car. Lazarus slides behind the steering wheel and just sits there.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Praile bites out.\n\nThen he spies a sliver of bone that has punched through the inside and lower part of Lazarus's wrist. Though demonics are brutally strong, the car was going around fifty miles per hour.\n\n\"I can set it,\" Lazarus says.\n\nPraile grins then winces as his back touches the seat. He jerks upright, glancing at Lazarus. His face is expressionless, as usual. In fact, Praile doesn't find proof of pain except for a certain tightness about his eyes.\n\n\"But you can't heal the injury?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nPraile know of no demonic or healer who can heal themselves. They heal only others.\n\n\"Too bad,\" Praile sings falsely, smoothing his hands down the stiff denim of his jeans. He lets his form go while he's hidden in the car, and a sigh escapes him.\n\nLazarus puts the car in gear with his good hand, and makes his way toward the region where Praile has been told the Angelic Blood has gathered. The High One will be his in the next day\u2014or lashes will be the least of his concern.\n\n# CHAPTER ELEVEN\n\nSlash\n\nSlash is ready.\n\nReady to be done. Ready to see Adrianna. He doesn't want two antagonistic females to babysit. He wants one female forever.\n\nSlash is usually more focused on the task at hand. When openings for security detail came up, he and Zeke were the first to volunteer.\n\nThen the impossible happened. A Lanarre female stumbled into the equation.\n\nSlash's eyes move to Tessa, the older of the two. Her thick black hair is plaited in a single braid down her broad back. It's easy to see she's female, but there's not a soft spot anywhere on her athletic frame. Her wide gray eyes are framed by sooty lashes that match her hair. A dusky complexion contrasts to a smattering of freckles over her straight nose.\n\nThe freckles reminds him of Adrianna, and his heart beats harder.\n\nAs is the norm, both females have a healthy dose of prejudice against him and Zeke.\n\nThat makes sense, because nothing good circulates about the Reds. Alaska is overrun with Reds, and they don't behave like a proper den. Instead, they run in immature, un-led packs, selecting mates indiscriminately. They've given all Reds everywhere a bad name.\n\nZeke keeps a watchful eye on the young female, as he should. She's shown a prowess for self-defense atypical of female Weres, though Alpha females are known for their contentious streak.\n\nSlash grins.\n\nTahlia notices and asks what's so funny.\n\n\"Nothing is funny. I'm thinking about how interesting it will be for you to meet Adrianna.\"\n\nHer faces screws up into a frown.\n\nZeke covers a smile with a cough and Tessa, appearing more jaded than all of them, looks between the two males and narrows her eyes.\n\n\"I know you're not going to hurt us,\" she begins, and Zeke's expressive face gives him away.\n\nTessa stops hiking and crosses her arms. \"Listen, I already told you. Two females are alone, then two wolfen males pop up like jack-in-the-Weres and don't let us know if they're friends...\"\n\n\"We obviously assume you are foes,\" Tahlia says with a touch of arrogance in her voice.\n\nZeke glowers but says, \"Obviously. Hated the talon swipe. Hurts like a bitch. Heals like hell.\"\n\nSlash chuckles. Zeke rolls with circumstances\u2014a critical component to surviving in their supernatural reality.\n\n\"Anyway,\" Tessa drawls, \"that doesn't mean I don't need any background about where we'll be taking temporary shelter. What is expected of us?\"\n\nAnother full look passes between him and Zeke.\n\n\"Okay, who stepped on your puppy?\" Tessa asks.\n\nTahlia looks around.\n\n\"I don't see any dogs.\" Then she smirks, giving a significant look at the two males in wolfen form.\n\n\"It's an expression,\" Tessa says with a proper amount of impatience.\n\nZeke scowls at Tahlia. \"You speak your opinion without any fear of reprisal.\"\n\nTahlia clasps her hands behind her back. \"And you can speak. I was beginning to wonder.\"\n\nTheir stares clash, and Zeke marches over to Tahlia. She tilts her face upward.\n\nAn expression of panic washes over Tessa's face.\n\nTahlia's either stupid or brave.\n\nOr both.\n\nZeke is a foot and a half taller than Tahlia is. He looms over her, and with a low growl, he moves as though to speak.\n\nTahlia tips her head back, exposing the smooth skin of her throat to Zeke. \"You would harm me because of my sharp tongue?\" she whispers.\n\nZeke sways forward, as if he's in a dreamlike state. \"Not harm\u2014no.\"\n\nHe grips her shoulders and sinks his short snout into the crook of her neck, letting out a low growl.\n\nThe posturing has gone on long enough.\n\n\"Do something,\" Tessa says, and Slash sprints the short distance to the pair.\n\nZeke's snout comes away from her neck, and she sinks against him, sliding her arms around his waist.\n\nFuck.\n\nHis eyes spin like emerald fire at Slash, but the revolutions are too fast to track. \"Keep your distance.\"\n\nSlash tenses. \"Let the Lanarre go.\"\n\nHer defiant gaze moves to Slash. \"I do not wish to.\"\n\n\"Tahlia,\" Tessa warns, \"this is dangerous.\"\n\nZeke presses his snout against Tahlia's hair, scenting deeply of her.\n\n\"She nearly decapitated you,\" Slash says.\n\nZeke ignores him.\n\nSlash exhales in disgust. \"You're drunk from her scent. Step away.\"\n\nZeke growls in challenge. Slash has no desire to injure or kill his newest second.\n\nHe gives the Lanarre the contemptuous look she deserves.\n\nTahlia sniffs at him. \"Do not look down on me, Red.\"\n\nSlash folds his arms as his second rolls in her scent. Zeke's snout disappears underneath her hair, and he only comes up for air to press his nose in another unscented spot.\n\n\"He is a good Were. Do not charm him.\"\n\nTahlia smiles. \"Shall I charm you?\"\n\n\"Won't work, whelp. You're too young, I'm too pure, and I have a female.\"\n\nTahlia pouts, and the expression makes her look even younger than she is. She plays childish games with dangerous players.\n\nGrudgingly, she loosens her hold on Zeke and steps away. He tries to follow.\n\n\"Zeke!\" Slash says in a sharp voice.\n\nThe Were's head jerks. He shakes it as though he were asleep. In a way, he was.\n\nThe Lanarre placed at the pinnacle of their species is a danger. With other lesser Were, they are treacherous. Zeke's mixed heritage make him vulnerable to her compulsions.\n\nZeke gazes at Tahlia. Slash watches his expression change from one of dumb thrall, as he's seen a human look at a vamp, to one of anger. \"That is not right.\"\n\nTahlia shrugs. \"It's important you know with whom you deal.\"\n\n\"Where is the selfless girl that saved my life?\" Tessa asks with a touch of sadness in her voice.\n\nTahlia's expression hardens. \"I will not be ruled by males. Or anyone. My chosen, Drek\u2014he is the only male who stands over me. I am Lanarre.\"\n\nTessa makes a sound of distaste. \"Well, good for you. I am a rogue Alpha who's been followed for two decades by a packmaster who doesn't care how I feel\u2014that I think independently at all.\" Her eyes bore into Tahlia's. \"But I'm not going to do a catnip routine on all males because of one male.\"\n\nAmen to that. Slash enjoys Tessa's spirit. \"Catnip?\"\n\nZeke chuckles. \"I like you,\" he says to Tessa.\n\n\"Thanks, but don't get any ideas.\"\n\nSlash laughs and turns to walk back toward Region One.\n\n\"How much longer?\" Tahlia asks after an awkward silent ten minutes of marching through the woods.\n\nVery young.\n\n\"We'll be there when we get there.\"\n\nWhelps.\n\n*\n\nJulia\n\nShe spots them first, which is amazing, considering all the others in the group have eyesight better than hers.\n\nJulia jogs out to meet Slash and Zeke.\n\nShe takes in the two women who they're walking with. Julia doesn't miss the healing talon marks at Zeke's throat, either.\n\nJason is there before she can open her mouth, his arm straying in front of her. \"Whoa, babe. Let's see what's what.\"\n\nOf course, he's right, but Julia's emotional upkeep is taking its toll. She doesn't want to follow rules or keep how she feels silent. Scott has returned.\n\nHer people are dead.\n\nJulia badly wants to be in charge of her destiny. And she will be if it's the last thing she does.\n\n\"Don't baby me, Jason,\" Julia says, scooting around his arm.\n\nHe sighs.\n\n\"Uh-huh, 'cause you're not a danger magnet or some such shit?\"\n\nJulia ignores him, and Slash, who's normally quiet, pipes up, \"These are some stray Were we picked up on our perimeter sweep.\" He jerks a thumb at the young women behind him.\n\nJulia stares openly.\n\nA couple of years ago, she would have made a stab at being polite. Three years in the supernatural world has all but scrubbed away the human niceties.\n\nThe younger one is striking. Her large wide-set eyes have the barest almond shape and an almost violet hue. Dark ringlets spiral out and away from her face, overwhelming her slim body. Her nose is straight; her lips, full.\n\nThey look fuller for the pouting.\n\nIt makes her look about twelve, though Julia is pretty good at guessing age, and she thinks the girl is closer to twenty. But if she's Were, that could be way off. Julia's gaze latches on to the older woman. Her long hair is as dark as night, and her startling gray eyes are not light as Victor's were. They are the color of a coming storm.\n\nShe meets Julia's stare unblinkingly.\n\nAlpha for sure.\n\n\"I'm Julia,\" she says with a smile.\n\n\"Tessa,\" the young woman replies.\n\nThe younger introduces herself as Tahlia.\n\nShe has some kind of accent, which Julia can't pinpoint.\n\n\"I'm sure that Slash and Zeke didn't bring you back here because everything's all hunky-dory.\"\n\nTessa grins suddenly, and the expression softens her face. \"No, you've got that right. But I'll be honest.\"\n\nWell, thank heaven for that.\n\n\"I don't want to bring what I've got chasing me down on you guys.\" Her worried eyes fall on Julia.\n\nJulia frowns. Nope, Region One sure doesn't need any more bad crap. But she won't turn away defenseless women.\n\nHer eyes stray to Zeke's neck. Maybe not so defenseless.\n\nJason's strong hands move to Julia's shoulders. \"Up to you.\"\n\nIsn't it always?\n\nTessa's expression is neutral and Julia can't read Tahlia's.\n\n\"You're welcome to stay here if you don't mind a little work.\" Julia's mouth twists. \"Or a lot.\"\n\nTessa's shoulders drop, and she lets out a sigh of obvious relief. Julia turns to Tahlia, who looks untroubled. Her deep poise is weird for somebody so young, and Julia is very interested to hear why a young female Were is away from her den. It makes zero sense. Julia remembers how closely they guarded her when she was at the Northwestern den.\n\nJulia steps forward and shakes hands with the women. The constant chattering white noise inside her brain intensifies unmercifully for a moment then subsides. She takes a shaky breath and smiles, despite the ESP distraction.\n\nBeing a telepath can be a liability. And when it comes to the Were, it's like bad noise that fills her head and makes it hurt.\n\n\"You okay?\" Jason asks in a low voice, and Tessa's ears perk.\n\nJulia nods, rubbing her temples. \"Yeah.\" She shakes off the disquieting telepathic current. \"I bet you guys are hungry?\" she asks, taking the focus off herself.\n\n\"Starved,\" Tessa admits with a grateful smile.\n\n\"I could eat,\" Tahlia says.\n\n\"Great, follow me.\" Julia turns around and without waiting for anyone, makes her way back to the kitchen.\n\n*\n\nThe guilt is there, but Julia ignores it. She wants to see Scott.\n\nShe's pulled to him like a moth to a flame. Though the soul-meld was wiped out in faerie, Julia wonders if something still remains.\n\nIt's possible the tie is the reason why she never really grieved when Tom Harriet took him. Julia must've known, deep down, that he was still alive.\n\nAnd she's glad. Julia's married to Jason, but she's happy Scott's alive and that he's here.\n\nHer feelings are still kind of a mess.\n\nJulia gets the women settled and moves quietly through the mansion without a guide, until she reaches a closed door on the second floor. She's never been inside this room before. The house is over seven thousand square feet, probably closer to eight. There are two dozen rooms, nine bedrooms and six bathrooms.\n\nScott could be anywhere.\n\nShe lays the flat of her palm on the polished wood door. Her every sense has come alive and they're raw.\n\n\"Come in, Julia,\" Scott says.\n\nShe sighs and turns the crystal knob, swinging the door wide.\n\nScott's propped up on pillows.\n\nJulia doesn't speak to the weirdness between them. Instead, she asks about something safe. \"How's the leg?\"\n\nScott shrugs. \"It'll be good soon.\"\n\nJulia looks at her feet. \"How soon?\" When she looks up, Scott's right in front of her. In. Front. Of. Her.\n\nJulia jerks her chin back. \"What\u2014what are you doing? How'd you move that fast?\"\n\nScott doesn't say anything. His hand moves to her shoulder and floats down to her wrist, then his fingers twine with hers.\n\nThe breath she's been holding slides out in defeat. She forgot Scott is so tall, so big\u2014and so terribly dangerous.\n\nBut he's not dangerous to her, never to her.\n\nHis injured eye has healed enough to open, and his dark gaze finds hers. His hand moves to her jaw, and he feathers his thumb along its edge.\n\n\"Did you believe what Tharell told you?\"\n\nShe didn't expect the question. Julia shakes her head because she can't think. She's numb with what his touch means. Inert like unshaped clay.\n\nThis can't be happening. Julia was so sure she had it figured out. That her path was set.\n\nScott grasps her chin, moving it gently so their eyes lock. \"That a soul-meld could be thrown away because we were in a faerie mound?\" His voice is rife with disbelief. \"What in the hell did he think would happen once we left?\" Scott's brows come together at the apparent obviousness of it all.\n\n\"I guess...\" Julia tries to retreat from his embrace, and it's like stepping out of warm bathwater into a cold bathroom.\n\nI don't want to go.\n\n\"I assumed...\"\n\nScott's eyebrows jam tighter. \"Uh-huh. You know what they say about assuming.\"\n\nJulia makes an inarticulate noise as he buries his fingers in her hair. He makes a fist, twisting the tendrils, creating a sensation just shy of true pain.\n\n\"It makes an ass,\" he whispers against her temple, \"out of you...\"\n\nHe kisses her there, and she whimpers, \"And me.\"\n\nThen his lips are on hers, and Julia forgets she's married to another man or that Scott's been tortured by an insane Were.\n\nThe wet heat of his kiss is all that exists in the entire universe. And the soul-meld locks into place once more, as if it never left.\n\nJulia should mourn its return.\n\nBut when the soul's other piece has found its mate, there is no grief\u2014only joy.\n\n# CHAPTER TWELVE\n\nPraile\n\nLazarus pulls up behind a vintage 1960s vehicle and parks.\n\nGood era, Praile remembers. So much simpler to sway the innocent then. Now humanity is so cynical, he can hardly take pleasure in showing the masses the path to Hades. Happily, many are already on a one-way course.\n\nLazarus inhales deeply. He rolled down the driver's window as they slowed. \"Were. Female.\" He closes his eyes. \"Two.\"\n\nPraile frowns. Those are not the words he was hoping to hear. Praile swings the car door open and winces as the material of his shirt tears away from his wounds\n\nFucking lashes.\n\nGravel crunches under his stiff running shoes as he walks around to the passenger-side door. The car has fins near the trunk and has been well-preserved.\n\nCuriously, it's abandoned.\n\nPraile does not believe in coincidence of any kind. He pops open the door and peers inside.\n\n\"What's happened here?\" he fires at Lazarus.\n\nHis bright-blue gaze pins Praile from across the seat as he leans in opposite him. Praile has always known of Lazarus's hate for him, but he is oh-so-careful about letting it manifest visibly.\n\n\"Give me a moment, and I will try to discern what's happened.\"\n\nThe thread of irritation buried in that neutral voice pleases Praile.\n\n\"I wish to determine where the High One's hidey-hole is.\"\n\nLazarus gives a mild exhale of utter irritation.\n\n\"Problem, Lazarus?\"\n\nHis eyes shift away, and Praile knows the movement makes it more difficult for Praile to read emotion. Clever demon.\n\n\"No.\"\n\nLiar. Praile's nostrils flare, smelling the untruth.\n\nLazarus holds up a palm. \"I am aware of what the end game is, Praile.\"\n\n\"Good. Do not lie to me again.\"\n\nLazarus says nothing. His eyes close, and he inhales in short chuffs. Finally, his eyelids sweep open, icy-blue irises blazing.\n\n\"One female is a Lanarre.\"\n\nPraile whistles, delighted at the revelation. Then his eyebrows drop. He palms his chin with undisguised talons. \"What is Lycan royalty doing cavorting about?\"\n\nLazarus shrugs. \"It's not important, really. What is\u2014is the women marked their territory and left this fine stolen vehicle behind.\"\n\nPraile swivels his head to Lazarus in a hard glance of interest. \"Really?\"\n\nLazarus nods. \"Really. And two Red Weres accompany them.\"\n\n\"Fantastic,\" Praile breathes out reverently. \"This is wonderful news.\"\n\nLazarus's lips lift.\n\nPraile waves his palm around. \"You know what I mean.\"\n\n\"I do.\" Lazarus frowns suddenly. \"Why are you not maintaining your form?\"\n\nIt's not as easy for me, fool.\n\nOf course, Lazarus is no fool and gives him a knowing look.\n\nPraile shrugs. \"I will slip my human shield on when we near Region One. I only need to employ it for a short time. The Angelic who remain will not know of our deceit if we're not in our true from.\"\n\nIn battle, the demonic must be in their true form. In all other things, the parody of humanity is perfect.\n\nPraile sighs. \"To know that the High One and the blood babe are finally here after all this time.\" Praile's gaze spears Lazarus and he gives a smug nod. \"The world is our oyster, Lazarus.\"\n\nLazarus is silent. And that silence suits Praile. He mainly enjoys listening to himself. He needs no other audience.\n\nThey lock both cars and walk into the woods. Praile knows everything will soon be within reach, even the swollen promises made by the Master.\n\n*\n\nJulia\n\n\"Scott!\" Julia shoves him away, freaking.\n\nHe's been tortured and has a broken leg.\n\nShe's all sorts of miserable.\n\nHe laughs.\n\n\"Oh, my God.\" Her voice trembles, and she puts her shaking hand over her scorched lips. \"So not funny.\"\n\nScott sobers. \"Sorry. I guess I'm just a little fucking giddy about surviving Harriet's treatment, escaping and coming back here to you.\"\n\nHis hand finds her nape and applies a tender squeeze.\n\nJulia moans. \"This is so bad. You can't be happy to come back to me. There is no us.\"\n\n\"No,\" he whispers. \"It's so good\u2014right.\"\n\nHe leans down and peppers kisses on her forehead. His hot lips move to each eyelid, and she feels his eyelashes brush against her own.\n\n\"And my asshole brothers. I was actually beginning to miss those guys,\" Scott says softly with a smile in his voice.\n\nIt's cold water on all Julia's senses.\n\nScott doesn't know about his father. Brendan, Jen\u2014Michael.\n\nOh no.\n\nScott watches emotions run across her face, fleeing for safety from his perceptive gaze.\n\nHis fingers tighten on her shoulders, sensing her morbidity. \"What the hell has you looking at me like that?\" Dark eyes pull at her, and Julia's drowning in all that deep brown.\n\nLightheadedness swims close.\n\n\"Julia, I'm sorry.\" Scott drags her over to the bed and gently lays her down.\n\nShe notices his slight limp and smells the soap he's used since his return.\n\nWhat's wrong with me?\n\nHe takes both her hands. \"Now tell me what's happening?\"\n\n\"You noticed we don't have many people?\"\n\n\"Ah, no. I noticed we have an assload of Region Two Singers. And let's face it. Observation skills were on the down low.\" His gaze moves over Julia's face, coming to rest on her eyes.\n\nScott stands up, realization making swift work of his face. \"Dad?\"\n\nJulia doesn't look away.\n\nShe counts it as the hardest thing she's ever done. \"I don't have a good way to tell you.\"\n\nHis expression morphs to granite, and he touches the top of her head lightly to take the sting out of his words. \"Spit it out.\"\n\n\"He's gone, Scott. Tony killed him.\"\n\n\"Tony? The apeshit Were that tortured my\u2014Jacqueline?\"\n\nJulia nods miserably. \"Yeah,\" she answers softly.\n\nScott slowly lowers himself to the bed and puts his face in his hands. A full minute pounds by silently.\n\nHe rolls his face in his hands to look at her. The bruises are already fading, but they're gruesome splashes of dying yellow on his skin. \"I'm not ready for this shit.\"\n\nJulia sits up, feels like puking, swallows, and plows forward. \"What shit?\"\n\nScott gives a wan smile. \"If he's gone, I am the head of Region One. Only royal blood can rule. And\u2014\" He clears his throat. \"He will be missed. I can't believe he's gone.\"\n\nThey stare at each other.\n\nScott's face changes as the wheels of his fine mind turn, no doubt thinking about what it would mean if Marcus were gone. She sees when he realizes her omission, and that his siblings are absent from the mansion.\n\n\"Don't tell me, Julia.\"\n\nJulia's tears don't even burn to warn her. Like escaped convicts, they run down her face, away from the prison of her eyes, then conspire together at her collarbone.\n\nShe cries for them both, and it's still not enough.\n\n\"What happened? What the fuck happened to my family?\" He cups his large hand at the back of her head, keeping a grip on her nape.\n\nJulia begins speaking.\n\nWhen she's done, there's a void in her that wasn't there before.\n\nJulia recognizes it for what it is\u2014that part of Scott that she owns, just as he owns a piece of her.\n\nHe's empty, and now, so is she.\n\nSo empty.\n\n*\n\n\"Do you want something to eat?\" Julia finally asks.\n\nScott shakes his head.\n\nJulia puts a hand over her stomach. It still hurts. She looks at Scott.\n\n\"I feel your hunger under all this.\" Julia waves her hand around, symbolically encompassing all the weighted grief that's been aired between them.\n\n\"Maybe,\" Scott replies ruefully. \"But who cares about the hole in your gut when the one in your heart's twice as big? Who gives a fat fuck?\" he yells.\n\nJulia yelps in surprise, scooting back from him.\n\nScott picks up the nearest thing and hurls it into the wall. Then he throws another. Glass shatters and flies. Shards embed themselves into whatever they can.\n\nOne spears Julia's palm as she hides behind her hands.\n\nShe hears a gasp but doesn't move. Julia rides out his justified rage in a safe spot against the headboard of the bed.\n\n\"Oh, Julia, I'm sorry,\" he says, plucking out the glass.\n\nA teardrop of blood wells from her palm.\n\nHis eyes are bright with his sorrow. His cheekbones flame with the blood pumping so freely with the river of his anger.\n\n\"It's okay,\" she whispers.\n\n\"No, I\u2014let me heal this.\"\n\nScott breathes over her hand and the blood stops flowing. He kisses the center of the wound and it begins to close.\n\n\"Oh, wow... wow.\"\n\n\"It's a bennie,\" Scott says.\n\n\"It's real, isn't it?\" she asks, scared to look at his eyes for what she'll see there. She looks up anyway.\n\nHe nods. \"No one can heal you beside a Singer Healer.\"\n\nShe swallows painfully. \"And... my soul-meld.\"\n\nSomething occurs to Julia, something besides the new mess she currently finds herself in.\n\n\"You just made a bunch of noise.\"\n\nHe blows out an exhale, ripping a hand over his short hair, clearly not getting the relevance. \"Yup.\"\n\n\"Nobody came.\"\n\nScott cocks his head. \"You're right.\"\n\nHe stands, towing Julia with him. \"You said Tony\"\u2014his chin dips, and Julia tries to notice everything but the standing water in his eyes\u2014\"killed everyone?\"\n\nJulia nods. \"Well, there were a handful of Region One Singers, but...\" She spreads her hands away from her body. \"I'm sorry,\" she barely gets out.\n\nScott's brows knit. \"I don't understand why no one hid in the bunker?\" He shakes his head.\n\nPain flares in Julia's chest. Instant and sharp, it pierces her.\n\nScott grabs her. \"What? What is it?\"\n\n\"What bunker?\" she whispers urgently.\n\nScott blinks slowly. \"The bunker that stays vacuum-locked for seventy-two hours after entry. No one gets in. No one gets out. Period.\"\n\n\"Julia!\" Jason yells, rushing into the room.\n\nShe turns with a guilty jump, and his eyes travel from her to Scott. They narrow, missing nothing and seeing stuff she can't explain. She doesn't want to.\n\nScott drops Julia's hands, and she's grateful, even though she feels as if they've been amputated without his touch.\n\nOh, God.\n\n\"What\u2014\" She clears her throat, barely able to meet the eyes of the man she loves\u2014or thought she loved. \"What is it?\"\n\nJason walks to her and takes the hands Scott just dropped. \"There's more survivors.\"\n\nScott says nothing. His silence speaks for him.\n\nJason flicks a glance Scott's way and Julia notes the chill in that hazel glance.\n\n\"Scott knows.\"\n\n\"Right. Well, his sister and Michael are alive. And Victor too. They were stowed away in some nuclear shelter thing.\"\n\nScott's instant grin is contagious.\n\nBefore she knows it, Julia can't wipe its twin off her face.\n\nJason throws an arm around Julia's shoulders. \"They're prepared. I'll give them that.\" His hand flips up, and his fingertips curl around her shoulder. \"Victor says he gathered the royalty together, and as many women and children that he could. They've been down there three days.\"\n\nJulia makes a face thinking about that\u2014but they're alive.\n\nJason laughs. \"Don't get all grossed out, Jules. They had a bathroom, food, running water. It's a damn underground Hilton.\"\n\nScott says, \"I wouldn't go that far. It has only the supplies needed for the seventy-two-hour time frame and no more.\"\n\n\"Still!\" Jason swings his hands up, piercing Julia with his hazel gaze. \"Great news, huh?\" He grabs her neck and pulls her against him, pressing a gentle kiss against her forehead, right over the crescent-shaped scar.\n\nIt is great news.\n\nSo why do I feel so sad?\n\nJason keeps one of her hands and tows her out of Scott's bedroom.\n\nJulia glances over her shoulder. Scott's lips are in a flat hard line; his eyes are fixed on their joined hands.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTEEN\n\nSlash\n\nSlash is vaguely pessimistic by nature, but he would admit that seeing those Singers, twenty in all, climb out of a trapdoor in a well-hidden spot under the mansion lifted his sagging spirits. With so many Singers gone, there was no one left to alert them to the survival quarters. Scott returned, and the surprise existence of additional survivors brought levity to a grim climate.\n\nAnthony Laurent moved through the Region One Singers, using his demonic saber like a knife through butter. Tony struck down Victor, but the Were was apparently in a rush\u2014he missed Victor's carotid artery by a fraction. Victor laid in a pool of his blood while the Were kicked him in the balls.\n\nThinking about Tony makes Slash's blood boil. He would kill him again if the chance was served up.\n\nFortunately, he's gone, and Victor has mighty recuperative powers.\n\nSlash had barely managed to heal himself enough to function when he saw what Tony was doing to the others. Victor cut his losses.\n\nCold but pragmatic, Victor headed straight to where he assumed the most important Singers would congregate. He was able to save Jen and Michael.\n\nSlash scans the faces of those who survived. Everyone is somber, as they should be.\n\nThat's how Slash would feel if he'd listened to the screams, begging, and pleas for mercy while Tony rained death down upon their heads.\n\n\"This is so sad,\" Adrianna says and he takes her hand in his.\n\nShe squeezes Slash's fingers. Unfamiliar heat blooms in his chest where an emptiness was before. It hurts, though it feels right.\n\nSlash won't discuss their evolving relationship. He can't. It'll make the hope into solid reality by speaking of it. Instead, he discusses more neutral matters. \"It's better that they're alive. More Singers survived than we presumed, important ones.\"\n\nHe studies Julia as she greets everyone, and Slash inhales sharply. Something is off with her scent\u2014he can't place it. He takes in the survivors, and his eyes come to rest on Jason, who was formally feral. He frowns.\n\nFinally, his attention shifts to Scott as he scoops his sister into a tight embrace. Slash smells healing injuries. But they're faded, scenting of old wounds, though Slash knows they're not. A Combatant can heal almost as quickly as a Were. Good thing for him.\n\nAs if Scott intuits Slash's thoughts, Scott gives a chin lift over Jen's shoulder, meeting Slash's eyes. He bares his teeth slightly, sucking in a few quick chuffs. He scents something that makes his eyes snap to Julia.\n\nTheir scents have mingled\u2014Scott and Julia's.\n\nSlash's chin lowers, and he breaks eye contact, exhaling in frustration. This will complicate things. And he knows just the person to discuss it with. The others probably haven't scented anything yet. As a pureblood Red, Slash's scenting abilities far surpass anyone's.\n\nJulia and Scott will already be aware of what's happened. Whether they've told anyone outside of their pairing, Slash doesn't know. He glances at Jason again, and the tight set of his jaw and his standoffish posture tells Slash that Jason suspects something is brewing.\n\n\"What is it?\" Adrianna asks, searching his face, following his gaze like a tennis match gone wrong.\n\nHe cracks a smile.\n\n\"Besides the obvious?\"\n\nOne side of her mouth lifts, and he's reminded of why he loves her. She's not classically beautiful, more like a pixie\u2014cute and feisty. Still, she's the female for him. Blood calls to blood. There's no denying the primal absolutism of blood.\n\n\"Yeah,\" she replies softly. \"You're looking awfully down for a buttload of Singers to have been found. I mean, this is great news. A Combatant is alive. Scott's brother and sister...\"\n\n\"Michael's an asshole,\" Slash says without rancor.\n\n\"True.\" She smirks. \"But we need all the color we can get right now. He's a smart ass, and he's obsessed with candy, but there's worse things.\" She shrugs.\n\nJulia disengages from the little circle of rejoicing Singers and slowly walks toward Slash.\n\n\"Hey,\" she says with a smile.\n\nDo you know your soul-meld is back online?\n\n\"Hi,\" he replies.\n\nAdrianna looks between the two of them. \"Got some serious shit to sling? Okay, I know when I'm not wanted.\"\n\n\"Adrianna\u2014\" Slash begins.\n\nShe twirls around, grabbing his hand. \"It's cool, stud. Chill. I'll make myself busy.\"\n\nThat's what I'm afraid of.\n\nJulia watches his eyes on Adrianna as she walks off. \"She'll be fine, ya know.\"\n\nHe nods. But because he's an Alpha Red male, his instinct isn't a light switch to flick on and off. He will worry. When Adrianna is not in his presence, she will be on his mind.\n\nSlash gives a rueful smile. \"The wolf in me can't accept that.\"\n\nJulia nods, frowning.\n\n\"What's on your mind?\"\n\n\"Scenting,\" she replies immediately.\n\nSlash's eyebrow jerks up. \"For what?\"\n\nHe smells her nervousness like a faint perfume in the air. He wonders if Julia knows his suspicions or if she's come to him for something entirely different.\n\n\"I\u2014I need to know who is actually dead. A head count of sorts.\"\n\n\"I see.\"\n\nJulia's face becomes apologetic. \"I know it's a gruesome request...\"\n\n\"Yes.\" It's the truth, and Slash won't sugarcoat it.\n\nJulia's face falls.\n\n\"But I'm the Were for the job.\" His eyes scan the grounds, instinctively looking for Truman. He finds him hanging around with the sharp-tongued Singer-Were, Cynthia.\n\n\"Truman would be an excellent choice\u2014or Zeke. Between the two or three of us, I think we can account for the casualties.\"\n\n\"I need to know, for closure,\" Julia explains in a voice ground down by tears and heartache.\n\n\"I understand.\" His face smoothes as he changes the subject. \"Good news about the Singers.\"\n\nShe nods, and a soft sigh escapes. \"It is, but\u2014\" She runs a hand over hair that's still damp from a shower. \"I don't want any more surprises.\" Her luminous, cat-like eyes lock with his.\n\nSlash folds his arms and dips his chin with acquiesce. \"If there are supernaturals to find or save\u2014ones who may still be living? We'll find them.\"\n\nAnother relieved breath leaks out of her. \"Thank you, Slash.\"\n\n\"Welcome.\"\n\nHis eyes narrow on her. Anxiety fills his nostrils. \"I know,\" he admits quietly.\n\nSudden color splashes against the pale skin of her face. \"Oh.\"\n\nJulia's head lowers, and long, champagne-colored hair swings forward, obscuring her expression.\n\n\"When will you tell him?\" Slash asks.\n\nShe glances at him. \"Pretty soon. He'll eventually scent the change anyway,\" she mutters.\n\nSlash tenses. Serving up raw truth always feels wrong, but he doesn't know another way. \"That's not what I'm asking.\"\n\nHer chin jerks up, eyes fierce. \"Do you think I like this back-and-forth shit? I hate it.\" Her voice hits the last word like a punch to the gut. \"But there's nothing I can do. Tharell told us that the magic of faerie negated the soul-meld.\"\n\n\"Tharell's a liar, fey or not,\" Slash grinds out, still pissed the Sidhe was allowed to live. Better to lop off his head and burn his ass to ashes.\n\nJulia meets his eyes. \"The fey don't lie.\"\n\nSlash jerks his head back at those words and the silence stretches between them.\n\n\"So you think he told you what was true for that time?\"\n\nJulia nods. \"Exactly. By the time faerie's proximity was less, so was its hold on our bond. Then Scott was taken. We never found out until now.\"\n\nJulia grapples with her emotions like a wrestler losing on the mat.\n\nFinally, she appears to win the momentary struggle with her feelings. \"And when Scott came back, I believed I was just glad to see him. Y'know\u2014relieved.\" She twists her hands.\n\nSlash's lips lift, painfully pulling the pucker of scar tissue in his cupid's bow. \"But you were too relieved.\"\n\nJulia bites her lower lip and nods. \"It's terrible. I'm the worst person on the planet.\"\n\nSlash doesn't comfort others. He receives no comfort, either. He tries something new. \"Maybe not the very worst.\"\n\nJulia laughs. \"Gee, thanks. You're a real prince.\"\n\nSlash frowns. \"I was trying to offer a little...\"\n\n\"Salt in the wound?\" She laughs, and it sounds like despair making a run for it.\n\n\"No,\" he says gravely. \"I don't take pleasure in your pain. For someone so young, you have a lot on your shoulders.\"\n\nSlash steps closer, putting a light hand on her upper arm, in defiance of his earlier sentiment. \"Listen to me. These huge responsibilities won't lessen. They'll grow more complex, bigger. Take a mate.\" His eyes implore her to see reason. \"Drop this human attitude and culture. It doesn't apply to us. You need a mate to help you carry these things that need attention.\"\n\n\"I can't choose between them, Slash.\" Her eyes meet his, and he's momentarily startled by the swimming bourbon irises. \"I can't believe I'm blabbing all this stuff to you.\" She heaves a little self-conscious laugh.\n\nSlash shrugs. \"I scented it. There's no denying\"\u2014he taps the side of his beak\u2014\"the discernment. Besides, I'm not a chatty guy.\"\n\nJulia breaks into a grin. \"That, I know.\"\n\n\"Good.\"\n\nThey stare at each other for a handful of seconds. \"I'll let you know. I have my own reasons to want to know who lives.\"\n\nJulia's eyebrows pop. \"Can I know what those are?\"\n\nHe deliberates, unsure about whether to confide.\n\nSlash is not an easy male.\n\nHe looks at Julia. Yet, she is not an easy female.\n\nThey make quite a pair.\n\n\"If Adrianna's packmaster is dead, she is free to mate with me.\"\n\n\"Wow,\" Julia says softly, seemingly stunned.\n\nSlash feels his face heat. He understands her surprise, of course. That one as ugly as he would even imagine a life with a female like Adrianna is foolish.\n\nBut love is foolish. Love knows no bounds or reason. Love simply is. It grows from the fertile garden of the heart like a stubborn flower, to be adored by the recipient or rejected so the blooms can wilt in the shade of unrequited love.\n\nHe casts his eyes to the ground. \"I don't deserve her.\" His voice is gruff, and Slash hears the shrug of dismissal in his own words.\n\n\"No, Slash. That's not it,\" Julia says, lightly touching his arm.\n\nHe looks up, seeing the compassion in her face, and looks swiftly away.\n\nSlash doesn't need anybody's fucking pity. \"I understand how I look. I get that I'm not a prize to be won.\"\n\n\"Hey,\" Julia says in a sharp voice, and he reluctantly turns to face her again. \"Scars do not define the man, Slash.\"\n\nHe heaves a painful breath, jerking it from air that's grown thick with his regret about confessing to anyone. He should have kept his own council.\n\n\"She's from another pack. The home den mates with their own females,\" he explains.\n\n\"Pfft,\" Julia says with obvious disdain. \"That's dumb.\"\n\nSlash smiles blandly. \"It is what it has always been.\"\n\n\"Well, if Lawrence isn't here to lay down the letter of the law, who's to stop you from marrying Adi?\"\n\n\"Mating,\" he corrects.\n\n\"Right,\" she says with a smile.\n\nSlash taps his temple. \"You're still very human in your thought process.\"\n\n\"Maybe, but all that stuff is on my mind at the moment.\"\n\nHe nods. \"No one is here to stop us. That's exactly my motivation for seeing it through. Though I would have done it for the asking.\"\n\nJulia squeezes his forearm. \"I know it. And I know Karl will help. He was a cop, after all.\"\n\nJulia steps closer, and he looks down into her face\u2014a face without guile. It makes him anxious to see someone so fragile lead so many.\n\n\"Does Adi know how you feel?\"\n\nHis eyes don't flinch under Julia's intense scrutiny.\n\n\"Unfortunately, yes.\"\n\n\"Why, \u02bbunfortunately'?\"\n\nSlash drags a hand over his short hair as he gives a harsh exhale, and Julia steps back, sensing the space he needs.\n\n\"She could do better. I am selfish in my pursuit.\"\n\n\"You're honest. And that's what Adi needs. You forget, I lived in that den for a while, and they were letting Tony rule the roost. Jason was locked up like an animal. If it hadn't been for Manny, I don't know what would have happened. Lawrence, in my opinion, was a weak leader, letting the Were kill each other for their stupid rites and treating the females like a commodity. I wasn't a fan.\"\n\nSlash is troubled but not surprised. There simply aren't enough females. It's a cross-species dilemma. Slash has often wondered if the dwindling number of females is a type of natural selection in the supernatural realm. Nature does population control while affording extra protection for the females by making sure there were more than enough males to provide that protection. But it leads to corruption within the Were leadership.\n\n\"If Lawrence is gone, there will be no opposition. If he is not, I will appeal for the right to mate with Adrianna. In the meantime, Truman, Zeke and I will scent the deceased. I don't know everyone's unique scent, but I can identify the Were and give a count of how many Singers\u2014\"\n\nJulia holds up her hand. \"Thank you. Please, don't tell anyone what I've asked you to do. It's a grisly task, and emotions are already running high. People are just waiting for something else to wail and gnash. And\"\u2014Julia's eyes fill with tears\u2014\"I don't blame them one little bit.\"\n\nSalt permeates the air, and Slash speaks to a point above her shoulder. \"There is good in all of it. More Singers are alive. Tessa and Tahlia are solid additions.\"\n\nJulia's brows furrow. \"Yeah. What's their story?\" She wipes tears from her face.\n\nSlash throws a hard glance her way, his hands going to his hips.\n\n\"Whoa\u2014that bad?\"\n\nSlash shakes his head. \"No. It's not bad, but it's not perfect, either. The whelp\u2014\"\n\n\"Tahlia? Is she really a whelp?\"\n\nSlash's mouth twists into a smile. \"No. But she is hardly more than one. She is Lanarre.\"\n\nJulia's looks surprised. \"I remember what that is. When I was bored out of my mind and semi-prisoner at the Northwestern pack, I read the Lycan history.\" Her frown turns to a confused scowl. \"But a female Lanarre running around without guardians? From what I can recall, they are not unguarded until mated.\"\n\n\"Her guardians were murdered.\"\n\nHer scowl deepens. \"By who?\"\n\n\"Who do you think?\" Slash asks.\n\nJulia shrugs, her expression puzzled. \"I have no idea.\"\n\n\"Tony.\"\n\n\"Oh crap.\" Julia shudders. \"What an evil guy he was.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nJulia cups her elbows. \"So, we're taking care of Tahlia until the Lanarre find us and kick our asses for having her?\"\n\nSlash barks out a laugh. \"Pretty much.\"\n\n\"Great.\"\n\n\"It gets better.\"\n\nJulia groans, and he's sympathetic.\n\n\"She was traveling to mate with her chosen.\"\n\nHorror bleeds over Julia's face, her eyes widening. \"Oh, wow.\"\n\nSlash nods. \"Basically, he's the prince of another Lanarre pack.\"\n\nJulia's arms fall by her sides, palms out. \"Does she want to marry this guy?\"\n\n\"Don't you have enough politics to worry about?\" Slash asks.\n\n\"Are you teasing me?\"\n\nSlash nods, allowing a smile to touch his lips. \"A little.\"\n\n\"Hell, yes, I have enough. But, I don't want to just deliver Tahlia to this arranged-marriage dude\u2014\"\n\n\"Drek.\"\n\n\"Okay, Drek. No, I want to her to be willing.\"\n\nNeither one talk about the parallels to Julia's own circumstances. They don't need to.\n\n\"Not our business. It's a Lanarre issue.\"\n\nHer face puckers with distaste. \"Uh-huh.\"\n\nThey're quiet for a time while Slash thinks. The Singers have moved inside the house to presumably eat and catch up more. Slash feels eyes on them, nonetheless.\n\nHe's sure Scott would not be out of eyesight, but within earshot. He doesn't scent Jason.\n\n\"And Tessa?\" Julia inquires suddenly.\n\n\"She's on the run from the Western pack. Tramack.\"\n\n\"Weird name,\" Julia says. \"Why is he after her?\"\n\n\"Old-school pack.\" Slash knows of the Western. They border the Northwestern's territory, though they don't co-exist well.\n\nJulia's eyebrow lifts and she tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. \"What, like the Northwestern?\"\n\nSlash shakes his head. \"No. They hold to very old principles that are dangerously outdated. But again, it's not our pack. I don't have jurisdiction there. Tessa says she's been running for twenty years.\" Slash gives her a sidelong glance. \"There's a lot of dead Were in her wake.\"\n\nJulia pulls a face, giving a surprised jerk of her chin. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes. She's learned to survive and the males aren't allowed to use deadly force. Tramack wants her for himself.\"\n\nDisgust replaces surprise. \"What a mess.\"\n\nI agree. \"She'll be here temporarily then she'll have to move on.\"\n\n\"Why doesn't this dweeb give up?\"\n\nWhy indeed? Slash laughs abruptly then cuts it off. It's too somber tonight when he's on the brink of searching out death scents. His smile vanishes.\n\n\"Some Were become obsessed with a certain female, usually an Alpha. They can't think of anyone else. And, remember, there isn't a plethora of females.\"\n\n\"True, but who wants someone that doesn't want them?\" Julia asks.\n\nSlash gives a hard smile. \"Plenty.\"\n\nHe allows his expression to convey that she should have known the answer to that question.\n\nHer face tightens when understanding dawns.\n\n\"Right.\"\n\nNeither mention Tony.\n\n\"I'll find the dead,\" Slash says, ending the conversation.\n\nJulia nods sadly, giving him her back as she walks away.\n\n# CHAPTER FOURTEEN\n\nPraile\n\n\"Do it.\"\n\nLazarus lays his palms on Praile's ruined shirt. He hisses from the light contact.\n\n\"The Master has commanded a three-quarter healing,\" Lazarus reminds him.\n\n\"I will deal with the Master. I cannot feign being a recovered Singer without this, Lazarus.\"\n\nSeconds tick by, and Praile groans when the power of Lazarus's healing washes through the rough cotton, seeping into the rawest part of the torn flesh.\n\nVapor rises as the bloom of health surfaces to the newly healed skin.\n\nPraile's head sinks forward, and he groans with relief, shuddering as the worst of the torment falls away.\n\nLazarus's hands lift, and Praile steps away, jerking the shirt from his skin.\n\nIt's the equivalent of ripping off a Band-Aid. Fresh scabs come away with the material, and he howls.\n\n\"Praile,\" Lazarus begins to reprimand, and Praile turns again.\n\nThey repeat a short bout of healing, and finally, Praile steps away the second time. His eyes search the woods, commanding the minions.\n\nThey slither out of the forest, tails high, horns long, their skin so dark it is black shadowed by red.\n\n\"Clothes,\" Praile instructs with a bark.\n\nLazarus quietly observes Praile making his way stiffly inside a new shirt. The waistband of the denims are drenched in his blood, and those must be replaced as well.\n\n\"Make haste. The perimeter is guarded.\"\n\nPraile rolls his eyes. \"I know that. We must make the most of this charade. The pretense will only need to be maintained for a day, perhaps a few hours more. We move in, kill the High One, and steal the blood babe and its mother from under their grieving noses. It's glaringly simple, Lazarus.\"\n\nDoubt lingers at the edges of Lazarus's altered face. \"I don't have time to convince you.\"\n\n\"You are here to scent track every supernatural in the area. I want Tharell if he's still alive.\"\n\n\"He is.\"\n\n\"The Master will take great pleasure in a promise broken by the Sidhe. Tharell can be fileted over and over and shall never die.\"\n\nLazarus's expression is carefully neutral, but Praile can see what swims beneath: loathing mixed with a glimmer of fear.\n\n\"It will keep the Master very occupied.\"\n\nLazarus raises a pale-blond eyebrow. \"And his lashes off your skin.\"\n\nPraile gives Lazarus a considering look. \"Precisely.\"\n\nPraile turns and commands the low demons telepathically. They retreat into the woods to blend with the organic matter until summoned once more. They're barely sentient, but they have their uses.\n\nGrunts for his bidding. Demonic meat shields in battle.\n\nThe demonic low females have even more diverse uses. Praile licks his lips with his forked tongue in both memory and anticipation.\n\nSoon. Soon he will leave this place and go back to his hot slice of dark heaven. There, he will feast at the Master's side once more, glowing in the adoration of a task well done. Tharell will be the literal whipping boy, the High One will be dead, and the last hope of the Singers will be snuffed out like a dying flame.\n\nPraile cackles in joy. His deeds are nearly done.\n\nHe slips his cloak of false humanity over himself, rendering his skin, horns, and tail invisible. His tongue proves the most difficult. All his consonants come out with a hiss. He is a handsome demon. Yet\u2014all the attributes of his attractiveness are a challenge to hide. Nevertheless, Praile makes short work of cloaking his true being.\n\nHe will have to be constantly vigilant whenever he speaks. It wouldn't do to sound like a snake when he's remanded to Region One.\n\nJust as he thought that, two Singer guards came upon him and Lazarus.\n\nFortuitous.\n\nPraile and Lazarus raise their hands in an obvious gesture of truce.\n\nThe Singer at the left asks, \"Who are you?\"\n\n\"I'm Laz, from Region Two, and this is Peter\"\n\nPraile contains his irritation at being given the ill-suited name he did not agree to.\n\nGood Lucifer.\n\nThe two Singers exchange a thoughtful glance. \"How'd you get separated from Two?\"\n\nLazarus smiles, and Praile bites his lip to keep from laughing. His mirth would certainly reveal their deception.\n\n\"We became separated during the battle and have just made our way here.\"\n\nThe Singers look suspicious, but the story agrees with everything they know thus far.\n\nThe Singer guards are not Angelic enough to have the veins that would alert them to the presence of cloaked demonics.\n\nFooling the High One will be a special bit of business.\n\nThe faster I end her, the better for us all.\n\n\"All right. We can use all the Singers we can get. You two follow us and shack up at Region One for the time being.\"\n\n\"Is the Rare One there?\" Praile is dizzy with excitement about her impending death at his talons.\n\nMild puzzlement knots the Singer's brows. \"Of course.\"\n\n\"Good.\" Praile nods, sensing Lazarus's discontent. \"At least we have leadership after all the deaths.\"\n\nThe Singer's face smooths out, all suspicion gone. \"Yes. It's the one positive in all the misery.\"\n\nPraile gives a sad nod, as false as anything he's ever manifested.\n\nThey move ahead. He and Lazarus share a look of readiness behind their backs.\n\nThey're nearly there.\n\n*\n\nTessa\n\nTessa feels like a million bucks. A hot shower and some food have made her wolf want to roll on its back and have its belly scratched. However, Tessa doesn't know anyone and decides it's better to take a walk down to the lake she spied earlier from a window instead of wallowing in her temporary reprieve.\n\nTessa feels night pushing at the edges of the day, pregnant with yearning to birth the stars.\n\nThe moon beckons, just out of range, and Tessa sighs with longing. She can't count how many months have passed since she was able to just be her animal without fear of capture.\n\nShe has a chance to defend herself against males in her human form. But when in wolf form, the difference of genders is at its glaring fullest. In Tessa's opinion, the best advantage a female Were has going for her is the quarter-change. They look no different, but have heightened senses, strength, and speed. It's meant to be a protection against losing a whelp while pregnant, but the form can be conjured at will, without the moon.\n\nShe's never attacked Tramack's hounds while in human form. She met them all head on in her quarter-change form. They were at a disadvantage without their wolfen forms engaged.\n\nAnd she brutally exploited it.\n\nTessa has no remorse. If Tramack allowed her freedom, she would no longer have to run. Sleeping in a different bed every two weeks, eat whatever she can forage\u2014Tessa is merely existing. She simply takes sustenance, and breathing has begun to make her weary.\n\nPushing air in and out of her lungs is simply not enough in this life. Her will to live is slipping as Tramack gains ground in his chase. But as the moon begins to peek through clouds stretched thin like milky wounds, Tessa is happy for this moment. She is protected, and she has a full belly and a lighter heart than she's had in years.\n\nShe's not a great musician, but she begins to whistle a melody\u2014a tune she remembers from when she was a whelp.\n\nHer mother and father raised her from whelphood before they were killed in one of the tragic wars of her kind. Being an orphan is not unique to the Were.\n\nMaybe Were would be more fruitful if we stopped killing each other. Tessa thinks women could stop the wars if they were allowed to hold leadership roles.\n\nThe thing is, there simply aren't enough females to fulfill all the positions they should. Females are so scarce there's nothing soft to balance the hard. It's all raging testosterone. Battle, then sex, eat\u2014rinse and repeat.\n\nI know there's more.\n\nA bird lands on a branch not too far away and twitters a last song. He stays long enough to offer solace then leaps off the perch to roost just as true night lands with a soft sigh all around her.\n\nTessa shivers inside the cooler nocturnal embrace, moving smoothly into quarter-change. Instantly, her higher body temperature warms her, and she rolls her shoulders back with an exhale of relief, comfortable again.\n\nHer ears prick at the sound of approaching footsteps. She moves behind a tree that feeds directly from a lake, which is little more than a large pond. The water is beautiful, but the smells of death strangely linger. Her nose twitches with it.\n\nWeird.\n\nTessa sights four figures walking toward her position and moves deeper into the shadows.\n\nIn this form, her eyes function as though its daytime, and she's grateful anew for the blessings of the quarter-change.\n\nTwo Singer guards, whose names she doesn't know, move with purposeful strides toward the Singers' large mansion. It looms at the top of a small hill, and Tessa watches lights pop on inside like many eyes, casting false warmth against the grounds.\n\nThe two men walking behind the Singers catch Tessa's interest.\n\nThey move stiffly as though unaccustomed to their own gait, especially the bizarre-looking one to the right. Tessa flares her nostrils but doesn't catch a scent. The man is like a vampire, who doesn't carry a scent. Though sometimes, vamps do smell vaguely like earth and snakes. Tessa frowns.\n\nThe one to the left is tall. His pale hair is some shade of blond in daylight, but in the moonlight, it is silver.\n\nHis gaze flashes in her direction. His eyes are also light.\n\nTessa's heart thuds. He can't see me.\n\nMaybe he's a Tracker? Tessa doesn't enjoy being noseblind. No Were does.\n\nClearly he doesn't belong here, and neither does she.\n\nSo they're equal. Tessa decides not to worry about it for now.\n\nSomething snaps behind her, and she whirls, talons spiking out of her fingertips in a painful burst. She's still in quarter by a thread. Tessa doesn't make a sound, planting her feet wide and crouching.\n\nThen she recognizes Tahlia.\n\nTessa's embarrassed. She made a novice mistake by becoming so engrossed that she forgot her surroundings.\n\n\"You're defending yourself against me?\" Tahlia asks in disbelief.\n\nTessa straightens, feeling a new flush of stupid. \"No.\" Her talons slide back, and the fine hairs at her nape smooth against her sensitive skin. \"I didn't scent you.\"\n\n\"Sloppy,\" Tahlia remarks with a little smile.\n\nTessa scowls.\n\n\"Thanks for nothing.\"\n\n\"Don't be cross. I think it's odd you missed me, is all.\" She hikes an inky eyebrow.\n\n\"Yeah. I was concentrating on them.\" Tessa points to the four males who are almost to the front porch of the mansion.\n\nShe twists in their direction, her eyes narrowing at the men. \"Hmm. Who are they?\"\n\n\"Don't know.\"\n\n\"You don't sound as though you're too thrilled.\"\n\n\"Nope. Don't like it.\"\n\nTahlia turns back, her eyes are navy pools of midnight. \"Why?\"\n\nTessa blows out a frustrated breath. \"Listen, you seem like a nice kid. But it's only a matter of time until Drek finds you and it's faerie tale time.\"\n\nTahlia blinks.\n\n\"For me?\" Tessa plants her thumb between her breasts. \"I have to consider everyone to be a threat. And it's just a little bit too convenient those two show up right after us, from the same direction we came from. Nah, I don't like it on principle. Plus, I can't scent them.\"\n\nTahlia's quiet.\n\nFinally, Tessa says, \"Well?\"\n\nTahlia gives her a sidelong glance, her lips pulling into a small smile. \"I think we should find out who they are. I have to keep busy with something.\"\n\nTessa lets out a breath, feeling as though she just passed a test. \"Thanks.\"\n\nTahlia shrugs. \"For what?\"\n\n\"For being my only friend.\"\n\nTahlia's smile widens and she lifts a delicate shoulder. \"You're my only friend too.\"\n\nTessa's grin slips. \"Why? Didn't you have some whelplings to hang out with among the Lanarre?\"\n\n\"Common Were? Certainly.\" Tahlia's smile is a flat line. \"Now ask me if I was allowed to belong? To be a part of anything?\"\n\n\"Were you?\"\n\nHer voice goes low as she answers, \"No. Never.\"\n\n\"Why the hell not?\" Tessa shakes her head in mild disgust. \"Y'know, for being it for Lycan kind, being Lanarre sounds pretty sucky.\"\n\n\"It wasn't my role.\"\n\nTessa gives her a sharp look. \"What is then?\"\n\nTahlia eyes fall away from Tessa's to train on the perfect half-moon. \"Whatever they have of me.\"\n\n# CHAPTER FIFTEEN\n\nJulia\n\nThough Julia's circle of trustworthy supernaturals grows, it's still small.\n\nScott and Jason stand at her side while she tries not to let the strengthening soul-meld out of the bag like an escaped cat.\n\nTharell needs to be questioned.\n\nThe scar at his throat pulses like a lavender creek that runs with thin blood beneath it. Julia's own throat tightens at the sight, and she couldn't swallow if her life depended on it.\n\nScott takes her hand, and the knot in her chest loosens. She can breathe\u2014and think. And she'll need to because Tharell holds answers to important questions. His knowledge is one of the key reasons she didn't have him killed as so many wanted.\n\nShe hides her gratefulness for Scott's gesture, and he squeezes her hand when he feels it course through him. Their bond makes secrets impossible. It's a relief, and a curse, to have it back.\n\nJason stiffens and Tharell smiles from his bound position at the ground.\n\n\"Trouble in paradise?\" he murmurs, his beautiful turquoise eyes bright, though hardly any light reaches the deepest part of the Singer training barn.\n\nA small window, too tiny to fit anyone older than a nine year old through, allows pale moonlight to slant inside. The illumination strikes Tharell's deep-purple hair, turning it into a spoiled-plum color.\n\nJulia doesn't bother with fabrication. \"Yes.\"\n\nShe grabs Jason's other hand, and he looks down at her, his eyes shadowed.\n\n\"I already know, Jules.\"\n\nShe bows her head, and Tharell laughs. Welling despair rises inside Julia like a geyser, threatening to burst from her mouth and force her to verbalize things she would rather not say.\n\nTharell quips. \"So human\u2014yet not.\"\n\n\"Shut the fuck up.\"\n\n\"Can't argue with that, Caldwell,\" Scott adds.\n\nTharell grins at their discontent, and Julia is plagued with second thoughts about letting him live and the shame of thinking it.\n\nJason tenses. \"No\u2014Scott, kicking his teeth in won't solve anything.\"\n\n\"But it'll make me feel so much better,\" he says.\n\nJason barks out a laugh. \"Amen to that.\"\n\n\"You wouldn't be so sure of yourself if I was unbound and deep within the arms of the sithen. There, it is I who maintains all the power,\" Tharell says in a bald voice.\n\nJason shrugs his words away. \"You're a dick.\"\n\nTharell turns his penetrating glare to Jason. \"Your crude names do not move me, Singer.\"\n\n\"I can think of something that will,\" Scott says and steps forward.\n\nSomething painful flares inside Julia's gut, and she gasps.\n\nScott stops mid-stride, and he whips his head around to look at her. Jason's hand moves to her back. \"What?\" they ask at the same time.\n\nThe three of them look at Tharell.\n\nHis veins glitter black beneath his plum-colored skin, rising to the surface to pulse in time to his heartbeat.\n\nJulia's mimic his, but hers are golden-silver and perfect, like jeweled lace.\n\nHer belly begins to throb with the beginnings of something that pulls her toward Tharell. She takes a single, staggering step toward him.\n\n\"Ahh...\" he says, relaxing against his binds.\n\n\"What. The. Fuck?\" Jason yells, dropping her hand and going for Tharell.\n\nScott grabs his arm.\n\nJason whirls, narrowly missing Julia as his fist reactively plows toward Scott's jaw.\n\nScott jerks his face away, barely missing the blow intended for Tharell.\n\nTharell chuckles as Julia drops to her knees, cradling her stomach with both arms.\n\n\"What have you done?\" she whispers. Scott and Jason turn, their hands fisted in each other's shirts.\n\n\"It is not I who has done anything. But the saber.\"\n\nJulia forgets that her soul-meld with Scott is suffocating them, falling back two-fold as it pours into the crevices as though it never left.\n\nShe doesn't recall that her husband is ready to come to blows with Scott again or that Tharell should never see her bare skin.\n\nJulia rips off her shirt. Scattered buttons fly like plastic raindrops. She throws the long-sleeved shirt to the bare cement floor.\n\nShe tears her cami sky high, looking down at the horror on her stomach.\n\nScott falls beside her, his large palm covering where the saber struck and Cyn healed her.\n\nHis eyes bulge. \"Ah!\" he says in a hoarse shout.\n\nBut his palm can't hide the damage. A comma-shaped whip of black stands above her belly button. Where she was pierced with the blade, spiderweb-fine threads spread from the deep blackness, lined in red.\n\nThis morning, the mark appeared to be a bruise. It pulsed and itched, and Julia had assumed the sensation represented residual healing. Too many things clamored for her attention for her to worry about a healing wound.\n\nBut this wound isn't healing. It's spreading like a contagion.\n\nThe finer ends of the ebony threads extend to her ribcage.\n\n\"You sicken,\" Tharell says with utter certainty, eyes on the spreading black highway of encroaching marks. His eyes alight on Scott's face like blue fire. \"She slows its progress but not the inevitable.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Julia cries.\n\n\"The blood of the demonic has entered your system. Even as the Blooded Queen and your precious angelic blood combat the spore\u2014it is insufficient protection.\"\n\nScott lets go of Julia's skin as if it burns him, and he grabs Tharell off the floor, hiking him until their noses meet.\n\nHe shakes Tharell. \"Tell me how to undo this?\"\n\n\"No,\" Tharell says with a cunning smile.\n\nScott drops him with a grunt of disgust, and Tharell stands, though his feet and hands are bound.\n\nScott retreats one step and clocks Tharell in the face.\n\nThe blow rocks the Sidhe warrior back against the wall, and he spits black blood onto the concrete between them. \"Strike me all you wish, but it will not save her life.\"\n\n\"What will?\" Jason asks.\n\nJulia lifts her head at the sound in his voice\u2014inescapable consequence.\n\nJulia totally knows the answer.\n\n\"Give her up, Were.\"\n\nJason whirls, beating the wall with bruising force. \"No!\" he bellows.\n\nJulia covers her ears.\n\nHot tears roll down her cheeks and splash at her knees, dampening her jeans like drops of sorrow in a sea of denim.\n\nHer heart thumps against her calm, eating at it with each beat. Resignation crushes her spirit.\n\n\"This isn't what I planned, Caldwell,\" Scott says. \"I'd never cause her this kind of sorrow if I had a choice.\"\n\nOn her knees, Julia looks up at Scott.\n\nJason turns, fists at his side, veins standing out like stark pathways of rage on his flesh.\n\nJulia quickly gets to her feet, standing between them.\n\nTharell remains silent against the wall. His swollen lip heals as he watches the emotional war between the three of them.\n\n\"Julia,\" Scott says in a low voice, gently moving her so that she is no longer between him and Jason, setting her farther away from Tharell. The growing evil in her belly quiets at Scott's touch.\n\n\"I feel it,\" he says quietly.\n\n\"I know.\" Julia can't keep the relief out of her voice when the seed of evil flinches from her soulmate's touch.\n\n\"Stop talking in fucking code,\" Jason yells at them and Julia flinches. Spittle stands at the corner of his mouth.\n\nAs Julia gazes at Jason, she realizes for the first time that maybe, what's happened to both of them separately in the last three years, might make it impossible for them to be together now, with or without the soul-meld. What Julia needs is to take care of her people, not walk on eggshells around Jason. She needs someone who thinks of others first and doesn't react with anger whenever something doesn't go his way. Those revelations move through her mind like a flash flood.\n\nJason sees them anyway.\n\n\"What? Is this it, Jules? You get a little soul juice back, and it's all about Scott again?\"\n\nJulia's silent. Finally she shakes her head. \"I don't feel like having this discussion in front of Tharell.\"\n\n\"Do not mind me,\" Tharell says unhelpfully.\n\n\"Shut up.\" Jason shoots him a hard look, and Tharell smirks, shrugging.\n\nJason turns back to Julia and she sighs. \"I am sick. There might not be any me to have.\" Julia's eyes search his wild ones. \"You're so caught up on having me like a favorite bone you can't see the bigger picture.\"\n\nHe folds his arms. \"Nope. Don't see it.\"\n\nWhere has Jason gone? More than that\u2014why haven't I noticed?\n\nMaybe she hadn't wanted to. \"Tharell's awful, but he's right. There was demon's blood...\"\n\n\"A high demon. The lowly would not have adequate power to sicken the Blooded Queen.\"\n\n\"What?\" Julia asks.\n\nTharell hops a step away from the wall, and Scott moves protectively in front of Julia. She grasps his biceps, feeling the hard muscle beneath.\n\n\"Say what you have to say from there, asshole,\" Scott says.\n\n\"There are high demons. I have demonic blood, as we've already determined. The high demon in charge of these matters is called Praile. He is who would have instructed Tony to slaughter the Singers of this region, weakening them so the Blooded Queen might be unguarded. It was a stroke of luck for the demonic that Julia was pierced with the saber.\"\n\n\"No Combatant to help her,\" Scott says thoughtfully.\n\nTharell shakes his head. \"I was called upon when the lowly appeared for battle. I partook because I had no choice.\"\n\nTharell lifts his healed chin, his disdain clear. \"Blood rules all.\"\n\nJulia believed it. If she'd learned nothing else within the last three years, it was that.\n\nBlood governs us all.\n\n\"So I die?\" Julia whispers, fighting tears. After coming all this way, some demonic blood is going to kill me. She's been poisoned, hunted, kidnapped, and stabbed. But this?\n\nShe has people to rule, things that matter beyond her own self.\n\nFor the moment, she will have to ignore the underlying tension between Jason and her. The Singers come first. But she can't rule if she dies.\n\nThen Tharell surprises her. \"No. You will not die from this alone. But a high demon can finish the job.\"\n\n\"Fat chance.\" Jason gestures around him. \"We've got plenty enough guys sitting around, waiting for the chance to kick some demon ass. The fire dicks missed their window. Too bad, so sad. \"\n\nTharell inclines his head. \"No one would be a proper match for the likes of Praile.\"\n\nJason's jaw works back and forth. \"Some kind of fire prick struts in and kills Julia?\"\n\n\"He will be able to sense our blood within her body.\"\n\n\"So we're screwed?\" Jason presses.\n\n\"What? Is he our advisor now?\" Scott stares at Jason, palm flung toward Tharell. \"This fey is the one who betrayed us, tried to kill another Sidhe warrior, and we've kept alive only for answers I'm not even sure we want or should listen to.\"\n\n\"Kill me and take away more answers,\" Tharell comments in a sage voice.\n\nJulia asks, \"Why, Tharell? Why would you do this?\"\n\nTharell's face shuts down. \"You are a true and honest leader, Julia. However, in faerie, I am merely tolerated because my blood is not pure. When Queen Darcel was murdered by the lovely Delilah, I was free of some of it. But I will never be released from the prejudice of the pureblood Unseelie in a place where I must dwell to flourish. Further, my actions are moderated by my mixed genetics\u2014I must do exactly as I am told. And\"\u2014his eyes sink into hers like barbs\u2014\"no one has asked the right question.\"\n\nJulia moves toward him, and Scott tries to stop her.\n\n\"No, Scott\u2014\"\n\nTharell's so tall, she cranes her neck to meet his eyes. Her mind turns over the facts of how Tharell has behaved. Suddenly, she hits on the reason. The answer was in Jacqueline from the beginning.\n\n\"If you were to never leave faerie\u2014the sithen\u2014would you be okay?\"\n\nTharell smiles. \"That, my Blooded Queen, is the right question.\"\n\nTheir gazes lock as though no one else exists. Right now\u2014for Julia, no one does. The world consists of only her and Tharell.\n\n\"What's the answer?\" Julia keeps her eyes on his face as if it's a target. Before he replies, his expression gives away the answer\u2014and something else.\n\nRelief.\n\n\"Yes,\" he answers.\n\nShe can see that he's relieved that someone could look beyond his deeds. Jacqueline isn't the only one who's crazy outside of faerie.\n\nFor some, insanity is the gift of leaving the sithen.\n\nFor Tharell, with his demonic blood, it was a death sentence.\n\nBut Julia's willing to offer a stay of execution\u2014if she lives long enough.\n\n*\n\nJulia is glad when they leave Tharell in his cell. The two men wish for his death while Julia longs for less suffering.\n\nShe strides toward the one person she knows is insurance against Tharell. She needs to get him to faerie, but she can't have him doing more things against her while he's under the influence of demonic intent and insane due to his distance from faerie.\n\nThe only one who's a threat to him will be his guard, if she's willing. Julia hopes for Tharell's sake that she is.\n\nJulia's nearly at a jog, but Jason and Scott are walking fast, easily keeping up to her five feet four inches.\n\n\"We haven't figured anything out, Jules.\"\n\nJulia whirls on him, jabbing her finger into his chest. \"My life is a mess. I'm sorry. But I didn't ask to be taken back in Alaska any more than you asked to be attacked and turned.\" Her eyes blaze into his, and Jason doesn't drop her stare.\n\n\"Why is the answer to saving you always me letting you go?\" he asks softly. His response deflates her anger.\n\nJulia's finger drops as her top lip rolls between her teeth. Seconds later, she replies, \"I don't know.\"\n\nShe stares at him, looking over a man who, by human standards, she's married to. He's handsome, protective, and smart. They have a long history together. They've been through so much\u2014too much.\n\nHer heart feels like it's in her throat, and Julia stifles a sob when she realizes she's fallen out of love with Jason.\n\nShe tries to rationalize her feelings. Maybe it's the soul-meld.\n\nBut maybe it's just life, the life she did not choose.\n\n\"I can smell it on you, Jules.\"\n\nShe startles as though she spoke her horrible epiphany aloud. But she didn't.\n\n\"What?\" she asks softly.\n\nJason flicks a glance at Scott, who's stood by her side silently for the entire thing.\n\nScott steps toward Jason. \"Fuck you, Caldwell.\"\n\nJulia wants to scream at them and beat on their chests. But they're doing such a great job of it without her.\n\nJason heaves a sigh of utter disgust. \"Take off. Give us a minute. I'm not going to hurt Julia.\"\n\nScott folds his arms across his muscular chest. \"You don't have a great track record, Jason.\"\n\nHe nods. \"I know, but I have a handle on my shit. Just\u2014God, do you have an ounce of compassion?\"\n\nScott stands there for a moment then gathers Julia against him. He kisses the top of her head and says softly, \"I won't be far.\"\n\nJulia nods and feels a sensation like physical tearing when he leaves. The demon's blood pulses back to sick life with each step he takes away from her. Julia folds her arm over her stomach and reluctantly turns to Jason.\n\nHe plows his fingers through his longish hair, and Julia notices it needs a trim. \"I can smell him.\"\n\n\"I didn't know.\"\n\n\"I know. It's never your fault.\" He gives a little crazy nod. \"But this time, I can't do it. To save your life, I could pull through like I was going to before.\"\n\nWith William, she thinks but doesn't say.\n\n\"But I can't stand by and watch some other guy have you. It's not right.\"\n\n\"Are you standing by us being married?\"\n\nHe shakes his head, and Julia can see his sadness even in the weak artificial light cast between the barn and the mansion.\n\n\"Nah. I know none of that matters a damn to these people.\" He laughs, swinging out a palm. \"That's right\u2014we're not really human anymore. All the stuff of our past, the shit that mattered? Gone.\" He throws his arms up into the sky, beseeching a break that'll never come.\n\nJulia doesn't say anything, because he's right. Their past is just that\u2014the past.\n\n\"So, I'm going to stick around until we know you're okay. Then I'm outta here.\"\n\nJulia steps forward. Jason retreats a step, hands up in mock surrender. \"Don't touch me, Jules. I can only take so much.\"\n\nShe stops. Her belly hurt, but her heart hurts more.\n\nJulia doesn't allow more tears to fall, but she feels sick as she watches Jason walk down to the lake and away from her.\n\n# CHAPTER SIXTEEN\n\nJulia grows chilled as the night deepens. Long after his broad back disappears from view, her eyes remain on the empty spot where Jason disappeared by the lake.\n\nJulia feels him before Scott moves behind her and wraps his strong arms around her. The top of Julia's head tucks easily beneath his chin, and Scott lays the side of his face against her hair.\n\n\"I can't say I'm sorry, and for that, I'm sorry.\"\n\nJulia nods at his contrary statement because speaking is too difficult. The demon's blood growing inside her recoils inside her body at his nearness, and she feels momentary relief from its insidious progress as it grows sluggish.\n\n\"That's not really an apology, ya know,\" Julia manages to whisper.\n\n\"I know. I'm a real ass. But you're aware.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she says, mad at him though she's a part of him now\u2014again.\n\nScott turns her to face him. \"Listen to me.\" His eyes seem to search every pore of her face and finally settle back on her gaze. \"It's like I told Caldwell\u2014if I had a choice, I'd allow you to be happy. I can't stand the idea of your sadness.\"\n\n\"Especially now,\" Julia says.\n\nHe grips her upper arms, pulling her tightly against his chest and cupping the back of her head. \"Especially now.\"\n\nTheir foreheads touch, and his scent overwhelms her, engulfing her senses.\n\nJulia swims through the headiness of his nearness enough to say, \"I need to talk to someone. She can be a guard for Tharell. Get him back to faerie before something else happens and we're forced to kill him.\"\n\nScott pulls away, staring at her. \"Killing Tharell would be awesome, Julia.\"\n\nShe gives a tight shake of her head, whipping her long hair back and forth. \"Not for me.\"\n\nScott studies her then bends over. He kisses her forehead then moves to her eyelids. Her breaths begin to come deep and even. She feels as though she's always been in his arms.\n\n\"You're soft in all the places that matter,\" he whispers against her temple, \"but I'm not.\"\n\nJulia opens her eyes and his are liquid night. \"I'm trying to look for something good here, Scott. Something that doesn't involve me hurting, killing or otherwise causing harm to someone else.\"\n\n\"We're good.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Scott asks, squatting down to look into her eyes. He traps her face with his palms. \"Why are you so afraid of the soul-meld?\"\n\n\"Because it's wrecked Jason. And that's the last thing I'd never want to do, especially to him.\"\n\nShe wraps her arms around her torso, and Scott's palms slip from her face to thumb the back of her skull, stroking her neck. \"He knows, babe. He knows you weren't trying to hurt him. He just can't let you off the hook.\" His hand flips open. \"Jason's got to blame someone\u2014and you're it.\"\n\n\"What do you mean you're hard and I'm soft?\" Julia asks suddenly, ignoring his last comment.\n\nScott sighs, stepping away. He takes hold of her hand as his other drops from her nape. They begin walking toward the mansion.\n\nScott's lips quirk.\n\n\"Mind out of the gutter, Scott.\"\n\n\"You did say I was hard.\"\n\n\"You called me soft,\" she counters.\n\nScott gives her a speculative look. \"True.\"\n\n\"I can't believe we're talking like this,\" Julia admits with a touch of shame.\n\n\"It's hard to keep up the pretense when we're connected like this. It's a tie at the molecular level. No one could resist it.\"\n\nJulia stops.\n\n\"Wait.\"\n\nScott's dark eyebrow lifts.\n\n\"The soul-meld didn't reconnect until after...\"\n\n\"I was tortured.\"\n\nA lone tear slides out of her eye at the thought of anything hurting Scott.\n\nScott thumbs away the wetness. \"Shh, babe, come here.\" He pulls her into his body, and Julia sobs. \"I'm okay. I'm here\u2014don't worry.\"\n\n\"What would I have done without you?\" she whispers as she clutches at his shirt.\n\n\"What you've been doing.\"\n\nJulia pulls away, her gaze riveted on his, debating about how much she should admit. \"I wanted you when you were missing.\"\n\nScott's surprise is plain to see. \"Without the meld?\"\n\nJulia nods. \"Yeah,\" she whispers. \"Yeah, I did.\"\n\nScott pulls her hands away. \"I wanted you, too. I knew that you'd chosen Jason and we had figured the soul-meld was exactly what it was, a magical blood tether, meant by some kind of natural design for us to connect. But the distance away from you made me realize some stuff.\"\n\nJulia's face is wet with tears, but she makes no move to wipe it dry because Scott shocks her again.\n\n\"I realized when they were peeling my body apart\u2014\"\n\nJulia covers her mouth and grabs his shirt, laying her face against his chest. His heart beats against her cheek, and an exhale shudders between them.\n\n\"I realized that I actually loved you, without the meld. Just me\u2014Scott.\"\n\nJulia nods against his chest. \"But I love Jason, too.\"\n\nScott stills and takes her away from him.\n\n\"You love him?\"\n\nShe nods.\n\nBefore he has a chance to react, Julia puts one hand on his shoulder, and the other on his face. \"It's you who I'm in love with.\"\n\nHe grins. \"Figured.\"\n\nJulia snorts, a sad smile plucking the corners of her mouth and she pinches the cleft in his chin together. \"Arrogant, more like.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" he admits. His face sobers. \"But my dad didn't die for nothing. I'm older, I'm Singer royalty. Our union makes sense in the cosmos.\"\n\nJulia's smile twists. \"You didn't think so when we first met.\"\n\nHe ducks his head. \"A classic case of asshole-itis.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\nScott pecks her on the lips and with a little groan he whispers against the corner of her mouth, \"Just so you know, I'm holding back. Giving you time.\"\n\nTo reconcile things with Jason. \"I know.\"\n\nJulia puts her hands on the hard planes of his chest and gives him a little shove.\n\nHe grabs her around the waist. \"You're not getting rid of me that fast.\"\n\nJulia wrinkles her nose and he kisses the tip.\n\n\"I need to see Delilah.\"\n\nScott jerks his chin back. \"No shit?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She laughs. \"She'll be Tharell's guard.\"\n\n\"My half-sister?\"\n\n\"She's like Madonna.\" She disengages her arm and puts a hand on her hip. \"Is there another Delilah?\"\n\nScott releases her, acting as if he's thinking about it. Putting a finger to his chin, he rolls his eyes skyward.\n\n\"Knock it off.\" Julia smacks him on the arm and he picks her up in his arms again.\n\n\"Scott!\" she laughs. \"Can't\u2014breathe!\"\n\n\"Quiet,\" he says, pecking her on the lips again.\n\nShe looks up at him and his eyes are dark with something besides color.\n\nDesire clouds them, vying for position in all that brown.\n\n\"Probably another Delilah somewhere in the world,\" he says in a voice choked by restrained emotion.\n\n\"Did someone call me?\"\n\n\"Speak of the devil,\" Scott says in a dry voice. He carefully sets Julia on her feet.\n\nDelilah looks between the two of them skeptically. \"What's going on?\"\n\n\"Soul-meld's back,\" Scott says without preamble.\n\nDelilah's eyes widen ever so slightly. \"Ouch\u2014settle down, brother.\"\n\nHe scrubs his head. \"It's been a long night.\"\n\nDelilah's chin kicks up, and she saunters closer, looking them over so closely that Julia can feel the blood rush to her face.\n\n\"Waste of blood, that,\" Delilah comments, and Julia's hands automatically move to cover her cheeks.\n\nDelilah giggles, and Scott moves between them.\n\n\"Don't worry, big brother. I don't like girls, though her blood does sing.\"\n\nJulia's face snaps to Delilah's. She hasn't heard that expression since William said it. A stab of pain pierces her with the reminder. Her ultimate protector, William had nothing to gain from saving her life, but the love he held for her. It was a pure sacrifice, and she'll never forget it.\n\nDelilah gives her a quizzical look. \"Yes. Though I am meant to take a male's blood, yours does hold a... certain appeal.\"\n\n\"Keep the appeal to yourself,\" Scott says in warning that borders on a growl.\n\nSilence sits heavy in the pause.\n\n\"Noted.\" Delilah answers then turns to Julia, clearly dismissing Scott. An inquisitive expression rides her face.\n\nNow that Delilah stands before her, Julia's request seems like too much to ask.\n\nDelilah studies her face. \"Ask.\"\n\nJulia sees the resemblance between her and Jacqueline, though she doesn't think mentioning it will ingratiate her to Delilah.\n\n\"I\u2014can you escort Tharell to faerie?\"\n\nDelilah gives an abrupt laugh. \"The murdering Sidhe?\"\n\nJulia instantly feels dumb for asking. Said like that, there is no way to deny that he's more than a murderer.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nDelilah laces her fingers together in a gesture hauntingly like Jacqueline's. Scott's hand kneads her shoulder gently.\n\nJulia gulps then pushes forward, \"I don't want to kill him,\" she admits in a low voice. Though God knows, Tharell deserves it.\n\nDelilah rolls her eyes, and Julia quickly continues, \"And it has come to my attention that he went bonkers because he was outside the sithen and his demonic blood became dominant once he was far enough away from faerie to negate the effect of faerie's proximity.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Delilah replies noncommittally. Her dark eyes, so similar to Scott's, sparkle like black diamonds. It's disconcerting how little Julia can read her expression.\n\n\"And I'm his natural enemy, so I will be able to keep him in line?\" Coal-black eyebrows arch to her hairline.\n\nJulia nods tentatively. \"That's the idea.\"\n\nDelilah's ebony gaze finds Julia again. \"What does everyone else think?\"\n\nJulia bites her lip.\n\n\"Oh, this is funny. You've told no one?\"\n\nJulia shakes her head. I knew it wouldn't be a popular idea.\n\n\"She doesn't need to, Delilah. She's the Rare One.\"\n\n\"That's not it though, is it?\" she asks softly, giving Julia an appraising look.\n\nJulia shakes her head. \"No. I don't have the energy to defend my theory to everyone who wants him dead. Not now. Not with everything that's changed recently.\"\n\n\"Ah. And Jacqueline\u2014my mother\u2014does she influence you in this?\"\n\nDelilah is no dummy. \"Yes, in a way. I've seen the huge change since she spent time in faerie, and I have to assume\u2014to believe\u2014it could be true of Tharell.\"\n\nDelilah's brow furrows as Julia holds her breath.\n\n\"Fine, I'll do it.\"\n\n\"She wasn't really asking,\" Scott says.\n\nJulia lets tense breath out. \"Shh, Scott.\" She puts a finger to his lips, and her eyes move to Delilah. \"I would never issue an order. Tharell could harm you.\"\n\nDelilah yawns.\n\n\"Not likely.\"\n\nHuh. Julia doesn't know what to say to that. \"Okay, what do you think?\"\n\n\"I'll take the naughty Sidhe.\"\n\nThank God. Julia stretches out her hand, and Delilah takes hold of it, slowly shaking it to seal the deal. Julia pretends to ignore the hint of fang showing in her smug smile.\n\nHer nostrils flare, and her fangs grow a touch longer. \"My control is not limitless. Your blood is quite\u2014\" She stills, her hand clutching Julia's in a grip she could never break from. \"Tasty.\" Delilah gives a nervous little lick of her lips.\n\n\"Back off, sis,\" Scott says. His words are light, but the meaning behind them is dead serious. Julia doesn't have to look at his face to know it. His feelings tear through the meld and hit her own.\n\n\"So yummy,\" Delilah says then appears to snap out of it, dropping Julia's hand and moving back a few steps out of the vague light between the two buildings. The shadows consume her form. \"Where's Tharell?\"\n\n\"I'll take you to his cell.\"\n\nScott, Julia and Delilah make the short trek to Tharell's cell.\n\nJulia screams as Tharell comes into view, blood pouring out of his body.\n\nSomeone has executed vigilante justice.\n\nDelilah blurs to his side, dropping beside him. A crimson pool leeches into the long skirt she wears, dying the gauzy fabric red. The small bells sewn into the fabric no longer ring as they clog with the Sidhe's blood.\n\nTharell turns his head. \"Do not bother to heal me. It is a fatal blow.\"\n\nDelilah gives an exasperated snort. \"Nonsense, Sidhe. You've claimed immortality. Do not make yourself a liar.\"\n\n\"No,\" Scott says in a low voice.\n\n\"Yes,\" Julia returns like a volley.\n\nScott glowers at her, but Delilah turns her head away from them to look at Tharell as her delicate fangs slide out. \"Trust me,\" she says awkwardly.\n\nJulia should stop this, but she doesn't. She lets Delilah do what she does next.\n\nDelilah tears open her own wrist.\n\n\"Drink from me, fey.\"\n\nTharell regards her.\n\nJulia looks away from them as the noise of his suckling reaches her ears. Bright shame and memories well inside her. Images of William and her time in the coven are mixed with her relief to no longer be there. She comes back to the present with a start as Scott holds her while Tharell feeds from Scott's sister. It is one of the weirdest sights she's ever witnessed.\n\nThe blood flow slows from the gap in Tharell's body then stops.\n\nTharell sits up, unbound, and Delilah's wrist falls limply, her eyes at half-mast.\n\nShe's vulnerable. Tharell could kill her.\n\n\"Scott?\" Julia's voice is full of fear.\n\nBut Tharell doesn't hurt Delilah. He gathers her against him. Her pale skin and dark hair look so beautiful against all his violet flesh.\n\nWhen Tharell strikes her in the neck, Scott doesn't react at first.\n\nBut Delilah does.\n\nHer head rolls away, and Tharell grunts, jerking her more tightly against his muscular body. His violet fingertips bit into ivory flesh.\n\nWhat the fuck is happening? \"Stop!\" Julia shouts, adrenaline kicking her in the butt.\n\nThen something wonderful happens. Tharell threads his fingers into the long strands of Delilah's hair, and his blue eyes regard Julia over Delilah's shoulder.\n\nSanity has returned and he is Tharell again\u2014not the murderer, but the Sidhe warrior he was when she first met him.\n\nHe is also more than he seems, not just fey or demonic: a vampire, awoken by another right before their eyes.\n\n# CHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n\nPraile\n\nPraile feels right at home, taking in the elegant headquarters of his nemeses. Instinctively, he senses the lack of high Angelic blood quantum in the Singers present.\n\nHe and Lazarus will not be outed. The revelation relaxes him.\n\nHe frowns again. The single thing that could get their collective geese cooked would be the appearance of Region Two Singers who do not recognize them.\n\nUltimately, Praile and Lazarus are in a race against time to locate the High One and the one who carries the blood babe within her before Region Two Singers trip across them.\n\nLazarus gives him a full look of warning, and Praile scowls at him.\n\nPraile does not need prompting from anyone, especially another high demon who is second to him. Praile functions with perfect autonomy.\n\nThe two Singer guards leave them inside an impressive foyer, with a mention that someone will be with them shortly.\n\nPraile sighs with boredom, surveying the age of the structure. It is too modern for his taste, but he always liked the medieval times. Late nineteenth century is just not for him. Too much artifice. He's a sucker for the medieval torture racks\u2014and the despair that permeated the air like a fragrance. Now that was living.\n\nPraile hears footsteps approach then his blood rushes to the surface of his skin. Just when he believed he would get away with everything, an Angelic enters the foyer.\n\nHe is a handsome specimen. As Praile looks on with distaste, he must concentrate to keep the manifestation of his demonic blood from being obvious.\n\nPraile is hanging on by a thread.\n\nHis pure demon blood is an oil-slicked cauldron boiling beneath his false human flesh. Lazarus copes better. However, Lazarus is a high demon, as well. Their blood is designed to serve as a natural alarm to their worst enemy's presence. The Angelic share that defense mechanism.\n\nThe effort of maintaining his camouflage makes sweat break out on Praile's skin, and his fingertips tingle as the large Singer approaches.\n\nWith each step the Singer takes, something primal and deep within Praile tightens. His teeth clench with the effort to retain his form.\n\n\"I am Victor,\" the Singer says. Eyes like pale gray storm clouds stare with disconcerting intensity on Praile. He is not intimidated by anyone.\n\nPraile's situation is precarious.\n\nHe must persevere and use the speech that might be expected. \"I'm Peter and this is Laz,\" Praile replies, swinging a casual thumb toward Lazarus.\n\nVictor's perfect brow puckers. He looks from Praile to Lazarus. Praile's disquiet deepens. He feels strongly that it is critical this one must accepts them.\n\nKill him if he does not believe, he sends in telepathic command to Lazarus.\n\nPraile does not want to show their hand at this juncture. However, they might not have a choice.\n\nYes.\n\n\"I do not know you,\" Victor says with quiet certainty.\n\nFor Satan's sake, he's Region Two.\n\nPraile spreads his hands away from his body, cursing the horrible clothing. \"We came as the battle commenced.\"\n\nUnderstanding lights Victor's eyes. \"Ah, I see.\" Victor knots his hands behind his back then glances at Praile. \"I was not a part of the battle with the demonic.\" Praile gives a covert glance to Lazarus. \"I was here when a Were went berserk and slaughtered Region One.\"\n\n\"How was it you endeavored to escape?\" Lazarus asks.\n\nToo formal, make your speech casual. Use slang, fool.\n\nLazarus flinches slightly from the mental plow Praile uses on his mind.\n\nHe is not subtle.\n\nVictor's laser attention moves to Lazarus\u2014through him. \"There is a life bunker below the headquarters. All Regions have this safety contingency. I gathered whoever was royal, the females, children and secured them. We were automatically released earlier today.\"\n\nAh, makes perfect sense. Praile enjoys knowing the secrets of his enemies. Though before the High One came into being, it was of no purpose to pursue them in this way. The attempts of the demonic against the angelic would have been war without reason.\n\nThe Master is pragmatic, among other things.\n\nPraile lifts his chin. \"We survived the battle but were separated from the main group and made our way back here just now. We had only a vague idea of where Region One was located.\" He whips a casual palm around. \"We're transplants,\" Praile embellishes.\n\nVictor's eyes rest on his form. Praile notices Victor is not subtle, either, taking in Praile's stiff denims, shoes too bright a white, and ill-fitting shirt.\n\nPraile sweats without his vapor to assist off-gassing his naturally searing skin. He uses every ounce of subversive magic to cause his clothes to appear as though they're worn, but he can only do so much. Splitting his concentration among the call of the blood, and his tail, his horns, and his skin color, he is leaking his effort everywhere.\n\nHe sees Lazarus tense nervously. Praile's machinations are obvious to him\u2014but Praile doesn't know if they are as transparent to Victor.\n\nVictor's face breaks into a smile. \"Excellent. You are welcome here. We've lost so many of our kind it's a gift to find Singers who survived the siege.\"\n\nVictor's skin glitters with blood reacting to the demonic within Praile and Lazarus.\n\nHowever, he has not noticed. Lazarus's eyes widen as Victor claps Praile on the back, and he stumbles, forgetting the strength of a Singer with enough Angelic blood to be problematic.\n\nVictor quirks a brow.\n\nPraile raises his lips in the parody of a self-effacing smile, trying not to gaze at the Singer's veins. \"I'm not known for my grace.\"\n\nVictor shrugs. \"That's fine. I don't know my own strength.\" He winks and begins to walk away, motioning for them to follow.\n\nPraile wants to bash the Angelic's head in with his spiked tail.\n\nA hand appears at his elbow.\n\nLazarus.\n\nHe gives the minutest shake of his head.\n\nAn exhale whistles out between Praile's teeth, regulating his anger. Strong emotion will make hanging onto his cloaking more difficult. Already he's lost enough control that the Singer's blood has risen to the top of his flesh.\n\nHow long will it be before he sees his own body's defenses and takes action?\n\nPraile seethes and rails against the Singer who casually walks in front of them.\n\nVictor enters a kitchen and spins around suddenly.\n\nPraile smiles falsely.\n\nVictor's words freeze on his tongue. \"What is wrong with your mouth?\"\n\nDemon dammit. His teeth and tongue are exposed.\n\nLazarus moves quickly, bashing the Singer in the side of his neck with his forearm. He crumples.\n\n\"Come on, Praile,\" Lazarus urges.\n\nPraile moves in quickly, grabs the Singer by the armpits, and drags him off. \"Where did he say the bunker was?\"\n\nVictor's heels make black marks on the oak floors.\n\nPraile rolls his eyes, looking around frantically.\n\nFaint voices reach his ears.\n\n\"Lucifer help us,\" Lazarus bites.\n\n\"Think,\" Praile hisses, his forked tongue shredding the word.\n\nLazarus yanks the semi-conscious Singer toward the center of the hall, tearing an expensive oriental carpet from the middle and exposing a trapdoor.\n\nPraile pops it open with a twist and a pull. A vacuum lock wheezes air.\n\nThey gaze down a dark hole with ladder-type steps.\n\nA shuddering exhale blows out of Praile. Lazarus gives him a nod, and together, they roll the Singer toward the hatch then push him inside. The body of the unfortunate Angelic clunks down the short flight to land with a thud below.\n\nPraile straightens, and Lazarus closes the circular portal. It makes a beeping sound and five shrill chimes, then a great suction sounds off for half a minute. All the while, they check that others don't wander in during the middle of their subterfuge.\n\nNo one does.\n\nThe portal locks, and a timer appears on its smooth surface. It's some kind of countdown clock.\n\nPerfect.\n\nIt reads seventy-one hours and fifty-seven minutes. Plenty of time.\n\nPraile is not humorless. After all, having a sense of humor is critical to surviving life in Hades and surviving the Master.\n\nHe grins. \"One Angelic down.\"\n\n\"The rest to follow,\" Lazarus finishes grimly.\n\n\"Lighten up, Lazarus.\"\n\nLazarus cocks an eyebrow at the foreign expression. \"I don't think this is a \u02bblight' mission, Praile.\"\n\nPraile glances down at the carpet covering the trapdoor.\n\n\"Probably not.\"\n\nLazarus does not point out the obvious. If he had just kept his anger in check, the Singer would not have seen his black teeth or forked tongue.\n\nIt's just so difficult to hide the devil's beauty. It's meant to be seen\u2014even by angels.\n\n*\n\nTessa\n\nThe two men move away from the hall, and Tessa sinks more deeply into the shadows of the room where she's hiding.\n\nWho are those two? And why in the hell would Singers hurt another Singer?\n\nShe's confused, but in her twenty years of running, Tessa has learned to stay out of business that's not her own.\n\nShe bites her lip. Tessa doesn't like repaying hospitality with silence. There's got to be someone in charge who should know what she saw. Tessa paces out of the shadows.\n\nShe's thinking of staying for a couple of days and making sure Tahlia gets picked up by the Lanarre. Then after she's foraged for whatever supplies they'll allow her to take, she'll mention the guy the newest Singers chucked down the chute.\n\nWhat if the Singer is hurt? Fatally wounded? It feels wrong not to divulge this bit.\n\nShut up, Tessa. Not your gig, you're a Were for moon's sake.\n\n\"Hey,\" Tahlia says from behind her, and Tessa jumps, hand to her chest.\n\n\"Moon! You scared the shit out of me!\"\n\nTahlia grins. \"I do adore your expressions. There's no poo anywhere. Yet, you say there is.\"\n\n\"Cut the crap,\" Tessa grumps.\n\nTahlia shakes her head, her smile widening. \"No, I think you have a fixation with excrement.\"\n\nMaybe. Tessa scowls, crossing her arms. \"What are you doing lurking around here?\"\n\nThe girl's eyes are round and innocent. Tessa gets a sudden image of her talons ripping out the Were's eyeballs.\n\nNot so innocent.\n\nTessa might bust if she doesn't tell someone.\n\nTahlia smells the story before Tessa speaks. \"Tell me, Tessa.\"\n\nTessa does, and Tahlia's expression mirrors Tessa's thoughts.\n\nShe doesn't reply right away. Instead, she jerks her head to the side, and Tessa follows her into a long, narrow room small enough to be a closet. Adjacent to the kitchen, it's lined with glass-fronted cabinets. Fine dishes are stacked inside.\n\nTahlia shuts the door behind Tessa, then palms behind her butt, she leans against the solid wood.\n\n\"Promise me you will say nothing until we depart this place.\" Her large dark bluish-violet eyes don't look away, compelling Tessa to say yes.\n\nShe frowns. \"I don't know,\" she answers slowly. \"They've taken us in.\"\n\nTahlia gives a small shrug. \"I am grateful. But this thing you witnessed? It is a Singer matter. They are not even Were.\"\n\nShe's right, of course.\n\nStill, it feels wrong. Tessa worries at her bottom lip. \"Some share our blood.\"\n\nTahlia folds her arms, lifting a shoulder. \"Not Were enough to change, not Lycan enough to count.\"\n\nTessa's gaze narrows on the younger girl.\n\n\"That's cold.\"\n\nTahlia's chin lifts. \"It's the truth, and you know it.\"\n\nTessa nods. She does know it but can't shake the feeling of wrongness. \"I can tell the Rare One.\"\n\nTahlia grabs her arms as Tessa turns to leave. \"When we leave this place. No sooner.\"\n\n\"What about the guys? The new Singers.\" Especially the blond one. He was kind of cute before he put the drop on the Singer.\n\nWhat is wrong with me?\n\nTahlia's hand falls. \"It shows they're capable of violence for its own sake.\"\n\nTessa nods. \"Yes, it does.\"\n\n\"Simple. We avoid them.\"\n\nThalia gives her a sharp look. \"You haven't told everyone about me, have you?\"\n\n\"Enough,\" Tessa admits. It's sort of important everyone knows she's Lycan royalty. It's not something to screw with.\n\nTahlia rolls her eyes.\n\n\"Well forgive me, your highness, but it was top on the list to find some sanctuary.\"\n\nTahlia strips a hairband from her wrist and twists her curly hair into a topknot at the crown of her head. Her eyes find Tessa again. \"Not much of a sanctuary if Singers are willing to beat and hide their host in a hole.\"\n\nThat was Tessa's thought, but she won't say it aloud. Instead, she says, \"It's a helluva sight better than Tramack getting his paws on me.\" The reconciliation feels weak.\n\n\"Why is he so bad?\" Tahlia cocks her head. \"Why not mate with him and avoid all this chasing?\"\n\nTessa's abrupt laugh echoes in the small butler's pantry.\n\n\"I am not Lanarre.\" Tessa stabs a thumb into her chest. \"I wasn't groomed to be mated with some unseen male.\"\n\nTahlia's expression moves to hurt, but Tessa doesn't pause. \"I want to choose a male who complements me. Who I actually want.\"\n\nA tear struggles out of her burning duct, then another follows.\n\n\"Don't you see? I am a prisoner if I stay with the Western pack.\"\n\n\"And now we're just murderers,\" Tahlia says, her hands slapping her jean-clad thighs.\n\nShame burns through Tessa. \"Yes,\" she hisses defiantly. \"I am guilty of murder. Many times over. And they are guilty of robbing me of my freedom.\"\n\n\"I am guilty of it, as well.\"\n\nTessa steps into Tahlia's space. \"Then why did you help me? If you are so dead-set on being \u02bbowned,' why would you help me?\"\n\nTessa searches her midnight blue eyes.\n\n\"Maybe I want you to be free because I never will be.\"\n\nTessa jerks back as though she's been slapped.\n\n\"What?\" she whispers.\n\nTahlia wrinkles her nose, and Tessa realizes she's in quarter-change form, subtly breathing in available scents.\n\n\"You heard me,\" Tahlia whispers, ending the conversation as she turns and jerks open the door.\n\nShe'd heard her all right. And there was no way to un-hear her.\n\nTahlia felt as trapped by convention as Tessa did. But unlike Tessa, Tahlia gave up hope.\n\nTahlia doesn't fight for herself.\n\nBut she'd fought for Tessa. It's what she could do.\n\nLoyalty doesn't go unnoticed by Tessa. It's such a rare commodity. Servitude won't be over just because the Lanarre come to collect Tahlia.\n\nIt'll be over when Tessa thinks it is\u2014and not a minute sooner.\n\n# CHAPTER EIGHTEEN\n\nJulia\n\n\"What the hell was that?\"\n\nJulia backs up and bumps into Scott. His hands grip her shoulders to steady her.\n\nTharell rises, unbound, with Delilah in his arms. Scott moves protectively in front of Julia.\n\nTharell takes in Scott's stance. \"I do not plan to injure the Blooded Queen.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh,\" Scott says, disbelief thick in his voice.\n\nDelilah stirs, and Tharell caresses her face.\n\n\"What did you do to her?\" Julia asks, her eyes bouncing from the wounds at Delilah's throat to the incisors that have sprouted inside Tharell's mouth.\n\n\"It is she that did \u02bbsomething.'\"\n\n\"Well, shit,\" Scott says.\n\n\"Yup,\" Julia agrees. She looks around. First things first. \"Who attacked you?\"\n\nTharell shrugs. \"It is someone who is invisible to me.\"\n\n\"Illusionist?\" Scott asks.\n\nJulia paces away, casting a glance at Delilah. \"So someone comes in here, cuts away your bindings...\"\n\n\"I did that.\"\n\nJulia whirls around to face him. \"What?\"\n\nTharell smiles, and Julia shivers at the sight of the perfect bead of blood seated on top of his cupid's bow.\n\nTharell rolls his shoulders in dismissal. They move awkwardly as he holds Delilah. \"I could escape at any time. Only iron bonds could hold me. And even you are not as cruel as that.\"\n\nJulia frowns at his choice of words, ignoring the implication. \"I heard it acts like an acid.\"\n\nTharell nods.\n\n\"Why is Delilah so out of it?\" Scott asks, stroking Julia's shoulder. It's so natural to have him touching her, but not without a price. Julia tries to wipe thoughts of Jason from her mind, but she can't quite do it. Scott gives her a sidelong glance. She's not entirely sure how the meld works, only that he's getting leakage.\n\n\"Blood exchange.\" Tharell's lips quirk, his answer breaking though her morose contemplations. \"That is my supposition. To be honest\"\u2014he smirks\u2014\"I did not know that any part of me was vampire. I should, in theory, have been \u02bbfound out' during my one thousand years in the sithen\u2014in faerie.\" Tharell widens his stance, shifting Delilah's slight weight. He lifts his chin.\n\n\"Vampires are the fey's mortal enemies. As I have mentioned previously, they bring true death.\"\n\nJulia stands slightly behind Scott's broad back as he folds his arms. \"So how did you manage, having vampire blood when they're the only supes who can do you guys in?\"\n\n\"I do not know.\"\n\n\"You're not knowing a helluva a lot,\" Scott says.\n\nBlue eyes unflinchingly regard brown. \"True.\"\n\n\"How come you're not all noodling out right now?\" Julia asks.\n\nTharell smiles. \"I assume you mean why have I not lost control over my senses?\"\n\nDelilah's arm takes that opportunity to dangle. Tharell absently tucks it back inside his tight embrace.\n\nAhh. \"Yeah,\" Julia says, her eyes pegged on the gesture.\n\n\"Unlike the other supernatural groups, the fey know the history of all. We make a point of learning.\"\n\nScott grunts.\n\n\"You have a vampire here. You might ask Brynn if there is validity to my suppositions. My understanding is when a female and male vampire come together in blood exchange, it leaves the female vulnerable. The male remains alert to defend her against all comers. In this way, he fulfills his duty as the stronger of the two, protecting the weaker.\"\n\n\"Makes sense,\" Scott says.\n\nJulia's brow cinches and she gives him a sharp look, pinching the bridge of her nose. Her brain hurts. \"Okay. Say that's true. How was Delilah to know that you wouldn't hurt her?\"\n\n\"She did not. Delilah only knew that she would heal my injuries with her blood. I have so little vampire genetics that she must have been unaware. As I was.\"\n\nScott palms his chin. \"Maybe she was aware. I thought she agreed to take your ass back to faerie awfully quick.\"\n\nTharell moves forward, and Scott tucks Julia behind him tighter. \"It's okay, Scott. He wants to go back, not hurt us. If he released his bonds, he could have done whatever.\"\n\n\"Your magick will not contain me this close to faerie. Your lock manipulator cannot change the magick of faerie, not when the music of the sithen plays. However distant its melody, it is just for me.\"\n\n\"And me,\" Domiatri says in a droll voice from the door.\n\nTharell's head whips to the warrior he fought beside for centuries, whom he decapitated while under the pull of the demonic.\n\nThe air grows heavy\u2014full.\n\n\"It's a symphony for me.\"\n\nTharell's brows jump above his icy-blue gaze. \"Well, wonderful for you, Domiatri.\"\n\nA staring match ensues, and Julia speaks in the middle of it. \"Listen, Domi, I didn't want you to find out like this, but someone...\"\n\nShe gives Domi an inquisitive look.\n\n\"It was not he who put the hole inside my body,\" Tharell says.\n\nJulia's shoulders slump in relief. She would have to act if Domi had defied their joint decision to hold Tharell.\n\n\"How do you know\u2014brother.\" Domi says brother like fucker. Julia hears it plain as day.\n\nSo does Tharell.\n\n\"Because I know that however much you hate me for my actions, to come to me in stealth rather than in plain sight would go against everything you are.\"\n\n\"It would,\" Domi states. His jaw clenches defiantly.\n\nJulia's brows come together. \"Then who hurt you?\"\n\n\"Who cares?\" Domi says.\n\n\"Who, indeed?\" Tharell agrees severely.\n\n\"I do,\" Delilah says from his arms.\n\nTharell's face slips into a tender expression before he checks it.\n\n\"Can you stand?\" Tharell asks gently.\n\n\"I think so,\" Delilah replies.\n\nHe sets her carefully on her feet. The brutal splash of blood over her skirt has mucked the area where her knees are underneath the layers of fabric.\n\nJulia's throat convulses. Gross.\n\n\"Okay\u2014\" Julia begins.\n\nDomi interrupts harshly, \"What have you done?\"\n\nDomi looks from Delilah's healing throat to the new fangs Tharell seems to have suddenly have trouble hiding. \"What came naturally?\"\n\nJacqueline rushes in behind Domi, and he stays her with a hand.\n\nJulia gasps at the size of her belly. \"What on earth is going on?\" she asks Jacqueline.\n\nJacqueline ignores her. \"What is\u2014oh my.\"\n\nThat's so it.\n\nJacqueline's eyes take in a pale Delilah leaning against the much taller Tharell. Her fingers loosely wrap his forearm as it crosses her chest and he pins her against his body.\n\nThe scar at his throat is gone.\n\nJulia glances at Domi. His scar is no longer there, either. Amazing.\n\n\"It appears as though Tharell is more mongrel than even I knew. He has taken blood from your vampire daughter.\" Silently, he meets Tharell's gaze.\n\n\"Blood exchange?\"\n\nTharell nods.\n\n\"Really,\" Jacqueline breathes out, her hand absently going to stroke the swell of her body.\n\n\"What now?\" Scott asks.\n\n\"It doesn't really change things,\" Julia says, \"except that\u2014God, Tharell's a vampire. I want Brynn here. He can tell us more.\"\n\n\"Tharell cannot go back to faerie. He must atone\u2014\"\n\n\"There is no atonement, Domiatri. I will be put to true death once I arrive. But to stay outside\"\u2014Tharell grips Delilah more tightly\u2014\"is insanity.\"\n\nDomi scowls. \"This is insanity.\" His hand gestures to Delilah.\n\n\"I thought, since the fey and vampires are natural enemies, that Delilah would be the best choice to get Tharell back to faerie,\" Julia explains.\n\nDomi turns the silver of his laser stare at Julia. She swears it burns.\n\n\"Why?\" he barks at her.\n\nScott steps between them. \"Watch it green man, or I'll see if your guts match your skin.\"\n\n\"Scott,\" Julia begins.\n\n\"Nope. He doesn't get to talk to you like that.\"\n\nDomi and Scott stare each other down, then Jacqueline rests her hand on Domi's arm. He flicks his eyes at her touch, and Julia watches him build himself anew, into something more reasonable.\n\n\"You are right,\" Domi concedes. \"I am\u2014this entire murder situation has been distressing.\"\n\nDistressing? Uh, yeah.\n\nJulia nods. I guess when you've lived a thousand years, an attempt on your life just isn't that important.\n\n\"Wow,\" Delilah says.\n\nJulia ignores Domi and walks to her. They're about the same height, so she meets eyes that are so like Scott's she has to remind herself they just found each other. Technically, they're half siblings.\n\n\"Wow\u2014what?\"\n\n\"She has never exchanged blood,\" Tharell appears to guess.\n\nDelilah pushes away and staggers forward. Tharell catches her with a blinding swipe of speed.\n\nJulia gasps, jumping backward. \"Holy crap! I didn't see your arm move!\"\n\n\"Yes. An advantage of the vampiric, apparently.\"\n\nDelilah rolls her eyes but doesn't make a second move to get away. \"Of course I've taken blood from a male before.\"\n\nTharell's brows come together.\n\nDelilah folds her arms. \"I suppose you think you're so vital that I'm just blown away. You don't suppose it has anything to do with the Heinz 57 that I am? If I've taken from a pure vamp, it just\u2014well it didn't feel the same.\"\n\nTharell's expression turns smug.\n\nDelilah huffs, crossing her arms. The blood moving up the sleeves is distracting. \"Your penis\u2014did it just grow or something?\"\n\nTharell blanches and Scott snorts.\n\nThey glare at each other. \"Because unless that happened,\" Delilah continues with slow deliberation, \"you shouldn't be behaving as though you are the second coming of Christ.\"\n\nTharell flinches at the name of God. Demonic blood is more than blue liquid that runs inside black veins.\n\nThere are qualities to it, like there are distinctive elements inherent to her own blood.\n\nDomi dismisses the sparring with an easy hand whip in the air. \"Tharell will be executed in faerie.\"\n\nJulia turns to him, and Jacqueline is unusually quiet.\n\nJulia says, \"I can't have him here. Most of my people didn't want him alive. And obviously, someone tried to kill him in secret, against my express order\u2014which we all agreed on. Tharell fought in a battle that killed many of the Region Two Singers. He wasn't here when Tony\u2014when Tony did what he did.\"\n\nJacqueline moves deeper into Domi's tall body. He wraps an arm around her shoulder.\n\nThe mention of Tony's name was enough to make her shy from it.\n\nJulia understands\u2014too well. \"Then there's Tharell making a deal with Gabriel.\"\n\nJulia shifts her accusing gaze away from Tharell and looks at the others. \"We need him to go. And if Delilah could get Tharell to faerie unharmed herself, he would be the fey's problem. Not mine.\"\n\nTharell claps. \"Well done, Julia.\"\n\nJulia lets go of a hard sigh. \"Listen. I don't have great choices here. My soul-meld with Scott is back. My people are dead. Jason is pissed at me. And you're some kind of new vamp.\"\n\n\"And that's a new item on the agenda. Soul-whatever?\" Delilah asks, glancing at Scott.\n\nJulia ignores her. \"If Tharell can return to faerie, along with you and Jacqueline, all the fey people will be back where they belong and I can begin to rebuild Region One with who's left.\"\n\n\"And if I refuse?\" Delilah asks and Scott's eyes narrow, but he makes no move to leave Julia's side.\n\nTharell turns Delilah's face to his with a soft touch to her chin. \"Would you deny what is between us.\"\n\nDelilah jerks her chin out of his grasp. \"Yes,\" she hisses. \"A little blood bind doesn't mean we're getting married, Sidhe. I never forget that you are fey.\"\n\nTharell's hand slowly drops and Julia can't read his expression.\n\nBad.\n\n\"But I concede I'm the logical choice to get your criminal rear end back to the mound. I can do it\u2014Brynn could as well.\"\n\n\"Brynn is pure vampire, the sithen will not allow him inside.\"\n\nDelilah's face thins to feral sharp, a slight tremor can be seen in a shaky hand as she swipes a stray hair away. \"I can. I did kill Queen Darcel, if you remember.\"\n\n\"Unforgettable,\" Domi says in quiet consideration.\n\n\"Thank you, Delilah,\" Tharell says, changing tactics.\n\nHer eyes narrow to slits. \"You're welcome, Tharell of the Unseelie.\"\n\nHe gives a little bow then uses his newly acquired vampire speed to jerk her to him.\n\nDelilah yelps in surprise and Tharell gasps as her talons plug him, the tips exiting out of the wound she just healed.\n\n\"That is not the way to thank a woman.\"\n\nTharell's pain-filled gaze moves to hers. \"Then enlighten me.\"\n\nDelilah jerks the talons out of his body and Tharell slumps forward. \"Next time you bite me\u2014you ask.\"\n\nTharell's breaths come fast and hard, his body using what energy he gained from the first blood-letting to assist with the new wound.\n\nBut Tharell does not heal himself. Instead, his fingers trail a pathway of chemistry so obvious its flame to flesh. The delicate touch runs from Delilah's cheekbone to jaw and her breath catches.\n\nDelilah's vein at her throat rises to the surface under his fingertips like a succulent rope and her heartbeat pushes the lush pulse like a magnet to his touch.\n\nTharell's gaze latches onto the precious blood source where his fingers rest.\n\nScott moves Julia behind him again.\n\nA pin could be heard if one were to drop.\n\n\"May I?\" Tharell asks, but his lips already hover above her throat, his strong hand craning her jaw so the long line of her neck is exposed, his prior wounds stand as twin stark holes against snowy flesh.\n\nJulia can see the immense strength in that grip. Tharell could snap her neck. Instead, he cradles her head as if it were a revered and fragile egg. Five spots of scarlet spread in a red pool at his back where her talons speared him\n\n\"You may, you insufferable hybrid.\"\n\nTharell's lips twitch as he strikes before any of them can take their next breath.\n\nDelilah doesn't flinch. Instead, she relaxes into his embrace.\n\nWhen Brynn enters the barn no one hears him.\n\nHe attacks Tharell in a smear of rolling bodies. The movement also tears out half of Delilah's throat.\n\nJacqueline screams and moves to go to her daughter.\n\nDomi seizes her, swinging the mother of his child away from the fray.\n\nScott likewise holds Julia.\n\nI can't breathe.\n\nBrynn knocks his fist into Tharell, and the Sidhe vampire catches the strike. Tharell's wounds close as Julia watches their movements, their clothing like spinning streamers.\n\nTharell leverages the fist meant for him and tosses Brynn into the concrete wall behind him. The building shakes from the impact.\n\n\"Brynn!\" Julia screams.\n\n\"No,\" Scott says, \"Yo\u2014you're so not going near them.\"\n\nBrynn rolls away from the concrete wall gracefully, and Julia gasps when she sees the indent of where his body struck the cement.\n\nJulia points to Delilah, but Scott is unyielding armor around her.\n\nDelilah grabs at her throat, eyes wide, gurgling.\n\nBrynn leaps beside her, scooping her off the cold floor. His eyes move to Tharell. \"Stay back, newling. You've done enough damage.\"\n\nTharell surges forward.\n\n\"Tharell! No, wait,\" Julia cries.\n\nBrynn ignores everyone. His attention is only for Delilah as she drowns in her own blood.\n\n\"Shh, you will live, young female.\" Her flailing arms find his shoulders and latch on.\n\nBrynn grits his teeth against the strength of her hold and folds the mutilated flap of flesh back against her throat.\n\nDelilah bucks, starved for air.\n\nBrynn tears at his wrist. Then balancing her head on his knees, he squeezes the blood out drop by drop.\n\nHer mouth opens, and his dark lifeblood drips inside. Delilah's eyes close. She begins to make mewling sounds like a kitten with its first saucer of cream.\n\nDelilah grabs the wrist above her and latches on with a contented sigh.\n\nBrynn gives Tharell a look of unadulterated disdain. \"That is how it's done, infant.\"\n\nTharell squats beside them. \"I am not an infant, and if you do not disengage yourself from her mouth, I will put my fist through your head.\"\n\nBrynn smirks. \"You will try.\"\n\nUnreal.\n\n\"We don't have time for this,\" Julia says.\n\n\"Nope, let them figure this out, Julia. Sometimes men just have to beat the shit out of each other to make sense of it all,\" Scott says.\n\nThat's so illogical.\n\nNeither of them acknowledges Julia or Scott. They're too busy with their testosterone-laden stare fest.\n\n\"It is I who saved her. You're too much of a novice to release her from the feed when another vampire attacks. You almost killed a helpless female as she entrusted you to feed from her vein. You. Are. An. Infant.\"\n\nTharell's eyes are like dead marbles in his face. \"And you shall die if you don't take your wrist from her mouth.\"\n\nDelilah ends the argument when she releases Brynn, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.\n\nThere aren't many blood-free spots on Delilah anymore. Brynn and Tharell look down at her at the same moment.\n\nShe glares at them both. \"That hurt like hell.\"\n\nLooks like they've bitten off more than they can chew.\n\nLiterally.\n\n# CHAPTER NINETEEN\n\nDrek- Lanarre prince\n\n\"This is absurd.\"\n\n\"They're dead, Drek.\"\n\n\"I can see that.\" Drek holds out his palm, where congealed blood collects.\n\n\"The human law enforcement has already combed the establishment.\"\n\nDrek's eyebrows lift. \"And?\"\n\n\"They have found nothing we didn't want them to. The human guardians were in bad shape.\"\n\n\"Eviscerated.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Bowen answers tersely.\n\nDrek shoots out an exhale like a bullet. \"And Tahlia is out there somewhere\u2014a Lanarre princess, unguarded.\"\n\n\"She is skilled, Drek.\"\n\nHe whirls on his trusted guard. \"I'm aware she is skilled. However, she will be my queen, Bowen.\"\n\n\"I understand.\"\n\nDrek kicks the cheap bamboo couch in the hotel room. It flips then hits the wall so hard that the peg legs embed into the drywall.\n\nThe room still bears her scent, which is strongest in the bathroom. Drek walks the length of the room and passes through the narrow bathroom threshold.\n\nA faucet drips loudly. Drek has never wished more to change to wolfen than he does in this moment.\n\nHe could be so much more aware.\n\nBut a seven-foot-tall wolfen will attract too much attention. As it is, it's taken all they could manage to get inside the room without alerting the authorities of their presence.\n\nWhat I wouldn't give for my wolfen snout\u2014or animal's eyes. Without them he has only his slightly heightened human senses.\n\nThen his eyes catch something that's fallen behind the dingy commode.\n\nIt looks like snow.\n\nNo\u2014it's a feather. A pure white feather. And balanced on top, is a drop of blood.\n\nDrek stands so quickly his head spins.\n\n\"Bowen!\" he yells.\n\nBowen rushes inside, hands gripping the doorjamb. \"What is it?\"\n\n\"She changed into bird form.\"\n\nThey come to the same realization simultaneously.\n\n\"She lives.\"\n\nHis gaze moves to the small bathroom window above the shower stall. The window stands open. The opening is just large enough for a bird to move through.\n\n\"Yes,\" Drek answers, clutching the feather.\n\nIt breaks under his grip.\n\n*\n\nSlash\n\n\"Hey,\" Adrianna calls out softly.\n\nSlash jerks up from the ground in a semi-pushup leap. His black nylon athletic pants leave little to the imagination, and he watches Adrianna take that in: his lack of shirt\u2014and underwear.\n\nIt's simply not practical for him to be wolfen and not have pants that accommodate his increased girth. Underwear would literally strangle his nuts. The athletic pants are the best he can do, and they're more modest than anything most would partake in.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" she asks.\n\nSlash can't resist a small chuff to scent her.\n\nAdrianna is nervous. Her emotions fuel a quick scan of the environment.\n\n\"Nothing's wrong Slash. I'm just\u2014I'm seeing how you're doing. You've been gone all day.\"\n\nHe moves toward her.\n\nFear washes over her features.\n\nSlash stops, stunned. \"Are you afraid of me?\"\n\nAdrianna quickly shakes her head. \"No. But, you're big in wolfen form.\"\n\nHe grins. He forgot what he looks like. For a full second, he forgot about his scar.\n\nHis smile disappears at the thought but Adrianna is already slipping her arms around his waist, nuzzling against the downy hair that covers his body in this form.\n\nHis hand awkwardly cups her small skull, and he thinks of all of what he loves contained in the fragile container of her head. He swallows painfully.\n\nShe is so vulnerable. And he can think of nothing else but her protection.\n\nHe voices different thoughts, though. \"Julia tasked me with scenting the dead.\"\n\nAdrianna tips her head back. \"Kind of shitty.\"\n\nSlash shakes his head as his mouth pulls into a thin smile and flattens his scar. \"No. It must be done. I'm a pureblood Red. Truman, Zeke, and I are making short work of it.\"\n\nAdrianna looks out over the small lake then glances at her feet.\n\nSlash nods. \"The fey were able to get all the... pieces.\"\n\nAdrianna nods at the word for the torn bodies of the dead.\n\n\"They put them in a mass grave. It's up to us to exhaust the tally of fallen Were.\"\n\nUnderstanding lights her expression. \"Lawrence.\"\n\nSlash nods, unable to tell her just how selfish his motivation is. The packmaster is the one true obstacle standing between Slash's union with Adrianna.\n\n\"If he's gone, then we can be together.\"\n\nEmotion overcomes him and Slash can't keep form and bleeds to human.\n\nThe short coat of red hair that covers his body disappears and only the barest grunt whistles out of him as he shrinks to the shorter stature of six foot four.\n\nAdrianna is still her fierce tiny package of female.\n\nSlash moves his fingers beneath her jaw and tilts it up, looking deeply into her eyes.\n\n\"Adrianna.\"\n\nHer lips twist. \"Just kiss me. I'm dying here.\"\n\nA hint of a smile pulls his mouth, and then it's on hers. Slash has been with many females.\n\nThey never saw his face; he made sure of it.\n\nHe never loved them, but a male has needs.\n\nBut everything he needs is now here inside his arms.\n\nThe sunlight warms his face and sparkles off the water.\n\nIt showcases his scar.\n\nYet, he allows Adrianna to pull him down to meet her soft lips.\n\nSlash is not starved for sex, but love is a different matter. And Slash knows that sex will be consuming when love is a part of it.\n\nAnd he loves Adrianna so much, it's a type of sweet agony.\n\nIt hurts him deeply because he gave up some of his self-preservation to feel it.\n\nThen her small hands slide just underneath the waistband of his pants and Slash is lost to her touch.\n\nJust lost.\n\n*\n\nSlash leads Adrianna by the hand. The woods deepen around them. The trees grow thicker and broader.\n\n\"I'll be cold, Slash,\" Adrianna says with just a touch of coyness to her voice.\n\nBut she does not say no.\n\n\"Let my body warm you,\" he says.\n\nShe lifts his hand and kisses each knuckle, never looking away.\n\nSlash sucks in a breath. \"Lawrence is dead,\" he confesses.\n\n\"I thought he might be,\" she says, giving a significant look around the woods. \"You wouldn't take me as mate unless he was out of the picture.\"\n\nSlash smiles, and Adrianna grins back.\n\n\"How do you know I am taking you as mate?\" he teases.\n\nAdrianna's hand is suddenly cupping his balls, and he gasps. \"You better be, buster. I'm not doing the nasty with just anyone.\"\n\nSlash seizes her wrist. \"You are mine. There will be no other who knows your body, Adrianna.\"\n\nA slow smile spreads across her full lips, and her hazel eyes sparkle. \"Just the way I want it, stud. Now let me do something more fun with these.\"\n\nSlash isn't shy, but when the one woman he loves has him by the balls, it's a strange position to be in.\n\n\"Adrianna,\" he calls softly as her fingers cup him intimately.\n\n\"Yeah,\" she replies. Her half-hooded eyes widen slightly.\n\n\"I know what you're going to ask.\"\n\n\"Then you know it will be better in quarter-change.\"\n\nShe nods. \"I'm young, not dumb.\"\n\nSlash wants her. Badly.\n\nHe doesn't want to hurt her, but he will. There is no reversing it. Virginity is the one thing that unifies all the species. Females who are pure will experience pain at the loss of it.\n\nSlash takes her in his arms. \"I would do anything to spare you.\"\n\n\"Slash, stop. I've always wanted you. I couldn't do this with anyone else.\"\n\nSlash growls.\n\nAdrianna's eyebrows pop. \"Don't go all Alpha on me.\"\n\nSlash doesn't answer. He bends over, taking her earlobe deeply inside his mouth and nips it, drawing blood.\n\nAdrianna whimpers.\n\nSlash hardens against her. \"You can't go back, Adriana. Once we are mated, whatever I have is yours. Whatever I lack, will remain.\"\n\nHer hand moves to him again, gently squeezing and he groans.\n\n\"You lack nothing,\" she whispers.\n\n*\n\nAdrianna kisses what she can reach, moving her lips across his unscarred chest. His nipples harden inside the cool interior of the woods.\n\n\"Where are the guys?\" she asks against his hot skin.\n\n\"They won't disturb us.\"\n\n\"Better not,\" she says, giving his nipple a hard nip.\n\nSlash pulls a sharp inhale that's a half-moan.\n\n\"Don't, Adrianna.\"\n\n\"Were like teeth,\" she says as though reading from a textbook.\n\n\"Perhaps too much,\" Slash says, knowing where that can lead.\n\nAdrianna takes his pants down to his ankles.\n\nSlash stands before her, unashamed by his nudity, hoping she forgives his face for what his body offers.\n\nAdrianna stares at him silently for so long he can't fight the heat that spreads from his neck to settle at his face. He physically restrains himself from jerking the pants back on and walking off.\n\nAdrianna finally looks at his face, which only makes his shame burn brighter.\n\n\"You are the most beautiful man I've ever seen.\" Her lips part, a flush rivaling his own spreads across her cheekbones and Slash's nostrils flare at her arousal.\n\nSlash grins so he won't cry and grabs her in a hug so fierce she taps out on his shoulder.\n\nHe pulls away, and her face is purple.\n\n\"Maybe a little too tight,\" she squeezes out, her fingers barely apart.\n\nSlash can't stop smiling. Adrianna called him beautiful.\n\nThen she takes off her clothes, and Slash knows his beauty is merely a shadow of hers.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY\n\nJulia\n\n\"No, absolutely not.\" Julia looks from Brynn to Tharell, then her gaze goes to Delilah. \"I asked you to go with Tharell. Back when he was a fey-slash-demonic. Now he's a vamp?\" Julia throws up her hands, and they slap down on her thighs.\n\n\"And can I mention, for the record, that you guys shouldn't even be standing with all the blood that's lying around?\" Julia crosses her arms, fuming.\n\n\"Julia.\"\n\nShe turns reluctantly to Scott.\n\nHis eyes beseech her to listen.\n\n\"Brynn was William's second, right?\"\n\nShe throws a look at Brynn. \"Yes,\" she answers slowly, \"after he was tortured at Merlin's orders, Brynn and the handful of other vamps are all who survived.\" It's important to clarify everything.\n\nScott nods. \"Okay, so he's the only vamp around that you trust.\"\n\nJulia supposes that's accurate. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Delilah's already decided to go. Brynn can supervise. Two vamps against the big bad fey.\"\n\nScott winks at her and Julia steps into his arms and hugs him around the waist. \"You're so funny.\"\n\nHe strokes her back. \"I know.\"\n\n\"Hmm,\" she says against him, but she's smiling.\n\n\"Tharell can do nothing to us. Two against one. Plus,\" Brynn says, \"it's against vampire nature to kill or harm a female. And it's not about gallantry, Julia.\"\n\n\"What is it then?\" she asks, frowning as she tosses Tharell a surreptitious glance. Disgruntled doesn't cover it.\n\n\"It's about self-preservation. If the males are chasing around and killing all the females, where do the new vampires come from. Offspring.\"\n\nJason strolls into the open barn door, hands stuffed inside his pockets, his gaze moving to where Julia stands beside Scott. \"Don't you just latch onto someone new and change them, blood sucker?\"\n\nHe smirks.\n\nGreat, Jason's going to be himself, when we really need this. Tharell needs to get gone so tempers can cool.\n\nScott takes her hand, and Julia tries to pull away, though she wants nothing more than to collapse against him in relief.\n\nJason notices the subtle tug-of-war and his smug expression turns to the hard edges of rage.\n\nJulia is intimately familiar with that expression. Julia stops struggling. She is the rope between two men, and she's fraying quickly.\n\nBrynn glances between all of them. \"Yes, we can change some humans into vampires, but they must already be vampiric. They must have the blood of a vampire to change.\" He glances at Tharell. \"As the Sidhe warrior did.\"\n\nJason's eyebrows hike. \"Really? So Tharell's gone all vampy. Well, isn't this just fucked.\"\n\nJason's got it right. It's a mess.\n\n\"So\"\u2014Jason taps his chin\u2014\"let me get this straight, as I've just been invited to this little party.\" When his eyes find Julia's, she doesn't look away. \"You three vamps are going to the fey mound, and you'll take your chances there.\" His eyes move to Delilah's still-healing neck, and he checks a snort. \"And Tharell is going to hope the fey just welcome him back with open arms? Not fucking likely.\"\n\nJason walks slowly over to Julia and Scott. His eyes rake down her body then move back to her face.\n\n\"And Julia's all entangled with Singer royalty again, while battling a demonic spore.\"\n\nJacqueline glances at Julia and she casts her eyes to the floor.\n\n\"Is this true, Julia?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" She gives a sharp exhale. \"The saber\u2014the demonic blood can't kill me, but I'll just get sicker.\"\n\n\"Until a high demon comes along and finds Jules. Then he can do her in.\" Jason looks at her coldly, but Julia knows it's his anger talking. He's angry she'll grow sick, and the situation with Scott has only renewed that rage.\n\nJason licks his lips. \"All Jules has to do is hook up with Scott here, and the high demon can pack sand, right, guys?\"\n\nJulia's miserable. A few short years ago, she couldn't envision a life without Jason.\n\nNow she knows that'll never happen.\n\nBrynn fills the awkward silence. \"Then it would make sense for Tharell to be gone from here, so if the demonic return, he can't be commanded to act on any direction given by them.\"\n\n\"Won't he be too vampire to be driven by demonic directives?\" Jacqueline asks.\n\n\"I think demonic trumps vamp,\" Julia guesses.\n\n\"I know it does,\" Domi says.\n\nJason turns to Brynn, Delilah, and Tharell. \"Then you better go. Because even though I'd love to kick some ass, I don't want one chance for some devil guys showing up and hurting Jules.\"\n\n\"But you are allowed to hurt her by staying?\" Tharell asks, getting to the heart of it.\n\nJason smiles and it's more a baring of teeth. \"Yeah. I've earned the right, purple dick.\"\n\nTharell moves in a streak of lavender. He slams Jason against the wall, holding his hand at Jason's throat. \"Courtesy, Were.\"\n\n\"Fuck you, grape.\"\n\nJulia runs to them. Scott reaches to grab her.\n\nNo, please, Scott.\n\nHe stills at her telepathic missive.\n\nBe careful.\n\nShe turns and puts her hand on Tharell. \"Please, just go. Don't harm Delilah.\"\n\nTharell looks down at her, his fingers like steel at Jason's throat. \"I will die inside faerie.\"\n\nJulia squeezes her eyes shut. \"You will die here.\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\nJulia opens her eyes and watches as Tharell drops Jason.\n\nHe massages his throat then looks at Julia.\n\nShe lowers her eyes before what she sees in his, feeling sick.\n\n\"I'll get my shit. It seems to me you have plenty of protectors here, Jules. I'm just in the way.\"\n\nJulia grabs him, latching onto his arms. He flings his arms wide and her hands fly backward. \"Don't,\" he snarls.\n\nScott is suddenly in front of her. \"It's all about you, Caldwell.\"\n\nJason's eyes are all for Julia.\n\n\"Not always.\"\n\nJason stalks off, not giving anyone anything but his back and the dust off his feet.\n\n*\n\nThankfully, Delilah has time to put on fresh clothes for the journey to the mound. They didn't announce her departure.\n\nBrynn and Tharell wait at the stand of trees that bisect the lake from Highway 101. The mound is beyond even that, west toward the Olympic Mountains at the edges of the Hoh Rain Forest.\n\n\"I feel bad,\" Julia says, reaching for Delilah's hand. \"I know we're not close, that we don't even really know each other.\"\n\n\"It's fine.\" Delilah gingerly lays a hand on her throat, where the faint scarring is nearly healed.\n\nJulia breathes a sigh of relief.\n\nI think we'll have to do a hazmat clean of the barn floor. She shudders at the recent memory.\n\n\"It changes things,\" Julia says.\n\nDelilah nods. \"It does. I know he could kill me if the right devil shows up.\" The corner of Delilah's mouth lifts.\n\n\"Not. Funny,\" Julia says but she laughs.\n\n\"Nothing is certain, Julia\u2014that's why Brynn is going.\"\n\n\"Another complication\u2014\"\n\n\"A contingency,\" she interrupts.\n\nNeither one of them mention Brynn's actions in saving Delilah in what looked like an attack by Tharell. Protective vampire instinct or something else?\n\nJulia shoves her hair behind her ears. Her head hurts with all the thoughts piling up inside it.\n\nDelilah shrugs. \"I'll be fine.\"\n\n\"You're still a girl\u2014like me.\"\n\n\"A woman who killed the Queen of the Unseelie.\"\n\nA shaky laugh escapes Julia. \"Right. I know.\"\n\n\"You requested I take him.\"\n\nJulia stares into Delilah's black gaze. \"Before Tharell vamped out.\"\n\nDelilah crosses her arms. \"Brynn and I will return. Once Tharell enters the sithen, he is a problem for the fey. Not us.\"\n\n\"It's like a death sentence.\"\n\n\"It's as you said. He waits, demons will come, and then he is an addition to the army.\"\n\n\"A possible addition.\"\n\nNeither of them enumerates the possibilities of how that particular event could spin out.\n\n\"True. However, this gets him away from whoever usurped your authority.\"\n\nDissent in the ranks.\n\nJulia throws up her hands. \"Okay, you win.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" Delilah grins, and the dimple she shares with Scott winks in and out of existence.\n\n\"What about Jacqueline?\"\n\nDelilah sighs. \"I'm not sure which I like better,\" she admits quietly. \"This soft, pregnant Jacqueline or the tough monarch.\"\n\nJulia jerks back. \"What? Jacqueline without the moderation of faerie tried to murder me. She was a bitch on wheels.\"\n\nDelilah nods. \"Yes, but a little bit of that is needed now. And she's just too broken to give that side of herself. What if something horrible happens? And you need what Jacqueline can bring?\"\n\n\"I think she'll rise to the occasion.\"\n\nDelilah gives a quick nod, looking over Julia's shoulder. \"She's here to see me off.\"\n\nJulia's mouth makes an O, and she turns in the direction Delilah is staring.\n\nJacqueline moves out of the shadows. Neither Scott nor Domi is in sight.\n\nJulia knows it's an illusion. Domi is protective over Jacqueline.\n\nScott would never let anything happen to Julia. However, she appreciates the illusion of privacy.\n\n\"I wished to tell you goodbye.\"\n\nDelilah lifts a shoulder. \"It doesn't matter.\"\n\n\"It does. I have something to tell you. It might make a difference\u2014it might not.\"\n\nJulia begins to back away, thinking she doesn't need to intrude on their private moment.\n\n\"No\u2014stay,\" Jacqueline says.\n\nJulia stills. Jacqueline's face is so grave, Julia's pretty sure she doesn't want to hear the words that Jacqueline will speak.\n\n\"I know that I have been an absent and neglectful mother, as I was with Scott.\"\n\nDelilah says nothing, and Julia's impressed. Most would rub in the obvious.\n\nJulia studies Delilah's face and comes to the conclusion that maybe her vampire nature offers a sort of natural indifference. If so, Jacqueline can't mend that bridge.\n\n\"You have asked, and I have refused.\"\n\nJulia's ears perk as she looks between the two. What?\n\nDelilah's skirts swish at her ankles as she moves forward suddenly. She takes Jacqueline's hands in her own.\n\n\"My sire?\"\n\nJulia holds her breath as the two women face off. Both are dark and severe as well as cunning.\n\n\"He does not know of your existence.\"\n\n\"And I do not know his identity,\" Delilah replies.\n\nJacqueline takes a deep inhale, letting it out slowly. \"It is Gabriel of the Northwestern Kiss.\"\n\nDelilah backs away, dropping her mother's hands as though she were burnt. \"No.\"\n\nJulia's breath escapes in a rush that makes her dizzy. Her hand hits the side of the barn.\n\nDelilah is the daughter of a Rare One, the very leader who tried to get into bed with Tharell to reacquire her.\n\nNow his own daughter will travel with Tharell.\n\n\"He is merciless!\" Delilah cries, and Julia watches Brynn and Tharell make haste to their positions.\n\n\"It is a trait I desired in the fathers of my children.\"\n\nUh-oh.\n\nDelilah's frantic eyes meet her mother's. \"Why?\" Her voice is as sharp as a blade.\n\n\"Survival of the fittest,\" Jacqueline admits in a vacant tone.\n\n\"For whom?\"\n\nJacqueline's eyes shift to the left.\n\n\"For me.\" Her voice has dropped to a thready whisper.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE\n\nSlash\n\n\"I'm not playing the role of blushing virgin.\"\n\nAdrianna is suddenly shy, and of course, that makes Slash go from hard to soft in an instant.\n\nSlash is stalled but not done. In two strides, he stands in front of her.\n\n\"Adrianna?\"\n\nShe glances up at him then away.\n\n\"I'm going nowhere.\"\n\nShe takes a deep breath, and he scents her anxiety. He also sees the muscle definition in the tenseness along her thighs.\n\nSlash wraps his hands around her upper arms. \"I'll be gentle.\"\n\n\"That's not in question.\"\n\n\"What is it then?\"\n\n\"Tony.\"\n\nSlash's hands convulse around her arms.\n\n\"He didn't\u2014I thought.\" Slash touches his forehead to hers. \"Tell me he did not do what I'm thinking. Because he'd need to die again.\"\n\nA sad smile touches her lips then disappears. \"No, but it was close\u2014so close, Slash.\"\n\n\"I don't want to harm you, but the first time will hurt.\"\n\nHer breath is warm against his skin. She's frightened.\n\nSlash can't back down, even now, despite knowing her trepidation.\n\nHer small hands float to his hips, and just like that, he's back to unbearably hard. \"Adi,\" he breathes against her, and his lips are at her temple. \"I can't not want you, female.\"\n\n\"I want you, too, Slash.\"\n\nHe bends at the knees, and her hands fall away. Slash glories in the sight of her for a full thirty seconds then scoops her into his arms.\n\nSlash didn't plan on this.\n\nBut the moss of the forest is dry. He kicks their small pile of scattered clothes with a single swipe, and they fall on top of the dry spongy floor. He arranges Adrianna on top of the bed of moss and clothes.\n\nAdrianna turns her head, and her nostrils flare, her senses heightened in her quarter-change form. \"They smell of you.\"\n\nSlash's eyes run down the length of her body. Her beauty is subtle\u2014perfect.\n\nRound breasts fall softly to the sides of her chest, and her ribcage narrows to a waist he can span with his hands. Her hips flare just wide enough of a woman just past whelpling age and far enough to be ready for what Slash offers. His eyes move to her perfect toes, and she wiggles them under his scrutiny.\n\nHer face flames when his eye come to her sex.\n\n\"Show me, Adrianna.\"\n\nHer thighs tremble, but she parts them. Slash falls to his knees to lay the side of his face against the inside of her thigh. His nose is inches from the most secret part of her.\n\n\"Am I...\" Adrianna's voice shakes, and she clears her throat. \"Okay?\"\n\n\"Okay is not a word I would ever use to describe you, Adrianna.\"\n\nHe can feel her heartbeat through her femoral artery.\n\nSlash turns his face, laying a heated breath at her core.\n\nShe arches her back, \"Slash!\" she says in a whisper-shout, grasping his hair with her hand.\n\n\"Do you like it?\"\n\n\"Love,\" she replies breathlessly.\n\nHis voice rumbles against her wet heat, \"Do you want more?\"\n\n\"Is there\u2014more?\"\n\n\"Yes.\" He places his hands at the apex of where thigh meets her center, and he spreads her like a flower.\n\nAdrianna tenses.\n\n\"Trust me, Adrianna.\"\n\n\"You know I do.\"\n\n\"I will prepare you.\" Slash waits, and when she relaxes, he moves in deeper between her legs. Using his tongue, Slash begins at one side of her and sucks the sensitive flesh deeply into his mouth.\n\n\"Ahh,\" she says, and fingers that had previously bit into his scalp now rub through the stubble of his hair.\n\n\"That's it. Open yourself to me.\"\n\nAdrianna's knees fall apart, and he tucks his hands underneath her hips, cupping the globes of flesh, lifting as he pulls her more deeply into his mouth.\n\nShe whimpers, and he licks her from entrance to clit, using the flat of his tongue to rub back and forth on the sensitive nub. Adrianna begins to make little sounds of pleasure, coming undone from the attention.\n\nSlash's erection is a painful, throbbing mass. He denies himself, giving pleasure to the only female he could ever consider mating. She begins to ride his mouth with eager hips, and he matches her rhythm with his own.\n\nWhen he pierces her entrance with his tongue, she cries out, and Slash does it again and again, holding her bare ass with one hand as the other strokes her slick clit rapidly with his thumb.\n\nAdrianna's body tenses as her head whips violently back and forth. She screams, her body an arc, and Slash slows his tongue penetration then stops it, carefully lowering her to the soft forest floor.\n\nHer eyes are spinning gold, and every feature of her beautiful face glows in stark relief.\n\n\"Take me,\" she says, and Slash is unsurprised by the growling quality to her voice.\n\nSlash lines himself up with her center.\n\nAdrianna gives silent consent with the widening of her legs, letting her arms fall behind her head. Her generous breasts lift, the nipples pointing at his body.\n\nSlash enters her with a single, hard shove. He tears through her barrier and meets the end of her in a quivering thrust of flesh married.\n\n\"Oh my\u2014moon!\" Adrianna gasps, struggling not to tense against his entry.\n\nSlash feels horrible, but her slick heat and the way her body welcomes his as though he never left, is too much, and he begins to move gently within her.\n\nHis head hangs as he lifts his weight from above her, working deeply in and out. \"I am sorry\u2014you are\u2014I am lost in you.\"\n\nShe rocks back against him, \"Nope, I have you, Slash.\"\n\n\"You do, every part of me,\" he whispers with clenched eyes.\n\nHis eyes snap open as her hands rest on his hips, guiding him\u2014encouraging him. \"Do not. I can't hold back, Adrianna.\"\n\n\"I don't want you to.\"\n\nHe freezes above her, his gaze searching hers in the shadows. \"Have I hurt you?\"\n\n\"Not like I'll hurt you if you stop.\"\n\nSlash smiles, and she grins back, her teeth very sharp. He begins to move with purpose, using long gentle strokes. She fits him like a hot slick glove as he bottoms out to kiss her womb.\n\n\"Take me, take me, take me, Slash.\"\n\nSlash studies her expression, and when he's satisfied it's what she wants, he does what his body has been longing to do since she came of age. He buries himself to the hilt inside her.\n\nThey grunt at the deep joining, and her legs fold over his back. He lifts her hips, tilting them forward as he begins to pound inside of her.\n\n\"Please,\" she whispers, and Slash can hold back no more. She is tight and untried by all but him. He plunges in a final time and unloads his seed into her depths, simultaneously scent-marking her.\n\nShe milks him, pulsing around him as she makes little grunts of satisfaction. They are music to his ears. That he could possibly satisfy this female who's entrusted him fills Slash with an unaccustomed sensation.\n\nIt's beyond the momentary contentment of this act between them.\n\nBeyond that, he has claimed a mate.\n\nMore than fleeting happiness, Slash feels true joy\u2014his and hers.\n\nTheir own.\n\n*\n\nSlash scrolls a fingertip down Adrianna's naked side and watches the trail of gooseflesh rise in its wake.\n\nAdrianna giggles. \"Stop. You're tickling me, ya butt.\"\n\nSlash gives a lazy smile. \"Butt, eh?\"\n\nAdrianna rolls onto her back, and his hand rests on her naked hip.\n\nHer eyes twinkle. \"You're so old, Slash.\"\n\nHis eyebrow raises. There is a great span between their ages. \"Does that bother you?\" Slash asks, hoping it does not because there's no rectifying it. He has taken her as mate.\n\nShe raises her hand, and he doesn't flinch when she touches the small unsavory mound of flesh that sits in the center of his upper lip. Instead, he catches her hand with his own and kisses her finger.\n\nA long shuddering sigh eases out of her, and his gaze catches on Adrianna's gorgeous breasts.\n\n\"You like looking at me.\"\n\nSlash's eyes move to her face. \"Yes,\" he admits. \"Now that I can, I cannot look away.\"\n\n\"You're a romantic, Slash.\" There's surprise in her voice. He hears pleasure, too.\n\nHis brows quirk and the heat of embarrassment rises to his face.\n\n\"Don't deny, buddy\u2014I can tell.\"\n\nSlash mounds her breasts, and her breath catches, her hazel eyes darkening like the threat of a storm.\n\n\"What else can you tell, Adrianna?\" he asks softly, never looking away while rolling her pebbled nipple between his thumb and finger.\n\n\"I can tell that I want to go again.\"\n\nSlash smiles, cupping her heat with his other hand, and she spreads her legs.\n\n\"Are you sore?\" he asks, kissing first one thigh then the inside of the other. He rolls his face against her flesh, taking the skin deep between his teeth, smelling her blood and his seed mingled together.\n\nAmbrosia.\n\n\"Not enough,\" she says in a voice gone low with need.\n\nHe releases the flesh of her thigh. His teeth leave indentions, but the skin is unbroken. The marks plump and smooth out as Slash watches.\n\n\"The quarter-change is helping to heal me,\" she says, relief in her voice.\n\n\"It was smart, Slash.\" She laughs, and he looks up from where he just pleasured her to her expressive face. \"But I think there was an ulterior motive.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" he asks, his fingers caressing her entrance.\n\n\"Yes,\" she says, her voice breathy, \"I think you just wanted me as much as you could get.\"\n\nSlash's fingers stop. He glides up her body, caging Adrianna with his arms, placing his hardness against her soft slit. He cradles her face with his hands, elbows planted on either side of her.\n\nHe kisses her forehead, each eyelid, then her mouth.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Ha! I knew it.\"\n\nHe brushes his lips against hers.\n\n\"I knew once I started loving you, once would not be enough.\"\n\nAdrianna wraps her arms around his neck.\n\n\"For me, either,\" she whispers.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO\n\nDrek\n\n\"That was a round about,\" Bowen snorts, twirling his finger in the air.\n\n\"We are Lanarre\u2014we can scent the rain on the wind.\"\n\nBowen rolls his eyes.\n\nDrek scowls. \"What is that look for?\"\n\n\"We may be Lanarre, but when Tahlia takes flight, there's no scenting her.\"\n\nDrek hates to admit any failure, but Bowen is right. If the other Alpha female's ground scent hadn't been nearby, they might have missed Tahlia altogether.\n\n\"Interesting scent mix at the gasoline station,\" Bowen remarks.\n\nDrek gives him a sharp look. About half of all supes, even vampires, could have scented the mess Tahlia made. He didn't know why Tahlia was with another female Were, but he suspected the second female was rogue. Drek understood the implications of an Alpha female running solo. None were good, certainly not once Tahlia was added to the equation.\n\nDid the female help Tahlia?\n\nDrek doubted that. Tahlia's scent was mingled with the blood of the males. That could mean only two things.\n\nThey had harmed her and Tahlia had defended herself. That option was highly unlikely. No average Were would harm a Lanarre.\n\nThe second option: she had attacked them in defense of another, most likely the second female.\n\nFrom all reports and his abbreviated correspondence with Tahlia, he suspected the latter to be the most probable.\n\nDrek smiles, palming his chin.\n\n\"You've thought of something?\" Bowen asks. The Were has been Drek's friend and guard since whelphood. Bowen's family has been the guard of the Lanarre royalty for a thousand years, an anomaly, for they are not human.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nBowen's dark eyebrows rise, his light brown eyes steady on Drek.\n\n\"I think she defended the Alpha female.\"\n\nUnderstanding lights Bowen's expression. \"Good call.\"\n\n\"There's a remote possibility that she was defending herself against the two males.\" He gives Bowen a sharp look.\n\nHe immediately shakes his head. \"Absolutely not. A Lanarre female just out of whelp? It'd go against every precept in Lycan culture.\"\n\n\"There's precedence.\"\n\nNeither of them speak of the scent of the Alpha Were who has murdered over nine humans, including Tahlia's guards.\n\nBowen lifts a shoulder. \"Who knows what that Were was made of? If he was being tasked by a packmaster or acting of his own volition?\"\n\n\"True.\" But Drek is troubled. A Were who would rampage through a human establishment like that was capable of other deeds.\n\nHe and Bowen exchange an uneasy look. \"He would not kill her but might do other unsavory things.\"\n\nA flutter appears in Bowen's jaw, and voices what has occurred to them both. \"He would not rape a Lanarre female. She's barely more than a girl.\"\n\nDrek's stomach does a slow, heated roll. \"He is not Lanarre. It would go against our instincts to protect females. But as you've said, we can't be absolutely sure.\"\n\nBowen throws his hands up in the middle of the parking lot of the decaying gas station. \"Let's run with the assumption that he missed her. That she hid herself. That the slaying of her guardians wasn't for nothing.\"\n\nDrek's eyebrows jerk up to his hairline. \"An Alpha male would scent a Lanarre.\"\n\n\"Not if she was in bird form.\"\n\nDrek puts his hands to hips and walks off. He paces back and forth. Ignoring the coming dawn and the coolness, he scents the ocean in the distance.\n\nHis nose is at the scene, and he can't get out of his head. He whirls and looks at Bowen. \"Then we make haste. We scent where their car has gone and follow.\"\n\nBowen walks to him then grips him by the arms. Though Bowen is only a fraction shorter, Drek is built for war. All Lanarre are. The royal line is the most barbarically fashioned. Both men stand nearly eye-to-eye at six feet five.\n\n\"Don't lose faith. This crazed male missed her once. It's clear Tahlia is now with the Alpha female we presume she helped.\"\n\nBowen wrinkles his nose. \"Those males were from the Western. Easy to scent.\"\n\n\"Possibly drones sent by Tramack?\"\n\nBowen rolls his shoulders into a dismissive shrug. \"I don't keep up on common Were politics.\"\n\nDrek grins suddenly. \"And you accuse me of being a snob?\"\n\n\"Ha!\" Bowen replies, dropping his hands from Drek's arms and walking toward the gas pumps. \"No accusation necessary. You're an elitist.\"\n\nDrek can't deny it\u2014the common dens don't adhere to the ways of Lycan tradition enough to earn his respect. A few dens still cleave to the traditions of old, but they are few and far between.\n\nBowen drops to his hands and knees on the ground, dirtying the knees of his well-worn jeans. He turns his face and hovers above the damp asphalt. He flares his nostrils once then makes several small chuffs.\n\nHis head snaps up.\n\n\"I have it.\"\n\nMetal is especially hard to scent, but Bowen has made a little game of it. He can usually get the decade of a vehicle from scent alone. Bowen is good enough at tracking that he can determine what year the car is.\n\n\"Older model, 1960s Chevy\u2014heavy.\"\n\n\"They're all heavy from that era,\" Drek says with a touch of humor. \"Really old model.\"\n\nBowen rocks back and sits on his heels, nearly yanking his shoulders to his ears. \"Perspective. I was a whelp in that day, but you were already thirty-five.\"\n\nDrek smirks.\n\n\"One hundred percent original components,\" Bowen says triumphantly.\n\nDrek's jaw drops. \"Really?\"\n\n\"Yes, probably an old couple, had it since the day they got married. Grocery-getter for the woman.\" His eyes glitter. \"It happens.\"\n\n\"Rarely.\"\n\n\"Better for us, the signature will be clean to follow.\"\n\n\"What are we waiting for?\" Drek says.\n\nBowen bounds to his feet in a single leap from his toes. \"Nothing, let's roll.\"\n\nDrek gives him a tolerant look. Bowen loves human slang. Drek finds it tiresome, though he's adopted a few key phrases himself.\n\nDrek grits his teeth, angry over the loss of Tahlia's human guardians with an undercurrent of acute anxiety for her. The humans who serve the Lanarre are greatly loyal, with generations upon generations of service.\n\nDrek would dismember the male who slaughtered them if Tahlia hadn't already. Any male who would touch a Lanarre female deserves death. Drek is keenly aware of Tahlia's proficiency in defense. However, she is still female. And judging by the remains of the humans, the male who is responsible for the massacre is strong.\n\nHe seems stronger than most Were, but he's not Lanarre-strong. If the male were human, Drek would have assumed he'd been taking some artificial enhancer, like PCP.\n\nBowen turns, giving Drek a considering look. \"Stop thinking. Let's go.\"\n\nStop thinking. Easier said than done.\n\nDrek glances over his shoulder, noting the neon sign that reads gas switching on.\n\nThey'll track during the beginning of day and find Tahlia by nightfall. Drek is optimistic.\n\nJust beyond the tree line, Bowen and Drek morph into quarter-change. The ability that is generally reserved for female Were is available to all Lanarre, male and female. Still, so far from the moon's fullness, the ability comes at a cost to the males.\n\nBowen and Drek race parallel to the road, following the scent of the car. They slow as the scent stops, then they climb the embankment that leads to the highway. A car passes, and they freeze, waiting for the scent to waft back.\n\nIt floats down to rest.\n\nDrek moves to the shoulder, sinking to his haunches. He touches the impression of deep treads biting into the soft dirt and pebbles. He closes his eyes, inhaling deeply.\n\nThe car was parked here. Tahlia was inside.\n\nHis eyes seek Bowen, but he's already at the edge of the woods.\n\n\"I have her.\"\n\nDrek looks, hoping that Bowen literally has her.\n\n\"Her scent, Drek.\"\n\nDrek's shoulders drop. \"I know,\" he replies and glances behind him.\n\nTwo cars were parked at the shoulder. He's scented them both.\n\nWhere did the other drivers go? Why were they here, parked behind my chosen? Drek doesn't like it, and he can't dismiss the possibilities of what it represents, especially the scent.\n\nThe ones who were here beside the unknown female and his chosen\u2014they are scentless.\n\nBowen motions impatiently.\n\n\"I am a prince, you know,\" he reminds Bowen.\n\n\"Uh-huh, get your princely ass over here so we can find Tahlia.\"\n\nDrek smirks. \"You don't show proper respect, Bowen. And no one cares more about finding Tahlia than I.\"\n\nBowen pegs his hands on his hips, one foot in the woods and one on the slope. \"And you clearly don't give a shit about anything but finding Tahlia.\"\n\nDrek grins. \"Yes, but we have a problem.\"\n\nBowen's brows come together, all humor gone, and his posture tenses. \"What?\"\n\n\"We have scentless followers.\"\n\n\"Vampire?\" Bowen asks instantly, his nostrils flaring and a scowl forming on his face. \"Can't scent a thing.\"\n\n\"Exactly.\"\n\n\"Doesn't feel right, Drek.\"\n\nDrek nods. Vamps would avoid daylight for obvious reasons and especially Lycan females. That interaction is a mess waiting to happen. Vampires employ stealth. It is their nature.\n\nNo, the followers are not vamps.\n\nDrek studies the impressions at the shoulder again. His eyes move restlessly over every groove or tread. His mind touches on an idea and instantly dismisses it.\n\nThere has not been a tangible appearance of cloaked demonic in centuries. There would not be one now.\n\nStill, it strikes a discordant note deep within Drek. He doesn't favor the idea of Tahlia with an unknown female while a deranged Were with a penchant for murdering innocent humans is on the loose. And now this new potential threat...\n\nDrek doesn't trust anything he can't scent. No self-respecting Lycan would.\n\n\"Drek?\" Bowen calls from the bottom of the embankment.\n\n\"I don't like it.\"\n\nBowen throws his hands up in the air, disbelief saturating his features. \"What's to like?\"\n\n\"These other scentless beings changes nothing,\" Drek says slowly. Except his chosen is vulnerable and is probably not experienced enough to understand a hidden threat is closing in. She is very young.\n\nDrek jogs down the small hill to the forest's edge to join Bowen, who's already racing ahead of him. They run side by side, shoving aside alder branches like ready whips in front of their faces.\n\n\"Wolfen,\" Bowen gasps.\n\nTheir clothes shred. Drek's more prepared than Bowen, who is left in his expandable underwear. Drek specifically chose the plain athletic pants because they would accommodate his change to wolfen form.\n\nThe Lanarre all possess coats of silver. A light downy mat of hair like gray smoke covers Bowen as he runs, and Drek knows he looks nearly identical. In wolf form, his coat is tipped in silver but otherwise black. In wolfen form, they both move with power that they could not spare while in quarter-form.\n\n\"Wait!\" Drek calls, stopping so quickly that he snatches at a trunk to arrest his progress. The tree groans with the impact as his talons punch into the bark. A fine spray of needles falls softly, and the smell of pine is pungent.\n\nDrek flings them out of his hair, but some remain tangled in the fine hairs that cover his body\n\n\"What?\" Bowen asks, jogging back to Drek's position.\n\n\"I scent Blood Singers.\"\n\nBowen nods, unsurprised. \"This is close to their territory.\"\n\nDrek inhales deeply, his eyes widening. \"Tahlia,\" he breathes her name reverently.\n\n\"How did I miss that?\"\n\n\"Chasing the ball!\" Drek answers with a healthy dose of sarcasm.\n\nBowen flips him off. \"I did not ignore scenting to chase the one scent.\"\n\nDrek snorts, his snout wrinkling. Bowen always has trouble multi-scenting. He gets one scent and gets obsessive.\n\nAn irritated exhale rushes out of Bowen. \"Okay, maybe a little.\"\n\nDrek's talons click as is thumb and index come together. \"All the way.\"\n\n\"Right\u2014go on,\" Bowen replies impatiently.\n\n\"They're not enemies of the Were,\" Drek comments significantly. \"They would take in two lone Were females.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Bowen admits.\n\n\"So Tahlia must have found refuge in their territory.\"\n\nBowen sighs and shoots a glance Drek's way. \"That's a reach.\"\n\n\"I don't believe in coincidence.\" His eyes lock on the slowly spinning mercury orbs in Bowen's face. \"An Alpha female, my chosen, and two Singer males\u2014together?\"\n\n\"You're right. But this will have to be handled with a degree of diplomacy you lack, Drek.\"\n\nDrek's face tightens. \"I have certain inalienable rights here.\"\n\n\"Of course. But they're a different species, with different rules that govern their kind. We might not be able to just waltz in there with nary a care and grab Tahlia. There might be a protocol in place.\"\n\nDrek's face whips to Bowen's and he feels his eyes spinning in response to his heightened agitation.\n\n\"Fuck protocol.\"\n\nBowen's chin dips. \"I was afraid you'd say that.\"\n\nThere are no words after that, only speed.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE\n\nCyn\n\nCynthia folds her arms. \"You have got to be kidding?\"\n\nJason whirls around, punching the wall. Plaster flakes float to the floor. \"Do I look like I'm fucking kidding?\"\n\nCynthia studies his tense body as if he were a coiled snake. She sighs. \"I'm not gonna lie. This sucks donkey dicks.\"\n\nJason snorts. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"What are ya gonna do?\"\n\nCynthia feels for him. He's so raw. The last three years have been a torture. And in a way, it never stopped. Jason's been on a perpetual roller-coaster ride like an emotional junkie with no fix in sight.\n\n\"What do you think?\" he asks, disdain thick in his voice.\n\nCynthia looks down at her feet, momentarily taking note of her shitty footwear. Why does that matter? She doesn't know, but in this crazy-ass new world of hers, she just wants something cute, goddammit.\n\nInstead, she faces Jason\u2014and reality. \"You're going.\"\n\nHe jerks his head in a nod. \"Hell, yes. I'm not sticking around to watch Julia do Scott.\"\n\n\"God, that's crude\u2014even for you.\"\n\nHe strides toward her, but Cynthia holds her ground. Jason's volatile, but she doesn't think he'll melt down all over her.\n\nJason sees something in her and slows, his expression like thunder. \"What? You think I'd put my hands on you?\"\n\nCynthia quickly shakes her head. \"No, but you're\u2014you're not yourself, Jas\u2014\"\n\n\"No shit?\" He rakes a hand through his sandy hair. \"My wife\"\u2014he thumbs his chest hard enough to leave a bruise\u2014\"is all soul-tied...\"\n\n\"Meld.\"\n\n\"Whatever-the-fuck!\" he roars, and Cynthia's mouth snaps shut.\n\n\"With Scott,\" he spits.\n\nCynthia's in full-diffusion mode. \"Listen, Jason, I know you're freaking out right now...\"\n\nHis hands clench into fists, his jaw goes hard, and his eyebrows yank in blatant disbelief. \"Yeah. Ya think?\"\n\nCynthia blows out a tight breath, crossing her arms. \"But you'll never forgive yourself if something happens to Jules.\"\n\nHe meets her eyes, his hazel irises turning green.\n\n\"You're not going all wolfy on me, are ya?\"\n\n\"Maybe.\"\n\nCynthia fold her arms. \"Well\u2014don't.\"\n\nThe green bleeds back to his human hazel, and Cynthia lets a sigh of relief escape. Jason as human is bad enough. Wolfen is just plain dangerous.\n\n\"I already can't forgive myself,\" he confesses harshly.\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nJason turns, and both of his fists come down on the wall. Cynthia yelps, retreating a step as her hands go to her chest, her heart bouncing around like a ping- pong ball.\n\nThey sure do a lot of wall repair here.\n\nJason turns away, speaking to the wall he just ruined, \"Because of my clueless ass, Julia was taken, Kev was killed\u2014eventually, you were turned.\"\n\n\"No, God\u2014Jace!\" Cynthia cries, moving behind him and putting her palms on his muscular back. \"This is not on you.\" She slaps him lightly. \"We didn't know this was even a part of our world.\"\n\nJason turns to face her. \"But if I was always Singer, why didn't I have a gut instinct to protect Julia? Shouldn't I have known something?\" His voice cracks, regret shattering the timbre into brittle glass.\n\n\"Remember the shooting, Jace?\" Cynthia's eyes search his. \"If that wasn't protecting her from that fuckwaffle teacher, I don't know what is.\"\n\nJason stares at her for half a minute, then he hugs her. \"I gotta go, Cyn. I can't be here. I don't want anything bad to happen to Jules, but she's got Scott.\"\n\nCynthia pats his back then grips his T-shirt. \"I know it's selfish, but I don't want you to leave. It's like breaking up the three musketeers or something.\"\n\nJason touches her cheek as he steps away. \"Yeah. It is. But I'll hurt her worse if I stay. I can't stand that prick.\"\n\n\"Because he has Julia or something else?\"\n\nA rueful smile crosses his lips. \"I don't have lofty principles. He's taking my wife, and that's all the reason I need to hate his stinking guts.\"\n\nCynthia can't respond to that. She understands. It's not reasonable, but it's real. And that's what matters to her.\n\nShe raises her eyes to meet his. \"When?\"\n\n\"I've got my shit packed. I'll say goodbye to Jules and get the hell out of here.\"\n\n\"What if there's, ya know, authorities hunting your butt?\"\n\n\"Let 'em.\" He stuffs his hands in the pockets of his jeans but not before Cynthia catches sight of his scraped knuckles.\n\n\"There's nothing I can\u2014\" She wants to beg, to reason with him. There has to be a way.\n\n\"No.\"\n\nShe sees the determination on every tenacious line of his face. \" 'Kay.\" Cynthia blows a stray hair out of her face, glancing down. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"Not your fault.\"\n\n\"It feels like it's all our faults.\"\n\nJason plows his fingers through his hair. \"Maybe.\"\n\nCynthia jerks her face up.\n\nJason shrugs. \"Feels like someone stole my life then gave it back to me like ground beef. And it's spoiled now.\"\n\n\"Gross analogy.\"\n\nHe lifts his shoulders. \"Tell me I'm wrong?\"\n\nCynthia shakes her head.\n\n\"Can't,\" she whispers.\n\nJason steps into her space and kisses her forehead, briefly cupping the back of her head. \"Take care, Cyn.\"\n\nShe nods. There's no talking, too many tears and no decent words.\n\nIt sucks.\n\nAnd that is all.\n\n*\n\nJulia\n\nHer guilt is an endless swamp. Hot and rank, it washes around her legs, threatening to drown her with its smell and heat.\n\nShe knew he would come, but as Jason moves toward her, Julia still tenses in surprise.\n\n\"Hey,\" she calls out. For once, she's blissfully alone, yet she feels the separation from Scott like a weight.\n\nJason moves faster, and her eyes widen as he crashes into her and his arms snap around her smaller frame.\n\nJulia opens her mouth to scream, and his lips smother hers as they smash into a wall in a tangle of arms and legs. His hands brace Julia before her head hits, his body pinning her against the exterior of the barn.\n\nJason kisses her fervently, desperately, and she opens her mouth to his. The kiss deepens, their tongues twining in a passion at once familiar, but now somehow wrong.\n\nThough married, they're separate.\n\nHis assault on her mouth cools to pecking. Reluctantly he releases her. Jason grasps Julia's jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze.\n\nFear, sorrow, and adrenaline combine in a dizzying cocktail that surges through her and the tie she shares with Scott. \"He's coming,\" she whispers.\n\nJason pulls a face of disdain. \"Of course he would. Let him come.\"\n\nJulia cups his face. A face she loves. A face she'll have to let go.\n\n\"Why, Julia?\" he asks, slamming a palm into the wall next to her face, and she flinches.\n\nShe doesn't answer because Scott's pulling him off.\n\nHe hurls Jason ten feet, and he lands, his clothes bursting off his body as he morphs into wolfen.\n\nScott changes into his Combatant form in the time it takes her to expel the air from her lungs.\n\n\"No!\" Julia screams.\n\nScott and Jason collide midair.\n\nThey land, and Julia steps between them. Strong hands latch on and fling her away, sending her airborne. Julia tries to work her telekinesis but fails as her emotional snare intensifies.\n\nScott catches her.\n\n\"Stay here,\" he growls, and Julia cringes when she sees his form. He whirls around, and there's empty space where Jason just was.\n\nVanished.\n\nJulia doesn't know if it's forever. But it feels like it is.\n\nScott straightens from his crouch. The monster slowly melts back to human. Teeth like a saber tooth tiger's retract, talons as long as fingers slide to nails, his stature shortens, and his eyes stop glowing.\n\nJulia takes a shuddering inhale and sits on her ass, dumping her face in her hands.\n\n\"That was awful,\" confessing the words as she fights sobbing and loses.\n\nScott doesn't agree, say he's sorry, or make excuses for himself or Jason. He scoops her off the ground and carries her to his bedroom.\n\n*\n\nCyn puts a wet washcloth on Julia's forehead.\n\nBliss.\n\n\"That went well\u2014not.\"\n\nJulia's eyes roll to meet Cyn's gaze. \"Yeah. I felt like an ass.\"\n\n\"Jason's not really all there,\" Cyn says, tapping her temple. She plops down, perching at the side of Scott's bed.\n\n\"Wow, that sounds bad. Like I think Jace is nutso. I mean...\" She sighs, wrapping her long hair in a fist and tossing it over her shoulder, \"He's not crazy. He's just frustrated. But I think he finally made the right choice.\"\n\nJulia's all talked out.\n\n\"He left so you could have a life, Jules. Jason left so he might, too.\"\n\n\"But he never came to terms with it\u2014with us.\"\n\nCyn's eyes drift up to the ceiling then pierce Julia when they move back. \"How could he? You're the one with the soul-meld\u2014not him.\"\n\n\"With this thing\"\u2014Cyn swings her finger back and forth\u2014\"that you and Scott have\u2014you have to move past memories. Jason doesn't have that buffer, the chemical things happening. He just has memories and devotion.\"\n\nJulia dies a little inside at her words.\n\n\"And the fact that neither of us knew we were Singers. And the fact that he's a Were now. I mean, we're so far from being human anymore, it altered everything.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Julia concedes softly. Logically, with everything that's changed in their lives, there is zero chance that they, or their relationship, would have remained the same.\n\n\"I hate to say this, but you'll have to think about annulling the marriage.\"\n\nJulia shakes her head, lacing her fingers tightly. \"I can't. That would lead someone straight here.\" And on some level, she feels like shit for even contemplating it.\n\nCyn allows a smile. \"Let Truman do it.\"\n\nJulia crosses her arms. \"Oh, yeah, that's so gonna work, Cyn. There's a manhunt gunning for Truman.\"\n\n\"Not so much, Jules. He's been gone awhile. Homer, Alaska, doesn't have the resources to look for a cop a year away from retirement age.\"\n\n\"A year away from retiring,\" Julia repeats in awe.\n\n\"I know, right?\" She looks away, and color floods her cheeks. \"He's like so not looking his age.\"\n\nJulia scrutinizes her expression. \"Do you kind of dig him?\"\n\nCyn looks at her knotted hands. \"Don't say.\"\n\nWow, Cyn is crushing on Truman.\n\n\"I thought we were talking about Jason here.\" Cyn huffs, swinging her leg.\n\n\"I think we've discussed him long enough. I don't\u2014I can't deny I love him.\"\n\n\"But you're not in love.\"\n\nJulia shakes her head. \"I thought I was.\"\n\n\"Too much water under the bridge?\" Cyn asks.\n\nJulia gives her a defeated look.\n\n\"Too much blood.\"\n\nJulia catches Scott's eye as he dips his head into the room.\n\nHe leaves without a word, allowing the women their grief for the past without him as an audience.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR\n\nSlash\n\nSlash loops his arm around Adrianna, drawing her against his body and kissing the top of her head. She smells of woods and him.\n\nSlash likes it.\n\nHis wolf gives a joyous roll just beneath the thin layer of skin that makes Slash look human.\n\nHis animal is pleased by his choice of mate.\n\n\"You're all mushy and soft now, stud.\" Adrianna pokes him in the side. \"Ooh, maybe not too soft.\"\n\nShe steps away and looks at his stomach, cocking her head. \"You must have a twelve pack there. That's hot.\"\n\nSlash raises his eyebrows, and he glances down at his flat stomach. \"A what?\"\n\nShe smacks him, and he catches her hand so quickly, she gasps softly. He flips her hand over and kisses the center of her palm.\n\nShe gives a contented sigh.\n\nSlash could get so used to the noises she makes.\n\nAdrianna blushes at the look he gives her.\n\n\"I thought you said you weren't the blushing virgin.\"\n\nShe looks up at him through her long eyelashes. \"I'm not, anymore.\"\n\nIt's Slash's turn to feel a touch of embarrassment. He pulls her back to him, holding her close. \"It was a precious gift you gave me.\"\n\n\"Slash,\" she says against his bare skin, \"you don't have to be so serious all the time. Life's not so bad, y'know.\"\n\nShe is very young. Sometimes Slash forgets. He memorizes every line of her face and her every curve. Life is an ever-changing tide. When he navigated the current alone, it was manageable. Now there are two of them.\n\nAnd someday, there may be a whelp. His chest swells at the thought of something he assumed would never be a part of his life. A thrill moves through him like an electrical current.\n\nA twig snaps and Slash whirls, shoving Adrianna behind him.\n\nHis eyes skate across the woodland. All is in order, and he can vaguely see the dark outline of the Singer's mansion in the distance.\n\nBut Slash is Red, so he maintains his alert posture. He never dismisses his instincts. His eyes belie what his nose tells him is true. Adrianna's fingers grip his flanks, and he flexes in preparation for a change in form.\n\nIt is not necessary for a Were to change to full wolf except for that time the moon calls. A quick glance tells him the moon is half-gone. There is no wolf at the ready. And he would be horribly vulnerable when he changed back, leaving Adrianna unprotected.\n\nNo, determine the threat and go from there.\n\n\"Come out. I hear you,\" Slash announces loudly.\n\n\"Slash,\" Adrianna says. He can scent her fear as if it were his own. He shares it.\n\nSlash didn't know fear before Adrianna. With a mate, it is part of the fabric of his thought process. Her welfare is a priority he can't deny even if he wanted to.\n\nA large Were moves from a thick stand of trees and walks toward them gracefully. That is quite a feat, considering his size.\n\nInstantly Slash intuits he's not from a nearby region.\n\nTheir nostrils flare as he approaches and both Were covertly scent the other.\n\nWarily, the other Were circles Slash and Adrianna.\n\nHis eyes take her in as she stands behind Slash.\n\nSlash growls low in his throat. \"Do not look at her.\"\n\nThe strange Were cocks his head to the left as though considering it as a request. Of course it is not a request. Slash doesn't make those.\n\n\"She is yours?\"\n\nOdd phrasing.\n\nAdrianna sucks in a breath. \"Weiner,\" Adrianna mumbles quietly.\n\nSlash ignores Adrianna's indignation. \"She is my mate.\"\n\n\"Most recently, by the smell of it.\"\n\nSlash stiffens, locking down his expression. \"Voice your concern and business, Were.\"\n\n\"I am Tramack. And I believe you have something that belongs to me.\"\n\nIt's impossible for Slash to contain his confusion. His mind sprints through the possibilities and finally lands on the vague memory of two females arriving the day before. Could that...?\n\nNo. One is Lanarre. This Were is common, not a spot of either, Red\u2014or Lanarre.\n\nHe is Alpha. And Slash senses he's a packmaster. He has that air of expected obedience about him.\n\nSlash is obedient to no Were. \"I don't have anything that belongs to you.\"\n\n\"I seek a female Alpha.\"\n\nSlash shrugs, giving him nothing. \"There are none but my mate, who you see here.\"\n\nTramack makes a show of scenting Adrianna from his distance of twenty feet.\n\nSlash decides he doesn't like him. Of course, that's not atypical. A sudden thought occurs to Slash.\n\nWhere is Zeke?\n\n\"She is Alpha, but not who I seek.\"\n\nHis attention returns to Tramack. \"I understand that.\"\n\n\"With whom do I speak?\"\n\n\"Slash.\"\n\nTramack dramatically runs his eyes over Slash's scar.\n\n\"You know, you're a first-rate chode. Why don't you go hunt around for your chickie somewhere else,\" Adrianna comments.\n\nSlash sighs. She'll be the death of me.\n\nTramack gives Adrianna a considering look. \"You know\"\u2014his eyes flick to Slash's\u2014\"an insubordinate female from our pack would be handled before her behavior got out of hand, as it appears to have with your female.\"\n\nSlash's patience thins. \"She isn't from your pack.\"\n\n\"From which pack does she hail?\"\n\nUnease washes over Slash, and he squelches it before it can be scented. He deliberates whether he should answer or not. He decides against it. The less this Were knows, the better.\n\n\"Northwestern,\" Adrianna says.\n\nSlash groans inside his skull.\n\nTramack gives a horrible smile of triumph that clenches Slash's guts. \"Ah. That explains things.\"\n\nSlash's frown turns to a scowl as his hands fall to hang at his sides. He doesn't like surprises. \"Oh? Enlighten me.\"\n\n\"That packmaster is gone. The rumor mill's rife with stories of his death, along with his second's.\"\n\nTony.\n\nAnd Manny. Slash had scented Lawrence and Emmanuel. They were buried beneath his feet. How would Tramack know what Slash just confirmed?\n\n\"We of the Western are tight sister dens with the North.\"\n\nChicken flesh rolls out like the red carpet across Slash's skin. Adrianna lays her face against his bare back, breathing in his scent.\n\nHer uncharacteristic silence speaks for her fear. Slash hates that their tender moment together has been followed up by an unplanned meet with this power-hungry Tramack.\n\n\"If she is Northwestern, then automatically she is part of the Western if Lawrence is declared dead. You know this.\" Tramack tosses his hand out as though his words are a matter of course.\n\nSlash's gut does a slow revolution. \"I do.\"\n\n\"And you\u2014you are not a part of the Northwestern.\" Tramack laughs.\n\nSlash does not see the humor. All he can do is scent his female's fear mixed with misery behind him.\n\n\"You are Red. I'd know that taint anywhere.\"\n\nSlash moves toward him and Adrianna grips him by the hips with slick palms, like an anchor at his back. \"No, Slash. He's baiting you.\"\n\n\"Listen to the little woman, Slash,\" he jeers, \"and enjoy what time you have with her before she is absorbed into my den.\" He thumps his chest.\n\n\"I'm not a \u02bblittle woman,' you neutered dog.\"\n\n\"Adrianna,\" Slash says like a slap, and she chokes back a sob.\n\nTramack gives Adrianna a thoughtful look. \"I shall enjoy giving you a lesson in manners.\"\n\nSlash shakes her hands off and dives against Tramack. They hit a wide trunk behind them with a crash. Slash lifts the other Were by the neck. \"You will not touch her, look at her, or take her anywhere. There will be no lessons learned by your hand.\"\n\n\"You know Lycan law, Red. She cannot mate outside the pack. You thought yourself clever, that you could circumvent the law where it suited you.\"\n\nSlash lowers Tramack to the ground, his anger clouding his scenting too late.\n\nFour Were move out of the wood.\n\n\"Slash!\" Adrianna yells.\n\nSlash's face swivels to look at her. Alone and small, she's unprotected. \"Stay there!\" Slash roars.\n\nTwo of the Were split from their position, each one walking toward Adrianna.\n\nHer quarter-change morphs to wolfen. Talons tremble at the tips of her fingers, and she whips them to her sides, the air whistling between the bony knives.\n\n\"Who's first to lose their teeny penis?\" she growls, her talons clicking.\n\nSlash loves her more than the moon.\n\n*\n\nTessa\n\nTessa's been edgy all day. There was a huge ruckus when the Rare One and her human husband had a falling out, then he split. Her Singer soul-meld is now at her side, a bunch of misplaced Region Two Singers are here, and Tahlia's not happy with her.\n\nAnd the two Singers she witnessed tossing the other Singer down a trapdoor chute in the middle of the hall... well, it feels like a fine time to go.\n\nTessa jogs down the hall to Tahlia's borrowed room, and with a quiet knock, she enters.\n\nIt scares the hell out of Tessa to see Tahlia packing.\n\n\"What is it?\" she asks, looking from the bag to her exotic face.\n\nTahlia looks up from her packing. \"I have a strange feeling.\"\n\nThat makes two of us.\n\n\"I'm already packed,\" Tessa admits.\n\n\"Do you\u2014\" Tessa sighs, giving her braid and irritated fling behind her shoulder. \"I mean, I know you said you don't really own your life. But do you want to not wait for the Lanarre rescue committee, and just come with me?\"\n\nTahlia bites her lip. After a full minute, she lifts her head. Her deep-blue eyes darken with a violet wash when her mood turns contemplative. \"If he were wonderful, I would go with him.\"\n\n\"But that's the thing\u2014you don't know.\"\n\nHer curly hair bounces as she shakes her head. \"I do not. He could be a tyrant. He could be arrogant.\"\n\nA Lanarre who isn't arrogant. Tessa smirks at that.\n\n\"He could be hot.\"\n\nThey turn and the Rare One stands in the doorway.\n\nStartled, Tessa says, \"No offense, private conversation.\"\n\nJulia spreads her hands away from her body inoffensively. \"I understand. But if we're talking destiny here, I might have a clue.\" She gives a short laugh.\n\nTahlia nods. \"I do appreciate your kindnesses.\"\n\n\"But...\"\n\nTessa looks between them and is struck by their eyes\u2014ancient eyes held prisoner inside their young faces. They've had to live too much for ones so young.\n\n\"But in this, I must choose,\" Tahlia says.\n\nJulia glides through the door and walks to Tahlia. \"You're brave. You survived your guardians being killed. You're in some kind of arranged marriage\u2014\"\n\n\"Not unlike your soul-meld.\"\n\nJulia lips tip up. \"Very unlike it. I feel love for Scott because it's actually in my blood.\" She puts a loose fist against her chest. \"He's a part of me.\"\n\n\"Thank you, Julia.\" Tahlia leans forward to hug her.\n\nTessa watches the two women, who are so dissimilar, finding common ground.\n\n\"Stay,\" Julia implores, \"The Lanarre guy\u2014\"\n\n\"Drek,\" Tahlia interrupts.\n\n\"Drek will show up. And you can be here, safe.\" Julia presses her hands against Tahlia's. \"If you go, he'll have to look for you. And this guy Drek, he's not going to hurt you, is he?\"\n\nShock spreads across Tahlia's features. \"Absolutely not. A Lanarre would never hurt a female.\"\n\nJulia looks down. When her face rises to meet Tahlia's eyes there's a wealth of sadness there. \"Let me tell you about a Were named Anthony Laurent.\"\n\nWhen Julia is done, Tessa thinks there's more to the story.\n\nTahlia sits down at the edge of the bed in defeat. \"It was he. He was the Were who murdered my guardians. It could be no other.\"\n\nThis just gets worse and worse.\n\n\"I know it's rare for a Were to attack females, but this Were?\" Julia shudders. \"He also had demonic blood. He killed my people. He didn't spare anybody.\"\n\n\"He is dead?\" Tahlia asks.\n\nJulia nods.\n\nTahlia's eyes close, and a wrinkle of worry settles between them. Her eyes open slowly. \"Yet... did he act under orders of another?\"\n\n\"Yes, a demonic named Praile.\"\n\nTahlia works her lip between her teeth.\n\nJulia leans forward. \"We understand there's potential for retaliation. What are you thinking?\"\n\nTessa's sense of foreboding kicks up a notch and her eyes bang around the room anxiously. \"We need to go if we're going, Tahlia.\"\n\nTahlia nods. \"My thoughts are only the legends I was raised with. The demonic are a race to be feared.\" She gives the smallest lift of her shoulders. \"However, you are angelic here, so you have a powerful built-in opposition.\"\n\n\"And what about Drek?\" Julia asks.\n\nTahlia gets a wistful look, gazing out a window without sight. Darkness has claimed the day.\n\n\"I'm not ready. I\u2014\" She gives Tessa a look. \"I think I was just following what others thought was best for me. And now I know I can be something other than a mated Lanarre princess.\"\n\nHer voice sounds uncertain.\n\n\"Are you sure that's what you want?\" Julia's face looks pained. \"What if he drops by and he's all kinds of amazing and kind and super handsome.\"\n\nTahlia's face breaks into a grin. \"Well, he'll be worth being patient for. I'm just not ready, and Tessa wants a companion.\"\n\nJulia gives Tessa a look that clearly says she's filled the girl's head with thoughts.\n\n\"Listen\"\u2014Tessa holds up her hands, glancing quickly at the window\u2014\"I'll check in after a couple of weeks once we're settled somewhere.\" She hikes her shoulders, sweeping a palm out in supplication. \"And if Drak is here....\"\n\nTahlia giggles. \"Drek of the Lanarre, Tessa.\"\n\n\"Ah-huh. If Drek drops by, then by all means, let me know what your opinion is of him.\"\n\n\"I'll tell him I tried to talk sense into Tahlia.\"\n\nTahlia purses her lips. \"I have an inordinate amount of sense.\"\n\nJulia's face took on a sad cast. \"I thought I did, too. Once.\"\n\nTessa's eyes swept the mostly empty room, landing on a duffel. \"That it?\"\n\nTahlia nods.\n\n\"I'll be back in a minute.\"\n\nTessa turns back from the doorway. \"Thanks, Julia. For everything.\"\n\nJulia stares at her with those unnerving eyes, like golden whiskey. \"You're welcome.\"\n\nIt'd felt like home for a day.\n\nNow the road would be home again.\n\n*\n\nTessa tiptoes through the huge mansion, making a beeline for the kitchen.\n\nShe carefully packs two days' worth of food and loads a large hot-cold lunch bag full of food stuffs.\n\nTessa sets the thermos gently inside, careful not to crush the rest, and silently thanks Julia again for sharing.\n\nThe hairs at her nape suddenly lift, and Tessa curses herself for being too slow as a hand clamps over her mouth.\n\nShe kicks out, knocking the lunch sack over. A single orange pops out of the bag and bounces across the granite butcher block. It rolls all the way and lands against the wall. It ricochets off the wall and lands with a thunk as Tessa is drug off into the butler's pantry.\n\nHer heels squeak against the wood floor as she quarter-changes and moves to lock teeth over the hand that grabs her.\n\n\"Do not.\"\n\nThat voice.\n\nHe jerks her over the pantry threshold and throws the door closed. He turns her in a blur of speed and slams her against the door. Tessa is momentarily stunned when her head thumps the wood.\n\nIt's the Singer, the lighter of the two who plunged the unconscious Victor into the hole.\n\nMoon.\n\n\"I am here to kill you.\"\n\nTessa's never been a slave to her emotions. She's never cared about a male. She's been hunted, beaten, degraded and never, ever cherished.\n\nIn the middle of all that, she survived.\n\nSo when her heart races and her limbs go weak, she can't possibly grasp what this is about.\n\nSmokey eyes gaze down into hers, and a light vapor rises off skin that has the faintest touch of red.\n\nHe smolders\u2014his eyes, his skin... everything.\n\nHe is so hot, she can feel the heat emanating from his skin.\n\n\"So kill me,\" Tessa whispers.\n\nShe is weary.\n\nShe is finished with running. If she dies, then Tramack can never have her. In a bizarre way, Tessa wins.\n\nHe shakes his head, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. \"No,\" he says, his fingers tightening against her throat. \"I think not.\"\n\nTessa's confusion deepens.\n\nHe could take her down piece by piece. Somehow, this weird-looking Singer has the strength to outdo a quarter-changed female Alpha Were.\n\nSo why doesn't he?\n\n\"You saw what we did to the Singer.\"\n\nI should have told Julia.\n\nShe licks her lips, and his eyes latch on to the movement.\n\n\"So, you're not going to kill me?\" Tessa's thoughts spin.\n\nHe shakes his head. \"I knew what you were to me the instant I scented you.\"\n\nThis guy's certifiable. I'll humor him.\n\nHis fingers loosen but don't drop from her flesh.\n\nShe hears herself asking, \"Scented what?\"\n\n\"My Redemptive.\"\n\nOkay\u2014really crazy.\n\nHe bends his much taller frame over her, but his hand doesn't let go. His thumb moves to her jaw and as his lips draw closer she tips her face up to give him better access.\n\nI've obviously lost my mind, too.\n\nThis guy drug her inside a closet and told her he was going to kill her, and now he's going to kiss her.\n\nAnd Tessa's going to let him.\n\nScorching heat sears through her lips as his land on hers. Tessa groans as if she's just awoken from a delicious sleep. Her every nerve ending fires. She doesn't realize her arms have encircled his neck until she molds herself against him like a second skin.\n\n\"So hot,\" she breathes against him.\n\nHe lifts her by the ass and buries himself against her.\n\n\"Ah,\" she moans and kisses him back. \"Oh, moon, you feel right.\"\n\n\"As do you.\" Peck, lick, suck.\n\nTessa tries to pull back, and he sucks her lip deeper into his mouth. The sensation is wonderful, like heated bathwater concentrated into a single wonderful sip of sex on lips.\n\nA surge of horrible disquiet flows over her and wakes Tessa from her sexual thrall.\n\nShe gasps.\n\n\"Who are you?\"\n\nShe doesn't even know his name. And he is a Singer without a scent. He's no Singer.\n\nAn unknown male I'm making out with.\n\nHe allows Tessa to slide down the door but stops her momentum before she's a puddle of melted wax on the floor.\n\n\"They call me Lazarus.\"\n\n\"I mean\u2014what\u2014are you?\"\n\nHe smiles, and Tessa is suddenly fascinated with a tongue so red it looks like it's on fire. It was just in your mouth, dumbass.\n\nShe swallows.\n\nLazarus brushes a hair away from her face and tucks it behind her ear. \"I am demonic.\"\n\nTessa's hands slap the door behind her.\n\n\"Shh, do not fear me.\"\n\nShe nods. \"Sure. Sounds like a great plan. I just made out with the devil, and you're telling me to calm down because things are so peachy. Right.\"\n\nHe ignores her words. \"Do you know what a Redemptive is, Tessa of the Were?\"\n\n\"It is my other half. Most demons do not have that potential. But demons of mixed parentage can be given this gift.\" His eyes skip away from hers to return a heartbeat later.\n\n\"I'm a Were. You're a demon.\" She points from her to him. \"It's not a match made in\u2014\"\n\nHe presses a finger to her lips, and Tessa watches the light steam rise and evaporate from his skin.\n\nHer throat feels tight.\n\n\"None of those words, Tessa.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" she squeaks, her eyes flitting to where his hands are. \"It's been ah\u2014great\u2014to make\u2014I mean\u2014meet you, but now it's time to go.\"\n\nLazarus shakes his head again. \"You are my only chance. If I take you as my bride, I will never have to return to Hades and suffer under the Master again. We are meant to be together. Only my Redemptive can free me from the bonds of hell.\"\n\nTessa finds air isn't reaching her lungs. \"What about your partner or whatever?\"\n\nHe scowls, and Tessa finds her out.\n\n\"He won't like it. You just let me go, and then everything will be okay. You can keep on being evil and that, and I'll keep on...\"\n\nWhat will she keep on doing?\n\nOh, yeah. Running.\n\nLazarus moves in tight against her body. \"I cannot force the Redemptive. She must be willing.\"\n\nHis hands slides behind her neck, and she groans against his touch. She's lost to it.\n\nSo lost.\n\nWhat is wrong with me?\n\n\"Do you not feel the pull?\"\n\nTessa does, right between her legs.\n\n\"Yes,\" she admits. \"But it's not enough. I mean, you're not even a Were? I can't just up and go with you.\"\n\nTessa gets an image of a future whelp. A hotdog comes to mind. She shivers.\n\nThis isn't going to work. Tessa needs space\u2014right now.\n\nShe shoves him, and he steps away, every hot inch. His six feet four-ish of hardened muscle is scentless but oh-so fragrant anyway.\n\nWhen her gaze reaches his lips, Lazarus twists them into what she guesses is his version of a smile. His gray eyes storm at her.\n\nHis light-blond hair begs for her fingers.\n\nShe blushes hard when she thinks of the other things.\n\n\"I can scent your arousal, Tessa.\"\n\nShe backs up a step.\n\nToo dangerous. Just too everything.\n\n\"I can't do this, sorry. You're so tempting. Like a pile of chocolates that'll never make me fat.\"\n\n\"I won't stop,\" Lazarus says.\n\nTessa blindly finds the doorknob behind her then opens the door. \"Stop what?\"\n\n\"Wanting you.\" He grabs the door as she tries to swing it shut between them.\n\n\"Ever,\" his deep voice rumbles.\n\nShe jerks it closed and sprints away.\n\n\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE\n\nScott\n\nScott would be happier without the soul-meld. He has no doubt. Right now, things suck.\n\nHis dad is dead. Most of Region One is dead.\n\nAnd Julia's emotions constantly batter him. He can't blame her. Her selfish asshole of a husband dumps his baggage at her doorstep to figure out while every stinking supe demands guidance from a twenty-two-year-old woman.\n\nHis heart aches where it never did before.\n\nScott figures there's one asshole down and a few more to go. He strides to the barn. Julia should be back there now.\n\nHe knows she is. He can feel her like a beacon inside his body. She dealt with Tahlia and Tessa while he broke the shitty news of what happened in the seventy-two hours his siblings were locked up in the bunker.\n\nAnd Victor from Two? Where the hell did he run off to? Scott is pissed. He saves who he can, rises from the ashes with Scott's sister and brother, then disappears. Not cool. Scott needs his stuck-up ass.\n\nLucius and he were separated after the torture he escaped from. The other Combatants were killed in the battle of the demonic. And Julia has a demon spore making her sick.\n\nThe trouble never stops.\n\nBut after holding Jen while she cried on him for an hour, Scott is ready for the healing the soul-meld will provide him. If he can just lay hands on Julia, all will be well, as his father would have said.\n\nScott pinches the bridge of his nose. Even smart-ass Michael, when faced with one of his junky suckers, couldn't bear to pop one in his cocky mouth.\n\nThey're in shock, he tells himself.\n\nThat's all well and good, but for two guys who wear their sister's grief on their shirt, logic and explanations just don't fucking cut it.\n\nIf he can get Tharell and his own evolving bio-mom out of here, so much the better.\n\nSpeak of the devil.\n\nTharell comes into view, along with Brynn, Delilah, Domiatri and Jacqueline.\n\nNow that he thinks of it, Scott isn't quick to shake his prejudice against vamps. The only good vamp is a dead vamp. At least he and Caldwell agree on that.\n\nOr they did.\n\nThat powder keg is gone now.\n\nHe feels the bond grow snug with each step he takes toward Julia.\n\nJulia's head turns, and his body weeps to connect with hers. As though he's moving through quicksand, each step he takes is heavier than the last. She moves to meet him.\n\nThey collide softly. She whimpers against his chest. \"It's so hard.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Scott agrees, touching her everywhere and scenting deeply of her hair as Julia molds her body to his. Seconds pass into a minute while everything rights itself.\n\nHis body grows stronger, and the fog of lethargy clears from his mind. All his senses come online and sharpen. Scott can think again.\n\n\"We can't be away from each other that long,\" Julia says with a shaky exhale.\n\n\"Feel better?\" he asks, looking down at her.\n\nShe nods. \"Much.\"\n\nScott looks around him, and the others stand silently.\n\n\"You're going?\" he asks Jacqueline.\n\n\"Don't sound so happy, my son,\" Jacqueline says.\n\nScott threads his large hand through Julia's smaller one and she stands at his side. \"I've had enough bullshit and strife to last two lifetimes. I'm good with the fey going back where they belong, and no offense\u2014I don't think vamps for hire appeals much either.\"\n\n\"No offense taken, Singer.\" Brynn hisses, his fangs sprouting like dual razors.\n\n\"Right,\" Scott drawls.\n\n\"Scott,\" Julia says in a low voice. \"Let's just let them go, and when things settle and hell's not chasing our butts, we can make good on the promise.\"\n\nScott turns to Julia, his gaze intent on hers. \"There might not be enough Singers to make good on that exchange, Julia.\"\n\nShe bites her lips, and Scott smooths them with a tender finger. \"No, Julia.\" He shakes his head and addresses Tharell and Domi. \"You guys\"\u2014he swings his finger between the two\u2014\"there will be some Singers who want to live in faerie.\" For the life of him, Scott can't come up with a single name. \"But I don't know when, or who.\"\n\n\"Do not break a promise to the fey, Scott,\" Tharell warns.\n\nScott moves to the Sidhe warrior. \"I'm well aware of the promise Julia made. But you're a traitor. And as such, I feel I'm being pretty fucking charitable to honor anything.\"\n\n\"Scott.\"\n\nHe turns to his mother, whose belly is swollen with Domi's child. He can't wrap his head around it all, so he doesn't bother.\n\n\"It's a promise to faerie, not Tharell. Faerie sends justice to oathbreakers.\"\n\n\"We won't break our promise.\"\n\nDomi steps forward. \"See that you do not. Make haste in an alliance between the fey and the Singers. Quickly.\"\n\nScott feels Julia's fear, and he wants to knock some rainbow heads together. But he's not going to pull a Caldwell. He's going to think things through. What's best for Julia. Them. The Singers.\n\nFuck the fey. Yet... Scott is old enough to understand the consequence of ignoring magic set in motion.\n\nInstead of voicing his heated thoughts, he says, \"We'll be in touch.\"\n\nJulia squeezes his hand and he pulls her against him.\n\nJacqueline moves from Domi as his hand reluctantly slides down her arm. She stands before him and for the first time Scott looks at her, really looks at her.\n\nShe has changed. Julia is right. Her eyes no longer hold that vacant indifference. It has been replaced with cautious hope.\n\nJacqueline doesn't move to take his hands, but Julia elbows him, and he feels what she feels for Jacqueline\u2014forgiveness.\n\nHe can't hate her anymore if Julia doesn't. And she is his family.\n\nScott doesn't know what family they will all end up being to him but when he looks over at Delilah, she is already making her way to him.\n\nJulia steps away so he can embrace his mother and sister.\n\nA small tear in his psyche begins to mend as his eyes hunt and find Julia.\n\nShe smiles, and it lights him from within.\n\nAnd Scott knows everything will be all right.\n\n*\n\nPraile\n\nPraile is as mad as he's ever been. Where in Hades is Lazarus? Praile has sighted the High One with the one who carries the blood babe. And Lazarus is where?\n\nHolding his hot dick while he takes a sizzling piss?\n\nPraile writhes with his anger.\n\nHe gave Lazarus explicit instructions to meet with him in this exact spot. Then they would take the women at one time. The High One had not divulged her scheme to return the Sidhe and the others to faerie.\n\nIt's a perfect situation for Praile, though. The fewer supernaturals to deal with, the better. However, killing the High One would be tricky.\n\nShe has a formidable arsenal at her disposal. Hopefully, she isn't fully aware of all the strengths she possesses.\n\nAnd she and her soul-meld are fools. If they have not consummated their relationship by coming together, she is vulnerable. Praile and Lazarus have not been at the compound long enough to understand the entire story, but he understands her human marriage has delayed her consummation with the soul-meld.\n\nPraile makes a disgusted noise. Some kind of illogical, emotion-based nonsense. This gives Praile the advantage.\n\nJulia would be invincible if the soul-meld were consummated.\n\nIt should be an impenetrable golden circle.\n\nPraile would find the chink in her unfinished armor. Praile leaks vapor then clenches his teeth until it subsides. He hates the human shell.\n\nIt is as ugly as sin.\n\nThe thought makes his face break into a grin.\n\n*\n\nTessa\n\nTessa drags both duffels and settles them into the back of a borrowed SUV. It's as old as hell but runs true.\n\nWell, that's what one of the Region Two Singers said.\n\nHe palms the keys in her hand and smiles. \"Julia says to get it back when you come back.\"\n\nTessa is so unaccustomed to kindness that she blinks back tears.\n\nTahlia squeezes her arm. Their eyes meet, and Tessa glances away before revealing too much.\n\nTessa thinks of Lazarus and his threat. She shivers, despite feeling the heat of him against her.\n\nThen, with a shudder, she remembers who chases her.\n\nShe stiffens her spine. Don't be a baby, Tessa. Get your ass in gear. She can't be with a demonic, no matter how amazing that interlude was back there.\n\nShe can't stay here and endanger the Singers, because sadistic Tramack is chasing her.\n\nShe glances at Tahlia, who slides into the car. And she can't leave a young woman barely out of whelp for a mystery match.\n\nTessa closes the back of the late-70s Chevy Suburban and makes her way toward the front.\n\n\"Tessa,\" a low voice commands from the woods, and on reflex, she looks up.\n\nTramack smiles.\n\nTwo Were drag a badly beaten Were between them. Shackled in silver, he can barely open his eyes.\n\nThe sight of the female takes her breath away. Her talons are broken, many at the base, and one eye is swollen shut. A third Were carries her in his arms.\n\nShe doesn't move.\n\nTessa scents they're alive. She also has a vague recollection of meeting them and doesn't know what happened.\n\nWhat Tessa knows is she's seen so much worse than this.\n\nThe female will survive.\n\nI'm so sorry, she whispers in her mind. If she helps, Tramack will win.\n\nShe will be his victim, along with the Were he's already captured.\n\nTessa glances at Tahlia, and the girl turns the keys in the ignition. The engine roars to life, and Tessa grasps the handle.\n\nTramack bellows, charging toward her, and Tessa whimpers. A body is suddenly pressing behind her, a hand covering her own.\n\nLight-red flesh warms her hand, making the metal too hot to touch, and Tessa snatches her hand back as strong arms hold her still as Tramack bears down on her. She knows the embrace. Her soul recognizes him as though she's been waiting her entire life to be held by him.\n\nLazarus.\n\nShe's not scared.\n\nFor the first time, Tessa feels safe.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX\n\nJulia\n\nJulia's arm encircles Scott's waist, and she lays her head on his bicep.\n\nThey watch the group walk away.\n\n\"You're relieved,\" Julia says.\n\n\"Yeah, can't you feel it?\"\n\nShe nods against him, and he closes his hand around the back of her head. He would glue her to him if he could.\n\nI heard that.\n\nScott deliberately inserts the image of super glue, and she giggles.\n\nHe strokes her hair.\n\nThey have a minute of peace before the nasty wound inside Julia begins to pulse and throb.\n\n\"What is that?\" Scott asks.\n\nJulia groans, her hand going to her stomach. \"It's that demon's blood.\"\n\n\"Oh, babe,\" Scott says, kissing her mouth. \"We'll figure that out.\"\n\nGravel crunching under a footstep causes them to look up. Julia forces a smile through the pain. \"Hi, Peter,\" she says.\n\n\"Hey,\" Scott says, but Julia feels a mild trepidation leaking from him. He's so paranoid. The guards actually found more Region Two survivors, and all Scott can think of is finding Victor so he can verify their identities. Julia's mind gets fuzzy as the demonic blood surges as though it's a magnet set on something outside her body.\n\n\"Where's the other guy?\" Julia asks. She snaps her fingers with a small grimace as the pain intensifies. She ignores it. \"Laz?\"\n\nPeter smiles, and hers falters. There's something there.\n\nJulia's skin begins to crawl as though a million biting insects are swarming over her flesh.\n\n\"Julia!\" Scott yells from somewhere far away.\n\nPeter strolls slowly to her and she's slipping. She falls to the ground and Scott is writhing on the floor.\n\nWhy is he half-changed into Combatant form?\n\nThere'd have to be a direct threat to her life.\n\nPeter grins. His teeth are black.\n\nJulia screams.\n\nThen she screams louder when the cloak of his humanity falls away, and his true form stands before her.\n\n\"Tony did well after all.\"\n\n\"Scott,\" Julia whispers.\n\nShe'd asked for privacy to say goodbye to the fey.\n\n\"Julia!\" Scott crawls to her, his veins pulsing gold and silver.\n\nHis skin smolders.\n\nAs does Peter's. Or whoever he is.\n\nHe sinks down beside her.\n\nJulia cringes, trying to scrape together her powers, but nothing comes.\n\nThe demon places the flat of his palm on her stomach, and pure agony surges through her. It feels like he's commanding her spine to come through her stomach, and she opens her mouth to scream. No sound comes out. The pain is so total, so awful that there is no breath to wail.\n\nShe contorts, her back arching.\n\n\"I am Praile. And you will die, High One. And then I will capture the mother of the blood babe.\"\n\nScott crawls closer.\n\n\"Jacqueline,\" Julia instantly squeezes through her pain-addled brain.\n\nPraile's inky brows tug together.\n\n\"No, part-demonic and fey, part-vampire and angelic, enemies of blood, and born of strife.\"\n\nJulia's head goes in the direction of where the party of fey traveled.\n\nIce slides up her spine.\n\nDelilah!\n\nHer attention snaps back to Praile as a gruesome tail settles above his head. His palm is fire against her flesh, and the light of her blood is blinding.\n\nBut the spore of the demonic has allowed entry to degrade her body, she realizes.\n\nThe ball at the end of his tail is spiked. It whips above his head more quickly than she can track, and he brings it down just as he lifts his palms.\n\nHer eyes meet Scott's as he takes her hand.\n\nA club swings through the air, whistling, then hammers into the ribcage of the demon bent on ending her. Praile staggers back.\n\nSpinning green discs meet her gaze, and she can't move.\n\nJason's wolfen form bends and scoops her into his arms. He reaches behind him and grabs a semi-conscious Scott. He drags the other man behind him as he jogs toward the mansion.\n\nScott's head bounces over the terrain and Julia lays like a bag of rocks as Jason makes his way into the house.\n\nHe sets Julia down gently and releases Scott, who groans when his head hits the carpet. Jason throws the carpet off, and Julia watches him enter a series of numbers into a door in the floor. Air hisses, and Jason's long fingers tear open the top.\n\nVictor's head is out in an instant.\n\nJason turns and hands Julia to Victor, who takes her below.\n\nNext Scott tumbles inside, and Victor catches him badly, the two of them rolling into a pile on the cold floor.\n\nJulia drags herself to the bottom of the ladder and looks up to meet Jason's eyes.\n\n\"I love you, Julia.\"\n\nShe opens her mouth.\n\nPraile appears behind him, his tail swings high, and the mallet connects with Jason's head, shattering his skull as she watches.\n\nJulia releases the last rung and falls to the floor.\n\nJason loses his hold on the hatch, and it closes as Praile's hands frantically claw at the metal for purchase and miss.\n\nJulia escapes in the only way she knows how, an unconsciousness of necessity sweeps over her, and she falls into an unnatural sleep of survival.\n\n\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\n\nTHE END\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# BLOOD ENCHANTMENT\n\nA Blood Series Novel\n\nBook 6\n\nNew York Times Bestselling Author\n\nTAMARA ROSE BLODGETT\n\nAll Rights Reserved.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2015 Tamara Rose Blodgett\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.\n\nwww.tamararoseblodgett.com\n\nTRB Facebook Fan Page\n\nCover Design: Phatpuppy\n\nEditing suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing\n\nSynopsis\n\nJulia's spirit is crushed as she sits trapped in the Singer bunker while heaven knows what happens to her people in the evil hands of Praile.\n\nMeanwhile, the insidious demon's spore flourishes, wreaking havoc on what makes her angelic. Julia and Scott are caught in a waiting game, ready to be released from their forced protection into a potential second catastrophe.\n\nAdi and Slash have fallen prey to the corrupt Were, as Tramack doggedly seeks that which he does not deserve. Can Tessa and Tahlia escape? Will Lanarre royalty cage Tahlia, or will Drek set her free?\n\nDoes Lazarus escape the depths of hell, only to fail in his pursuit of the ultimate forbidden fruit?\n\n# DEDICATION\n\nDawn Yacovetta\n\nWarning! ***Contains spoilers***\n\nCharacter Index:\n\nBlood Singers\/talent:\n\nJulia- Queen of the Singers; Telekinetic\/telepath\n\nJason- Singer\/\"Feral\"\/Red Were\n\nScott- Royal Singer Blood; Deflector\/Combatant\n\nBrendan- Tracker\/pyro\n\nMichael- Illusionist\n\nJen- Telekinetic\n\nCyrus- Healer\n\nPaul- Negator\/amplifier\n\nAngela- Feeler\n\nMarcus- Region One\n\nJacqueline- Royal Singer Blood; Region Two Leader\n\nVictor- Region Two\/Combatant- Boiler\/Flame of Blood\n\nLucius- Combatant\n\nCynthia \"Cyn\" Adams - Rogue\/Healer\n\nHeidi- Reader\n\nTrevor- Deflector\n\nNorthwestern Were Pack:\n\nLawrence-Packmaster\n\nEmmanuel \"Manny\" - Beta to Lawrence\n\nAnthony \"Tony\" Daniel Laurent- Second to Lawrence\n\nAdrianna \"Adi\"- Alpha female\n\nSoutheastern Were Pack:\n\nDavid- Packmaster\n\nAlan Greene- Alpha male\n\nLacey Greene \u2013 female Were and Alan's sister\n\nBuck \"Slash\"- Alpha male\n\nKarl Truman- former Homer detective\n\nFord- Alpha male\/ FBI agent\n\nReagan - Moon Warrior, Lacey's daughter\n\nSoutheastern Vampire Kiss:\n\nMerlin- Coven leader (now deceased)\n\nWilliam- new coven leader (now deceased)\n\nBrynn- New leader of the Southeastern\n\nNorthwestern Vampire Kiss:\n\nGabriel- Coven Leader\n\nClaire- William's cousin\n\nWilliam- Runner\/shifter\/Singer blood\n\nUnseelie Sidhe fey:\n\nQueen Darcel- Sidhe\n\nTharell- mixed Sidhe warrior\n\nCormack- Sidhe warrior\n\nDomiatri \"Domi\"- Sidhe warrior\n\nRex- Sidhe\n\nKiel (key-ale)- dragon shifting Sidhe\n\nCelesta- Sidhe warrior\n\nDelilah - Vampire, third to Julia, Scott's half-sister\n\nRogue Reds:\n\nEzekiel \"Zeke\"\n\nRogue Alpha female Were:\n\nTessa\n\nFEDS:\n\nTom Harriet\n\nTai (tie) Simon\n\nWestern Were Pack:\n\nTramack\n\n[the] Lanarre:\n\nDrek\n\nBowen\n\nTaliah\n\n# CHAPTER ONE\n\nTessa\n\nTramack's claws stop his forward momentum abruptly.\n\nExhaust from the suburban plumes toward him, and Tessa sees his effort to stifle his violent reaction to the nauseating smells of gasoline. Fossil fuels act like poison to a werewolf.\n\nBut Tramack is Alpha, so he can withstand a lot of unpleasantries, like the rogue female Alpha who has outfoxed him for two decades, leaving a legion of Were corpses in her trail instead of bread crumbs.\n\nNevertheless, he's followed the trail, and here he stands. Tessa can't believe Tramack's finally gotten off his ass and stopped sending lackeys to get their butts handed to them by a female.\n\nShe shoots a covert glance at Lazarus.\n\nHe's calm.\n\nHot, but Zen. His skin emits a subtle vapor, in the same way hers holds a layer of anxiety-laden sweat.\n\n\"Tessa,\" Tahlia calls from inside the truck. Her tone says it all. But if that weren't enough, Tessa tastes her own trembling fear on her tongue.\n\nFuck.\n\nTramack's dark brows drop like bushy caterpillars over eyes the color of flat pewter as they fall on Lazarus. \"Go to hell, demon.\"\n\nLazarus smiles, his eyes alternating between an icy blue and the palest shadow of gray. \"Make me.\"\n\n\"What are we? Three?\" Tessa mumbles. But inside, her guts flip-flop like overdone pancakes.\n\nTramack's wolves circle their Alpha, flanking him in practiced smoothness.\n\nTahlia guns it. The fumes from the vehicle make Tessa cover her mouth to keep herself from puking. Fucking Chevys always burn rich.\n\nTramack coughs. \"We have no quarrel with you, demonic. Leave the female\u2014she belongs to me.\"\n\nTessa gives an indignant snort. Lying asshole.\n\nLazarus turns to regard Tessa as though counting every pore of her skin, then turns his attention back to Tramack. \"I do not see a label of ownership, dog.\" A lazy smile hovers at Lazarus's mouth.\n\nTramack growls.\n\n\"Do not think it, mutt,\" Lazarus says. \"Tessa is my Redemptive, and as such, she has certain inalienable rights.\n\nI do? \"Oh... boy,\" she mutters.\n\n\"Nonsense,\" Tramack states as though whatever drops from his mouth is absolute fact.\n\nFor him, it is.\n\n\"That is a myth. Demons stay in hell, and the Were roam the earth unimpeded by your kind. You are not allowed to play in this realm.\" Tramack's large hands fall to his sides.\n\nLazarus cocks his head to the left, appearing to contemplate Tramack's justification bullshit. Lazarus raises a finger, and Tess is mesmerized by his skin tone.\n\nWho knew sunburnt skin could look sexy? She shakes her head. Murderous Were are on the prowl, bearing down on them. Lazarus's little chat with Tramack is just a verbal dance. Tramack will spring. He'll kill Lazarus then take Tessa. She needs to think of contingencies. For example, Tahlia is already in a running car. Tessa sights the positions of the other Were as they move wide of Tramack. They're too close to the Suburban. They'll pounce. Tessa shudders. She can't stand the thought of Tahlia falling into the hands of the Western pack.\n\n\"Normally, that is true,\" Lazarus says, \"but we've been given a certain latitude from the Master for a time.\"\n\n\"I don't give a ripe, hairy shit how flexible the devil has been. This is where we live, feed, and fuck. So, go to hell.\" Tramack's lips pull back from his teeth, and icy fear slides down Tessa's spine.\n\nThe other three Were growl low in their throats.\n\nThis is getting saucy. Tessa quarter-changes to wolfen instantly, grimacing slightly at the rapid shift.\n\nHer head whips in Tahlia's direction.\n\nBurning eyes like silver discs rotate slowly in a return stare. A voice like gravel grinding together says, \"Time to go, Tessa.\"\n\nShit! Tahlia's already wolfen\u2014and ready to drive a vehicle.\n\nTessa begins to back away from Lazarus. He's on his own.\n\nLazarus whirls to face her, his eyes like mercury-laced glacier blue.\n\nHer eyes widen.\n\nHis gaze changes to obsidian. \"Do not leave my side.\"\n\n\"They'll kill us,\" Tessa blurts. \"Lazarus!\" she screams as Tramack flings himself forward, landing on Lazarus.\n\nTramack is dirty, through and through.\n\nTessa breathes through the pain, bursting to wolfen in a slide of tendons and bone-breaking shift of her quarter-change form to half-werewolf.\n\nHurts, her beast says.\n\nThe first wolfen male comes for her, and she tamps her fear. Despite her alpha-female status and awesome skills, she's outweighed and outreached.\n\nShe growls, crouching low, and flicks her hands out. Talons fling the residual skin from the change like strips of sloughed snakeskin.\n\nHe follows through in a hard charge, wrapping his arms around her like steel bands.\n\nTessa gasps, struggling for oxygen.\n\nFuck breathing. She swings her head forward, head-butting the large male in the forehead. Stars burst, and Tessa groans. Fantastic.\n\nHis hold loosens, and she plunges all eight talons into his back, unwittingly marrying the two of them together.\n\nHe roars, jerking backward and taking Tessa with him.\n\nShe flips over the top of him and corkscrews her talons with a turn of her wrists.\n\nScrambled muscles! Tessa jerks her talons out, staggering backward. Another Were attacks from behind, but she's ready, throwing her skull back into his face.\n\nHe howls. This time, she gets lucky and he drops her.\n\nShe lands with bone-jarring impact. The exhaust pipe is right in front of her face, but the engine's no longer running. Oh shit. A huge shadow passes over her head. Tessa knows it's not a cloud.\n\nA bird of prey hovers, legs like stiff planks as it sails down in a spiraling circle of speed, talons spread.\n\nHere comes Tahlia.\n\nA scent she can never forget swamps her nostrils, and her beast rebels. Tessa's tossed over onto her back.\n\nA look of triumph covers Tramack's ugly face, his dark-pewter eyes spinning. \"Bitch.\" He grates, all teeth.\n\n\"Douche!\" she screams, trying to crawl away.\n\nTramack grabs her ankles, half-flipping her. She stabs the ground with her talons, arresting her backward progress, and turns to her side, throwing her forearm in front of her face.\n\nA pale-red appendage bursts through Tramack's torso. A ghostly worm of intestine slips out of Tramack in a slimy loop. He releases her ankles, and she yanks her legs away.\n\n\"Ahh,\" Tessa says, adrenaline surging through her body as she scuttles in a backward crab walk.\n\nTramack's eyes go round as the fleshy weapon exits his body with a meaty suck.\n\nHer gorge rises. Don't have time to puke, Tessa.\n\nTramack falls hard on his ass, hands grappling with his slippery guts. He can't quite manage to collect his intestines and drops them with a slapping smack.\n\nDirt and debris coat the pulsating organ.\n\nShe looks up from the sight, swallowing vomit as gravel and grass jam into the tender flesh of her palms.\n\nLazarus stands above Tramack, surveying the destruction of the Alpha Were and his writhing posse, his tail rising above his head. Tessa's eyes catch on strings of gristle and a tendon.\n\n\"Any takers?\" he asks casually and Tessa makes a small sick sound.\n\nHis eyes laser to hers. Coal black softens to a pale gray then flips to a sky blue.\n\n\"Ahh,\" Tessa says again.\n\nThe bird of prey lands to peck at Tramack's exposed intestine. He looses a high, keening scream.\n\nLazarus nods in apparent approval.\n\nTessa's mouth opens and closes as if she's a fish out of water.\n\nBeady black bird's eyes turn and survey Tessa's stupidity. They blink like two bottomless wells of oil, then the bird goes back to pecking.\n\nTramack's bellows fill the air.\n\n\"Ahh,\" she says with soft redundancy. Tessa's been reduced to a one-word vocabulary.\n\nLazarus studies her for a moment, frowning. \"We do not have time for a breakdown, Tessa.\" He reaches for her, and she beats at his hands, her talons automatically retracting. With a sigh of pure frustration, he scoops her off the ground. His tail, mercifully, is gone.\n\nTramack begins to howl in earnest, trying to swat at the bird while his body furiously heals the wound Tahlia inflicts in her bird from.\n\nNew skin grows over the dirt and the intestine.\n\nTessa looks away before she barfs. \"What is that?\"\n\nLazarus looks more human. His pale-blond hair is a perfect complement to what a human being would recognize as a ruddy complexion.\n\nThen the tail rises above his head once again.\n\nSo much for human. Tessa gulps back the lump of crazy in her throat. The ball of fear settles in her stomach, spreading out in dangerous tendrils of hysterics.\n\n\"This?\" Lazarus asks casually. The tail flicks.\n\nTessa nods, hiccupping. She claps a hand over her mouth, unable to take her eyes off the perfectly formed hammer head at the end of a six-feet-long reddish tail.\n\nTessa tries to ignore the chunk of intestine that Tahlia slurps down her throat like a succulent oyster.\n\nCaw.\n\n\"Oh Jesus, let me down.\"\n\nLazarus bends slightly and sets Tessa on her feet, smoothly kicking the twitching Were trying to heal at his feet. He makes the wound more severe, and brains leak out where only a fractured skull had been before.\n\nTessa runs to the bushes and heaves her guts into the greenery, never more thankful she'd worn a braid. Leaning on a tree trunk, she stands, wiping a shaky hand over her mouth.\n\nTurning, Tessa sees the Were are repairing themselves. Tramack looks at her with hate.\n\nTahlia is back to wolfen now, but she's still covered in the grime of her deeds as a bird of prey. A pure-ebony feather lies at her feet.\n\nTessa shudders. Gross.\n\n\"We need to go,\" Lazarus says.\n\nNow he wants to go somewhere?\n\nHe looks at Tramack with utter indifference. \"But first we kill this Were,\" Lazarus's tail swishes above his head like an agitated feline appendage.\n\nTessa looks at the tip. How can that plow through a body? Do I want to know? Tessa turns, her long braid flopping at her back as she clenches her eyes shut.\n\nShe should be happy that the misery of Tramack will be at an end. She can leave and be free of him. Avoiding the inevitable skirmishes while traveling as a rogue female would be nothing if he weren't after her.\n\n\"What in the hell are you doing, Lazarus?\" roars a voice that sounds as though it's on fire.\n\nTessa's eyes fly open. A man stands at the edges of the mess, as shouts and screaming begin to filter toward their position.\n\nIt's that other guy\u2014the one who came with Lazarus. But he looks nothing like he did in what she could only call a human costume.\n\nHe's tall, like all male supernaturals. But there, the similarity ends. Sleek deep-red hair, a shade or two darker than his skin, is slicked back from a high, broad forehead above merciless eyes so black, she couldn't find the pupils if she tried. Black horns sprout from his head like bony flower stems without heads.\n\nThen she gets a load of the tail. Tessa backs up a step.\n\nLazarus's eyes flick to hers then back to this new threat. She'd thought Lazarus's tail was something.\n\nBut this guy\u2014this guy...\n\nHis tail whips above his head, and spikes, all black, extend from a deep-red bulbous end. The tail end looks like a fleshy medieval flail.\n\nTessa backs up another step, burning to turn and see how far the Suburban is from her present position. She flares her nostrils, trying to locate safety that way.\n\n\"I have the Blooded One contained. We only need kill who we can then proceed to wipe her out of existence. Why you are wasting your time with antagonizing\"\u2014his nose wrinkles, vapor exits his nostrils in smoky spirals that drift away, and a strangled sound of fear squeaks out of Tessa\u2014\"these ridiculous beasts?\" He tsks, a forked tongue flicking out at the last syllable. \"You are not staying on task, Lazarus.\" The snakelike tongue snaps back into the black interior of his mouth.\n\nOh, baby Jesus, a forked tongue.\n\nHis inky brows come together in a clear frown of chastisement. He takes in the bleeding but healing Were at his feet. Then he stomps Tramack's head into the ground, crushing his skull instantly. Brains ooze out from underneath his shoe.\n\nLazarus doesn't even flinch.\n\nThese demon guys mean business. Tessa dares turning, seeking Tahlia. As if in total sync, Tahlia bleeds back to quarter-change and races to the passenger side of the Suburban. Tessa breaks, ignoring the demon interaction, and runs to the driver's side. She hops in, starting the engine.\n\n\"Or are you doing something else?\" the other demonic asks Lazarus. His voice sounds closer.\n\nTessa tries to squish the panic. Could this dude be even worse than Tramack? She can't unhear their conversation. She closes her eyes, remembering the feel of Lazarus's hands on her body and his mouth on hers.\n\n\"Come on, Tessa\u2014what are you waiting for?\" Tahlia hisses.\n\nTessa pauses, noting a string of gristle dangling off Tahlia's chin.\n\n\"I need to know he's going to be okay,\" Tessa says.\n\n\"What!\" Tahlia shouts. \"Leave him. He is a horned one!\"\n\nI can't.\n\nThe other demonic stands before Lazarus, who is shaking. The other one has him around the neck by the tail. His face intent, he squeezes Lazarus around the throat like a python.\n\n\"Tell. Me.\" He shakes Lazarus.\n\nNope. Can't do it. Tessa exits the car, stepping over Tramack. His hand snakes out, grabbing her ankle, and she kicks him. He grunts.\n\n\"Don't, Tessa.\"\n\n\"Fuck off, Alpha,\" she replies without glancing at him.\n\nThe second demon's eyes move to her, unnerving and flat black. Soulless. Obviously.\n\nTessa shivers.\n\nEvil radiates from him, coating her through the layers of skin, muscle, and organs, making her insides quake in revulsion. Still, Tessa moves forward against the horribleness of the creature before her.\n\nHis black eyes widen in surprise. \"Who is she?\" His tone is somewhere between shocked and affronted.\n\n\"Get your tail off him, jerk!\" Tessa shouts.\n\nThe demon smiles. Black teeth.\n\nHe slowly unwinds his tail from Lazarus's throat. A mark like a rope burn twines around his neck.\n\nLazarus drops to his knees choking, clawing at his throat.\n\nThat pisses her off even more. Why can't anything ever go right? Why can't fucking males just leave me alone?\n\nAnd, for the love of the moon, why must she do the white knight shit? And the one male, albeit a demon, who's actually treated her decent, is busy getting his assed kicked by his own kind.\n\nNo. Something deep slips inside of Tessa, like a mudslide in her brain. She rushes forward, red-hot.\n\nLazarus bellows, \"No!\"\n\nAnd then the demon is on her, wrapping her with his tail. That's fine. Tessa's talons are at the ready.\n\nShe slices off his dick.\n\nAll guys have one.\n\n# CHAPTER TWO\n\nJulia\n\nJulia forces her gorge down. She's pretty sure that the queasiness woke her. She rubs her eyes and groggily closes them again. But before she can doze off, the last memory sinks into her, grounding her in the present. Images of brutal clarity force her up off the cold floor like a reanimated corpse.\n\n\"Oh God,\" she moans, palm to stomach, gazing around the bare concrete surfaces. Emergency lighting flickers. LEDs struggle to warm in the ambient low sixties temperature of the bunker.\n\nHer eyes latch on to the stainless-steel ladder rungs leading to the first floor of the mansion. Beads of sweat pop on her upper lip, and Julia shelves the last images of Jason's death for the moment. She can't touch them or grieve.\n\nPeter\u2014or whoever he is\u2014owns her region while she's down in the bunker.\n\nJason did what he promised. He saved her\u2014at the expense of his own life. Julia sucks back a sob, instinctively looking for Scott. Her eyes find his form only feet from her own.\n\nShe tips off the edge of a cot and crawls toward him, vertigo making walking impossible. Putting her hand to his chest, she feels for a steady heartbeat\u2014and can't find it.\n\nDon't panic, Julia.\n\n\"He cannot sense you.\"\n\nJulia jerks back, her heart thudding.\n\nSteady gray eyes regard her.\n\nVictor.\n\nShe releases a held breath. \"You scared me. I forgot\u2014\" She ducks her head. \"I forgot that you and Scott...\" Julia puts her face in her hands. They smell like dusty concrete. She lets them drop, meeting Victor's handsome face.\n\n\"He probably has a concussion.\"\n\nShe grabs Scott's limp hand, reveling in the warmth. \"Right,\" she says, nodding a little too rapidly.\n\nI can't take them both being gone.\n\n\"He will regain consciousness.\" She hears Victor's attempt to soothe her.\n\nShe nods as a tear trails down her face. \"We need to get outta here, Victor.\"\n\n\"Impossible.\"\n\nHer face jerks from the study of Scott's relaxed features to Victor's stern ones. \"What do you mean \u02bbimpossible'?\"\n\nVictor sighs, running his large hands down his slacks. \"It is timer driven. If no timer is set, it will automatically default to seventy-two hours.\"\n\nJulia's mind whirs. \"How much longer?\"\n\n\"Roughly forty-seven hours.\"\n\nJulia's shoulders drop in disappointment. \"How do you\u2014\"\n\nVictor points at the far wall. A clock similar to the countdown clock from the Northwestern Kiss where William held her runs the seconds down in digital format, marking time's passage eerily.\n\n\"That bastard is up there\u2014doing God knows what to my people!\" Julia says loudly.\n\n\"I know,\" Victor glances away, his frustrated expression exactly matching her feeling of helplessness.\n\nJulia scans the space restlessly, scrutinizing the rows of cots. They're harder than damn rocks. A queen should be able to do something about such slack accommodations, right? She feels a grim smile perch on her face.\n\nQueen.\n\nWhat the hell kind of queen can't even command the region she was prophesied to rule over? A sucky one.\n\nJason pops into her mind.\n\nDon't think about him, Julia. Just. Don't.\n\nShe sucks in a shaky inhale then lets it out with agonizing slowness. \"Okay.\" Julia stands, slapping her thighs and dusting off her hands. \"I'm going to check out this bunker.\"\n\nHer eyes move to Scott, so still on the adjacent cot. As she watches, his chest rises and falls.\n\nJulia has to occupy herself, or she'll go crazy\n\n\"I will accompany you.\" Victor's battered body is mending before her eyes.\n\n\"It's okay. Just rest.\" Julia knows Victor must have hauled them away from the hatchway after they fell in here. \"I can do this.\" Her brows pull together. \"How'd you get down here?\"\n\nA rueful smile tucks itself into the corners of his mouth. \"I was unceremoniously tossed down by the demonic ruffian and his cohort.\"\n\nThe older Singers speak so strangely. \"So no one noticed you were missing, for like a day?\"\n\n\"I did.\"\n\nJulia whirls. \"Scott!\" she squeals and rushes to his side, relief surging through her.\n\nStanding, he lifts her off her feet then twirls her. \"You are a sight for sore eyes, Julia.\"\n\nShe automatically kisses him\u2014right there in front of Victor, with Jason's dead body on top of the escape hatch. Julia doesn't even have time to analyze how practical she's become in the years she's survived the supernatural world.\n\nThe soul-meld doesn't care about circumstance. Their bond dictates and overpowers everything.\n\nTheir mouths mash, tongues inserting and twining passionately as reason and rationale depart. Scott and Julia touch, moved only to have skin-on-skin contact, reuniting and strengthening each other as only they know how. The reaction is natural for soul-meld Singers.\n\nVictor clears his throat, reminding Julia they have an audience.\n\nThey leap guiltily apart\u2014at least Julia does. She doesn't think Scott feels guilt about much, especially their union.\n\nJulia feels the sting of shame because the circumstances are dire. And caving to their need of each other somehow seems selfish in the face of the potential suffering going on above their heads.\n\nJulia knows there is no alternative to the bunker, but that doesn't change her feelings. She self-consciously covers her mouth as though she can erase the moment.\n\nScott shushes her, pulling her against his chest.\n\n\"Are you okay?\" he asks against her hair.\n\nShe nods, though she's anything but. Silently taking comfort from the steady beat of his heart, she lets Scott's warmth seep through his shirt and heat her cheek.\n\nVictor inclines his head. \"My king.\"\n\nRight. Now that Marcus is gone, Scott's it. Julia closes her eyes against a reality she can't deny.\n\n\"Please, Vic, I can't take all the pomp and circumstance.\" He rakes his free hand through his inky hair. \"You just treat me like you did before-before Father died,\" he ends quietly.\n\n\"As you wish.\" Victor clasps his hands behind his back, his chin dipping.\n\nScott exhales in relief without mentioning the obvious: how they would all love to be above. Instead, Scott tugs her away from the cots. \"I've been down here, but you want a tour?\"\n\n\"We've got nothing better to do,\" Julia admits. \"That horrible guy is up there, doing I don't know what while we're here languishing. I need a distraction.\"\n\n\"Hey.\" Scott stops walking. He tilts her chin up with one finger, \"We can't get out, Julia.\" He pauses for a moment. \"I wasn't a fan of Caldwell.\"\n\nJulia shuts her eyes against an agony she can't name, against Scott being that insensitive to all that's happened. Julia knows Jason's conduct was terrible at times, but now he's dead. Truly gone.\n\n\"Julia.\"\n\nResentfully, she meets his nearly black gaze. \"He did right by you. That demonic had me. He was going to do you in, and I couldn't change fast enough, get past his evil, to save my own soul-meld.\"\n\nScott shakes his head, eyes narrow. \"That spore\"\u2014his mouth flattens into a tight line of anger\u2014\"that thing made you susceptible to the demonic.\"\n\nJulia's surprised by his words and relieved Scott's giving credit to Jason.\n\n\"Not just that, Scott.\"\n\nThey look at Victor.\n\nHis expression is apologetic.\n\nJulia gets the idea that he's accustomed to having to say things that might not be real popular. Cue Jacqueline being the queen of Region Two.\n\n\"If your meld remains unconsummated, you're especially vulnerable.\"\n\nJulia's face bursts into flames, but he pretends not to notice her obvious embarrassment, though Scott wears a smirk.\n\nVictor continues, \"You would have done yourself a great service to have accepted the triad between the wolf, vampire, and your soul-meld.\"\n\nVictor hangs his head in apparent regret, and Julia wishes she had a rock handy, so she could crawl under it.Victor casually discusses her nod to a plural marriage as if it's the weather.\n\nJulia's still trying to wrap her head around being a Rare One\u2014a queen. It's all so foreign. But as the death toll mounts, the enemies draw closer, supernaturals literally pour out of the woodwork, and people she loves sacrifice themselves for her\u2014Julia has slowly come to the realization that she is who they claim she is.\n\nShe fills her lungs, shoring up her weak stores of courage. \"So now that William is gone, and Jason\u2014\" She can't finish.\n\n\"Yes, completing the meld will make you nearly invincible and hasten the powers that all Rare Ones hold within themselves as potential\u2014unrealized without the correct prompts.\"\n\nScott's lips twitch. \"So you're saying if we come together, then Julia will be safer?\"\n\nKnock that off!\n\nHe flinches at the shouted telepathic communication.\n\n\"Of course,\" Victor says smoothly, a slight furrow between his brows as though they are the dumbest people who ever breathed.\n\nJulia crosses her arms. Maybe one of them. She glares at Scott.\n\nVictor's eyes bounce between her and Scott. \"I apologize if what I've said is\u2014\"\n\nJulia stabs the air with her palm, remembering all the other times sex had come up as The Solution. \"Nope.\"\n\n\"Let me show you the bunker,\" Victor says, appearing to sense the tension.\n\nJulia grunts softly, jabbing her elbow into Scott's side.\n\nHe guffaws quietly, tucking her under his arm. \"That was so uncool. Why would you let him go on like that if you understood everything already?\" she asks in a fierce whisper.\n\nScott flicks her nose. \"Fun to watch you get all flustered.\"\n\nJulia rolls her eyes. \"This isn't funny. Jason is dead.\" Her voice shakes, and they slow, letting Victor move down a long corridor ahead of them. \"And I don't know what that Peter demon is doing to our people.\" Tears fill her eyes as the earlier levity flees.\n\n\"Hey,\" he says, \"he was after you. There's too many in the complex for him to try for everyone. You're safe here with me, and he's probably\u2014I don't know\u2014gone to hell.\" He offers her a crooked smile.\n\n\"You're so not helping!\" Julia jerks away from him, and he yanks her back.\n\n\"Let go!\"\n\nHis dark eyes narrow. \"No.\" His hand wraps the bare skin at the base of her skull. A painful breath eases out of her as her head dips forward in defeat. \"I'm sorry about Jason, but I'm never gonna regret what he sacrificed for you. It was the right call. I would have done it.\"\n\n\"Do you hate me for being sad over Jason? It's so awful, Scott. I can hardly breathe.\" Her hands fist the front of his T-shirt.\n\n\"Yeah. I hate\u2014really hate\u2014that you care for another man. But I love how tender you are, Julia. Those two things aren't separate. I can't have one without the other. And...\" He pauses for so long that Julia lifts her head off his chest. \"He was there first. Before I knew you. Before all this.\" He sweeps his palm around their subterranean prison.\n\nJulia's chest aches.\n\nRight then, she realizes it's from a broken heart.\n\nScott threads his fingers through hers, and they walk down the corridor together again. Victor waits patiently at the T where the hallway ends.\n\nJulia's lost interest in checking out the tomb-like surroundings. Exploring her lackluster prison of the next two days doesn't seem nearly as important as getting the hell out of it and excising the demon that somehow infiltrated her region.\n\nBut her want is in direct conflict to what is possible, so she walks.\n\nScott smooths the tension of her brows with a kiss between her eyes, and her breathing settles into a regular rhythm. She's survived worse.\n\nI'll survive this.\n\nShe turns her face up to meet Scott's concerned stare and smiles through tears that remain unshed.\n\nThe time for grief is gone. Julia has a role to fill, and it's there for her whether or not she's ready for it. Jason's death can't be for nothing. He died because he believed in her importance. In her.\n\nJulia's hand finds the place where the demon's wound festers. It pulses briefly before quieting.\n\nAs long as Scott and she are touching, it doesn't progress.\n\nAs long.\n\n# CHAPTER THREE\n\nSlash\n\nSlash has suffered greatly in battle. He'd been beaten to within an inch of his life and always triumphed in the end.\n\nHe's just that determined, but this is utterly different.\n\nHe spears the ground, using it like a handhold, and drags his upper body along the debris of the forest, making his way to his mate.\n\nSlash's head spins.\n\nBlood loss.\n\nHe has so many puncture wounds from talons, he's a Lycan pincushion. But right now, none of that matters.\n\nAdrianna is injured.\n\nTramack of the Western harmed his precious mate, and for that\u2014he'll suffer.\n\nFinally, Slash gets to within arm's reach of Adrianna and rolls to his side, heaving his unfeeling, broken legs around in a swinging arc with his hands.\n\nSlash resists the urge to weep. Mere crying isn't enough to quantify how grievous the situation is. Adrianna's face is battered; every bit of skin that meets his gaze is abraded by touch, talon, and teeth. Nips from sharp teeth march across her flesh.\n\nBut only one holds Slash prisoner\u2014the area around her left areola has been punctured by a single fang, as though marked.\n\nThe vision of her beautiful breast marred by another male bottoms out Slash's guts, leaving him shaking in a rage so pure, there's no name for it.\n\nAdrianna's clear hazel eyes open slowly then round with fear and disorientation.\n\n\"Shhh,\" Slash croaks, his healing throat like sandpaper. \"I'm here.\"\n\nAdrianna begins to cry, frantically touching herself all over. \"Did they? Oh God, Slash, did they touch me?\"\n\nHe hangs his head, his palms flat on her shoulders. He leans against her temple, lips against her ear. \"They did not have the chance.\"\n\nHer body shivers against his, and hot tears scald the cheek he holds. Her grief and fear shred Slash on a molecular level.\n\n\"Don't cry, Adrianna. I'm here.\"\n\n\"I know,\" she sobs, wrapping her arms around his head and drawing him closer.\n\nSlash tucks her in against his body, wincing at the motion but happy the others didn't get a chance to rape his mate. However bad that mark against the perfection of her skin is, it is only a mark. Slash's blood burns with the thought of what could have happened.\n\nIf they had been taking their time and not had the ulterior agenda of the woman, Tessa, Adrianna might have been violated.\n\nSlash hears far-off screaming, shouting, and the sounds of fighting. They're certainly not out of danger yet.\n\nHis memory is fuzzy after he killed the first two Were, but he remembers Tramack's nose jerking up as he held a screaming Adrianna down, as though he recognized a scent so important that it blanked the present.\n\nTramack flicked his eyes over Adrianna, seeming to deliberate, then struck her in the temple with the back of his hand.\n\nThe light in Adrianna's eyes dimmed, and she fell silent\u2014still underneath Tramack.\n\nSlash struggled to break free of the other two Were. Then Tramack snapped a tree in half as he swung the trunk from behind at Slash's unprotected legs.\n\nNumbness swelled then burst over his lower body\u2014hips to toes, and the Were holding him dumped him like garbage. He landed face-first in the muck of the soggy forest floor.\n\nTramack tossed the twenty-year-old tree like a twig after using it on Slash then stepped over his body. \"That's not the lesson I would have given with more time, but there will be time enough later. My intended has just released her scent.\"\n\nTramack lifted his nose to the sky, sighing in contentment while Slash's eyes remained frozen on his face\u2014memorizing it forever.\n\nSlash realized Tramack was crazy. It happens sometimes. Alphas aren't always of the most stable temperaments. Tramack was no exception, though he had spun down into a new low. Beating a female for no other reason except her mouth? Because he could raise his fist?\n\nSlash understands the prejudice against Reds. He's lived that. If Adrianna hadn't been there, they still would have punished Slash for being what he is, for looking imperfect.\n\nSupernaturals aren't known for their compassion. Every supernatural is supposed to be the epitome of perfection of his or her kind. The expectation is due to their powers, strength, and healing ability. The Singers have all that the Were possess and paranormal talents besides.\n\nNo Lycan can withstand silver without obtaining a scar. And some species have no compunction against using the alloy in battle. Slash had been in many battles. It'd only been a matter of time before someone had a weapon meant to do worse than kill\u2014but permanently maim. Slash shoves his introspection away as Adrianna begins to quiet, shattering Slash's reflections. He carefully wraps the tatters of her thin T-shirt over her breasts\u2014the brassiere is long gone.\n\n\"They'll come back!\" Adrianna says, her voice edging along that fine line of hysteria.\n\nSlash shakes his head, rising push-up style over her. He cages her in with his body, dragging his still-uncooperative limbs behind him.\n\n\"They're busy,\" he huffs between movements.\n\nFor the moment.\n\nAdrianna's lip trembles.\n\nHe cradles her face, kissing her soft lips, hating that it's the only undamaged spot of her face. \"Listen to me, Adrianna.\"\n\nShe nods, gasping back a sob. \"Okay.\" Tears roll over the tops of his fingers.\n\nTheir eyes lock. What he sees in her gaze makes his heart ache like a rotting tooth. \"I need you to be that smart-ass brave girl I know you are.\"\n\nA surprised laugh escapes. \"What? I\u2014my words are what got us into trouble, right?\" Her eyes flick guiltily away from his.\n\nSlash places a gentle fingertip on her jaw and turns her head back to face him. \"No. They would have hurt me regardless of your presence.\"\n\n\"Because you're Red?\" She guesses immediately.\n\n\"Absolutely. And because of my imperfections.\"\n\nAdrianna crosses her arms. \"That's bullshit.\"\n\nSlash smiles, his scar tissue flattening and reminding him that his face is still healing.\n\nHer skittish gaze flies around the still woods. \"We need to get out of here, Slash.\"\n\nHe nods. \"Can you hear that?\"\n\nDistant noises reach Slash's ears. A large engine revving. A female's screams. Low, threatening male voices.\n\nAdrianna stops all movement, seeming to really understand his odd stance above her for the first time. \"What is it?\"\n\nShe jerks up, and Slash follows the motion, rolling to his elbow. She's now above him and looking intensely into his face. A leaf is embedded in her matted hair. The sun slants through the thick canopy above where they just made love, setting one of her eyes on mossy green fire, mimicking the needle-strewn floor they lay on.\n\n\"What the fuck, Slash?\" A fat tear slides out of her swollen eye as it skims his body, the unnatural stance of his lower limbs. \"What'd they do to you?\"\n\nShe kneels beside him, and he gathers her close, so tightly she's hard-pressed to breathe. \"They've hurt me beyond what I can heal quickly and without a shift\u2014or food. My situation makes us vulnerable. I need you to leave me for a while, Adrianna.\"\n\nAdrianna struggles against his hold, but Slash gives a low growl and sets his teeth at her shoulder. She stills beneath him, her wolf submitting to his. Her eyes roll to meet his. \"Don't make me, Slash. I just found you.\" She touches his face. \"We just found each other. Don't make me go, please.\"\n\nSlash's eyes close against her pleas. If he has to die because he's indefensible, he won't take his mate with him.\n\nSlash releases his hold. \"Adrianna.\"\n\nHer head tips back, and he catches her fragile skull. Her eyelids hood, languid over her submission to his wolf. It's a wonderful interaction during sex, but not so much in the present, when Slash can hear the sound of a small battle happening too closely for his comfort. And Tramack's vague threat about returning hangs over him.\n\n\"It's the only way I can protect you until I heal this injury.\"\n\nTramack had performed the maneuver to paralyze an opponent before. He was far too practiced to have not. The move against him made Slash wonder how deplorable the Western pack had become.\n\nHe shakes the thoughts away. They can't afford the time of his speculations. \"I'm paralyzed,\" he says in a bald tone.\n\nDeliver the facts. No more, no less.\n\nAdrianna bites her lip, trying for brave, not that she needs to try. She is brave. She clutches his shredded shirt. \"No,\" she says with quiet intensity.\n\n\"Not forever, but right now, I must\u2014my wolf must\u2014keep my mate safe.\"\n\nAdrianna clings to him. \"I won't leave you!\"\n\nI was afraid of that.\n\nA huge sound booms where the voices have escalated to shouts. The report of gunfire echoes.\n\nHe shoves Adrianna away from him, growling. His eyes become razors, and he pushes every bit of Alpha Red to the surface of his skin.\n\n\"Do not kill me by staying,\" he delivers in low command.\n\nAdrianna's head rocks back as though she's been slapped. \"What?\" she whispers. \"I would never do anything to hurt you.\"\n\nSlash hates what he must do. But she is a young Alpha female who thinks with her emotions. Newly mated, she's vulnerable, and her feelings are right below the surface. She'll get them both killed without meaning to.\n\nSlash has to think for the both of them.\n\n\"Get the fuck out of here. It was fun, but I don't need you like an anchor around my neck.\"\n\nTears pour down her healing face like an undamed river, and she scoots away from his slack hold on her.\n\n\"Bastard!\" she screams, angrily swiping at her tears. \"Did you fucking see what that douche did to me? He marked me!\" Her hand moves to the breast Slash covered with a makeshift bra.\n\nSlash holds his flinch. It's one of the hardest reactions he's ever had to suppress. Somehow, he manages. \"Yes. Do you want him to again, female?\" Slash grinds out coldly.\n\nShe shakes her head. \"No, you asshole.\" Adrianna stands, begins to stomp off, then whirls to face him.\n\nSlash hates being on the ground, unable to stand on his own two feet.\n\n\"I would have stayed with you.\" Her voice goes low. \"Fought for you. Protected you.\"\n\nLike all Were, Slash has excellent sight. His eyes home in on the standing water in hers.\n\nTheir eyes lock. Finally, he breaks the heavy silence. \"That's not your role. Now go, female.\"\n\nAdrianna nods quickly. \"I'll go, you jerk. I can't believe you mated me and care so little. I thought\u2014\" Her hands rub at the tears brimming and streaking her bruised face. \"The hell with what I thought. At least one of those bastards is a testi shy.\"\n\nShe turns, striding away. Then she runs.\n\nA tight breath of relief slides out of Slash. He allows himself to fall backward, the leaves and needles cushioning the short slump. Slash lies there, looking up toward the sky, his chest tight.\n\nHopefully, Adrianna will be so pissed off, she'll just keep going. His nose will find her later. It's more important that she's safe\u2014and far from this place. He knows Adrianna will avoid the conflict. And most certainly, the conflict involves Tramack.\n\nSlash can explain his reasoning to her later. She would have stayed. He understands the kind of female Adrianna is.\n\nHe also understands the male that Tramack is. He'll return, regardless of whether or not a female that is supposedly his intended has been located in Region One.\n\nHe'll come back because he's a follow-through type of Were, the worst kind, made even more by his insanity.\n\nAs Slash scans his surroundings, a reluctant grim smile pulls at his lips. The two dead Were languish a few yards away from his position.\n\nAt least there's that. Now how do I get somewhere isolated that I can shift to wolfen and hunt to revitalize this body?\n\nA stealthy movement hits Slash's radar, and he tenses, feeling his toes for the first time in an hour. That's not going to do a damn bit of good if what he hears is round two with Tramack. His fingertips itch to burst to talons, his emotions inciting the change like a lit match.\n\nSlash resists. He's exposed.\n\nTruman moves from behind a tree, looking around at the mess and the Were corpses. \"What the fuck?\" he asks, and Slash grins. His relief is so intense, his normally stoic personality momentarily leaves him.\n\n\"Yes, that's exactly it.\"\n\n\"It's that Alpha Zeke and I scented, right?\" A shadow crosses his face, and Slash sits up straighter, hiking his ass so he can be upright. It's not standing, but it's not lying on his back, either.\n\nFeeling swarms to Slash's ankles. Hope flares.\n\nKarl Truman\u2014a former Homer, AK cop, and now the oldest living change on record\u2014stares at Slash's legs. His eyes slide back to Slash's. \"That prick do that to your legs?\"\n\nSlash nods. \"I can feel my feet.\"\n\n\"Asshole.\" Truman's eyebrows jump. \"Where's Adi?\"\n\nSlash's chin dips to his chest, and a frustrated exhale squeezes out. \"I rejected her so she'd leave.\"\n\nHe whistles. \"Ouch! Didn't want that Alpha to come back and hurt Adi when you couldn't protect the new mate?\"\n\nSlash nods; there are no secrets with the nose Were possess. Glad someone understands the logistics of being a male who loves his female more than taking his next breath. Slash answers in a curt voice, \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Well, you want the good news or bad?\"\n\nFuck. \"Bad.\"\n\n\"Zeke's dead.\"\n\nShock rips through Slash, though his surprise is short-lived. \"Tramack?\"\n\n\"Who?\" Truman's eyebrows jump again.\n\n\"He's the fuck from the Western.\"\n\nTruman's hands go to his hips. \"Listen, I got changed by the Northwestern and don't give a good goddamn about keeping track of who's who and all the political bullshittery.\"\n\nSlash blinks.\n\nTruman goes on, \"So an Alpha who's not from here killed Zeke, though he managed to wipe out some of them. That's what that garbage smell is.\" Truman cups his chin.\n\nThere were even more?\n\nTruman nods slowly. \"Yeah, little posse of Were. Here. For what?\" He spins in a circle, coming to stop in front of Slash. \"Don't know. Don't give a ripe shit.\" He taps his nose. \"They're presently after the two girls that you and Zeke had just picked up. And the two males from Region Two?\" Truman barks out a laugh of pure disbelief, shaking his head.\n\nSlash's eyebrows drop and his gaze narrows on Truman. \"Tell me.\"\n\n\"Those bozos are fucking demonic. Tails\u2014the whole nine yards.\"\n\nGooseflesh ripples over Slash's skin. His beast begs to change, though without a full moon, that's only a painful wish.\n\n\"I can't make this shit up.\" Truman shrugs.\n\nHis eyes meet Truman's. \"What now?\"\n\n\"I drag your fucked-up ass to the mansion, locate your bride, and kick some foreign Weres' ass,\" he recites calmly.\n\nTruman's simplicity is somehow perfect. He doesn't understand enough to worry about it.\n\nIt is simple: find the bad guys and eliminate them.\n\nPoint and shoot. Slash wishes the process could be that simple.\n\n# CHAPTER FOUR\n\nJulia\n\nAll the rooms are the same. Julia doesn't know what she was expecting.\n\n\"They're like crypts,\" she whispers.\n\nVictor's beautiful, dove gray eyes stare into her own.\n\n\"They are sound-proofed and meant to be similar to the humans' catastrophic nuclear strongholds.\"\n\nGround zero. Julia shivers, and after studying the rows of metal doors leading to compartments for Singers, she turns back to Victor. \"You mean if a nuclear bomb went off?\"\n\nHe gives a solemn nod. \"In theory, our bunker can withstand it.\"\n\nScott squeezes her fingers reassuringly.\n\nJulia is thoughtfully silent for a few seconds. \"We're not deep enough.\"\n\n\"True.\" Victor strolls to a door like all the others. However, this one has a security pad with numbers. Victor taps a series of numbers into the lighted keypad.\n\nJulia flinches when it beeps like a whining siren.\n\nVictor opens the door, and crisp, slick stainless doors butt together. Only a dark, slim seam marks the center.\n\nElevator. \"Where does that go?\" Julia asks.\n\n\"Deep,\" Victor replies.\n\nJulia turns to Scott. \"You knew?\"\n\nHe nods. \"It's not like we hang out in the bunker all the time. The royal blood lines all have a safe place to be. Never even thought to give the shaft any thought. No one anticipates nuclear holocaust.\" Scott shrugs.\n\n\"Somebody did,\" Julia replies softly, her attention shifting to the elevator once more.\n\n\"Yes.\" Victor closes the innocuous door, and the elevator disappears behind it, blending in with all the others.\n\nVictor leaves them at the farthest reaches of the bunker. Julia estimates the size to be, on all one level, as large as the mansion above it. She didn't think to ask what the \"shaft\" size was.\n\nVictor rounds the corner but turns at the last moment, giving them a level stare full of meaning.\n\nHis looks seems all for Scott.\n\n\"Your quarters are already assigned.\"\n\nJulia feels her eyebrow lift. Assigned?\n\nVictor interprets her puzzled expression perfectly and knots his hands together. \"In the event of a need to use the bunker\"\u2014his eyes rise to hers then briefly flick to Scott's\u2014\"each royal family member would have their own accommodation. That still remains the case. As it happens, Marcus had no official spouse during his reign as Region One king.\"\n\nOfficial?\n\n\"But I do,\" Scott says from behind Julia.\n\n\"Yes.\" Lifting his chin, he gives Scott a significant look.\n\n\"What, guys?\"\n\n\"What Victor is too polite to mention is that you are meant to be my wife, but until we do the deed, it's sort of a hollow, unfinished union.\"\n\nA pale-pink blush spreads across Victor's cheeks. \"Not as I would have put things, but accurate enough.\"\n\nJulia says nothing. She knew it would come to this.\n\n\"Julia.\"\n\nShe turns around and faces Scott.\n\nHe takes her chilled hands in his warm ones.\n\nLowering his face to be level with hers, he asks, \"Is sleeping with me a fate worse than death?\"\n\nJulia bursts out laughing. \"No. I-I don't know. Everything's moving too fast.\" Her heartbeats pile up on each other, her palms dampening.\n\n\"I will be in the main area near the vault,\" Victor announces quietly.\n\nNeither of them replies, but his departing footsteps echo hollowly back as Julia and Scott stare at each other.\n\n\"I am sorry about Jason.\" His dark eyes search her face. \"But I'm not sorry that he sacrificed himself to allow you to live. I'm just gonna keep saying the truth over and over again. No guilt, baby.\" Scott cups her face, and she sighs.\n\nHe's so warm.\n\nPresent.\n\nHers.\n\nJulia feels the rightness of the meld between them. Like warm water it molds to their bodies, reaching every bit of her. Their bond isn't conflicted, and she shouldn't be, either.\n\nScott waits in the silence pregnant with their emotions.\n\nHe wants her as a man wants a woman. He also wants her because the Combatant inside of him knows she'll have a net of security that would be very hard to strip if they finalize their union.\n\nJulia nods, and Scott's shoulders drop, the tension of their tethered hands lessening, growing supple.\n\nHis eyes move to the door that simply has a musical note finished in a shining red enamel.\n\nThe color of blood. The global symbol for a melody.\n\nBlood Singers.\n\n*\n\n\"Don't get pissed,\" Scott says, and her eyes move to his.\n\nShe was looking around the room. Julia didn't feel pissed; she was stunned.\n\nThe space must be something special for the bunker. It's unadorned and so plain, it's almost medicinal\u2014except for a huge bed in the center of the oversized bedroom. An old-fashioned quilt graces the top, and four body-sized pillows round out a metal headboard. Two awkwardly narrow nightstands flank it, matching lamps softly glowing on top.\n\nJulia shivers.\n\nScott notices, and his fingers part from hers.\n\nHe moves to the door then closes and locks it. Julia flinches as the deadbolt slides home.\n\nHis fingers twirl the thermostat to a higher temperature. Scott turns, and she's overwhelmed anew by his size, flushing at the thought of being with him.\n\nThis is gonna happen.\n\n\"Better?\" he asks quietly.\n\nShe nods, looking down at her feet.\n\nJulia shifts her weight nervously, and Scott's larger feet come into view, dwarfing her Converse sneakers.\n\n\"Scott,\" Julia begins, her voice breathy.\n\nHe wraps his strong arms around her.\n\n\"I'm scared.\"\n\nScott pulls away, cupping her chin and tilting it up. Gravity pulls the tears from her eyes.\n\n\"Don't, Julia. I would never hurt you.\"\n\nShe nods, blinking.\n\nHis thumbs wipe the tears away. \"Why are you crying?\"\n\nHer exhale trembles. \"So many reasons.\"\n\n\"You think I'll suck in the sack?\" His lips twist.\n\nShe laughs, and they move apart. Julia smiles, appreciating the way he breaks the ice.\n\n\"Better?\" he asks for a second time.\n\nShe nods. \"I don't\u2014I'm not thinking about that.\"\n\n\"I know,\" he says softly, tucking a long strand of hair behind her ear. \"Then what is it?\"\n\nJulia gives him a look of pure disbelief, folding her arms. \"Jason just died. Our people are in danger.\"\n\n\"And we have to be down here for nearly two days,\" he states logically.\n\nShe snorts. \"So we might as well screw because what else is there to do?\" Julia sounds bitter.\n\n\"Yup!\" Scott says, angrily pacing away from her. \"Can't wait to have everyone in danger and die so we can hop into bed together. Right. So sexy.\"\n\nJulia hangs her head. \"I guess it sounds pretty dramatic.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\" He sounds pissed. His entire body is one long line of tension.\n\nIt has to be her; he won't push. He's made his case. Victor's made it.\n\nJulia walks to him slowly.\n\nScott doesn't move a muscle, showing her his profile.\n\nShe flattens her palm against his chest, and a sigh escapes them both. \"I'm sorry,\" she whispers. \"I don't mean to be a bitch.\"\n\nHis long fingers cover hers. Still looking away, he speaks to the flat gray wall. \"You're not. Any human being would feel the same right now. You've gone through hell in the last three years, Julia.\"\n\n\"I'm not strictly human, Scott.\"\n\n\"Yeah.\"\n\nThey look at each other, their heartbeats syncing.\n\n\"That's so weird,\" Julia says with a tremor in her voice.\n\nScott knows what she's saying; it's all over his face. \"Not to me.\"\n\n\"That's because you were groomed for the possibility of the soul-meld.\"\n\n\"Yes, but it's still surreal\u2014our bodies knowing each other, wanting that constant physical contact. And if you remember, I wasn't exactly on board.\"\n\nSadness tightens her chest. \"I was a girl from Alaska two years ago. Now I'm a queen of a bunch of paranormal people and part angel and\u2014\"\n\nScott presses a finger to her lower lip. \"And you're the woman I love.\"\n\nJulia kisses along the side of his finger, and Scott inhales sharply. She stares into his eyes, drowning.\n\n\"Julia, if you want to back out of this, do it now, because, baby, I can't stop.\"\n\nShe shakes her head, releasing the guilt and shame, the ownership of things she shouldn't keep.\n\nScott shudders, wrapping her against him. \"Do you trust me?\" he asks against her hair. Their bond is a rubber band of comfort, security, love, and lastly, good, old-fashioned lust.\n\n\"With everything I am.\"\n\n\"Then let me take care of you, Julia. For the love of all that's holy, let me be the one to take care of you.\"\n\nJulia wraps her arms around his waist, laying her cheek between the hard muscles of his chest. \"Yes.\"\n\n*\n\nThe room is warm.\n\nJulia is hot.\n\nScott begins to undress, his eyes glued to her. He jerks off his T-shirt and tosses it onto a folding chair against the wall.\n\n\"It's creepy that there's a chair there beside the bed. What? Is there an audience, possibility?\"\n\n\"No,\" he says, voice deep.\n\nShe swallows her nervousness, trying not to ramble on anxiously. Again.\n\n\"Not even a remote chance of interruption.\"\n\nJulia nods, dumbstruck.\n\nScott is a beautiful man. His large hands go to his hips as he stares at Julia. A handful of seconds squeeze by as they regard each other.\n\nThen his fingers close on his belt buckle.\n\nHe slides his jeans down before kicking them off in the direction of the creepy folding chair. When Scott is clad only in socks and boxer briefs, Julia closes her eyes.\n\nHer mind supplies the rest: Six feet, three inches of heavy muscles. Narrow hips. Broad shoulders. Legs like tree trunks. Soon she'll see all that she's imagined in the flesh. Julia calms her breathing and opens her eyes.\n\nScott stands before her. A little \"eep\" flies out of her. Her eye roam his naked body. She'd missed the unveiling but she's all eyes now. He's so much more than her imagination could have ever conjured.\n\nJulia grins. \"You scared me.\"\n\nScott's smile broadens.\n\n\"What are you smiling about?\" she asks in a huff, keeping her eyes on his face with an effort.\n\n\"You.\"\n\nJulia gives a tense little laugh. \"I guess it's\u2014\"\n\n\"Let me, Julia.\" His eyes shift to her clothing.\n\nShe nods, her heart thumping, and lifts her arms above her head.\n\nScott strips the T-shirt and throws it onto his pile of clothes. His hands move to the waistband of her jeans and slide them off slowly.\n\nJulia doesn't cover herself. What they're about to do doesn't seem sleazy.\n\nIt feels right.\n\nBefore guilt has a chance to form, she rolls to her tiptoes and tilts her head for the kiss she knows he'll give her. His intent pounds through their meld.\n\nJulia's not disappointed.\n\nHis hands land on her bare back, rolling over her skin. Her flesh pebbles beneath his fingertips, and a little sigh escapes her lips.\n\nJulia becomes aware in stages that her panties and bra joined his clothing on the floor.\n\nScott scoops her from the floor, his dark gaze tied to her face.\n\nThe emotion in his eyes heals her. His body undoes her.\n\n# CHAPTER FIVE\n\nTessa\n\nThe demon's penis drops to the dusty driveway like an exhumed hotdog. Black blood pours out of the ragged hole she made with a quick talon swipe. Oops.\n\nTessa guffaws, because that's the best thing to do while wrapped against a demon. She's always wanted to try that with a deserving male, and this fire dick fit the bill.\n\nSound ceases.\n\nHis hold loosens, and his mouth opens in dawning horror as his hands automatically go to his crotch.\n\n\"Sorry about that, asshole,\" she says conversationally.\n\nSuddenly, Tessa is hoisted off her feet, and her hands instinctively slice backward, hitting only air.\n\nLazarus whispers, \"We are going.\"\n\nThen she's being turned and squired to the Suburban in a blur of speed.\n\nTahlia, looking human again, is buried behind the too-big wheel. Her eyes are mostly human, and entirely too young in a face pinched by fear.\n\n\"Tessa!\" she screams as Lazarus tosses her inside the back of the truck. Tessa shoots across the bench seat like a cannon ball, sharply rapping the top of her skull on the opposite door.\n\nLights burst and flash behind her eyes. \"Ah!\" Tessa instinctively curls up into the fetal position. That fucking hurt.\n\nWith a shrieking squeal, the door she was heaved through is torn off.\n\nTessa sits up, her vision warped as she sees Lazarus holding the door like a shield in front of his muscular body.\n\nThen she sees why.\n\nIn the next second, Fire Dickless is storming toward him.\n\nToward me.\n\nThe real bad? His penis is growing back and is presently a fleshy little red nub between his legs. It's deliciously pathetic looking.\n\nDon't laugh, please, Tessa.\n\nShe laughs. Tears stream down her face, and she can't stop. Knowing she should makes it worse.\n\nWith a dull roar of rage, Lazarus brings the car door up between them in a swinging strike, tipping the broadest part sideways at the last second and impaling the demon in his gut.\n\n\"Fore!\" Tessa whoops as though he's hit a golf ball, with zero sense of self-preservation.\n\nLazarus follows through with an open kick that sends the demonic flying. He turns, giving her a death stare. \"That is unhelpful.\"\n\nRight. Tessa clamps her mouth shut.\n\nA giggle erupts.\n\n\"Hang on!\" Tahlia screams from the front seat.\n\nIt does occur to Tessa then she might be a little bit in shock\u2014or more than a little bit. It's not normal to laugh when a wounded demonic is gunning for them. She nods at Lazarus's obvious rage then slumps back against the door, laughing again.\n\nLazarus pushes in beside her.\n\n\"Go\u2014now!\" Lazarus shouts at Tahlia.\n\nShe nods, stomping on the accelerator. The tires spin uselessly.\n\nTessa turns and looks at the back of the rig. Her laughter dies.\n\nThe demonic is holding onto the tailgate, his triumphant smile revealing gleaming black teeth.\n\n\"Reverse!\" Lazarus yells.\n\nOh, shit.\n\nThe click of the transmission locks into place, and suddenly, he's underneath the carriage of the car.\n\nThump.\n\nTessa's ass lifts off the seat. Her hair clings to the ceiling briefly before her butt drops back onto the seat.\n\nThe four-wheel drive locks into place, and the front wheels roll over the top of the demonic.\n\nThump.\n\n\"Forward!\" Lazarus says above the grinding, rising car.\n\nThe Suburban gives an ungainly lurch and seems to pause as if stuck on the biggest speed bump ever.\n\nTessa's eyes find Lazarus.\n\nHis face is grim.\n\nAnd handsome. Tessa's mouth pops open to speak.\n\nThe car plops down on the other side of the demonic, and spraying loose gravel, it speeds off.\n\nTessa turns, getting to her knees. Gripping the back of the seat, she watches as a mangled body rises like a crimson zombie.\n\n\"Oh my God!\"\n\nOut of the corner of her eye, she sees Lazarus wince.\n\nOh, yeah, no religious terms. Tessa sinks onto the seat, her eyes tracking the demonic as he becomes an ever-smaller red dot in the distance, like a Mexican jumping bean.\n\nHe's steaming pissed.\n\nTessa rotates slowly to face the front again, lowering herself onto the seat. \"That was close.\" Her heart's pounding begins to slow.\n\nLazarus turns, letting his head fall back against the seat. Air rushing through the hole of the door serenades them with road noise.\n\nTessa blinks at the blurring landscape. That's right: demon boy is back there with a half-crushed door in his guts.\n\nOr is the car door gone now because Tahlia ran him over? Hell on the tires, Tessa muses.\n\n\"Where now?\" Tahlia asks, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles are white.\n\nProbably not fair to make the youngest the driver in the Race of Death.\n\nShit happens.\n\nLazarus runs his fingers through his hair, pulling it away from his perfectly formed face.\n\nTessa's crazy to still be worrying about him when they just barely managed to avoid catastrophe. Still.\n\nHis eyes meet Tahlia's in the rearview mirror. \"I do not know.\"\n\n\"Oh fantastic,\" Tahlia mutters. \"Let me understand this. I am pursued by the Lanarre\u2014rightfully, I might add. Then I decide to leave, giving myself the illusion of choice. And instead of riding off into the great yonder\u2014\"\n\nTahlia rolls her eyes as Lazarus's eyebrows slowly rise.\n\n\"I must contend with a demonic passenger after my friend relieved another of the horned persuasion of his penis.\"\n\n\"Huh,\" Tessa harrumphs. \"Well, that's a neat-o summary as those go, but lacking a few details.\"\n\nTessa turns to Lazarus. \"Lazarus\u2014\"\n\n\"Laz,\" he corrects, that vague smile hanging on his lips.\n\nTessa blinks. \"Laz, what in the hell is going on?\"\n\nThe corners of his lips tweak. \"What indeed?\"\n\nCute or not, Tessa sort of wants to wipe that insufferable smile off his face. Of course, the way she wants to do so is probably not ideal\u2014with her tongue.\n\n\"It's too noisy to hear anything,\" Tahlia grumbles from the front. \"And I don't know where we're going.\"\n\n\"Drive,\" Laz instructs.\n\nHer eyes shoot daggers into his through the mirror. \"You do not command a Lanarre female anything, horned one.\"\n\nLaz laughs. \"I haven't heard that in a coon's age.\"\n\nTessa's brows knot. \"Really? Fine. Speak loudly over the din.\"\n\nLaz exhales roughly, jerking his chin toward Tahlia. \"The demonic hold the Lanarre in a higher regard than most of the supernaturals. That is true.\"\n\nA smug smile twists Tahlia's lips, though her eyes remain on the gray ribbon of highway in front of them.\n\n\"However, every being who has a soul is culpable to our purposes.\"\n\nTessa hears only the greedy air grabbing at their vehicle.\n\nAfter a full minute has passed, Tahlia asks, \"Forgive me, why are we helping you?\"\n\n\"It is I who helped you.\" His eyes dodge to the mirror in challenge. \"Except for your fine work with the Alpha.\"\n\nTessa ignores Tahlia's bird-ate-the-canary grin. \"Explain.\" She folds her arms. This ought to be good.\n\n\"Praile is a high demon\u2014as am I.\"\n\nTessa's throat tightens at the D word. Really, there's no good connotation to that.\n\n\"You guys don't look the same,\" Tessa states the obvious. It's not as though she's tripped over a bunch of demonic in her life. What did Tramack say? That they weren't allowed in this realm or something like that.\n\n\"Praile is the best of us. He has all the traits of beauty among our realm.\"\n\nTahlia grunts loudly enough to be heard over the roar of noise.\n\nTessa sniffs. \"He's fugly.\"\n\nA small smile touches Laz's mouth then vanishes.\n\n\"I agree,\" Tahlia chimes in.\n\n\"Your earthly views on attractiveness are not important in our realm. In the demonic realm, dark-red skin, horns and teeth of black, a tail made for battle\u2014those are deemed beautiful.\"\n\n\"He's less beautiful now without a prick,\" Tessa comments dryly.\n\nTahlia's shout of laughter in the front are followed by a soft whoop.\n\nLaz suddenly grips Tessa's shoulders, causing her to yelp in surprise, and drags her against him.\n\nThe wheel jerks, and they nearly sail into the road through the hole in the side of the car.\n\n\"What are you doing to Tessa?\" Tahlia shouts.\n\nLaz ignores her, his eyes going black.\n\n\"You're scaring me!\" Tessa says, squirming.\n\n\"Good, for Praile will retaliate.\"\n\n\"He can't. He's fifty miles behind us.\"\n\nLaz releases her abruptly, shaking his head. \"He is demonic. Do you understand what that means?\"\n\nTessa was born in the 1960s. By werewolf standards, she's young for a female. She has studied some history, but demonic lore was never high on her list. \"No,\" she says at last.\n\n\"It means that Praile has a strength in this realm that he lacks, even as a high demon, in Hades. He can do much here.\"\n\n\"Why did you\u2014why didn't you stay behind?\" Tessa asks.\n\nLaz stares at her so long, Tessa thinks he might be ignoring her question. Then he replies, \"Because my Redemptive has been revealed. That is all I needed. All that was necessary for me to eschew my origin. To never have to be in hell again.\" He curls his long fingers around Tessa's nape, gently cupping the hot flesh around her skin, warming it.\n\n\"You're hot,\" she whispers.\n\nLaz nods, the small smile she's coming to like frosting his lips like cake icing. \"Yes, I am demonic. It is part of what and who I am.\"\n\n\"Why don't you look like that Praile nutjob?\"\n\nHis lips quirk. \"It is rare, but sometimes, an ugly demonic will be born. He will lack all the features of beauty among our kind.\" Laz gives a rolling shrug, dismissing the way he just put himself down.\n\nTahlia's eyes flick to Tessa's then back to the road.\n\n\"So you're ugly.\"\n\nLaz chuckles. \"Very.\"\n\nTessa frowns. \"Hmm. Okay, so aside from your grotesque looks...\" She looks up from beneath her eyelashes, and his face is solemn.\n\nShe hits him on the arm. \"Kidding!\"\n\nHis answering smile is tentative.\n\n\"God\u2014touchy!\"\n\nLaz flinches.\n\n\"Sorry.\" Tessa pauses for a second, thinking about what to say next. \"They really did a number on you.\"\n\nLaz scowls. \"They did nothing to me. It has always been the order of Hades. An ugly demonic who is a high demon must prove their worth in other ways. They do not have their looks to rely on.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" Tahlia says.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\nTessa's getting this might be bad. She asks anyway, \"So what have you had to do?\"\n\nHis eyes glitter, their color morphing from the pale grayish-blue to a smoky charcoal. \"Many unmentionable things.\"\n\nOh. \"What\u2014why are you different?\" Tessa asks instead of pressing him for all his demon deeds.\n\n\"I am not purely demonic.\" His words hold shame.\n\nOr maybe I'm reading things into that.\n\n\"Okkaaay.\"\n\nHis head jerks toward her, his eyes now black. \"I can heal others. I have a mixed heritage. Imagine being a ticking time bomb of mystery among those whose destinies are set as high demons with a fate as certain as the sunrise.\"\n\nPretty awkward. \"And this Redemptive craziness?\"\n\n\"Stop the vehicle,\" Laz says in a powerful voice.\n\n\"What about the demonic, Praile?\" Talia asks in a strained voice, her eyes bouncing between them and the road.\n\n\"Pull. Over.\"\n\nTahlia's mouth becomes a slash in her pretty face as she jerks the wheel. The car slams into the soft shoulder.\n\nShe shoves the gearshift into park and turns around, gripping the back of the driver's seat. \"You will show me respect, horned one, or I will become an eagle in the time you take your next breath and pluck the beak from your face.\"\n\nLaz leans forward, nearly nose to nose with Tahlia. \"And I shall suck your soul in one gulp, bird or no.\"\n\nThey glare at each other.\n\n\"Guys,\" Tessa interrupts their combative posturing. \"Totally not helping. And Praile is probably really cranked.\" Definitely. \"Let's get things discussed and find a safe place. And ditch this car while we're at it\u2014kind of conspicuous.\" What with the built-in AC for the lack of door.\n\nLaz exhales in disgust, dismissing Tahlia.\n\nGreat. That's all I need is those two at each other's throats. Tessa wonders how she acquired a rebellious whelp Lanarre and a demonic. How does this shit keep happening to me?\n\nLunatic life, that's how.\n\nLaz turns to face her, his intense eyes trapping her. \"You are my chosen one. The prophetical Redemptive.\"\n\nTessa represses the urge to smile. \"I think you mentioned that when we were sucking face.\"\n\n\"What!\" Tahlia shrieks in surprise.\n\nLaz lifts his chin. \"Silence, Lanarre.\"\n\n\"I will kill you,\" Tahlia huffs, her iolite-colored eyes flashing.\n\n\"Negative,\" Tessa says, shooting her a \"shut up\" glance.\n\n\"You will try,\" Laz murmurs.\n\nTessa grunts. \"You're sure immature for a big bad demonic.\"\n\nLaz leans forward, capturing her jaw in a hand that could crush her. Strength thrums through his capable fingers. \"I am more evil than anything you could dream up in the vastness of your thought process.\"\n\nTessa's blood runs hot, surfacing over her entire body and tingling insanely where his touch lingers. She fights rubbing against him like a cat with its favorite perch. \"If you're so evil,\" Tessa whispers, \"then why do you feel so good?\"\n\nLaz's forehead tips to meet hers, their breath mingling.\n\nHoly hot tamale. Cinnamon sweet and yum. Tessa's suddenly dizzy.\n\n\"That is the question you must answer. I know what the Redemptive means to me. I will stop at nothing to protect you. You are the most cherished discovery a high demon of mixed heritage can hope for.\"\n\n\"Wait a second.\" Tessa pulls away. And like releasing yourself from warm bathwater, it's a shock to the system, an unpleasant withdrawal.\n\nOh I'm in such deep shit.\n\n\"Are you saying\u2014what are you?\"\n\nLaz shakes his head. It's hard to think when his thumb is moving over the pulse in her throat like a feathery whip of fire.\n\n\"Tessa, I don't like this,\" Tahlia says, warily staring at Laz.\n\n\"Me, either,\" Tessa answers softly. But Laz did save her\u2014them. He deserves to say his piece.\n\nLaz lifts a muscular shoulder, and Tessa's breath catches at the recognition of how wonderfully put together he is.\n\nWait\u2014maybe all this bullshit \"pull\" is nothing more than heat. How long had it been since I was in heat anyway?\n\nLaz jerks her out of her thoughts. \"I do know that I am high demon. But the other species is anyone's guess. Demonic is always primary\u2014as angelic is.\"\n\n\"But you're a Healer?\" Tessa asks, trying to shake off the image of humping a certain red guy.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"What species can do that?\" Maybe they can employ simple deduction and figure out what brand of Heinz 57 Laz is.\n\n\"Many. Fey, Singers, some vampire\u2014mostly, they all can. Though pure demonic cannot.\"\n\n\"What do I have to be in order to be your Redemptive?\" Tessa asks, without bothering to censor her suspicious tone, though she can't deny there's a powerful connection.\n\n\"We would have to be of the same blood.\"\n\nGah. Tessa pulls a face. \"Ooh. Like related?\"\n\nLaz grins suddenly, and the light expression is so different than his typical somberness that Tessa automatically laughs. \"No, we are not of close blood\u2014like blood.\"\n\n\"I am pure Were,\" Tessa says matter-of-factly. That solves that.\n\nLaz shakes his head, his irises back to the soft pale hue Tessa connects with everything being okay. \"No supernatural is pure. Anciently, we were one species.\" He knits his hands to illustrate his point. \"Excepting the angelic and demonic, all the other supernaturals were as one. Then inexplicably, there was a fracture, and the species became separate. Now we have what we have.\"\n\n\"In your theory\u2014\"\n\n\"Fact.\"\n\nTessa groans. \"Anyway, if it were true, how do we figure out what I am.\"\n\n\"That Were knows what you are, and he wants you.\"\n\n\"Tramack wants me because he's psycho.\" Tessa rolls her eyes heavenward.\n\nTahlia snickers.\n\nLaz shoots her a long-suffering look. His attention shifts back to Tessa. \"He wants you because he somehow senses your specialness.\"\n\nTwo decades of chasing her does seem excessive. All those sleepless nights of wondering why he couldn't just find a passive little woman and have a litter of little Tramack's didn't escape her thought process.\n\n\"So what is our mutual blood?\"\n\n\"Does it matter?\" Laz asks.\n\nAt the end of the day, probably not.\n\n\"What do you get out of her being your Redemptive?\" Tahlia asks suspiciously.\n\nWhat if I don't want to be a Redemptive?\n\nLaz says, \"That's simple\u2014I don't go back to Hades. Ever. I am free.\"\n\nAh.\n\n# CHAPTER SIX\n\nDrek\n\n\"I smell her everywhere,\" Drek comments, lifting his palm off the forest floor. He brushes his hands off on the athletic pants so typical of what his kind wear during wolfen form.\n\nEven though shifting is simple for a Lanarre werewolf, there is nothing simple about maintaining the form. All forms require excessive energy without the full moon. For the common among his kind, a full change is only possible at the moon's zenith.\n\nBowen tips his head in the direction that they both scent the escaped Tahlia. Drek shouldn't allow hope of finding her. Scent-tracking doesn't mean anything except that she was alive when she moved through this area. By some miracle, Tahlia survived a massacre by an unhinged Alpha Were.\n\nIt's up to Drek to recover Tahlia and protect her from any future challenges.\n\n\"Drek,\" Bowen calls in a low voice.\n\n\"Wait\u2014\" Drek's brows come together. His ears are sensitive, and elongated in his wolfen form. They fold forward slightly, and he stills.\n\nFar off to the east, noises of conflict reach him\u2014a particular kind of conflict. Violence.\n\nHe lifts his nose to the sky. The moon rolls over the horizon as though called by him. It is waxing to full.\n\nHe notices Bowen is studying him, reading the subtle tells of his face. \"Drek, the moon's call is weak.\"\n\nHis eyes move to Bowen's, spinning silver in his head. \"Do not tell me what call I can or cannot answer. I am a Lanarre prince.\"\n\n\"Fine\u2014fuck it. It'll hurt like a bitch.\"\n\n\"It will. But I can find Tahlia faster if I become my beast.\"\n\n\"That means I have to shift.\"\n\n\"Do not.\"\n\n\"Right\u2014and be known as the shittiest guard that ever howled? I'm royal enough, Drek. I've got some of that righteous blueblood of the Lanarre, too.\"\n\nDrek looks away, throwing his shoulders back.\n\nHis fur ripples as he seizes the barest voice of the moon's call. It's a whisper.\n\nBut Drek is Lanarre, and that is enough.\n\nHis skull splits first. He can't fight the pain of a shift this far from the moon's siren, and his body slumps, knees hitting the soft undergrowth of pine needles, moss, and leaves.\n\nVaguely, he senses Bowen's shift to his right. The other Were's change will hurt even more, for he does not possess enough of the royal blood to shift without a high degree of pain.\n\nSaliva strings dangle from his mouth as a double row of canines sprout like knives inside his mouth. Drek's shriek of agony is a garbled wail. He falls to his side, his chest heaving. He whimpers as brutally sharp, short talons erupt from his legs.\n\nDew claws for vertical climbing, absent in mundane Lycan, push through the back of his legs. Powerful, with their own specially designed talons, they hurt like wisdom teeth breaking through in a human mouth.\n\nDrek doesn't feel wise; he aches to his very molecules.\n\nLastly, his ears and eyes explode like spoiled fruit. Drek lies in the soupy gore of his own change, blind and momentarily deaf, while his vision comes to him in shades of gray. Stages of clarity gradually form into a crystal-clear acuity of a full shift.\n\nDrek lies still. The seconds pile up to minutes. The noise of animals breathing reach his acute hearing.\n\nThe smell of a bird shitting a mile from his position causes his nose to stir. He lifts his muzzle off the richly scented, lichen-laden forest carpet and staggers to his feet.\n\nWith a mighty shake of his body, his fur fluffs out, shaking away the miserable remnants of his wolfen form.\n\nDrek raises his snout, testing the air and sighting Bowen.\n\nHe is sleeping in the muck of his change.\n\nDrek grins with the mouth of his wolf. He looks to the moon, somewhere between three quarters to full, and howls a singing praise of thanks.\n\nOne must always thank the source of one's power.\n\nEspecially a Lanarre.\n\n*\n\nDrek had to wait for Bowen to come to himself, then suffer through his complaint of the wretchedness of changing that far from the moon's fullness. Drek reminded him that they were lucky they had the ability.\n\nHe gave Drek a sour look.\n\nWhen that bit was finally accomplished, they trotted to where the scent of Tahlia burnt his nostrils. There is no scent beyond him while he is a werewolf.\n\n\"A terrible wonder\" some Lanarre call the absurdly refined olfactory senses of the royal Lycans.\n\nDrek's extreme case of nose makes him a supreme tracker. Many of the Lanarre believe his skills are wasted because he is a prince, and as such, nothing is required of him but the making of new little princes.\n\nDrek considers that role to be extremely tiresome.\n\nYet, he has told no one, though he believes Bowen suspects how much he would like to change the archaic laws that have been in place for over a thousand years.\n\nNew challenges hasten the need for responses that are different than the canned protocol that has become ineffective\u2014such as the arranged match between he and Tahlia, a young woman he has never met.\n\nIt is his secret, and his alone. But he has no wish to mate someone with whom he has no kinship. She is his chosen\u2014but not his beloved. He would free her from this obligation if he could, and he often wonders if she feels similarly.\n\nHe endeavored to speak with her, ascertain her thoughts. That was before.\n\nBefore the merciless killing of her guardians. Before her survival became paramount.\n\nNo. He will find Tahlia and secure her safety. Then, and only then, will he see to her assimilation into the Lanarre.\n\nOf course, that presumption is met with a dozen thoughts of what that could mean to her.\n\nTahlia might become an outcast if the others believe he rejected her because of some perceived imperfection.\n\nDrek is sure that she is perfect. Lanarre royalty have been deliberately bred to personify the perfect physical characteristics of the Lycan.\n\nHe's also sure that she is barely out of whelphood and not perfect for him. Tahlia is a good choice as a mate because she is of pure royal blood, as pure as his own.\n\nAnd she is a wereshifter\u2014a rare trait. That very thing undoubtedly saved her from the murderous, crazed Alpha whose scent he now owns.\n\nThe royal families of all the Lanarre families have been aligned for hundreds of years. It's time to change that and give males and females of royal blood a chance to choose whomever they want.\n\n\"Are you going to be okay?\" Bowen growls. Though his vocals are a series of yips and soft barks to those who are not Were, for Drek, it is as refined as his human speech.\n\nDrek is able to hear Bowen's sarcasm a mile away, and he glares at his trusted guard. His return barks are also soft, nearly inaudible.\n\n\"I'm in my head, Bowen.\"\n\n\"I see that.\"\n\nDrek would love to seek his council. If there were retribution for his beliefs, which are not in keeping with Lanarre law, it is better that Bowen doesn't know them. Drek can admit that Bowen is more friend than guard. So he will shoulder the burden alone.\n\nDrek could have sent an entire contingent to track Tahlia when she did not arrive at the preordained time. But what kind of prince would I be if I'm unwilling to find my own chosen? Drek has always felt strongly that his role as prince requires him to lead by example. Strong leadership through acts are more powerful than words. Every time.\n\nHe will retrieve the sacred chosen\u2014his chosen\u2014and work out his internal struggles from there. Her safety is paramount.\n\nBowen yips, and Drek turns toward where his large snout points.\n\nDrek knows he cannot truly frown in this form, but he does frown.\n\nThey've come to an open glade. A large late-nineteenth-century manse rises from a knoll like a jewel of architecture. To the northerly position sits a huge red barn, though Drek doubts livestock have graced the inside of the structure in a long time, if ever. It does not scent of animals in the last fifty years.\n\nIn human form, Drek would have laughed at the expression Bowen's wolf gives. But humor is in short supply. Bowen swings his massive face toward the structures and gives a soft yip. His eyes rotate so quickly, they're spinning coins of molten silver. His coat is gray, like Drek's, but Drek retains the inky tips of royalty.\n\nThe two move cautiously closer.\n\nThey've entered a loud ruckus\u2014the same one he'd heard some miles back, before they changed. Drek scents Bowen's intent, and with a snuffle of acquiescence, they trot with well-trained unity, seamlessly parting and running in mirrored semi-circles around where a horned one lies writhing in the dirt.\n\nAnother is beside him.\n\nAn Alpha.\n\nDrek scents deeply of him, smelling many things, but not the scent he most wishes for. It's both a disappointment and a relief. It would not end well for this Alpha if he had smelled of Tahlia.\n\nThe fragrance that rises most quickly is the foreign Alpha's injury, but underneath that, the certain stirrings of insanity lurk like rancid liquid from garbage gone bad.\n\nBowen gives Drek uneasy eyes from across the yard, where he is positioned in the shadow of the barn. Insanity is a real problem with older Alpha's. There is usually a catalyst for the origin, but once it begins, it can spiral into true lunacy.\n\nTheir spinning orbs regard each other.\n\nWhat has happened here? They seem to silently ask each other.\n\nThe demonic holds his cock in an attempt to stem the flow of inky blood that pours forth.\n\nDrek's tongue hangs from his mouth. The injury is fitting for one of that kind. His keen eyes shift to the Were on the ground, intestines littering the sparse gravel driveway.\n\nDeep grooves speak of a large vehicle leaving in haste\u2014recently, by the scent.\n\nThe smell of injury, death, and fear permeate the area. And Tahlia's scent is mingled throughout.\n\nSomeone will answer for this.\n\nDrek lowers his head, growling softly. The demonic and Were raise their heads, spotting him. They do not see Bowen.\n\nDrek leaps, closing the distance.\n\n# CHAPTER SEVEN\n\nJulia\n\nJulia believes that fear about her first time\u2014anxiety over the unknown\u2014would otherwise have been present.\n\nBut with Scott, it's not.\n\nThe soul-meld is a drug. Feelings of ease coat her body in languid calmness, and Julia submits to the ocean of instinct that permeates every cell of her body.\n\nScott lies beside her, trailing his fingers lightly over the slope of her naked side. His fingertips hesitate where her waist narrows to a valley, then he moves on, his fingers barely skating the hill of her hip.\n\nHis fingers spread on the bone, warming her to the core.\n\n\"Do you feel forced?\" Scott asks softly, his normal intensity dialed down.\n\n\"No,\" she replies quietly, looking away. Her hair sweeps forward, partially blocking her view.\n\nScott tucks the wayward strands behind her ear, tilting her face to his with a finger. \"Don't, Julia.\"\n\nHer eyes move back to his. She studies the deep-chocolate irises. Steady, commanding, they are filled with desire.\n\n\"Don't what?\" she whispers, but she knows. She can feel it through their connection, grown taunt with the coming event\u2014the solidification of what they were always meant to be.\n\n\"Think,\" he whispers and softly kisses the tip of her nose.\n\nA sigh slides out of Julia, loosening that last bit of tension. \"I haven't\u2014God, I sound so stupid.\"\n\nScott presses his finger to her lips. \"I know. It's what all the damn fuss has been about. The virginity thing.\"\n\nJulia nods, her cheeks burning. \"I've been really intimate before.\"\n\nScott's dark brows lock together.\n\nJulia smooths them with a finger. \"I'm sure there's been other women for you Scott, so get over yourself.\"\n\nHis smile is tight. \"Now that I have you, there certainly wouldn't have been. I'm not a monk. But for you, I will be everything you need.\"\n\nJulia holds her lip between her teeth as his words reverberate to her toes. So many emotions riot inside her: inadequacy, guilt, and excitement.\n\n\"Really?\" she asks. The fact that she's married to another man, though he's gone, doesn't stop how important their coming together is.\n\nScott nods solemnly. He grabs her hand and unfolds it over his chest.\n\nTheir heartbeats sync.\n\n\"Feel that?\" he asks.\n\nShe doesn't think she'll ever get tired of their bodies' recognition of the other.\n\nHe must see the agreement on her face and sense it at the soul level, because that's how they're bound.\n\n\"This isn't just sex\u2014though that's going to be mind-blowing.\"\n\nJulia snorts softly. \"Sort of arrogant.\"\n\nHe smiles, but then his eyes grow serious, beautiful brown darkening to jet black. \"Not at all. It's about your protection. The Combatant in me can't stop thinking about that. The man loves you, the Singer wants you at his side, and the Combatant wants you to live.\"\n\nPretty tall order. \"What about the demon spore?\" Julia asks.\n\nScott nods. \"What we do next can't hurt. Maybe our union will wipe that fucker out.\" His teeth clench.\n\n\"Maybe,\" Julia replies wistfully.\n\nHe tugs at her hand, his dark gaze searching her eyes, forcing her to believe his words through sheer determination, though she feels the echo of it in their emotional tether. \"Definitely. Believe, Julia. Reach for the stars, and maybe\u2014just maybe\u2014you'll touch them.\"\n\nShe closes her eyes, contemplating hope.\n\nWhen Julia feels the soft press of his lips on hers, she yields to his hold. Scott's a huge man, and he uses every solid hard inch of himself to wrap around her.\n\nJulia feels protected\u2014and cherished.\n\nThe room feels like a womb of silence. The battle she imagines happening above them fades, and memories of Jason's sacrifice lessen. Julia commits to the inevitable\u2014her destiny.\n\n*\n\nScott\n\nScott stares down at Julia. Golden-red hair scatters like a glittering fan across the stiff pillow of their bed. Large whiskey-colored eyes stare up at him while her heart floods a full gaze. Scott sees it all in those depths. Trust. Hope. Desire for him.\n\nShe's finally mine.\n\nScott wraps his arms around her and holds her tightly, mindful of how tiny and fragile she feels within his embrace.\n\nThey've had every awkward conversation possible. Caldwell's death, the unlucky bastard. Her virginity. The possibility of that fucking demonic doing God knows what above. The spore that remains from the wound she received in Region Two.\n\nBut the most important thing is making their bond permanent. Unbreakable.\n\nAnd like he told her, the Combatant part of his dual nature can't relax until that's accomplished. The male inside him has wanted her from the instant their hands accidentally brushed, and he was helplessly swept into the tide of what they were meant to be for each other, suffering through the torture of Caldwell's indecision. The irony of the soul-meld isn't lost on Scott. He was the poorest candidate of anyone in this realm to have had this bestowed on him. He's more than rough around the edges. Julia's compassionate and soft.\n\nShe chases Scott's thoughts with her words.\n\n\"I'm ready.\"\n\nHe believes her. The conviction stands in their shining connection and the trust in her eyes.\n\nScott tucks his palms underneath her, arranging Julia more solidly beneath him, and gently pushes her long hair out from beneath her body. \"There,\" he says.\n\nA deep-pink blush spreads across her face as he surveys every bit of her naked body. She's breathtaking\u2014frail yet strong, gorgeous yet unaware of her beauty. It's an intoxicating mix.\n\nAnd there's no hiding what the sight of Julia does to him\u2014her proximity.\n\n\"You're just looking,\" she comments shyly.\n\nScott gives a slow, considering nod. \"Let me. I'm not going to just pounce on you.\"\n\nThe color on her cheekbones deepens.\n\nHe gives her a quick kiss, feathering his thumb over the heated skin of her face. \"I will pounce if you say the word.\" He arches his eyebrows, feeling his smirk edging his lips.\n\nJulia smacks his bicep, and her breasts jiggle deliciously. Scott hardens painfully and cages her in tightly, their chests mashed together.\n\nJulia's heart thunders against his. \"No pouncing,\" she manages. Then blows him away with, \"But I want you sooner rather than later.\"\n\nHis surprise must show because she laughs.\n\nHe eats the sound with his mouth, tasting her with his tongue. Softly, they explore each other's mouths, and his hold loosens enough to let his hands rove her body.\n\nShe's so small but curved in all the right places. He nuzzles at her neck, burying his nose into the sweet spot between her ear and collarbone. Her soft sigh is better than all the yeses in the world.\n\nScott moves lower. He hovers above her while moving backward as he plants soft kisses on her silky skin. When Scott reaches her breast, he slowly massages the pliant flesh, forcing the soft pink nipple up. The swollen bud hardens as he watches.\n\nHis eyes meet hers. Julia's face is flushed, her eyelids hood, lips parted. Her breathing is heavy and deep.\n\nThis is where he wants his soul-meld: breathless with anticipation.\n\nScott is acutely aware of his painful dick and his need to pleasure Julia as he lowers his head, softly bathing her nipple with his tongue. Taking the small nub into his mouth, he swirls his tongue around the base, and it hardens more. Scott nips and sucks at her, and Julia arches against him, gripping his shoulders.\n\n\"Scott,\" she moans.\n\nHe palms her other breast.\n\nShe pants, and it's music to his ears.\n\nHe rolls his face between her breasts, covering the left mound completely. \"Yes?\" he says in a low voice, continuing to kiss the side of her breast.\n\n\"I like it.\"\n\nHe smiles to himself. \"I know.\" He pushes the mounds together and moves between the hills of her breasts, kissing, sucking, and lightly biting her nipples.\n\n\"Please,\" Julia says in a thready voice.\n\nNot yet. \"Let me take my time. We've waited long enough, my queen. A few more minutes won't matter.\"\n\nHer eyes widen, but the look of surprise fades and is replaced with lust when his hands trail from her breasts and float over her flat stomach to part her thighs. His eyes never leave hers, gaging her reaction.\n\nJulia tenses.\n\nScott stills.\n\nShe bites her lip, but releases it with a pop when his hand covers her mound.\n\nThe tip of his thumb sinks between her outer folds. She's so wet,\n\nScott groans involuntarily, his cock jumping in anticipation. Wait. It's her first time, the circumstances suck, and she's counting on you.\n\nHis lips turn up. No pressure.\n\nHe throbs, and with a rough exhale of self-temperance, he uses her wetness, flicking the slick little hood back and skimming his short nail over her clit.\n\n\"Ah!\" she groans loudly. \"That feels so good, Scott. Don't stop...\"\n\n\"Not planning on it.\"\n\nHer fingers grab his hair when his face is inches away from a place he's wanted to be for over a year. Julia's all-woman\u2014sweet, salty, and perfect.\n\nHis.\n\n\"I don't know\u2014\" she says in an uncertain voice, her fingertips faltering on his head.\n\n\"I do.\" Scott buries his face between her slick folds, his thumb keeping the rhythm on the little bundle of nerves.\n\nJulia throws her head back, sounding as though she's hyperventilating.\n\nScott is intense. He's no different when it comes to sex. And this is his soul-meld.\n\nHer emotions wash over him in a flood. Her arousal is like his own, but different\u2014and varied. Scott senses what she likes and does that, avoiding whatever makes her uncomfortable. He's surprised by how much she likes him to take charge. He grips the globes of her ass, yanking her hips against his seeking lips and tongue.\n\nJulia groans loudly, widening her legs to give him better access.\n\nHe reads the signals of her body like a book, digging deeper, tonguing her entrance as he presses hard at the center of her clit.\n\nJulia gasps, her hands seizing his hair painfully.\n\nScott rolls his gaze to hers. Her eyes are frantic, tits swollen, and legs spread. The beautiful pink folds of her are at his mouth while his forearm holds her hips pinned against his seeking mouth. He gives one deep press of his thumb in her hot, pulsating flesh.\n\nJulia shatters, throwing her head backward. Her walls grab and release his tongue as he keeps the penetration steady. When she finally comes down, Scott is painfully erect. He breathes through the urge to take her hard, as he wants to.\n\nHe felt her barrier. Scott doesn't fool himself; he might have given her a rockin' orgasm, but the first time will hurt.\n\nScott works his way back up her body, gently supporting his weight.\n\nHe fits his cock between her legs, and she pulses between them as he throbs for entry.\n\n\"Scott, that was amazing.\"\n\nHe can hardly nod, he wants her so bad. He needs her.\n\nHer expression changes when she senses the agony of his control.\n\nJulia spreads her legs wider, and his prick is like a homing device, slipping into her entrance as though it was always made to be there.\n\nScott dips his head, shuddering against the slick smooth velvet. She's so tight. Even with lust riding him, he doesn't want to hurt her. He shakes with the sensation.\n\nHe must\u2014to finish what they've started.\n\nHer eyes seek his, and he fights to not look away. \"It's okay. I know it'll hurt.\"\n\n\"Julia,\" Scott presses his forehead against her much smaller one. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\n\"I know.\" Her eyes urge him on.\n\nScott presses forward in a hard stroke, her newness fighting his length and his girth.\n\nJulia shouts in shock. Her expression can't mask the pain. \"Hurts,\" she hisses between pants.\n\nScott nods, slowly removing his length.\n\nJulia stares at him, adjusting her hips. She spread her legs wider, trusting him.\n\nScott gently rocks inside again.\n\nGod she's tight. His mouth parts as his efforts in the last year to keep this from happening through all the upheaval catch up to him. He's frantic to own every inch of her.\n\n\"Yes,\" she whispers, putting her hands on his ass.\n\nScott stills, throbbing and hard. He wants to pump with abandon. But through the meld, he can feel her soreness. Scott also feels her desire.\n\nShe clenches her fingers on his ass and pushes her hips up.\n\nTake me, she sings through their connection, through their blood.\n\nScott sucks a ragged inhale, plunging again.\n\nJulia meets him with a small pant of pain laced with desire.\n\nThey lock gazes. Cradling her face with his hands, Scott begins to rock inside over and over. She meets his every thrust. Gradually, her pain eases, and he feels her excitement.\n\n\"Close,\" Julia breathes against his neck, her pussy makes a single tight fist around him, and Scott's head tips back in frozen ecstasy.\n\nHe releases inside her, pouring his seed, his love, and his soul into her depths.\n\nJulia's cries of pleasure are salve to his battered nerves.\n\nThe soul-meld tightens like a perfect knot, and their eyes meet, bodies joined.\n\n\"What's happening?\" she whispers, locked against him, their bodies in perfect synchronicity.\n\nThen the tingling begins, sweeping over them both like a live wire. Lights flash, and Scott groans as a second release pours out of him and Julia gasps in surprise as her release follows his.\n\nScott feels true fear\u2014his and Julia's\u2014co-mingled in a new way. On the heels of the best sex of his life, Scott blacks out.\n\n# CHAPTER EIGHT\n\nAdi\n\nAdi can't believe she can be in this much pain and still be live.\n\nNope. She's going for it.\n\nThat fucker Slash!\n\nHer tears burn when they meet the healing wounds of her face. Males suck.\n\nHer eyes close for a second. How could those Were beat her and bite her boob?\n\nHow could Slash\u2014how could they be what they were, and he just shove her away like a regret?\n\nAdi thrashes through the woods, uncaring about the limbs and small branches snapping back. She takes the abuse without flinching or protecting herself.\n\nShe could give less than a damn.\n\nAdi wanted Slash and he crushed her spirit. That jerkoff Tramack was all about getting to poor Tessa. He wouldn't have returned to give them another beat down.\n\nAdi slows, finally becoming aware of something other than her bull-in -a-china-closet march through the woods.\n\nA high-pitched keening reaches her ears.\n\nShe looks behind her. Slash is back there, legs not working.\n\nGet the fuck out, he told her.\n\nRight. Adi sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, gnawing the soft flesh thoughtfully. She turns. Maybe I'll just go back.\n\nThe memory of Slash's eyes hating on her halts her in her tracks.\n\nNo. He didn't want me.\n\nThe keening grows louder. Adi strains toward the sound. What on earth is that? She moves cautiously to the edge of the forest and pushes the last of the limbs aside, gathering her ragged clothes against herself.\n\nA red guy is clutching his dick, howling.\n\nWell, that's unexpected. A rash little giggle slips out. She's never heard the sounds he makes before. The high-pitched agony isn't natural. Of course, losing your dick might kick that right along.\n\nAdi doesn't recognize him. But she recognizes the female Were in front of him\u2014the new chick, Tessa.\n\nThe guy does a slow revolution, still clutching his package.\n\nHer keen eyesight takes in something that goes plop on the ground.\n\nOh my, is that his\u2014?\n\nAdi covers her mouth to stifle more inappropriate laughter. And here, I thought the day couldn't be salvaged.\n\nAdi lets the branches fall back. Shit has gone down. She is not getting involved in whatever this new shit storm is. Though the compulsion to keep looking is like fire ants crawling over her skin, Adi runs along the small corridor of woods that almost touch the mansion. She'll get her stuff and make her way back to the Northwestern. Lawrence and Manny are dead. Her brother Joseph is also gone.\n\nShe's a nobody. Nobody's sister. Nobody's pack member. Nobody's mate.\n\nAdi leans against the last tree. It's branches reach toward the edge of the huge Victorian. She angrily brushes tears off her sore face.\n\nI can go back to the Northwestern. Everyone who was important is gone. And the worst male, Tony, is done being him.\n\nNo one to fear. Nothing to lose. Adi turns around in the direction where Slash was.\n\nAnd no one to keep me here.\n\n*\n\nSlash\n\n\"This sucks,\" Slash comments dryly.\n\n\"Yeah. Accept the help. By the time we get back to the mansion, we can get you patched up better. That healer, Cynthia, she can fix ya.\"\n\nSlash has no feeling in his lower back and upper thighs. Each minute crawls by as Truman walks him back toward the Victorian. They have to stop every few minutes because Truman's basically dragging him.\n\n\"Look at that,\" Truman says.\n\nSlash spots Tramack and several Were swimming in their own blood one hundred yards or so from their position.\n\nGood. Slash finds the energy to smile.\n\nHe has trouble concentrating when the scent of his female is thick in his nose.\n\nBut the enemy is in sight, and she is not. The knot of anxiousness in his chest loosens. It looks as though his scheme to assure her safety was successful. Slash's eyes narrow. \"That's a demonic.\"\n\nTruman shakes his head. \"It's something. I didn't know what they were until that battle by Region Two.\"\n\nSlash says, \"I forget you were changed late.\"\n\nTruman nods absently. \"Yup. Really not up to speed on the different species. However\u2014\" His chuckles abruptly. \"There's definitely no shortage. Vamps, fey, shifters galore. Demonic, and can't forget our hosts, Blood Singers.\"\n\nSpeaking of which, the Singers are closing in around Tramack, who lies in a steaming pile of his own guts.\n\nPerfect.\n\nSlash releases a tense breath.\n\nAdi is safe.\n\nThe demonic appears to be searching the ground for something of vital importance. Slash throws back his head and laughs when the demonic finds what he was looking for.\n\n\"Ouch,\" Truman mutters.\n\nSlash's mouth twists. \"Losing your cock would be a grievous problem, my friend.\"\n\nTruman gives him a narrow look. \"Do we have time for comedy?\"\n\nAmusement is in short supply, and Slash's day has been so dark, he can only reply, \"Always.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh. What about your girl?\"\n\n\"Long gone, hopefully in the opposite direction.\" That's Slash's most fervent wish. He can track her easily once he's on the mend.\n\n\"You're not concerned?\" Truman pulls a face of disbelief.\n\n\"More than I can say.\" Slash smacks his upper thigh, not feeling the blow. \"But there's nothing that can be done. I can't protect her in the state I'm in.\" His voice shakes with rage. \"And I can't tear the beating heart out of the male who hurt her.\"\n\nTheir eyes land on Tramack.\n\nSeveral Singers\u2014obviously not of angelic blood\u2014haul the demonic up by the armpits as he makes pathetic sounds of injury. Slash spies a twisted car door covered in blood at his feet. Odd.\n\nSlash sneers. \"We need to get over there and tell them what's happening.\"\n\n\"What's happening is Julia, Scott and Victor are unaccounted for, and that dog will say he was after his rightful mate. The Singers won't get embroiled in that little mess,\" Truman says.\n\n\"What?\" Slash roars, tearing away from Truman and promptly falling on his ass.\n\nAnother set of Singers swoop in and latch on to Tramack as he looks up from the ground.\n\n\"Maybe they'll toss those lovebirds into the same cell?\" Truman muses.\n\n\"Doubt it.\"\n\nSlash turns in Truman's direction. \"Where is the Rare One and her soul-meld?\"\n\nHis eyes find Tramack again as he waits for Truman's reply. Slash would kill him twice if he could walk. To hell with the ramifications of his packmaster status.\n\nTruman shrugs. \"They were here\u2014then gone.\"\n\nSlash frowns. He knows Julia, a little. Even though she's a Singer and not a female of his kind, she does not impress him as a flighty female. His knowledge of their kind is limited.\n\nA scream from the direction of the mansion scatters his thoughts. Slash's nose tells him it's not Adrianna. Nonetheless, adrenaline surges through his system.\n\n\"Come on, stubborn Red.\" Truman hauls him to his feet, and tossing him on his back, he melts to wolfen underneath Slash, racing to the mansion.\n\n*\n\nThey burst through the doors, and Truman lets go of Slash.\n\nSlash slides off his broad back, hitting the door jamb and clutching the deeply profiled wood trim.\n\nHis nostrils flare, hitting on a scent. The only scent.\n\nAdrianna was here.\n\nThe knowledge of her absence affects him deeply, and his wolf howls to be within her presence. His wolf doesn't think; he only feels. And right now, he's kicking Slash's mental ass for the blow-off he gave his mate.\n\nIt's for her own good, he reprimands the beast inside.\n\nStill, Slash feels sick that she's gone\u2014and unprotected.\n\nYou're best isn't good enough, Slash.\n\nCynthia, the Singer and part-Were rushes into the parlor. She slips and falls on her butt with a yelp.\n\nTruman is suddenly there. He grabs her arm. \"What?\" he bellows in her face.\n\nShe's pale, her face pinched, void of any real emotion, except one.\n\nSlash's nostrils lift.\n\nHer fear rolls over him like a wave to shore.\n\n\"Truman,\" Slash cautions in a low voice. \"The female isn't in her right mind.\"\n\nTruman scowls at Slash.\n\nSlash sweeps a palm toward her feet. They're slick with blood.\n\nTruman's eyes bug then go hard and flat. His fists clench.\n\nSlash realizes the expression is his \"thinking cap\" look, the same one he probably wore when he was a cop.\n\nHe picks up a shaking Cynthia and brings her to Slash.\n\nHer green eyes flutter, rolling up into her head. \"Jason,\" she manages, before passing out in Slash's arms.\n\n\"Wait!\" Slash barks at Truman. He whirls.\n\n\"I can't defend her!\"\n\nSharp lines of determination settle into Truman's face. \"And I don't know what's down that hall that scared the bejesus outta her.\" He stabs a thumb at his chest.\n\nMoon.\n\n\"Fine,\" Slash hisses. \"Hurry up. My mate is somewhere, and a crazy Alpha from the Western is making up whatever tale he wants while I can't feel my fucking back.\"\n\nTruman and Slash lock eyes. \"Okay, hang tight.\"\n\nHe doesn't have to tell Slash to protect Cynthia. Slash gets it, however, in his semi-paralyzed state he's a weak choice. But like Truman said, he has to see what the danger is. Slash's role as a male Were has never been confusing to him. That there are males who would abuse their precious females\u2014or any female, for that matter\u2014confounds Slash. It also makes him deeply angry.\n\nAnd rage is always close to him, waiting. Slash is hardwired that way.\n\nCynthia's sleep is unnatural. Her face looks unanimated rather than peaceful in his lap.\n\nThe time rolls out. Though only ten minutes have passed since Truman went to inspect what new horrors lay down the hall, it feels like a thousand years. Each step Adrianna takes from his side is a small knife in his heart. His only consolation is that Tramack is here, and she is putting distance between herself and the Were who harmed her. Slash suddenly smells Cynthia's wakefulness and glances down.\n\n\"I couldn't fix it,\" Cynthia whispers.\n\n\"Fix what?\" Slash asks softly, as though speaking to a child.\n\n\"Jason.\"\n\nSlash stiffens, slapping a palm on the floor and lifting them both upright.\n\nCynthia sits up, notices she's on his lap, and gingerly climbs off.\n\n\"Don't leave,\" he says, remembering Truman's words.\n\nShe wipes a tear from her face. \"No,\" she breathes out in a pained gasp.\n\n\"What's wrong with Jason?\"\n\n\"Something...\" Cynthia covers her face with her hands. \"Something killed him.\"\n\nIf he hadn't been Were, he would not have heard that last.\n\nSlash flares his nostrils. The stench of death reaches him easily. Beneath that, he smells blood and brain matter.\n\nSlash hates to hear about the death of a solid Were. While he didn't really know Jason Caldwell, he did know Jason was volatile, but not mean-spirited.\n\nThis would not bode well\u2014losing Jason so closely with the loss of Zeke. A bad trend had begun.\n\nJason had been threatened on many occasions to leave or force an ultimatum on the Rare One.\n\nSlash understands. He could never share Adrianna. However, Were are a different species from the Singers. Apparently, Caldwell did not feel the same. Maybe he was human for too long. Maybe he was too much Were. In death, it no longer matters.\n\nGently, Slash asks, \"What killed him, Cynthia?\" It's never who in their world.\n\nShaky hands fall to her jean-encased thighs. \"I don't know, but whatever it was, I couldn't heal him. There was no chance. None.\"\n\nSlash isn't a soft, comforting male. But her needs are not complicated. Even an idiot Were like him, one who callously gets rid of his mate, can show mercy. \"Not your fault,\" Slash manages to murmur. \"Couldn't have saved him.\"\n\nShe nods absently, as though she's merely placating him.\n\nTruman jogs into the room, sliding to a stop in front of them. \"You know?\" he asks, looking between them and ascertaining that Cynthia must have conveyed the details of Jason's death.\n\nSlash confirms anyway. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"I don't know what bashed his brains in, but it's nothing I've seen in my short acquaintance with the supernatural world.\"\n\nCynthia flinches at his uncaring rundown of events. \"Who cares, really?\" Cynthia flips a palm over helplessly. \"Something killed Jason. And Julia's not here. Neither is Scott or Victor.\" A bubble of snot grows from her nostril as a tear rolls aimlessly down her face. \"I mean, if Jason's dead, where the hell is Jules? Where the hell am I?\" She dumps her face into her hands.\n\nTruman walks over to her, holding out his hand. She shakes her head, denying whatever a hard Were like Truman can offer. Slash thinks he was a hard human before the change, too. \"Nope, you're sticking with me like glue, girl. Stand up and wipe that face. We're finding out what the hell is going on\u2014like yesterday.\"\n\n\"What about?\" she asks as body-wracking sobs break over her. She waves her hand toward the hall where Jason's body presumably lies.\n\nTruman gathers her against him. Her body so small inside his arms.\n\nAdrianna is even smaller inside mine.\n\n\"We'll take care of him the right way, Cyn.\"\n\nShe nods against his shirt, fisting the material as sadness drenches the fabric.\n\nSlash stares out the window, wondering how soon he will be able to leave this place and right what went so terribly wrong.\n\n# CHAPTER NINE\n\nTessa\n\nTessa flops back against the seat. \"Listen, Laz...\" she rolls her face to the right, looking at him. Beyond that are the deep woods.\n\n\"We can go,\" he says to Tahlia.\n\nShe slaps the steering wheel. \"Where?\" Tahlia rotates to face them, clutching the driver's seat. \"I have been driving for two hours. We are at a crossroads. If we keep going north, we'll be in Canada.\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Tessa says, suppressing a shudder. \"Don't need foreign heat.\"\n\n\"It's hot enough in America,\" Tahlia agrees.\n\n\"You are Lanarre. Where is the nearest pack?\" Laz asks.\n\nTahlia shakes her head vigorously. \"I cannot return to my own pack in the Redwoods of California. It's\u2014the shame would be something I couldn't stand.\"\n\nLaz stares at her and Tessa asks, \"What do you mean, Tahlia?\"\n\nHer eyes fill with tears. Tessa just came to terms with the fact that Tahlia's a baby in Lycan years, and she's been driving like a bat out of hell for two hours while they fought their way down the highway with three quarters of a car.\n\n\"As a Lanarre princess,\" she says, quickly looking to the two of them as though they would laugh at her. They don't. \"I was on my way to meet Drek, my chosen. That entire plan was derailed when Tony Laurent slaughtered my guardians. Now there is another bad force in play, and I must run. It is Drek's pack that I must go to.\" She covers her face with her hands. \"I don't know why I didn't think of this before. Eventually, Drek will return when he cannot locate me. Then we can be mated.\"\n\n\"Wait a sec,\" Tessa begins with slow deliberation. \"I thought you weren't sure about this Drek guy?\"\n\nTahlia's hands shake a little as she lowers them to her lap. \"I'm not, but there is protection within the borders of the Lanarre. It's there that I won't have to fight to remain alive. I am skilled, but am only one.\"\n\nSmall point.\n\nLaz has been silent until then. \"The Lanarre will kill me,\" he states simply.\n\nTessa fingers convulse on the seat cushion. \"And what's their policy on rogue female alphas?\"\n\nTahlia's silence is answer.\n\n\"Shit.\" Tessa slumps in her seat, folding her arms, thinking about the possibility of her heat cropping up. \"Can't catch a break,\" she mutters.\n\nLaz brushes a stray hair over her shoulder that's come undone from the single plait down her back. \"Perhaps the Lanarre princess, betrothed to be mated to their prince, holds sway.\" His pale-blond eyebrow rises, and his eyes level on Tahlia.\n\nShe shakes her head. \"I can't guarantee anything, because they have never scented me. They will scent that I am Lanarre. But the protocol for a betrothal mating is strict. Only Drek and his personal guard know my scent.\"\n\n\"Oh, this is special sauce here.\"\n\nThey look at Tessa.\n\nShe slumps farther, attempting to become one with the seat. \"So we head to Drek's Lanarre stomping grounds\u2014\"\n\nTahlia interrupts, \"At the edge of the Hoh Rain Forest.\"\n\nLaz cringes. \"I am familiar with the area. Very wet.\"\n\nTessa's eyebrow hikes. \"Duh.\"\n\nFaster than Tessa can track, Laz lifts her and seats her on his lap. His nose buries at her throat, and she makes an inarticulate sound. It speaks of deep satisfaction. Damn it all.\n\nLaz tenses beneath her.\n\nTessa opens her eyes to find a talon buried against his insta-erection. Her eyes widen on Tahlia.\n\n\"We can sit here at the side of the road, drawing attention to our deplorable vehicle and its strange occupants, or we can take our chances with the Lanarre of the Hoh Rain Forest.\"\n\nLaz lets out a measured breath, his eyes narrowing at Tahlia, arms still locked around Tessa. \"She is my Redemptive. Tessa will be my freedom from hell, Lanarre. Your talon beside my prick won't change anything. Except to incite my rage.\"\n\n\"Incite away,\" Tessa says, glaring at Laz. \"I'm so glad I'm your one- way ticket to above-ground living. But I don't know if I'm up for the job.\"\n\n\"You must be \u02bbup for the job' and accept my claim as my Redemptive.\"\n\nOr what? Her desire-laden brain attempts to think.\n\nHis thumb presses above her clit, and she groans.\n\nLaz groans, too\u2014but in pain.\n\nI've clearly lost my marbles.\n\n\"Do you want to mate with a horned one, Tessa?\" Tahlia asks with clear disdain, her talon having sliced through Laz's stiff denim jeans.\n\nTessa drowns in the treacherous seas of his eyes. \"I don't know,\" she finally whispers. Too much has gone unexplained and Tessa finds she can't think when Laz touches her.\n\n\"Then moon help you,\" Tahlia replies with disgust, removing her talon. \"I can't save you from yourself.\"\n\nWho can?\n\nTahlia starts the engine again and turns west, to travel the Hood Canal Bridge, straight for the Olympic Peninsula. Beyond that is the den of the Lanarre.\n\n*\n\nTessa wakes with a start, completely disoriented.\n\nThey've stopped.\n\nShe pulls away from the damp drool spot she's made on Laz's lap.\n\nOh Moon, terrible.\n\nShe sits up, and his arms slide from around her body. His gaze finds her, and for the first time, Tessa thinks about bad breath, hair, and body odor.\n\nHe scoops her against him, scenting of her deeply. \"You are part of me.\"\n\nShe says something in her daze of wakefulness, then his hands jerk her hips onto his lap. Again.\n\nTheir position leaves little guesswork to the equation.\n\nLaz wants her.\n\n\"Where's Tahlia?\" Tessa manages. But her hips grind down against his erection. Her shame isn't enough to stop her.\n\nGotta be heat. Apparently, when it comes to the demonic beneath her, nothing matters.\n\n\"We're in Port Angeles,\" Laz says, spreading his palms at her lower back and pressing her deeper against his hardness.\n\nTessa has to pay attention to their surroundings. What if the Were are after her again?\n\nTramack will heal anything, even his own evisceration.\n\nBut right now, Laz is doing his best to make a hole through their jeans. \"Laz,\" Tessa gasps.\n\nHe licks her throat, and she cries out. \"Stop.\"\n\n\"Your body says yes, Tessa.\"\n\nHell yes it does. \"Maybe I'm in heat,\" she says without thinking.\n\n\"So much the better, my Redemptive.\"\n\nBad, Tessa. Very bad.\n\nTahlia jumps into the truck. \"What?\" she yells.\n\nBut Tessa barely hears it through the fog.\n\n\"We're at Walmart.\"\n\nTessa opens her eyes and really looks around while Laz dips between her breasts, licking and kissing. Her head tips back, and she takes an upside-down gander. Wall-to-wall cars are stacked everywhere.\n\nHer head snaps up. \"Laz!\" she says, shaking him.\n\n\"Hmm,\" he mumbles between her tits.\n\nTahlia puts a talon against his neck.\n\nHis face jerks up, his eyes rolling to black.\n\nTessa tries to scramble off his lap, but his grip on her back tightens, and his hand whips out, closing over Tahlia's small wrist.\n\n\"Ow!\" she yells, her talons useless inside the vise of his fingers. Her eyes smolder at him.\n\n\"You will cease and desist. I am not a male Lycan who can have his cock on a leash. I am a high demon, and my Redemptive sits before me. I must sate her heat, Lanarre.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Tahlia says in a stunned voice, forgetting Laz's grip on her arm, snapping her attention to Tessa. \"You're in heat. How did I not scent this?\"\n\nTessa looks away, embarrassed. \"I think I might be.\"\n\n\"You cannot mate with Laz, Tessa. What are you thinking?\" Tahlia yanks her hand out of Laz's lax grip. \"You will whelp a monster.\"\n\nTessa glares at Tahlia. \"I don't think so. I won't get pregnant by a male who is not Lycan. You know this. It's basic law.\"\n\n\"Do you wish to take the chance if it were not? How certain are you of this?\" Tahlia asks, searching her face.\n\nLaz says yes at the same time Tessa says no.\n\nHorrors.\n\n\"Of course you cannot scent another female's heat,\" Laz remarks.\n\nTahlia retracts her talons, gifting him with a dirty look, and raises a bag with the Walmart logo emblazoned on the front. \"Hungry?\"\n\nStarved. Tessa's not some delicate flower. She's a full-grown Were who has spent two decades keeping a physique that's allowed her to escape from her pursuers. She tries not to dwell on what Laz is really offering her.\n\nHe's demonic. She's a Were.\n\nLaz has Praile on his ass, and he's as possessive as any male Were she's ever encountered. But Tessa might like his brand.\n\nAnd that scares her.\n\nTessa's stomach rumbles, and she puts a palm over her belly. \"What do you have?\" she asks Tahlia, and Laz chuckles.\n\n\"What?\" she half yells at him. \"Do demons not eat?\"\n\nHe strokes a finger from her temple to her jaw.\n\nTessa shivers.\n\n\"We eat, female.\"\n\nHe says it as though peaches are melting in his mouth and he wants to lick off the juices. Hers.\n\n\"Moon, you make me tired, demonic,\" Tahlia comments from the front.\n\n\"Address me as Laz, or I shall address you as princess.\" Laz lifts an eyebrow.\n\nThe silence engulfs the vehicle.\n\nFinally, Tessa moves toward the bag, then rattling noises fill the tense atmosphere. Beef jerky, honey-roasted peanuts, hard-boiled eggs, cheese, and... Hot Tamales?\n\nTessa asks, \"What's with the candy?\"\n\nTahlia fidgets with her hands. \"It is not allowed for Lanarre to poison their bodies with sugar.\"\n\n\"You've got to be kidding. Well, this Were is downing them.\" Tessa's so starved, she thinks the jerky and Hot Tamales will be amazing together. She frowns. Or separate. \"No chocolate?\" she asks Tahlia, still rummaging.\n\nTahlia laughs.\n\nLaz's fist covers his mouth. Their gazes meet. \"Definitely in heat.\"\n\nAll right, chocolate craving is a dead giveaway. Were females normally don't love chocolate, but like human women, a Were female has certain cravings before her cycle. The Ben and Jerry's ice cream is just because.\n\n\"Probably,\" Tessa says without looking up from the bag.\n\nLaz opens the jerky and puts a piece underneath her nose. Tessa opens her mouth. She takes it from his hand without thinking.\n\nTahlia sucks in a breath. \"Tessa!\"\n\nHis fingers are in her mouth as she sucks the juice of the jerky off them. She groans in pleasure, so hungry from the ordeal and length of time without food that she wants to just plow through the supplies. Instead, she lets a near-stranger demonic hand-feed her and slam his erection against her. Slick, Tessa.\n\n\"You trust him?\" Tahlia asks.\n\nTessa meets Laz's icy bluish-gray eyes and nods. \"I do.\"\n\nSomething in Laz's expression softens. \"Let me feed you.\"\n\nAfter the fifth piece of jerky, Tessa is parched.\n\nTahlia, munching away on her own jerky, hands back a large water bottle. Tessa downs half then wipes her mouth on the back of her hoodie sleeve before taking a hunk off a cheese stick.\n\nHot Tamales are poured inside her palm. She tosses them back. Sweet-hot cinnamon bursts over Tessa's tongue, and she moans in ecstasy.\n\nFinally, her hunger has faded, and she notices Laz hasn't eaten. \"What?\" She touches his arm. Warmth spreads underneath her fingertips.\n\nShe doesn't pull away. \"Aren't you hungry?\"\n\nHe nods solemnly. \"Yes.\"\n\nShe passes her bag of jerky to him, and he closes his hand around hers. The bag crinkles. \"Not until my female is sated.\"\n\nMoisture pools at her core from his fervently spoken words. Tessa's brows come together as she swallows the last bite. \"I'm not your female, Laz.\"\n\nHis smile is crooked, steam rising from his mouth. \"Not yet.\"\n\nTessa's appetite is not as robust as it once was. A consumption awaits. Of her.\n\n# CHAPTER TEN\n\nTessa\n\n\"Thank Moon we're in a four-wheel drive.\" Tessa grips the roll bar as if her life depends on it. She's strapped in, courtesy of Laz, as they plunge up then sharply down gulleys that are supposed to be roads.\n\nThat's a full load of bullshit. They're ribbons of dirt sporting a few spots of gravel that wasn't sucked up into the muck of the rain forest.\n\nIt's sunny outside, but no one would ever know it. The moss is deep, hanging like a fine coating of hair as it brushes past their vehicle, clinging to the sides of the car then letting them go as though the very woods couldn't abide the taste.\n\nIf Tessa was the trees, she would think a pair of werewolves and a demon guy tasted like crap, too.\n\n\"Hey!\" Tessa cries as Tahlia takes a small cliff. Laz's arm snakes around her waist, though she's belted tight.\n\nMoon, he's strong. She tells him, pausing at the ego boost it might give him, but he surprises her by stating without an ounce of arrogance, \"The demonic are stronger than all species\u2014even vampire.\"\n\n\"Don't you think you're cool,\" Tessa says, testing him.\n\n\"I am not \u02bbcool.' Torture drives self-regard to unbearably low levels. Only a few of us escape the regime of the Master.\" His voice is so miserable as he recounts his time in hell, Tessa's chest tightens.\n\nThe rig lurches lower. Tahlia sinks them wheel-deep in a river.\n\nTessa's heartbeat begins to thunder as the river rushes underneath the chassis. Cold air plows through the car, swarming the interior with iciness. Tessa shivers.\n\nWarm air envelopes her.\n\nLaz.\n\nHis skin has gone from a vague ruddiness to a distinctive red hue.\n\n\"Are you doing that?\" she asks.\n\nHe nods.\n\nWow.\n\nTahlia downshifts. The wheels grind underneath the swirling current. \"Can't go farther!\" she yells over the gnashing gears and rushing water. The noises of the woods capture their racket, flinging it away from them to be absorbed by the vastness that surrounds them like a living tomb of green.\n\n\"Good thing we didn't trade the vehicle out!\" Tessa shouts over the engine.\n\nThen it stalls.\n\nLaz acts fast, ripping the seatbelt off Tessa and tossing it away. The river swallows the fabric, sweeping it beneath the car as the chrome buckle winks into the dark swirling water.\n\nThe Suburban shifts sideways. Water sloshes inside and swarms across the floorboards.\n\n\"Shit!\" Tessa screams before Laz takes her by one arm and throws her on the Suburban's roof. Tessa's talons punch through the metal, and she winces. Going wolfen due to emotion is always painful. Birthing talons through metal\u2014agony.\n\nShe gasps, and Laz is there.\n\nI can do this.\n\nTessa whips her head back and forth, searching for Tahlia. \"Tahlia!\" she screams.\n\nTahlia's head pops out the window. She struggles. \"The belt's jammed!\" she says, her voice shrill with panic.\n\nTo be a werewolf and drown is a horrible way to die.\n\nTahlia tries to stand, and the Suburban sinks hard to the left. The water rises above Tahlia's neck.\n\n\"No, Tessa,\" Laz says with quiet authority, and she forgets she's on top of a sinking Suburban with a current too fast to navigate by car or body, where Tahlia is about to drown.\n\nLaz is huge. His form has changed. A light scarlet reddens his shimmering skin to the color of soft rubies. Eyes like ice dipped in a vat of aquamarines study the situation, and Laz's blond hair has morphed to a reddish-gold.\n\nSeconds of perusal is all Tessa gets, then Laz grasps her arm. \"Roll when you fall, Tessa,\" he says. And then she's airborne.\n\nTessa spins in an ungainly pile of wolfen muscle and short fur.\n\nStill aching from the speed of the change, she lands on the shore in mud and water.\n\nShe lands hard, without rolling as Laz instructed. Tessa yelps, feeling her ribs bruise. She gasps, trying to look toward the vehicle escaping down the river. Holding her ribs and still opening and closing her mouth without the benefit of oxygen, Tessa stands.\n\nShe stumbles toward the bank.\n\nLaz is nowhere. Her eyes swivel to the roof of the Suburban.\n\nThey're underwater!\n\nHer legs are swept from under her, and Tessa lands backward. What little wind was returning rushes out of her lungs.\n\nHer ribs don't heal. Too many demands.\n\nTessa clutches her neck in the universal sign for choking.\n\nI'm going to die!\n\nThree sets of upside-down silver eyes regard her. Wolfen. All-male.\n\nLanarre.\n\nWith the last of her strength, Tessa points to the sinking rig behind them.\n\nThree faces turn toward where she's pointing.\n\nA body lands beside her.\n\nTahlia.\n\nLow growls roar above her. Tessa's talons sink into the ground, and she heaves herself upright. A sheet of hazy white falls over her vision.\n\nNeed. Oxygen.\n\nThe wolfen back up.\n\nShe throws herself beside Tahlia. The girl's lips are blue, and she's not breathing.\n\nTessa is struck in the back in precisely the spot she needed. Air surges through her lungs, and she coughs.\n\nTessa sits up on her knees, not bothering to see who hit her, and laces her fingers together. Putting the knot of her hands on Tahlia's chest, she begins CPR, rhythmically pumping up and down.\n\nLive.\n\nWater shoots out of Tahlia's mouth, and her beautiful bluish-violet eyes slam open. She grabs Tessa's wrists, vehemently shaking her head. \"Tessa!\"\n\n\"I'm here,\" Tessa says, landing on her ass in the mud.\n\nTahlia sits up, and they pant together. \"You're wolfen,\" she says.\n\nTessa nods. Nothing like stating the obvious.\n\nTahlia's eyes widen.\n\nTessa whirls to see what's behind her.\n\nLaz is on his knees, steam pouring off him. The wolfen have him. The one who stands beside him raises a shining sword toward Laz's neck.\n\nTessa crouches then leaps as though her life depends on it.\n\nTwo wolfen heads swing in her direction, clear surprise etched on their faces.\n\nNot soon enough, fellas. She makes her body a ball mid-flight and takes out sword-wielder neatly.\n\nThey tumble together into a heap, and he raises the sword above her head. She throws her forearms over her face defensively.\n\n\"I do not hurt females,\" he says as though deeply insulted.\n\nTessa drops her arms. \"But you'd kill the guy that saved us!\" she yells in a hoarse shout. And forget the fact that she had to figure out saving Tahlia.\n\nNot a proactive group of Were.\n\nHe turns, and Laz is walking toward them.\n\nNaked.\n\nOh. Oh. Tessa's mouth opens and closes without the excuse of oxygen deprivation.\n\nHis blond hair glows in the ambient light allowed through the thick wet canopy of green that hangs in tendrils that nearly touch the ground. His broad cheekbones frame eyes so black, they look like holes in his face. Steam vaporizes behind him as he walks, eaten by the green of the forest. He comes to stand before them.\n\nHis erection hangs in glorious bare glory between heavily muscled legs. They should be stocky, but because of his height, they're the perfect complement to the rest of his body.\n\nHis tail rises behind him, and Tessa's gaze shifts to the wolfen.\n\nThey're laid out.\n\nShe blinks, spying blood at the hammer-head end of his appendage. Laz told a bold-faced lie when he said he couldn't use that thing in battle.\n\nOf course, Praile's was a flail.\n\nTessa backs away, her wolfen form wavering. She's suffered too much injury, too much\u2014everything. Despite her valiant efforts to remain wolfen, she melts to quarter-change.\n\nJust then, the enemy appears, jumping at them from the creepiness of emerald forest. Tessa couldn't be more spent.\n\nThe wolfen beside her stands, stepping in front of her protectively.\n\nTessa rolls her eyes. He finally gets his act together, and it's Laz, who wouldn't hurt her. That she knows.\n\nAsk her how she knows that, and she couldn't say. But Were live by their instincts. And hers have saved her more times that she can count.\n\nShe clenches her eyes shut, asking the Moon to forgive her, and rolls to her side, punching the wolfen in the crotch.\n\n\"Ah!\" he bellows, folding to the forest floor, where the deep moss catches his body.\n\nTahlia hops over the downed wolfen and rushes to her. She sees Laz, all demonic and naked, and slows, making a wide birth.\n\nHe hisses as if to say, \"Don't screw with me.\"\n\nHis mouth is vaguely gray.\n\nTessa shudders. She kissed him, tongued him\u2014and thought about doing more.\n\nA heck of a lot more.\n\n\"Need to go,\" Laz says.\n\nTessa shakes her head. She saved Laz. She wants Laz.\n\nBut this?\n\nShe looks at his form again. Every hard inch of his muscled body is encased in red skin, his mouth is gray, and his teeth are a pearly white. His black eyes narrow on her as he reaches for her.\n\n\"I'm weak, Laz. Please, just go.\"\n\nHis hand drops, and he shakes his head. \"I cannot just go.\" Anger makes his voice vibrate.\n\nThe guy she whacked in the crotch groans. He'll heal.\n\nMoondammit.\n\n\"Listen, Laz. You're...\" Hot, virile, a sexual typhoon. This is so not the right time for this conversation.\n\nHis brows come together. All that muscled flesh momentarily distracts Tessa. The subtle vapor of heat covers his skin.\n\n\"You're an attractive\u2014\" His dick draws her eyes like a magnet. Tessa swallows, Moon, he's so perfect, it hurts to look at him. \"Male,\" she manages.\n\nTessa can't believe she's breaking up with Laz in the middle of a rainforest with a pile of beaten wolfen at their feet before they even got together.\n\nLaz puts his hands on his hips, drawing her attention to\u2014Yeah.\n\nTessa hangs her head.\n\n\"Hate to interrupt all these deliberations,\" Tahlia says, her voice shaking.\n\nTessa's nostrils flare. \"More are coming.\"\n\nLaz scowls at her, then his hand is at the back of her neck. He tears her from the sodden earth, ignoring the mud that covers her and ignoring his nudity, and smashes his lips to hers.\n\nTessa groans, moving into his arms. She fits so perfectly against him, she's forced to hold back a sob of semi-relief at the contact.\n\nHis cock presses between them as though it's seeking entry. Laz hikes her up, and her legs wrap his waist.\n\nHis length presses against her entrance through her yoga pants.\n\nHe shoves upward, and she cries out\u2014in agony and ecstasy. Clutching his neck, she moves her lips against his. Heat blooms in her core, and like a brush fire, it moves outward, seeking.\n\nIt slams into Laz, and his face tips back, breaking the kiss.\n\nWhen his head lowers, his eyes flash to black.\n\n\"I don't want you,\" Tessa says, having never spoken a lie as large as that one in her lifetime.\n\nLaz runs his hands down her side, and she shudders. As he sets her on her feet, his gaze returns to a pale gray.\n\nWolfen circle the area.\n\nTessa feels as though her heart is in her throat. She can't breathe through her emotions.\n\nLaz's face closes down. His body grows opaque. And like a ghost, he vanishes.\n\nTessa blinks. \"Laz!\" she screams, her heart leaking out of her pores. Then in the next breath, her mind justifies the lie in her rejection of him. I did the right thing.\n\nLaz would have never survived the Lanarre.\n\nTessa looks around at the Lanarre surrounding them, noting they're downed brethren. Tahlia and Tessa wrap their arms around each other.\n\nThey won't hurt females.\n\nWith a flare of their nostrils, they identify the one thing Tessa wishes she could have kept to herself.\n\n\"Heat,\" one says.\n\nThe others smile.\n\nUnclaimed is what Tessa hears. Tahlia turns nervous eyes to Tessa.\n\n\"Tell them,\" Tessa says.\n\nTahlia turns to face the wolfen. The number of males in the party makes Tessa uncomfortable on principle, to put it mildly.\n\nLaz's absence makes it worse. Tessa's been alone for a long time. She doesn't need Laz. And he was demonic. She hangs her head.\n\nShe can admit to herself he was more than that.\n\n\"I am Tahlia, Princess of the Lanarre pack from the Redwood.\"\n\nConfused, they regard one another then their attention razors on her like sharp slits. The one with the abused crotch stands, slowly shaking his head, giving Tessa a hard glare.\n\nShit.\n\n\"The chosen has arrived ahead of Drek. We do not know who you are\u2014but your impersonation of the chosen will not be met with tolerance.\"\n\nTahlia's mouth drops open.\n\nWhat? Tessa turns her stunned expression to Tahlia.\n\nHis eyes move to Tessa's. \"And your cavorting with a horned one?\" His smile lacks warmth.\n\nTessa's cheeks heat. Hell, she'd punched him in the dick and had a demonic in tow. She wasn't winning any popularity contests.\n\nLike ever. \"He's gone now,\" Tessa whispers, hoping Laz will stay gone, Redemptive or not.\n\nThe Lanarre's grin is toothy, though the smile never reaches his eyes.\n\nTessa scents Tahlia's confusion and, underneath that, her fear.\n\nAmen.\n\n\"But that doesn't matter. The demonic was here, escorting two Were females\"\u2014his gaze flicks to Tahlia\u2014\"one a Lanarre\u2014on her own.\" His eyebrows rise significantly.\n\n\"So what? Females can't travel together?\"\n\nHe shakes his head. \"A Lanarre female of any repute would have male escorts or if she were royalty\u2014her family guard.\"\n\nHis chin lifts. \"You are not she.\" His slick black eyebrows drop over molten-silver eyes. \"But we will get to the bottom of who you really are.\"\n\n\"I am Tahlia,\" she seethes. \"You ridiculous Lanarre, can you not scent my purity?\"\n\nUh-oh.\n\nHe rushes her.\n\nBravely, Tahlia plants her feet wide. She has obviously never felt the hand of a male against her.\n\nHis nose goes to her crotch and Tessa blanches.\n\nTahlia chops her hand on the back of his neck in a hard stroke of such instinctive quickness, he rolls to the side.\n\nHe kicks her in the stomach, and she yelps, hands to belly as she falls slowly to the forest floor.\n\nTessa steps forward and chin-checks him against the side of the tree.\n\nThe Lanarre close in.\n\nIt takes six males to subdue them. In the end, they do more than that. They steal Tessa's hope.\n\nThe Lanarre of the Hoh region isn't a sanctuary.\n\nIt's a prison.\n\n# CHAPTER ELEVEN\n\nDrek\n\nDrek lands steps from the healing Were on the ground.\n\nHe barks. Explain.\n\nDrek watches understanding flow over the Alpha's features. The Alpha knows Drek is Lanarre royalty after one inhaled chuff.\n\n\"Forgive me, prince,\" the Alpha grovels.\n\nA ripple of power, stolen from the moon, tears through Drek. He pushes it over the Alpha, blanketing him in Drek's will.\n\nThe Alpha flattens on the dirt. Only a thin layer of skin covers the pulsating wounds of his stomach. Drek's lip lifts, and a low growl hums through the space between house, driveway, and barn.\n\nThe horned one whirls, looking as though he'll come for Drek.\n\nBowen moves through the assembled but scattered Singer population, and the horned one steams from the holes of his evil body, but he does not draw nearer. Clever creature.\n\nHe cannot take two full werewolves. He's decided to cut his losses.\n\nDrek allows Bowen the lead so that he might change into wolfen. He scents that Tahlia's fragrance is no longer fresh. Staying in werewolf form offers him no benefit. Drek rises on his hind legs, melting the things of wolf to the part-form of wolfen. He tamps down on the relief of shifting in reverse, which is always easier and less painful than becoming his beast. He ignores the murmurs from the Singers and levels his attention on the horned one.\n\n\"I have no quarrel with you, Lanarre,\" the evil one hisses. He swings a mallet-like tail above his head.\n\nDrek takes in the spiked appendages at its end. He is a fearsome creature, but Drek is unafraid. He and Bowen will prevail.\n\nDrek has not come face to face with a demonic in many years. That he has today, with Tahlia in such close proximity, causes a profound unease to creep over his skin. In the presence of evil only a few yards away, the fine silver hairs of his wolfen stand on end.\n\n\"We have no quarrel yet, horned one.\" Drek feels the potential simmering between them.\n\nThe red horror of the demonic grins, his black teeth causing his mouth to appear as a yawning hole inside his face. Low vapor rises, sucked by the light breeze of night succumbing to dawn. He throws his head back, laughing.\n\nDrek does not see the humor.\n\n\"I have business here that has nothing to do with our cousin, the Lanarre.\"\n\nDrek jerks his jaw back, voicing his displeasure in growling words, \"We are not relations, demonic.\"\n\n\"Au contraire,\" he wags a finger. \"You are very much under the call of the Master, if you possess even a bit of Red in those blueblood veins of yours.\"\n\nLow murmurs from the assembled Singers become louder, but Drek ignores them. The demonic before him poses a greater threat than they do.\n\nDrek wonders suddenly where the leadership might be for the region, but he takes charge of the conversation at hand. \"Then rest easy, demonic\u2014for I do not have the necessary blood to cause me to be a malleable specimen for the devil.\"\n\nBowen comes to stand beside him.\n\nHis presence strengthens Drek. Where three of their kind come together, as with all magics, they become more powerful than if they stood alone. Still, two will do.\n\nThey warily and loosely circle each other. \"Then why are you here\u2014for I scent my chosen.\"\n\nThe Were at his feet blanches.\n\nDrek refocuses a sharp look at the Alpha. \"What do you know, Alpha of the Western?\" At least, he smells like the west.\n\nThe Alpha's nostrils flare. \"I have not touched your chosen,\" he nearly wails.\n\nThat, Drek believes. Tahlia would have this male for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She's classically trained, like all Lanarre royalty. In theory, she should be an impressive female in all areas.\n\n\"Speak,\" Drek commands in a low voice.\n\nThe demonic inches closer.\n\nBowen growls, his lips peeling back to showcase the razor-sharp teeth of his wolfen form.\n\nThe demonic halts. Steam pours from his mouth and nostrils; additional vapor covers his revealed skin like a layer of smoke.\n\nThe Singers' voices rise. Drek gives them a cursory sweep with his eyes. They appear human, but that can be deceiving. His understanding is complete. They have talents that rival the strength, nose, and speed of Lycans. But they are not a species at direct odds with the Lanarre. He returns his attention to the cowardly packmaster of the west, who is attempting to stand while holding his writhing guts inside his body.\n\n\"I have been seeking my intended for twenty years! She has led me here,\" the Alpha mewls.\n\nDrek reins in his temper to extract additional information just before a loud female voice interrupts. \"She didn't want to go with this guy!\"\n\nAll heads turn to a taller female Singer.\n\nDrek's nostrils flare. She is Were, as well, though changed, not born. Interesting.\n\n\"This numbnuts came charging in here after she'd only been here a day, and she took off like the devil was chasing her.\"\n\nDrek blinks, deliberating on the pun within her words. Her modern way of talking and lack of elegance is shocking. However, she is changed. That can make all the difference. Tall but slight, she has longish blond hair and piercing emerald eyes.\n\n\"And this fire prick?\" she goes on, pointing at the demonic, \"He pretended to be a Singer! But really? He tried to hurt Jules\u2014I know it. And we're really fucking sure he killed Jason.\"\n\nThe Singers break out in screams and shouts, surrounding the demonic.\n\nDrek will not be a referee in supernatural matters between species who are meaningless to the Lanarre. He raises a palm. \"Thank you, female.\"\n\nShe purses her lips, nonplussed by his dismissal.\n\nDrek feels a shrug coming on. You cannot win them all, as the humans say. He scans the faces of the Blood Singers of Region One. His scenting tells him many things.\n\nDeath clings to Region One.\n\nA battle or massacre of epic proportions took place here in the recent past. If the demonic have been loosened in this realm, whatever is afoot will affect them all. And why an Alpha would seek his legitimate intended for two decades reeks of foul play and the breakdown of the Western.\n\nBut none of these factors are enough for Drek to concern himself with. \"I am looking for my chosen. She is a Lanarre princess.\"\n\nBlank looks answer him.\n\nHer scent is here. Someone has interacted with her; Drek is sure of it. He ignores the demonic, who seems to be searching for a handy escape route. Drek gives equal inattention to the Alpha at his feet.\n\nDrek is keenly aware of Tahlia's appearance. Photographs have been exchanged. \"She stands this high.\" He holds the edge of his hand just beneath his shoulder. \"Black hair that is curled to her waist, with eyes the color of twilight meeting night.\"\n\nSilence.\n\nThen the part-Were female says, \"Listen, pal\u2014she took off with this jerk's intended.\" She makes funny little curls with her fingertips as though plucking the word out of the sky. \"So she's gone. And this demon guy's side-kick? She took off with the Alpha's intended\"\u2014she says the word with clear distaste\u2014\"so since you don't want to join the party in helping keep these guys in line, they went thataway.\" She points due north.\n\nDrek smiles. He supposes she's helpful\u2014in her way. \"Lanarre do not engage in altercations with other species. Tahlia will be in need of our protection.\"\n\nDrek sinks to his haunches beside the Alpha male from the Western, who cringes away. \"If you follow my chosen, for any reason, supposed intended or not, I will tear the guts that have just healed out of your body and hang you with them.\" Drek's voice remains deadly with intent, never changing in modulation.\n\nHe stands.\n\nThe female Were crosses her arms, glaring at him with disdain. Bowen and Drek exchange a look.\n\nThe demonic's face is hard, cunning and determined. \"My subordinate is with the group that accompany your chosen.\"\n\nFrowning, Drek says, \"That is not a consideration of the Lanarre.\"\n\nThe demonic smiles. \"It is to me!\" he says with a hiss. In a flash, he's blurred like a red smear to the tree line and beyond. The collective gasp of the crowd is a hushed bomb of surprise.\n\nDrek's frown turns to a scowl. He wants nothing to do with the demonic, but he will do whatever is necessary to protect Tahlia.\n\nIf he must dance with the devil, then he shall.\n\nThe crowd parts as Drek and Bowen step over the fallen Alpha.\n\n*\n\nBowen scoops the gravel from the shoulder as his nose hovers over slightly damp gravel. He sifts it between his fingers.\n\n\"She was here.\"\n\nDrek is impressed. He does not believe that Tahlia ever got out of the vehicle that was used in the quick exit they made from Region One. Bowen would have to smell her, layered underneath fossil fuel, manmade asphalt of indeterminate origin, forest, vegetation, and the indigenous wild animal population.\n\nHis head turns sharply in Bowen's direction. \"Do you think Tahlia might be heading toward the den?\" The thought process makes sense. She's probably frightened and unsure. Seeking Drek's pack is solid thinking.\n\nBowen considers, tossing the gravel away from them. \"Not sure.\" His wolfen snout points in a generally northwestern direction. His spinning silver eyes find Drek's. \"If she does, that benefits us.\"\n\n\"But not her companions.\"\n\nBowen gives him a look of disbelief and a snort so finely executed, it sounds almost exactly as it would if he stood before Drek in human form. \"Does that matter, really?\"\n\nNo. Yet, they somehow had a hand in Tahlia's rescue. Or Tahlia somehow helped them. Without the details, Drek is not happy dismissing their lives so quickly. And one is a female Were. He scented her. Unfortunately, the demonic, like the vampire, are scentless.\n\n\"I suppose no,\" he finally answers, \"but I believe this female rogue was the one who Tahlia assisted back at the highway. And as I put the pieces together, I further postulate that the Alpha who was so neatly gutted at Region One is part of her capture. And Tahlia interrupted it.\"\n\n\"That Alpha is bad news, Drek. I don't want that following us to Lanarre country.\"\n\nDrek sighs, knowing he should have finished gutting that one. However, it would have been cowardly to kill a defenseless Were without clear reason. And in front of witnesses, when no transgression was made against the Lanarre? No. A bad move.\n\n\"We own the Hoh. It is ours.\" He misses thumping his chest by a hairsbreadth. \"It is the Lanarre who has kept the western half of the United States free of problems among Lycan. The alliance between the southwestern Lanarre region through my mating with Thalia would have solidified that further.\"\n\n\"Come on, Drek. You know that's not true. There's been unrest. And I don't believe you want the ancient status quo any more than I do.\"\n\nHe gives Bowen a hard glance but keeps his misgivings to himself. Bowen is right. Small packs keep popping up. They don't feel the need to formally align with the Lanarre, preferring an outlaw lifestyle to the strength of unity. It's troubling. But that further solidifies Drek's ideas about progressing Lycan culture into a more modern direction.\n\n\"Listen\"\u2014Bowen claps Drek on the back\u2014\"you can't take all this bullshit political evolution on as your singular mission to save everyone. You just have to make the Lanarre pack the very best of us. We worry about the rest later, yes?\"\n\nBowen is wise.\n\nDrek is fraught with obligation, responsibility, and thoughts better left unsaid and not dwelled upon.\n\nHowever, Drek does dwell. He dreams of a better life, more communicative between packs, agreement on inter-pack matings, and a cessation of rites that leave females in precarious positions of being fought over. That is not a healthy environment for perpetuating the breed.\n\nAt least that will not be Tahlia's end. No Were would want the cast off of a prince. She can live out her life in peace, without being forced to wed Drek\u2014if, and only if, he is able to effect change.\n\nWithout change, the muck of tradition will weigh them down like boulders in quick sand.\n\n\"Lead on,\" Drek says.\n\nThey run.\n\n*\n\nDrek slows, his lungs on slow-burning fire. The Hoh receives more than a hundred forty inches of rain per year, and the forest is slick with trailing moss and undergrowth.\n\nWolfen flesh has a coating similar to a duck's; the rain wets the tips, and the hair sheds the majority of the wetness. Still, the rain dampens the pair, making the travel wet and chilly, even in their partially changed forms.\n\n\"You're rugged for a prince,\" Bowen huffs as he speeds through the woods.\n\nDrek lets the next branch swing back. He hears it whip Bowen, who curses.\n\n\"Kidding!\" Bowen shouts from behind him.\n\nDrek smirks. Bowen is always poking fun.\n\nLoud voices in conflict reach his ears.\n\n\"Wait!\" Drek says, wrapping a long arm around a trunk to assist his slowing.\n\nTahlia's sweet scent fills his nostrils, and Drek inhales deeply, relief flooding him. Nothing compares to a female of royalty, and Tahlia's safety.\n\nHe scowls, his nose wrinkling at the second scent: one who is in heat. The odor reaches him easily\u2014all male Were would scent the same.\n\nBowen reaches him, eyes as wide as his nostrils. \"Is that what I think it is?\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Drek says.\n\n\"Tahlia has somehow come to the pack, and another female is in her heat cycle? I'm wracking my brains, but I am certain none of our females were cycling.\"\n\nDrek nods. Bowen is correct. He shakes his head. A female in heat? In the middle of a pack of Were? Even the Lanarre will be hard-pressed to restrain themselves. Royal lineage does not negate the primal needs of werewolves. The three Fs are in full play: feeding, fighting, and fucking.\n\nBowen races ahead.\n\nDrek follows closely\u2014he cannot have Tahlia in the middle of the fray. He's relieved she's safely in Lanarre territory. It was his hope that her scent would lead here.\n\nWhen he arrives in the heart of his den, his relief is short-lived.\n\nTahlia is screaming, held down by three Lanarre males.\n\nMeanwhile, a demonic guts whoever comes within striking distance of the female he and Bowen had scented as fertile.\n\nHis voice booms over the space, the trees shaking from the resonance of the growling timbre, \"Stop!\"\n\n# CHAPTER TWELVE\n\nScott\n\n\"Scott!\" Julia says loudly.\n\nHe blinks slowly awake. Julia's perfect face comes into focus.\n\nBut it's her bare breasts that really get his attention.\n\nHer hands on his shoulders, she sighs, sitting back on her heels.\n\nScott sits up, eyes pinned to her nude form.\n\n\"Perv,\" she says in a sullen voice.\n\nHe grins, grabbing her and setting her on his lap. \"What happened?\"\n\nJulia giggles softly. \"I think we blew a fuse or something.\"\n\nScott nods, eyebrows hiked. \"Nice.\"\n\nChampagne hair sweeps forward over her wrinkled brow. \"I don't think passing out every time we have sex is all that great.\"\n\nScott's brows meet. \"Oh, yeah. Why not?\"\n\nHe leans in, rubbing her nose with his then kissing the tip softly. \"I'll pass out with you anytime.\"\n\n\"Perv,\" she whispers again, but more softly this time. Her voice is edged with desire and a hint of happiness.\n\n\"You betcha, all the way.\" Scott covers her breast with his hand, and her sharp intake of air is felt in both ways, through flesh and a warm breath of air through his soul.\n\nScott shudders. \"I don't know how I'm going to get used to that.\"\n\n\"We will,\" Julia says, snuggling deeper into his body.\n\nThey hold each other quietly for a few minutes, saying nothing as Scott explores every inch of her skin with his palms. \"I can't believe you're mine.\"\n\nJulia nods.\n\nScott feels her sadness through their link and leans back to see her face. A sheen of tears wets Julia's amber eyes. \"Hey,\" he says as the first one slips out. \"No crying. I forbid it.\"\n\nShe laughs, nodding. \"How can I be this happy when all this shit is raining down all around us?\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Scott says, understanding sinking in like unwanted teeth.\n\nJulia disentangles from his embrace and grabs his shirt off the floor, throwing it on over her head. Julia heads to the bathroom, and Scott gives her the space. Water runs, then a toilet flushes.\n\nScott stands and walks naked to the thermostat on the wall. He looks at the temperature setting. Too cold. He turns the dial up to seventy-two. Balmy. He frowns. His balls will melt off, but Julia will be toasty. Sacrifices must be made. His lips quirk as he leaves the setting warmer.\n\nJulia leaves the bathroom, skin flushed.\n\nHe walks by her, trailing his fingers over her neck and down her spine as he moves to the bathroom and uses it himself.\n\nWater runs down the drain as Scott holds his toothbrush loosely, inspecting his face in the mirror. He doesn't know what he was expecting to see. Their soul-meld is complete, but he really doesn't feel much different. He loves Julia. He still wants to protect her. Nothing's changed.\n\nEverything has.\n\nHe walks out of the bathroom, catching sight of the pensive way she's standing. \"We're not going to discuss what we can't help.\" As Scott walks over to Julia, her eyes dip to his hips and a deep-pink color invades her cheeks.\n\nOh yeah, got my dick hanging in the wind.\n\nScott grins.\n\nJulia blushes harder.\n\nThis is too fun. Scott's gaze never leaves hers as he laces his fingers, placing his hands on the back of his head. Swiveling his hips, Scott whips his semi-hard-on back and forth. His cock slaps his thighs.\n\nScott waggles his eyebrows.\n\nJulia busts out laughing, covering her mouth. \"Really?\"\n\nScott nods. \"Oh yeah\u2014really!\" he races toward her, and she squeals, turning to run.\n\nScott seizes her around the waist, heaving her on the bed. She bounces once, and he's on her in a flash.\n\nHe runs his fingers underneath his T-shirt, searching for all the obvious tender spots to torture, and soon, she's breathless with laughter.\n\nWhen his palms cover her breasts, Julia's laughter drains from her face, and serious luminous eyes regard him.\n\nScott grows hard for her again as fierce possessiveness courses through him.\n\nJulia's eyes widen. \"That's how you feel about me?\"\n\nHe nods.\n\n\"It's almost too much.\" Her eyes hold fear\u2014and wonder. Her hand rises to his face, and light fingertips trail over his day-old stubble.\n\n\"Nah,\" he says, fingering the strands of hair caught in her mouth from laughing so hard. \"It's never too much.\"\n\n\"You want to own me, every bit\u2014my mind, my body.\"\n\n\"Your soul,\" Scott whispers with a seriousness he didn't know he had in him.\n\nJulia nods, searching his face. \"That especially.\"\n\nScott presses his mouth to her lips. Breaking the kiss, he cocks his head, giving her hooded eyes. \"Let's start on all that right now then. No better time than the present.\"\n\n\"I haven't even brushed my teeth!\" Julia protests.\n\nHis eyes narrow. \"It's not your mouth that needs kissing.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Julia says in a breathy voice.\n\nScott works his way down to where he just was a handful of hours before.\n\nTime unwinds.\n\n*\n\n\"Victor is going to know we were in here humping like bunnies.\" Julia covers her face, toothbrush sticking out of her kissable clean mouth.\n\n\"Victor-smictor.\" Scott shrugs, slapping her cute little round ass.\n\n\"Hey!\" Julia says through her toothpaste, but she's smiling.\n\nHe loves to see her smile. Scott feels her every emotion down to his feet. And when they're good, they're great.\n\nShe spits and rinses, the foamy toothpaste disappears, and she rolls her lips together, sighing in relief. \"I hate a sweater on my teeth.\"\n\nScott laughs. \"Great visual, sweetheart.\" He gives her a slow wink.\n\nHer lips twitch as she arches a golden eyebrow. \"You're so immature. Rhyming Victor's name.\"\n\nWhat can I say? \"Mhmm.\"\n\n\"Oh my word, what have I gotten myself into?\"\n\nScott turns, grabbing Julia and hiking her up by the ass. Her legs go around his waist. He groans as he gets his third boner in twenty-four hours. My dick's gonna fall off. \"You're killing me, Julia.\"\n\n\"Ah, no. I'm the one who's sore, big guy.\"\n\nScott feels his sheepish grin. He squeezes her, whispering against her neck, \"I didn't hurt you too much?\" His heart rate picks up. The duality of his soul-meld completion is somewhat contrary. He had to hurt his soul-meld to make her his\u2014a small hurt for better protection and so much more. Though he can justify what he did, there's no denying his guilt over the process.\n\n\"Hey,\" she says softly, sliding down the front of him.\n\nNothing like a few thoughts of hurting Julia to make him a limp noodle. Scott looks away from her burning gaze.\n\nShe swings his jaw back to her. He swims in the liquid fire of her eyes.\n\nTheir breathing instantly comes together. \"I wanted to have sex. I don't think you have any idea how much.\"\n\nScott remains silent.\n\nShe touches his cock, and it springs to vivid life again. Julia wraps her fingers around him, and his erection strains toward her. \"I wanted this, Scott.\" She strangles him for a second, and he stops breathing. \"All of you.\"\n\n\"Okay,\" he squeaks. \"Got it.\" Now what are we going to do about it?\n\nShe looks at him as though she heard his question aloud. Probably.\n\n\"I thought you just mentioned Victor...\"\n\nThen her small hands tear down his underwear, springing his dick free.\n\nShe sinks before him. Her tongue is wet velvet against the tip of him, and he shudders. \"Julia\u2014\"\n\n\"Shhh.\" She licks at him, her tongue trailing the rim of his head, burning a path of fire.\n\nScott's head tips back as his hand finds her hair, fisting the gorgeous silky strands. He pushes her mouth deeper as she takes more of him.\n\nJulia eases down to his base. She frees her lips and slides to his tip then deep throats him again.\n\nScott starts to work inside her mouth with his hips. \"Julia, I can't\u2014I can't last,\" he gasps. He feels her lips part in a smile around his length as his other palm hits the wall behind him.\n\nShe comes up for air. \"Maybe I don't want you to.\"\n\nThat does it. His hips pump.\n\nHer hand joins her mouth, one following the other as she crests at his tip with her hot wetness and slams down to his base, her hand squeezing as she does.\n\n\"Ah!\" he bellows into the air while hot jets of cum spurt inside her waiting throat.\n\nShe swallows him down, and Scott shudders as his release wanes. He slumps against the wall.\n\nJulia undoes him. Flat out.\n\nShe places her hands on his ass and releases his dick with a final lick at the tip.\n\nShe lays the side of her face against his naked hip. \"I love you, Scott,\" she whispers, her breath warming where her mouth just was.\n\nWhat Scott feels for Julia goes way beyond mere love.\n\nHe sinks to the floor and kicks off the underwear from his ankles. Gathering Julia to his chest, he kisses the top of her head. \"I love you more.\"\n\nShe tips her head up, and he presses a kiss to her forehead. Julia closes her eyes. He kisses each eyelid.\n\nHer eyes slowly open, and her lips part.\n\nHe kisses her mouth. It tastes of him. Scott stands with her in his arms then carries Julia to their bed.\n\n\"Again?\" she asks coyly.\n\nScott nods solemnly. \"Yes.\"\n\n*\n\n\"Nobody passed out,\" Scott says, turning his head to look at her.\n\nJulia peeks up at him from the crook of his arm. \"That's a plus.\"\n\nHe pushes the hair from her face. \"Oh, I don't know. It was kinda novel.\"\n\nJulia's laugh is low and satisfied. \"Yeah.\"\n\nScott's stomach growls. \"All right. I guess that's it then.\"\n\nHer eyebrow arches. \"It's what?\"\n\n\"The beast has awoken!\"\n\nJulia sits up, tossing her mussed hair behind her shoulder. \"I think you were a beast,\" she says, fluttering her eyelashes.\n\nIs she flirting with me? He laughs.\n\nJulia's got that look. It's the look that will land her in bed again. Scott's stomach rumbles hard, followed by a gnawing cramp.\n\n\"Hell,\" Scott says, giving her a considering look.\n\n\"We can't just have sex forever, ya know.\"\n\n\"Says who?\" he asks with a chuckle.\n\nJulia blushes.\n\nGod, I love her.\n\nCaldwell was a fool. A rough exhale shoots out of him before he can stop it. The jerk saved her, and Scott will always be grateful for that. But in the darkest part of his mind, the part he doesn't like to admit he owns, he's glad that Jason isn't around to make Julia miserable with all his mood swings. Fuck, he was a bitch with that emo shit.\n\n\"What?\" she asks, studying his expression.\n\n\"Can't read my mind?\"\n\nShe shakes her head. \"I'm telepathic, but some species\u2014especially Were\u2014and some individuals\"\u2014she taps her head\u2014\"white noise.\" She shrugs. \"I can send you a direct phrase if I do it just right, but it wipes me.\"\n\n\"We don't want that.\" Scott gathers her close again.\n\nShe gives a soft shake of her head. \"No.\" Her head falls on his shoulder, and he strokes her back.\n\nAnother hunger pang shoots through him.\n\nScott stands, tugging her by the hand. \"Let's grab a quick shower and see what kind of dehydrated bullshit we can rustle up.\"\n\nJulia giggles. \"It's better than a sharp stick in the eye.\"\n\n\"Well, yeah,\" Scott says, carrying Julia to the bathroom.\n\nHe turns the water on and slides Julia carefully to her feet with one arm. Hot spray hits the shower wall. Steam rises.\n\nJulia strips the little bit of clothing she had on. Naked, she steps inside. Her eyes grow round when Scott follows her.\n\n*\n\nJulia\n\nVictor turns toward the sound of their footfalls.\n\nJulia tries not to blush.\n\nFail. Julia realizes she can't do the things she's done with Scott and not have it pinging around in her brain. It's all so new. So amazing.\n\nHe stands in all his tall, stately glory, though Julia admits his normally dapper suit is worse for the wear.\n\n\"Hi,\" she says, hating the breathless tone in her voice. She can't shake the embarrassment and tries to hide it.\n\nScott assured her that all the rooms were soundproof. Nevertheless, Julia is damn sure Victor knows what they were up to in that bedroom for nearly an entire day.\n\n\"My queen,\" Victor says, bowing slightly.\n\n\"Gah!\"\n\nVictor's head jerks back at her outburst.\n\n\"Sorry,\" she mutters, and Scott squeezes her hand. \"I know that technically, I'm a royal Singer\u2014\"\n\n\"You are the Rare One.\"\n\nJulia blows a strand of hair back. \"Yeah. Anyway, I just want you to call me Julia, okay?\"\n\nVictor stares.\n\n\"Listen, Vic\u2014\"\n\nVictor's stormy expression shifts to Scott.\n\n\"We know our place, and it is working beside our people, not over them.\" Old Vic is from Two, after all. And Scott's mom was the mistress over that little mess.\n\nVictor's chin dips. Restless fingers rake his perfect blond hair. His pale-gray eyes come to rest on them. \"Forgive me. I have lived so long under your biological mother's reign, a different one has me completely out of sorts.\"\n\nJulia nods. His feeling are understandable.\n\nHer eyes move to the timer clock. How many hours she has left in her prison underground?\n\nHer flush comes back to merciless life. She's been down here screwing Scott's brains out while her people are\u2014\n\nScott turns her, gripping her shoulders. \"No.\"\n\nJulia doesn't need further explanation. Stop thinking about things we can't change, he said. Self-blame won't make the horrors, imagined or real, resolve themselves. Scott's words haunt her\u2014because they're right.\n\nShe turns her head to the clock again.\n\nTen hours, eleven minutes, and three seconds. It seems like eternity. Her eyes lock with Scott's, and her heart squeezes.\n\nIt seems too soon.\n\n# CHAPTER THIRTEEN\n\nAdi\n\nAdi shifts the weight of the backpack between her shoulders. It's a miracle she was able to even put anything together with her state of mind.\n\nThe pack must be Jen's. The thing's covered in sparkly unicorns. But it was all she could find.\n\nAdi sighs. She can't even escape without looking ridiculous.\n\nNot that she gives a shit. She's got the necessities inside the pack: beef jerky, apples, water, and some peanut M&Ms.\n\nAdi loves those.\n\nA wave of heat threads through her, igniting her core. She pauses, her hand instinctively slapping the nearest tree trunk. The sharp bark presses painfully against her tender palm. Adi's almost healed fully, but her hands still ache from all the punching and hitting of those cockbite Were she ran into.\n\nI hope that one can't grow another set of balls.\n\nToo bad she doesn't have silver talons. A grim smile covers her face as another wave of nauseating heat hits her. Adi doubles over. What the hell is wrong with me? She shuts her eyes, leaning against the tree.\n\nTaking even breaths, she wills herself to relax. Did she get injured more than she knew? Fear grips her as she thinks about possible internal injuries. She has no way to fix that between here and the Northwestern down in Gig Harbor. Though it's only a couple of hours south by car, she's not in any shape to move fast yet. She might not have suffered as much as Slash did, but she's not perfectly healed. Not by a long shot. When she opens her eyes, she sees nothing but deep green woods\u2014and Highway 101.\n\nFinally.\n\nShe swings the backpack around and gives the zipper a vicious reverse tug. After jerking the water bottle out of the inside, she spins the cap off and chugs half. Better. She tightens the cap on the half-drained water bottle. Adi surveys the territory, thinking through her options.\n\nThey're all kinds of miserable. But she can't dwell on the beauty of what happened between her and Slash. She can only hope to start again. She figures her small goal of returning to the Northwestern is solid. She'll get back there, regroup, eat some of Susan's delicious home cooking, and figure out her life. She strokes the unicorns on the backpack and thinks of the pajamas she lent Julia way back when.\n\nShe feels a sad smile slip onto her face then melt away just as quickly.\n\nShe gnaws a piece of beef jerky, and gradually, her stomach settles, filling with protein and much-needed water. With the highway in sight, she feels less anxious. She can just hike parallel to the road, and voila\u2014she'll be back home before she knows it. Adi regrets not being able to say goodbye to Julia, but she was nowhere to be found. Everyone else she shared so much with might have tried to convince her to stay.\n\nI don't think so.\n\nShe plows through three strips of jerky and downs more water.\n\nAdi doesn't realize she's crying until the tears wet her thin T-shirt. She shivers, straightening, and walks away from the tree, shoving her water and jerky in the pack. She flips it over onto her back and strides away.\n\nDoubt creeps in as she hikes the short but steep ravine to the highway. Could I be in heat? Is that what this is all about? Adi grows uneasy with the thought that she's wandering around without male escorts.\n\nI'm too young for heat.\n\nBut Moon help her if she is. Being a female Were in heat is like ringing the dinner bell. And what the hell might have set that in motion anyway? A sudden thought strikes her.\n\nTessa and Tahlia. Those two Were gals show up, Lanarre or not, and suddenly, Adi feels all tingly and fucking needy.\n\nMoon. She stops at the shoulder, cars buzzing by in both directions. The Olympic Peninsula is to the north; her den lies to the south.\n\nAdi had planned to go quarter-change and trot on back to the Northwestern. Now, with the possibility of being in heat, she can't take that risk. If unscrupulous males are around\u2014and her scent is strong enough\u2014they could....\n\nShe shudders. It could be bad. Adi gets a sick feeling. Could Slash have sent her away knowing she might be in heat?\n\nNo way, even he's not that cruel.\n\nThe tears roll unheeded down her face.\n\n*\n\nAdi's face is hot.\n\nShe rolls to her side and groans. Twigs, leaves, and small stones are her bed, and her body is protesting about it.\n\nThe hell with it.\n\nShe sits up, sliding her backpack from where it had served as a pillow, and unzips it. After opening the bag of M&Ms, she pops a small handful in her mouth.\n\nBliss. Flavors explode, and she sighs with pleasure, sucking the shell of chocolate coating and crunching the peanut beneath.\n\n\"Now that is food,\" she remarks to the indifferent forest.\n\nAdi tucks her legs beneath her, searching her backpack. Carrying a toothbrush, deodorant, soap, and a small washcloth, she walks to a nearby stream.\n\nI'll thumb it today, she thinks, glancing back at the 101 behind her. She's still not made up her mind, but she plans to head south and figure it out as she goes.\n\nAdi hears the water before she sees it. The water gurgles its music over small rocks, tinkling and singing as it moves through the woods. Adi's thirsty as hell, and her mouth waters with the thought of drinking. But she remembers just how sick Julia got after drinking from a creek.\n\nThat's all I need is to be shitting and puking. Yeah, that'd be a nice little piece of awesome icing on the misery cake.\n\nShe hikes a little higher, brushing aside small branches, and spots the dim sparkle of the water down a gentle slope. She carefully makes her way to the edge and squats in front of the running water, letting the bristles of her toothbrush dangle in the rush of water. Adi brushes her teeth, gazing around at the environment.\n\nBeauty is everywhere here. The Hoh Rain Forest is a ways off, but the kiss of its nearness is everywhere she casts her eyes. Sweetly scented Douglas fir and western red cedar choke the deciduous alder and occasional red maple as they vie for position along the stream bed. Adi inhales deeply, filling her lungs with the smell of woods, water, and beneath that, the pervasive scent of the small animals that fill the forest with their unique existence. Invisible to most, they are stunningly present for a female Alpha Were.\n\nFeeling alive, Adi stands, swishing dubious water in her mouth, and spits the used toothpaste on a nearby brush. Wild Rhododendrons seek patches of strangled light with bony branches like outstretched arms. Their buds are so full, the color of the blooms are visible within scant slivers of leaves holding the growth tight, waiting for the perfect temperature to arrive.\n\n\"Beautiful,\" Adi whispers, stroking a deep-emerald leaf. Her fingers come away slightly sticky from the rhody's under leaf. Adi leans over the creek, dipping her fingers into the chilly water to wash them. She fills a washcloth with water and adds bar soap, rubbing vigorously. She washes her hands, face, and pits.\n\n\"Shit,\" she mutters. Blindly, she splashes water on her face, letting the droplets fall. She applies her deodorant without looking.\n\nSetting the tube down, she wipes an arm across her face. Soap assaults her sensitive nostrils. \"Ugh.\" She'd much rather smell the forest than the strong-smelling soap she thieved from the Singer's house. Her arms drop, and she opens her eyes.\n\nWithout the soap mauling her senses, she might have scented them sooner. Adi stands so quickly, the muddy shore of the creek aids her fall on her ass.\n\nShe sits on the squishy mud of the bank. Spinning amber eyes glow from across the creek. Male Were.\n\n\"Oh,\" she puffs out.\n\n\"Female,\" one of them calls out.\n\nAdi scrambles to her feet, tossing her pack across her back. A ray of sun stabs the pack, glittering on one of the unicorn horns.\n\nA surge of heat floods her system, zinging her core with such need, she gasps. Adi's heart begins to gallop.\n\nThe gazes of the three Were narrow sharply at her.\n\nAdi's eyes are keen, and keener still when she instinctively shifts to quarter-change.\n\nThe males across the wide creek miss nothing, their nostrils flaring together.\n\n\"Let us ease you, female.\"\n\nFuck that. Adi retreats a step.\n\nThey advance.\n\nOne of the three takes a step into the water. The fast-moving current breaks around his foot, making protesting sounds of intrusion.\n\nAdi hears a helpless noise\u2014then realizes she's making it.\n\nThey take another step.\n\nA wave of burning hits her hard, and Adi cups her elbows, whimpering against the mess of her body.\n\nThey exchange glances. In the next moment, they're crashing through the small river.\n\nAdi wakes up. She whirls, never more thankful she kept the backpack straps loose.\n\nShe shifts to wolfen in the next jump.\n\nAdi runs for her life. There are rumors about what happens to unprotected females who move through heat without a male escort. Adi doesn't think of what she's heard.\n\nShe runs.\n\nBranches lash at her face and body as she moves through them like a bullet made of muscle and fur.\n\nHer body metabolizes the sugar from the candy, chowing through the little bit of protein hanging on from the prior night and her jerky.\n\nThe water hydrates her for the first mile.\n\nTheir footsteps gain.\n\nI can't outrun males who are a foot taller! Her mind agonizes as her body trembles to keep up the crushing pace she sets for it.\n\nThen a miracle occurs. Adi sights 101 and gets a brilliant idea. As she bursts into traffic, a car slams into her. Adi spins in the air, her body on fire to heal the injury. The heat that she is most certainly going through aids the efforts of her body. The imperative of breeding supersedes all others.\n\nShe lands hard, cracking her head on the smoothly pebbled asphalt. Ribs break instantly, and breathing as she knew it stops. Adi's head falls to the side, and sees the males swarming the border of the woods. She sucks in a breath; it shudders like shards of glass.\n\nCars screech to a halt.\n\nAdi has enough presence of mind to shift back to quarter-change from wolfen as humans approach.\n\n\"Hey! Oh my God\u2014call 911!\" a human man's voice says.\n\nAdi closes her eyes. Tears roll out no matter how hard she squeezes them. Slash! she wails, though she knows he's not listening.\n\nHands touch her. Not to harm, but to help.\n\nPieces of conversation come to her in scattered bits. \"Like this\u2014no, careful!\" The wail of sirens draws nearer.\n\nMedics arrive. Gentle hands touch her ankles, throat, and wrist.\n\nShe'll heal. But right now, Adi hurts like hell.\n\nBut the humans don't know that. \"One, two\u2014three!\" The hands lift her, transferring her to a gurney. Adi shrieks despite her best efforts not to, feeling weightless as the human responders begin to slide her inside the back of the ambulance.\n\n\"Skid marks. Driver was going fast. Did you see how far she was from the vehicle?\" one medic asks another.\n\n\"Too far.\" The voice is ominous.\n\nAdi cracks her eyes open. The males are gone.\n\nA bee sting pierces her arm at the bend of her elbow.\n\nThen she is gone, too.\n\n# CHAPTER FOURTEEN\n\nTessa\n\nThey grab the women, hauling them on shoulders as broad as houses, then run deeper into the woods.\n\nTessa jiggles on the back of the one whose crotch she nailed.\n\nHe seems to be purposely jostling her in a teeth-rattling stride while maneuvering around the huge, old-growth trees heaped with layers of moss and lichen.\n\nShe wants to barf, preferably on him.\n\nFinally, they reach a clearing, and he allows Tessa to slide off his back.\n\nActually, he just sort of lets go, and she rolls off him in a clumsy pile of limbs. She lands hard, a breath choking out of her body. The food she had in the Walmart parking lot is long-gone, and she's so thirsty, she can hardly think of anything else.\n\nBut those considerations are second to the Lanarre pack coming out to see the novelty of two females literally dropping into their laps.\n\nTessa stands, dusting off her hands, and glances over her wardrobe malfunctions. Her yoga pants got a workout while stretching to accommodate her shifts from quarter-change to wolfen. They hang loosely now, barely staying on her hips. Her T-shirt's neckline and hem are terribly stretched out. She's filthy.\n\nShe glares at the approaching Lanarre welcoming committee. Assholes. Tessa will not allow fear to rule her.\n\nHer palms slick with the beginnings of the fight-or-flight response.\n\nTahlia doesn't seem to share her anxiety.\n\nOf course not. She's lived in the comfort of the southwestern Lanarre region of the Redwoods in northern California. Tahlia's seen nothing but deference.\n\nWhat an eye-opener this must be.\n\nThree Lanarre break from the pack of about a dozen. Tessa backs up until her butt hits a tree.\n\nThe Lanarre who carried her turns, his eyes like knives of contempt, slicing her up.\n\nLooks like his crotch is okay now. Tessa smirks.\n\nThe three move to Tahlia. \"Imposters will be punished.\"\n\nTahlia's brow furrows, and anger radiates from her every pore. \"You are some of the most daft Lanarre I've ever had the misfortune of encountering. Scent me!\" she yells.\n\nThe lead of the three shakes his head. \"Drek was tasked with meeting his chosen, Tahlia. After a massacre of her guardians\u2014\"\n\n\"My guardians, you foolish dog.\"\n\nHis fist swings out, and Tahlia ducks smoothly. He feints, clocking her with the opposite fist.\n\nShe lands hard, her lip split and bleeding. \"You will not address me as though you are above me. No female but a royal could speak to a Lanarre male in that way, bitch.\"\n\nSo much for not hurting females.\n\nTessa's back straightens. Tahlia has a smartass mouth on her. But for a huge male to use a closed fist on a female Lanarre? Nope.\n\nThey're going to get a reckoning when Drek finally makes his appearance.\n\nTessa moves quickly. These idiots will be unprepared for her offensive. They're so sure of their wonderful maleness, there's no way a female would see to them.\n\nBullshit on that.\n\nOne of the three almost catches her race to get them, but he misses it.\n\nTessa rolls as she flies low, bunching up her body and somersaulting across the soft ground. At the last moment, she shoots out her hands, grabbing the nuts of the two who flanked Beater.\n\nHe turns, mouth agape, and Tessa springs straight to his face, striking him in the throat in a solid jab. He falls.\n\nTessa smiles. All in a day's work.\n\nShe swivels, grabbing the hand that Tahlia throws above her.\n\n\"Thank you, Tessa,\" Tahlia says, spitting blood on the ground.\n\n\"Thought you were a big bad fighter?\"\n\nTahlia nods, her eyes wary on the remaining Lanarre. \"I am. When I know I will suffer abuse.\"\n\n\"You've never been hit by a male?\" Tessa asks without looking away from the approaching Lanarre.\n\n\"No,\" she says, voice small. \"None would dare.\"\n\nThe Lanarre approach, changing to wolfen. Their bodies burst the clothes apart, swelling to almost seven feet.\n\nTessa's empty. She doesn't have sufficient fuel to shift. Quarter-change is all she's got, and even that is scraping the bottom of the barrel.\n\nAnd it won't be enough. She took out the three through the element of surprise. Without that to assist her, they'll have her bent into a pretzel in no time. Nailing their crotches was a quick, effective offensive. It also probably has the highest piss-off factor.\n\nTessa chances a glance at Tahlia. Her face is brave, but her lips tremble. \"No male Lanarre would raise a hand to a female.\"\n\n\"They didn't get the memo at this pack,\" Tessa remarks.\n\nTahlia frowns, but then her face bleeds to horror as she looks to the border of the forest.\n\nLaz steps from the woods.\n\nHis tail rises above his head, and he crouches like a samurai warrior. His hiss sounds like a legion of snakes.\n\nTessa shivers. The demonic are a fearsome species.\n\nThe Lanarre turn and pause.\n\nHe's worth a pause.\n\nLaz, why couldn't you stay gone? Tessa has time to ask before sprinting to meet him. She runs toward the evil\u2014her salvation.\n\nMaybe there's hope yet. With the three of them, they might be able to get out of this lunatic place where they're noseblind to a true royal in their midst.\n\nShe's almost to him when a Lanarre blindsides her with a fist.\n\nTessa flies, crashing on the ground. She rolls, moving to her hands and knees, shaking her head to clear it.\n\nTahlia flies in a blur of color to her right.\n\nTessa stands and falls. She gets up again.\n\nTahlia's put two of the Lanarre out of commission.\n\nA lazy smile forms on Tessa's face.\n\nA couple of chicks kicking their asses. Tessa likes it. Remembering Laz, she turns.\n\nHe brings the end of his tail down on the head of a Lanarre. Brains blow out the side of his head. Shards of skull fling away like the scattered shells of eggs.\n\nA hand grabs her arms, and Tessa twists it hard. The grasp loosens, and she stares up into slowly rotating eyes of silver. She hits him in the nose with the flat of her palm, giving it everything she has left.\n\nHe howls, staggering away and grabbing his stubby snout.\n\nTessa whirls, her throbbing palm letting her know she's fractured something, and promptly slams into Laz's chest.\n\nHe grips her with fingers of steel. She sucks in his scent as though she's starving.\n\nHome. \"Laz!\" she cries.\n\nHe tosses her gently aside, and she lands on the ground behind him.\n\nHer head bounces off a rock, and the world spins. Tessa hears the fighting and screaming. Something warm hits her face like droplets of bathwater.\n\nA large hawk slowly spirals in loose circles above her head. \"What?\" she chokes out.\n\nTahlia?\n\nShe rolls her head, and it comes off the rock.\n\nNo. Tahlia is under three Lanarre.\n\nThey're holding her down. Gotta get over there.\n\nTessa begins to claw at the ground, working her way inch by inch.\n\nA foot lands on her back, and she groans as pain radiates through her beaten body.\n\nShe grabs the foot and twists. The Lanarre loses his balance, falling beside her.\n\nShe shoves her thumb in his eye. He wails, and she rolls to her side, lurching to her feet, and stumbles toward Tahlia.\n\nWhy does she look like I'm seeing her through a tunnel?\n\nTahlia drops to her knees just as an elegant and commanding Lanarre moves into the clearing.\n\nTessa sways.\n\nHe takes in the melee then shouts, \"Stop!\" in the most intense voice she's ever heard.\n\nTessa shudders. His voice resonates through her bones like a note from a tuning fork. She begins to fall forward, and someone catches her. She bats weakly at the hands. Then she notices whose hands hold her.\n\nHeat seeps into all the cold parts of her body, one in particular.\n\nHer eyes snap open.\n\nPale-blue eyes stare somberly down at her out of a face too red to be human flesh.\n\n\"Laz!\" she calls in weak warning.\n\nHis tail snaps back like a mallet, taking the approaching Lanarre's head off at the base.\n\nLike a classic parody of a zombie, the Lanarre keeps walking forward, arms outstretched, blood shooting out of his neck like a geyser. He comically tumbles forward.\n\nThe four after him are more cautious as they approach Laz.\n\nMy demon.\n\n*\n\nDrek\n\nThe area stills, and a frightened Lanarre princess seeks his face. Her fear strikes Drek like a piercing sword. Its evisceration of his tender insides is complete. His arrogant certainty of her fate as separate from his own is wiped from his psyche forever.\n\nHis guts pull him forward with a painful precision born of biology. Tahlia is more than his chosen in an arranged match of tradition he's been told about over the years.\n\nTahlia is meant to be mine. The very fiber of his being weeps for their union. His wolf thrashes his insides to get to her. Drek nearly stumbles as he makes his way toward Tahlia.\n\n\"What is this chaos?\" Drek roars, eyes sweeping the impromptu battleground.\n\nBowen bursts his skin for the third time in twenty-four hours, smoothly transitioning to wolfen.\n\nDrek keeps form.\n\nHe takes in the large hands holding her small body on the ground. His beast wants to gnaw those hands off.\n\n\"We have caught this rogue Lanarre female, Drek. She claims to be Lanarre royalty from the southwest. She attacks the males.\" His snort of disdain sets Drek's teeth.\n\nOnly royal Lanarre males can scent royal females. His temples thump, popping veins.\n\n\"Take your hands off my chosen, or Bowen will strip them off with his teeth.\"\n\nBowen growls his agreement.\n\nHis eyes seek Tahlia. She remains aloof, looking everywhere but at him.\n\nThe other males step away, and she manages to stand. Tears stain her face. A smudge of muddy forest floor and a stray needle stick to her cheekbone as she rubs her arms where the males held her.\n\nHer hunger slaps at Drek, and her fatigue tears at him like small teeth. This is chosen? He thought he could just\u2014what? Make her go away?\n\nThere is no going away. Tahlia is here to stay.\n\nMine, his beast whispers with insistence from deep inside. Drek reaches for her, and large midnight eyes narrow at the gesture. \"Don't touch me, prince,\" she seethes.\n\nDrek frowns. \"I am Drek, your chosen.\"\n\nShe nods, as regal as he.\n\nThis is not going as he thought it would.\n\n\"I know who you are. Call off your dogs from my friend, or I will make your time on this earth a living hell.\"\n\nDrek's misgivings deepen. He might want her, but the greeting she received was incorrigible. Therefore, she is justifiably upset.\n\nHe glances at the six bodies on the ground. Two are missing heads. His lips lift from his teeth. The Lanarre guard who are uninjured bow their heads, backing away. Drek risks a glance at the rogue female and the demonic.\n\nShe is worse for wear, bleeding from her head. The demonic, standing proudly in the nude, wears the blood of the Lanarre over his entire body.\n\nDrek dismisses him as a threat for the moment, turning his attention back to one of his guard, Ospere. \"What. Is. Going. On?\" He enunciates each word like gunfire.\n\nOspere glares at Tahlia.\n\nIn the flesh, she is utterly gorgeous\u2014liquid and vital. Wide-spaced eyes of the darkest blue with a splash of violet flash in a face contorted with anger. Black hair in tight spiral curls falls to a hand-span waist.\n\nDrek wonders what it would be like to touch it.\n\n\"Do not look at my chosen thus. Explain. Now.\"\n\nOspere's mouth drops open, and Drek wonders at his shock. \"We found the females trapped at the great river, Drek. They were accompanied by that one.\" He jerks his thumb toward the demonic hovering near the forest, with the injured female in his arms.\n\n\"Why?\" Drek yells. \"Why would you raise a hand to the chosen?\"\n\n\"Drek,\" Ospere spreads his arms away from his body in an inoffensive gesture. \"Your chosen has been here for over a week. She arrived in the time you have been gone.\"\n\nDrek jerks his head back. \"No. This female\"\u2014he points at a pouting Tahlia\u2014is my chosen.\"\n\n\"No, she isn't,\" calls a voice from the direction of their den.\n\nDrek swings his body toward the voice. A female, the near spitting image of the one not two yards from him, stands close to the edge of the glade.\n\nShe sways as she walks toward him. The female is undoubtedly royal\u2014Drek can smell it. She also smells alarmingly similar to Tahlia.\n\n\"Who is she?\" Bowen asks.\n\n\"I am Tahlia of the Lanarre pack of the Redwood Forest.\"\n\n\"You bitch!\" the chosen screams.\n\nDrek's shock is absolute.\n\nTahlia attacks the other female. Talons fly.\n\nBlood flows.\n\nMore Lanarre rush in and separate them.\n\nDrek and Bowen exchange a look of confusion.\n\nFor once, his nose has lied. He doesn't know who is telling the truth\u2014and who is lying.\n\n# CHAPTER FIFTEEN\n\nJulia\n\nJulia leans back.\n\n\"You're gonna wear your eyes out looking at the clock constantly.\"\n\nShe turns to Scott and sighs. He's right, but she can hardly wait.\n\n\"It will surely be unpredictable,\" Victor comments, setting his fork at the edge of his plate, tines down.\n\nJulia's stuffed. She leans back, pushing her plate away with a fingertip. \"I'm scared,\" she admits softly.\n\nVictor's forehead creases. \"Do not be. Scott is Combatant. I am, as well. The demonic doesn't stand a chance against the two of us.\"\n\nJulia's hand covers the spore. It's quiet. But for how long?\n\nScott follows the movement, his face troubled. She can feel their combined thoughts like collective soup\u2014delicious, but filling. He knows what she does. Nothing.\n\nShe glances at the timer that will release them from the vault, yet again.\n\nFive hours, four minutes, thirty-two seconds.\n\n\"Julia,\" Scott says softly, taking her hands in his. He kisses her knuckles, keeping hold of her hands.\n\nHis flesh is warm against hers. She doesn't cry, but the tears are right at the surface. Julia thinks of Jason dying and Cyn still living above their heads. Maybe safe?\n\nMaybe not.\n\nJulia's been so selfish. Scott's brother and sister are above. Jen and Michael can't even know they're down here.\n\nJulia turns to Victor. \"You didn't know those two weren't Region Two?\"\n\nVictor's face tightens, regret etched on every surface. \"I thought something was off. But, like everyone, I was overly thrilled that additional Singers survived. At least, more presumed to be Singers lived.\" His eyes meet hers, and Julia releases a harsh breath.\n\n\"Me, too,\" she whispers. They exchange a tormented glance.\n\nVictor continues, \"I was walking through the kitchen when my veins began to surface.\"\n\n\"That's when you knew,\" Scott confirms, and Victor gives a curt nod.\n\n\"So they're here to what?\"\n\nVictor narrows his eyes at Julia, drumming his fingers on the cheap folding table they just ate at. \"I do not wish to alarm you further. But because you're the Rare One, the demonic would be interested in shutting you down.\"\n\nJulia turns to Scott, and he nods.\n\n\"Royal Singers are angelic. The demonic had nothing to worry about when we were spread across the globe\u2014numbers low, no one to solidify or unify who and what we are. Along comes the prophesied Rare One. You changed all that.\"\n\n\"How?\" Julia asks, taking her hands from Scott's hold. She stands and paces back and forth in the all-concrete gloom.\n\nVictor stands, as well, clasping his hands behind his back. He walks closer to her, but stops a few feet away. \"Your potential has been much debated. But we know that the Rare One is here to unite the Singers and bring a purity of blood and cohesiveness to our species that's been diluted and misaligned over the centuries.\"\n\n\"Like Jacqueline,\" Scott states quietly.\n\nVictor looks in his direction, saying nothing.\n\n\"We can't blame what's happening here on Jacqueline's mismanagement of Two. No. Those demon guys are here because they're trying to halt progression,\" Julia states.\n\nVictor's eyes are on Julia's hands as they fly around like escaped birds. \"You are the natural enemy of the demonic.\"\n\n\"All of us are,\" Scott corrects.\n\nVictor shakes his head. \"All royals, naturally. However, many of us do not possess sufficient blood quantum to worry them.\"\n\nThey look at Julia. \"But I do.\"\n\n\"In abundance.\" Victor casts his eyes to the floor. \"I have assumed that you've bonded fully.\"\n\nJulia's face bursts into flames.\n\nEven the unflappable Scott seems a little... flummoxed. He manages, \"Yes.\" The one-word answer clearly signals the end of the conversation.\n\nNot for Julia. \"So we have. The soul-meld is consummated. What are the bennies?\" She shifts her weight, trying to ignore the timer.\n\nVictor's mouth parts. \"Bennies?\"\n\n\"What are the benefits now that we've done what we were meant to?\" Julia asks.\n\nScott reaches for her.\n\nThey thread their fingers together.\n\n\"I do not know,\" he says.\n\nJulia's shoulders slump.\n\nScott scrubs a hand over his short hair.\n\nVictor lifts a palm. \"I do know that the coming together of the two\u2014a true soul-meld\u2014is unprecedented. In theory, Julia's abilities, when tested, should be at their fullest.\"\n\n\"English, Vic,\" Scott says.\n\n\"You are stronger together than apart.\"\n\nScott hauls Julia against him, planting a soft kiss at the crown of her head. \"Well, we're together all right.\"\n\nJulia's blush flames to life again.\n\nVictor's face doesn't even twitch. \"That is good. I am more happy with that news than anything I can dream up.\"\n\nJulia thinks it's weird that one physical act can change things so drastically. Was that all it took?\n\nVictor grins suddenly. \"And\u2014\" He claps his hands together softly. \"If a child would result, all the better.\"\n\nJulia's mouth feels as though it's come unhinged from her jawbone.\n\nScott's embrace tightens.\n\n\"It would be the happiest of news.\"\n\nJulia really feels stupid now. She never once thought about protection. Dread pours through her.\n\nScott snaps his head to her.\n\nShe can't handle the idea of a baby in the middle of this dangerous life. She can't even protect herself.\n\nScott turns her to slowly face him. \"Julia,\" he says tenderly, brushing his mouth against hers in the softest kiss she's ever received, \"I'll never let anything happen to you\u2014or to a baby we would have.\"\n\nJulia's face falls forward on his muscular chest. \"I can't do kids right now, Scott.\" She wrings the confession out.\n\nScott places his index finger beneath her chin and lifts it. His lips part into a crooked smile. \"But you know they'd be little angels.\"\n\n\"Literally,\" Victor chimes from behind them.\n\nJulia nods, forcing a smile through her anxiety. \"That's what I'm afraid of.\"\n\nLittle targets for the likes of Praile and crew. The thought reminds her of something. \"What about Laz?\"\n\n\"He was the demonic that helped Praile, who went by 'Peter,'\" Scott states.\n\nJulia shudders, thinking of the pain from the demonic's spore when he drew nearer to her. \"But what's happened to them?\"\n\nVictor spreads his hands. \"We are here. They are above.\"\n\nJulia notes he very carefully doesn't address Jason's murder.\n\n\"And the new women\u2014Tahlia and Tessa?\" She shakes her head, putting her face in her hands. There are so many variables, so many who could be hurt because of Praile's unknown agenda.\n\n\"He is certainly the one who was behind the Singer genocide here\u2014using Tony. We know that Tony did not act of his own volition. He could not have.\"\n\nJulia nods a little too quickly.\n\n\"A great offense is the best defense,\" Scott says.\n\nJulia whips her head to his. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Let's talk about what to do when we finally get outta here.\"\n\nVictor says, \"Agreed.\"\n\n\"What\u2014\" Julia sucks in a huge lungful of air, ready to verbalize the unthinkable. \"What if everyone is dead... again?\"\n\nScott drops her hand, folding his arms across his chest. \"No way\u2014refusing that outcome.\"\n\n\"Scott?\" Julia cries. \"We have to address the possibility.\"\n\nVictor cups his chin. \"We need to assume that if a high demon has left the realm of Hades to seek the death of the Rare One, that would be the only goal. Killing Singers was more about decimating numbers, and he tasked that to a lackey\u2014Tony Laurent, who is now deceased.\"\n\nYeah he is.\n\nJulia still remembers his ripped-out crotch. Scott, apparently sensing the distasteful memory, slides his arm around her shoulders and draws her close. \"So the big wig comes to do me in?\"\n\n\"I would not put it quite like that. But they were aware of your...\" He clears his throat delicately. \"Unfinished ties to Scott, and while you were vulnerable, they presumed to end you.\"\n\n\"But now we're tied\u2014in every conceivable way,\" Scott repeats unnecessarily, and Julia suppresses the urge to elbow him.\n\nA small smile hovers on his face as he gets a sense of her embarrassment.\n\nShe frowns.\n\n\"Yes,\" Victor says, clearly oblivious to the interplay between her and Scott.\n\n\"So now we're invincible?\" Julia asks, disbelief dripping from her words.\n\n\"Hypothetically,\" Victor says, and Julia hears the but.\n\n\"But?\"\n\n\"The spore worries me,\" he admits.\n\nJulia's hand flattens over her stomach.\n\n\"Let me see, Julia,\" Scott says.\n\nShe rolls up a thin T-shirt that'd been stuffed in one of the dressers in their room. It smells stale.\n\nHer fingers shake as she holds the bunched material.\n\nThey look at her stomach. Julia glances down, as well.\n\nA small, comma-shaped black smudge mars otherwise-creamy skin. No evidence of the wound caused by the demon's saber remains. Just the shadow of evil.\n\nShe exhales slowly. \"Still there.\"\n\n\"Yup,\" Scott says.\n\nJulia can hear the worry in his voice. It mirrors her own.\n\nVictor tears his eyes away from the mark. Facing away, he says to the wall, \"We might be forced to seek outside help to expunge that potential threat.\"\n\nJulia's face jerks to him. She was staring at the mark, rubbing it as though she could erase it from her body.\n\nScott asks, \"Who?\"\n\nVictor's exhale is filled with irritation. \"The fey.\"\n\nNot them again.\n\n\"We already owe them. I promised Tharell the exchange of Singers who would marry the fey.\"\n\nScott frowns. \"Yeah, before Tharell became a traitor.\"\n\n\"Doesn't matter. The oath is to faerie. Just like an oath of loyalty in human marriage is to God, not the spouse.\"\n\nJulia had never thought about marriage in those terms. \"So let me get this straight.\" She squeezes Scott once and steps away, gathering her thoughts without the heat of his emotions swarming her mind. \"I promised Tharell, but he was acting as faerie's rep?\"\n\nVictor tilts his head back, brows snapping together. Finally, after a full minute of consideration, he answers, \"Yes.\"\n\n\"Wow,\" she breathes. \"Tharell was dishonest, all out of his head because he wasn't close to faerie, and with his demonic blood\u2014it ruled, but faerie was still online. Then when I committed to exchange Singers for marriages\u2014\"\n\n\"Faerie was silently taking notes,\" Victor confirms.\n\n\"Marvelous,\" Scott says, his expression in opposition to the word.\n\n\"And I promised to end him,\" Julia says, biting on a nail.\n\n\"And that would fall under the same precepts,\" Victor adds, giving her a speculative look.\n\nJulia's stomach does a little flop. \"This is terrible.\"\n\n\"Is there a timeline?\" Scott asks suddenly.\n\nShe thinks about her prior conversations. \"I can't remember that I committed to a specific date.... Maybe. We have time,\" Julia says with quiet hope.\n\nVictor's eyes are dark with his thoughts. \"Perhaps.\"\n\nA beep, like a squawking bird, pierces the still subterranean air, and Julia jumps. Her head whips to the clock.\n\nZero hours, minutes and seconds.\n\nIt's time.\n\nScott holds out his hand, and Victor leads them to the rungs of the ladder that will take them up and out.\n\nTo the unknown.\n\n# CHAPTER SIXTEEN\n\nSlash\n\n\"I need to leave,\" Slash states.\n\nTruman's eyebrows move to his hairline. \"We could use another Were here.\"\n\nSlash's breath rushes out of him, and he scrapes a palm over his cropped hair. He doesn't bother with subtle. \"I've mated Adi.\"\n\nCynthia's mouth drops open. \"You\u2014what?\"\n\nTruman's lips twitch at the corners. \"Nothing like doing the deed when everything's going to shit.\"\n\nSlash understands the timing is unbelievably bad. But sometimes the heart wants what it wants\u2014the hell with timing.\n\nTruman runs his eyes over Slash's form.\n\nHis expression tells Slash what he already knows\u2014he isn't going anywhere right this minute. Feeling has returned to mid-thigh, though his lower back is still numb.\n\n\"I know,\" Slash confirms what he reads in Truman's disbelieving expression. \"That Alpha nailed me. But I'm coming around.\"\n\n\"Shift to wolfen,\" Truman suggests easily.\n\n\"Couldn't out there,\" Slash jerks his head to where Truman just hauled him from. \"What if it'd taken a couple of times, and Tramack and company had opted for a return visit? Plus I'm low on fuel.\"\n\nTruman grimaces, casting his eyes to the floor. \"You have me there.\" He puts his large hands on his hips, considering for a full minute. His eyes rise to meet Slash's. \"Shift. I'll guard you, then you go get your girl. This mess will be here in some form when you get back. It always seems to be.\"\n\nThey stare at each other, both understanding there might be no coming back. Uncertainty is the way of the supernatural world.\n\nLawrence and his default second-in-command, Manny, are both dead. Tony Laurent is dead, thank Moon. That leaves the Northwestern leaderless. Not an ideal spot for a pack of werewolves to be in. Without leadership, Were tend to become unstable.\n\nAdrianna almost surely went in the direction of her pack of origin after Slash shoved her away. However, the immediate goal of securing her safety was realized when Slash saw Tramack beaten and bleeding on the ground, his Were beside him.\n\nShe is safe for now.\n\nBut Slash would rather have her with him always. He knows he'll have to beg her forgiveness and eat crow to the end of his days in order to make Adrianna understand that he would never have said those things and acted as he had if the situation had been even marginally winnable.\n\nShe's young and female. Adrianna simply doesn't understand her importance to him\u2014or his role in her protection. How could she? She only has herself to protect.\n\nSlash has to protect them both.\n\n\"We'll get some food, and you shift,\" Truman says.\n\nPreferably something that's still squirming. Though that was unlikely.\n\nSlash is anxious to get out of the area, scent Adrianna, and set things right.\n\n*\n\nSlash groans.\n\nTwo shifts later, he remains wolfen.\n\nCynthia brings in the third plate of steaming leftovers.\n\nSlash eyes the food: an entire twelve pound chicken, by the looks of it. Slash isn't sure if that's sufficient.\n\nHell with it, it'll have to do.\n\nShe sets the food on the coffee table in the dainty parlor where he shifted and made a mess everywhere. Bet the Singers never thought that a bunch of cross-species would be spreading the remnants of a shift all over their house.\n\nSlash's chuckle is like a bark. Shit happens. And it happens often in his experience.\n\nSlash begins to shovel food, his body feasting and breaking down the nutrients as fast as he can chew and swallow. \"Thanks,\" he mumbles a heartfelt word through a packed mouth.\n\nCynthia leans against the door jamb, managing a wan smile. \"Welcome.\"\n\nSlash's eyes take in her slight form. She could use some food, too. Singers begin to file in through the door, and Cynthia turns to watch their quiet progression.\n\nShe sucks in her lip, holding back the sobbing.\n\n\"They'll take care of him,\" he comments, swallowing a load of food.\n\n\"I know,\" she replies softly, sweeping a small strand of blond hair from her face and absently tucking it behind her ear. She sniffles, taking a shaking inhale then going still.\n\nThey sit in silence as Slash picks his plate clean. Down the hall, voices are talking. Others are crying.\n\nJason Caldwell was a volatile Red. Most are.\n\nBut he was a part of the Singers. And like an injured limb that won't heal, his loss is felt keenly.\n\nSlash uses the last bit of chicken to catch the juices. He can't help his indifference. Slash has seen too much death to be concerned about one more. It's the single consistency of being a supernatural\u2014death.\n\nRight now, the only thing he cares about is the female who is not by his side.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Slash says again, covering a burp with his fist.\n\nA low vibration of tingling begins in his lower back, radiating like seeking fingers of heat, gripping and massaging his nerve endings back to life.\n\nSlash tries to stand from his crouch on the floor. He crashes to his ass on the floor. He grits his teeth against the searing pain as his body heals the last bit of his paralysis. Flames lick at the lumbar region of his back, bringing it to life. \"Ah!\" Slash places his palm to his lower back, where the pain is most acute.\n\nCynthia rushes to him, face blotchy from holding back grief. \"What is it?\" she asks, grabbing his arm.\n\nHis eyes slit in pain. \"Healing,\" he breathes out.\n\n\"Oh,\" she says. Then something flows into him\u2014part balm, part heat\u2014and his eyes meet hers.\n\nShe's augmenting his own body's healing.\n\nPins and needles stab him like an unwilling voodoo doll, and he bends in half, his palms hitting the solid coffee table. The plate rattles as his fork drops to the floor.\n\nA gauzy gray shroud covers his vision then shreds to ribbons. Slash staggers to the pass-through, Cynthia's hands still on his arm. He grips the threshold between the two rooms and slowly opens his eyes.\n\nHis wolfen vision is ten times as acute as a hawk's. Everything comes into focus. Slash feels his back, hips, legs, and feet simultaneously. He touches his back, his finger brushing the elastic band of the new athletic pants Truman had set aside for him.\n\nSlash feels alive.\n\nHe turns back to Cynthia, and her hands fall. \"I keep saying thank you\u2014but thank you.\"\n\nShe nods. \"It feels good to help.\"\n\nTruman walks in from where the Singers have congregated at Caldwell's death scene, eyebrows hiked in clear question.\n\n\"I'm ready.\"\n\nTruman nods. \"Looks like someone's locked in that underground bunker.\"\n\nSlash frowns, flaring his nostrils. Many scents come to his nose, ones he'd been too unwell to consider. Demonic is the first.\n\nDeath.\n\nWere.\n\nJulia, Scott, and Victor.\n\nTruman shrugs. \"Don't know who it is or how they got down there. But the timer's about up. All the bad asses have been accounted for.\"\n\nTruman doesn't smell them. Probably too new a Were to scent identify every layer in the vicinity.\n\nCynthia stands up straighter. \"Maybe it's Jules,\" she says, hope heavy in her voice. \"That'd make sense, right? Haven't seen Scott, her, or that Victor dude.\" She holds her face in her hands. \"I can't take it if they're hurt of worse,\" she says through her fingers.\n\nTruman grunts. \"Could be, or maybe not. Don't know yet, Cynthia. Don't borrow the worry.\"\n\nHer shoulders slump. \"Yeah.\"\n\nTruman steps away from the doorway, giving her a look that captures Slash's attention. Cynthia doesn't see the expression.\n\n\"There's always hope,\" Slash murmurs.\n\nHe scents something surprising from Truman. He doesn't act as though he cares about this female, but Slash scents that he does.\n\nTheir eyes move to Slash. He indicates his healed body with a hand. \"I never thought to have a mate. And now I do.\" He doesn't acknowledge the Rare One, her soul-meld, or Victor being inside that bunker. Slash would hate to tell them his suspicions, only to be wrong.\n\nCynthia lifts her shoulders. \"I know Adi, and if you don't get your werewolf ass after her, pronto, you can kiss the mate thing goodbye. She's not a girl to trifle with.\"\n\nI know. \"I'm sorry to leave you with all this going on.\"\n\nCynthia shakes her head. \"We could use you. Truman's right.\"\n\nTruman remains silent.\n\n\"But Adi's important, too. Us women have been through a lot together. And she's kinda headstrong. I'm afraid for her, Slash. She needs a level-headed guy. Don't dick her around.\"\n\nSlash blinks. Adrianna being headstrong is one of the biggest understatements he's ever heard. And he would never play games with a female. He's never had the opportunity even if that were part of his nature.\n\nSlash is uneasy, too. Thankfully, Adrianna doesn't have much of a lead on him\u2014six hours, tops.\n\nCynthia scans his face, apparently satisfied with what she sees there. \"Go,\" she says softly.\n\nTruman nods.\n\nSlash leaves. He doesn't run at first. But before he knows it, he's sprinting.\n\nAdrianna's scent is easy to follow. It smells like home.\n\n*\n\nAdi\n\nAdi blinks heavy eyelids. She looks around at all the white: white walls, floor, blinds, and bed.\n\nShe gazes down at her ensemble, a white hospital gown.\n\nUgh. She shuts her eyes again. Unreal.\n\nDerailed to the human hospital.\n\nHer eyes snap open. Oh shit. Adi can't let them examine her too closely.\n\nThey would find out things.\n\nShe sits up, and a plastic tube like a clear worm swings from her arm.\n\nWonderful.\n\nAt least she's escaped the three stooges.\n\nMaybe.\n\nThe heart rate monitor starts to beep, and a nurse cruises in. \"Ah, you're awake.\"\n\nAdi blinks at her stupidly.\n\nShe's about five feet five, with a slim build and dyed-black hair. Her liquid eyeliner is like a black slash, making her clear light-brown eyes stand out. She smells fresh off her cycle, and Adi can smell that she uses antibacterial soap.\n\nAnd she has aggressive breast cancer.\n\nSometimes it sucks to be a wolf.\n\nThe nurse\u2014Adi scans her nametag\u2014Jenni, clasps the clipboard with Adi's probable vitals. Jenni's expression turns puzzled.\n\nMaybe Jenni is a couple of years older than Adi. She looks young.\n\n\"Let me check your vitals.\"\n\nAdi nods, suddenly sad at all the inside info she now holds. Jenni checks all her parts. And like a jointed doll, she's okay.\n\nThat's when the fun begins.\n\nJenni plops down in a chair and rolls it to her bedside.\n\n\"You're very lucky.\"\n\nAh-huh.\n\n\"Do you know your name? We couldn't get anything from our records with your print.\"\n\nOf course not. No self-respecting Were would allow a human to get ahold of her DNA.\n\nExcept me. Adi figures they've got her blood, skin, and everything typed. Dammit. \"My name's Adrianna.\"\n\nJenni's smile is brilliant and gentle.\n\nShe's in the right line of work, this human.\n\nJenni pats her hand. \"We have x-rays that show a broken pelvis and femur, contusions, and small fractures in keeping with the larger injuries.\"\n\nHer eyes sweep to Adi's. \"A second set of x-rays show that those injuries have mended themselves.\"\n\nAdi gulps. Spying a water cup, she grabs it, takes a sip, and sets it back down. \"Okay?\" Adi says, feigning ignorance.\n\nShe's awesome at that.\n\n\"We're going to run more tests.\"\n\n\"Nope,\" Adi replies in a pleasant tone.\n\nNurse Jenni's brows crease. \"I'm sorry?\" she asks, as though she heard Adi wrong.\n\n\"I am not staying for more tests. I feel amazing. And, I have somewhere to be. I'd love to grab some food, but I bet I'll need to stick around for that.\" Adi grabs her lower lip with her teeth and swings her legs to the side of the bed opposite Jenni.\n\n\"Hey!\" Jenni calls out loudly.\n\nAdi's clothes rustle as she stands, tearing out the IV. She tosses it onto the bed then jerks off the tape, wincing. She rips the gown over her head, pitches it on the hospital bed, and pads naked to where she spies her clothes.\n\n\"What? Wait...\" Jenni says, setting the clipboard on a rolling tray with a disruptive clatter.\n\n\"It's okay. You've done your job and filled me up with some great meds.\" Adi turns to look at her, her hands hanging limply at her sides.\n\n\"Did you set my breaks?\" Adi asks, rooting through her unicorn backpack and pulling on her pants. She whistles through her teeth at some residual pain, hiking the yoga pants over her hips.\n\nBet the other pair are toast.\n\nAdi eyeballs the pack. A few unicorns have road skids, and only a smattering of glitter remains where they'd romped over the slick material.\n\n\"Yes,\" Jenni whispers.\n\nAdi smiles at her. \"Thank you. That would have been awful for me to try and figure out.\"\n\nJenni takes a deep breath then lets it out as though she's calming frayed nerves. Probably. \"We want you to stay here for observation, Adrianna.\"\n\nI bet.\n\n\"Adi.\"\n\nJenni catches her forearm. \"Please don't go, Adi. We've never seen anyone heal like you do.\"\n\n\"I know. Can't stick around and be a cooperative pincushion.\" Adi walks to the window, where she pops the metal slats apart with her index finger and thumb.\n\nShe swivels the latch at the middle of the window and slides it open slightly. Adi rests the side of her face on the wooden sill.\n\n\"What are you doing?\" Jenni asks from right behind her.\n\n\"Smelling,\" Adi turns to look at her. \"Stay where ya are. Don't stick me with needles or anything. I won't like it.\" Adi allows her eyes to go wolfen, and Jenni gasps, retreating a step.\n\nAdi directs her attention back to the window. She lays her face on the windowsill again and closes her eyes, inhaling deeply.\n\nHer eyes snap open. The males are here.\n\nJenni's going to be more than a nurse today.\n\nShe whirls, and Jenni snatches the clipboard from the tray, holding it in front of her like a shield.\n\n\"I need your help,\" Adi says, shutting out the fear. For now.\n\n\"You have it. Stay here so we can study you and take care of you.\"\n\nAdi gives an irritated shake of her head. \"No. You're going to wheel chair my ass out of here, toss me into your car, and we're going to your place. Then I can get where I'm going without the three musketeers up my ass.\"\n\n\"The three what?\" Her face screws into a frown of confusion.\n\nConvince her, Adi.\n\nShe rushes the nurse, who squeals like a piglet. Adi covers her mouth with one hand, staring deeply into her eyes.\n\n\"You'll help me because I know stuff about you.\" Adi shakes off the guilt of coercing a sick human. Survive.\n\nJenni tries to shake her head.\n\n\"I'll let you go if you don't scream.\" Adi raises her eyebrows, waiting.\n\nJenni shakes her head again.\n\nOkay, she's gonna scream.\n\n\"You have aggressive breast cancer.\"\n\nJenni's face slackens.\n\nAdi takes her hand away.\n\n\"How\u2014how could you possibly know that?\"\n\nLong version or short? Adi's eyes skate to the window. Short.\n\n\"I'm a werewolf.\" She taps her nose.\n\nJenni's skin pales, and she begins to slide down the wall.\n\n\"Shit!\" Adi says as she catches her easily.\n\nWhere the hell are the smelling salts when you need them?\n\n# CHAPTER SEVENTEEN\n\nDrek\n\n\"Stop this!\" Drek bellows a second time in a voice meant to deafen.\n\nAll activity ceases.\n\nHe makes a valiant effort to soothe a beast within him as it claws for escape. His attention moves to the palest shadow of the moon.\n\nFortune is with him.\n\nIt is full. And for a Lanarre, that means more control, not less. Three measured breaths later, his eyes peg the two Lanarre females before him.\n\nWhich one is Tahlia?\n\nHe openly studies the two females' bodies from the tops of their heads to the tips of their toes.\n\nAt first, Drek had assumed they were identical. Now he sees subtle differences and smells differences in scent, as well.\n\n\"She is my cousin, Drek. Tanya,\" the little spitfire tells him.\n\nThe other female, his purported chosen, glares at her.\n\n\"This is Tahlia,\" the voice of a strong female says from a few feet away.\n\nBowen growls.\n\nDrek raises his hand. \"Let the female speak.\"\n\nHe gives her a less-thorough perusal than the one he gave the warring Lanarre females. She is tall, even for a Were, standing easily five feet and ten inches. A messy black braid graces the hollow between her shoulder blades and runs past her waist.\n\nGray eyes like a pale storm cloud meet his frank appraisal with one just as bold.\n\n\"She saved me from Tramack's men.\"\n\nDrek feels his face tighten. His heartbeat trips over the next one in anticipation of her words. \"The Alpha from the Western?\"\n\nShe nods, and clear surprise washes over her face. \"Yes,\" she answers quietly. \"How did you\u2014?\"\n\nBowen chuckles beside him. \"We made his acquaintance at the Singers' Region One.\"\n\n\"And what of Praile?\" the demonic says.\n\nTheir fingers lace, and low growls can be heard everywhere. No Lanarre will stand for the inference of romantic intentions from anyone other than another Were.\n\nA female Were in heat is the exclusive right of the Lycan. How dare this demonic manifest his intent?\n\nDrek steps forward.\n\nThe demonic's skin flushes a light red. A tail rises above his head. \"Step no closer.\"\n\nDrek laughs. \"Do you not see you are outnumbered, horned one?\"\n\nThe demonic smiles, flashing teeth as bright as a slice of ivory in his hard face. \"I know many things.\"\n\nDrek hesitates. His knowledge of the demonic as a species is limited.\n\nHe has never had a need to know this little-seen enemy on intimate terms.\n\n\"Demonic wounds are very difficult to heal.\" Drek looks at the demonic. They are equal height. His pale-blond hair appears to silver beneath the bright moonlight that swaths the open meadow. Light colored eyes of indiscriminate color gaze guilelessly back at Drek.\n\nBut the demonic teem with guile. They are a crafty species\u2014that Drek is not soon to forget. His gaze shifts to the wounded Lanarre.\n\nThe body count stands at two. Shards of brain like bleached bone litter the ground as though head-sized eggs have been shattered in place. Drek's eyes reach the demonic again. \"You've murdered Lanarre, horned one.\"\n\n\"Only the ones who would have seen my true death come to pass.\"\n\nSelf-defense.\n\n\"He is a problem,\" Bowen comments.\n\nDrek heaves a harsh exhale. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"I can heal all but myself,\" the demonic says casually, and all movement ceases. \"And I am not horned.\"\n\nSomething in his tone rings of hollowness.\n\n\"That particular mark of beauty was not bestowed on me. However, where that bit is absent, I have other... attributes.\"\n\nThe female by his side blushes, casting her eyes at the ground.\n\nDrek knots his hands, noticing the male's nakedness again. Casual nudity is not appropriate among shifters, but perhaps it doesn't matter to the demonic. After a full minute has passed, he says, \"What do they call you?\"\n\n\"Lazarus.\"\n\nDrek's eyebrows pop. That is an ancient name from the fabled Christian book. It does not seem a likely namesake for a demonic.\n\n\"Not that it matters since there hasn't been one fair turn in this entire time,\" the chosen says from behind him, and Drek turns to the sound of her voice.\n\nHer eyes are pockets of shadow in her face, spinning slowly like swirling smoke. That alone lets Drek know that she's agitated, her beast rioting for escape.\n\n\"Laz saw that we escaped from Tessa's horrible packmaster and the other demonic. He alone helped us.\"\n\nDrek whirls to Lazarus. \"Praile?\"\n\nLazarus nods gravely. \"He will find me. There is no reasoning within the ranks of the high demon. Praile will locate me, and he will escort me to Hades, for the Master's reckoning.\"\n\nThe female beside him shivers, gripping his powerful bicep.\n\nHe wraps an arm around her, covering her head with a large palm. Steam rises in slow-moving vapors to escape into the cooler night air. His tale vibrates above his head, clearly ready for anything.\n\nDrek notes a very subtle shimmer over all of Lazarus's skin. It must be a trick of the eye. The vapor of hell couldn't off gas from his very pores.\n\nOr could it?\n\n\"We cannot offer sanctuary to a demonic,\" Drek says with a decisive grunt, \"or one who killed two of my guard. Or is clearly about taking a female from the limited number the Were possess. This Tessa? She shall remain here and be suitably mated and bred for the female she is.\"\n\nWhy can't this demonic understand Tessa's place among his people?\n\n\"She is my Redemptive. She will not be mated to a Lycan. Common Were or Lanarre.\"\n\nDrek's mouth drops open. \"If you know so much about the Lycan, then you must know our females are much depleted. We mate within our species, demonic.\"\n\nHis grip on Tessa tightens. \"Be that as it may, without her, I am condemned to hell.\"\n\nBowen chuckles. \"That's rich! Aren't you already there?\"\n\nLazarus's face sours. \"Yes. That is why this rare opportunity which has presented itself is so enticing. Without Tessa, my life remains one of torture, abuse, and maiming the souls of all beings whom possess one.\"\n\n\"It isn't our choice who Tessa mates,\" the female claiming to be his chosen says.\n\n\"I am Tahlia. Do not listen to this imposter.\"\n\nThey scent so similar.\n\nDrek ignores them both for the moment, turning back to Lazarus. \"I must sort the mess of my chosen before I can give sufficient weight to your words, demonic. Can you be trusted to not harm any more of my guard?\"\n\nHe can't afford more bloodshed, and he knows that will be what it comes to.\n\nA crooked half-grin seats itself on the demonic's chiseled features. \"If they do not try to harm me.\"\n\nDrek turns to his guard. \"Watch, but do not act.\" The six who remain look upon the demonic with angry wariness.\n\nHis attention moves to the two females. One lies. The other holds the truth.\n\nThe spitfire has captured him. But the other is equally beautiful.\n\nBut Drek knows from brutal experience that beauty is not all that matters. There is such a thing as a mate who holds within her the innate makings of a queen.\n\nThe spitfire is too bold, too rash to make a good queen, though their connection is irrefutable.\n\n\"What do you think, Drek?\" Bowen surveys the two royal females from the west.\n\n\"I think I will very thoroughly question the females.\"\n\n\"Good call,\" Bowen says.\n\nDrek looks to the Lanarre guards. The one who is the lead, Ospere, nods his compliance.\n\nWhatever Drek wishes to do, Ospere will see it done.\n\n\"Take the females to my chambers. Restrain them so they do not harm each other\u2014\"\n\n\"What the fuck?\" Tessa roars and launches herself toward Drek.\n\nLazarus captures her about the waist, popping her feet off the ground. And though she is a tall athletic specimen of a female, he easily halts her forward momentum, but not before she speaks her mind, \"You chauvinistic cad.\"\n\nDrek frowns, easily understanding the gist of her words.\n\n\"Tahlia is the real chosen. She came here because she thought your pack would protect her since her guardians were murdered. But you're like all the rest of the Were, royal dick or not. Your males hurt her because she tried to defend herself.\"\n\nThe Lanarre circle her and Lazarus, but Drek gives a subtle shake of his head. They instantly still.\n\nHe would hear her thoughts\u2014and what his guard did against the female. Drek folds his arms. \"How am I like the other Were?\"\n\n\"You all have small dicks and try to squish a female's spirit in the hopes she won't discover the inadequacy.\"\n\nLazarus's face appears pained, and a feminine snort sounds from somewhere behind him. Drek doesn't have to wonder over who might have made the noise.\n\n\"None of the Lanarre males have lack of function in that area.\"\n\nShe snorts. \"What other excuse is there? And you have proof. How would that be?\"\n\n\"Tessa,\" Lazarus murmurs.\n\nDrek's irritation rises.\n\n\"If you were a decent Lycan male, you wouldn't be trying to restrain your future mate. You'd be compassionate. She just lost her human guards, you foolish male!\"\n\nShe's spitting now, and Lazarus tries to calm her. \"I won't!\" she replies to something he says beside her ear.\n\nHer eyes flash like silver coins. \"It doesn't even matter if another lying female is playing you here. The facts are: we arrived, we were held against our will, and you almost killed a guy who was our only protector when one of our kind sought to enslave me. And you don't bat an eye, Prince Drek,\" she states with thick sarcasm. \"And you're the stand-up for the Lycan race?\" Her stare incinerates all who stand within range, her accusing eyes missing no one. \"You guys couldn't dance your way out of a paper bag. No wonder I'm rogue. What can you offer a female? Nothing.\"\n\n\"Amen,\" the chosen says from behind Drek.\n\n\"Take them,\" Drek says without turning.\n\n\"You'll regret this, Lanarre.\"\n\nDrek walks to her and the demonic. \"I allow the demonic to live because I haven't ascertained his culpability in these circumstances, only that he felt he acted in self-defense. And I do not know the true nature of my chosen. You are female and in the beginnings of heat. You're not capable of behaving rationally.\"\n\nThe first flicker of uncertainty Drek has seen lights her features. Good. She is too sure of herself for his taste.\n\n\"Come no closer,\" Lazarus says.\n\nTheir gazes clash. \"You threaten me? A Lanarre prince.\"\n\nLazarus's nod is slow. \"I threaten anyone who would harm my Redemptive.\"\n\nDrek's lips thin. \"I keep you for her welfare, as undeserved as it seems now.\"\n\nTessa's lips curl back from her teeth. \"By all means, kill us. Kill a female who dares to speak her mind and tell the truth about circumstances against her. And kill the male who saved her and your supposed chosen, who you don't even believe is your true mate.\"\n\n\"Your presence is separate from who my real chosen is.\" Drek scrubs his face. \"However, a true chosen would not behave as she does.\"\n\n\"Pfft!\" Tessa says, and Lazarus tightens his hold on her. \"You wouldn't know a true female with backbone if she walloped you between the eyes.\"\n\nHer disrespect grates on him. Drek looks to his guards, who flank him, their eyes spinning with the need for bloodshed. However, they will not act without his command. \"Take them to the house as guests. Keep the demonic at the back.\"\n\nDrek tries for gracious when all his beast desires is war. \"I need your word that you will not consummate whatever this Redemptive status is. Give us time to come to terms.\"\n\nLazarus inclines his head. \"I am not cut from the same cloth as the Lycan. I do not feel pressed to manipulate a female for its own sake.\"\n\nIt's not a real answer, but one of evasion.\n\nTessa gives him a glance.\n\nDrek flares his nostrils. They are not as well-acquainted as he first believed.\n\nShe is learning about his behavior just as he.\n\nA demonic is not meant to be with a Lycan female. They will see this. If he can delay the strange courtship that this Lazarus insanely believes is his right, Drek will figure out something that defeats it without looking like the one who manufactured their demise. Then she can be free to mate with a Were. And whoever his chosen really is will see him act with temperance instead of the dictatorship that is his right.\n\n\"Yes, whatever you believe, demonic, does not necessarily hold all the facts.\"\n\n\"Enough facts.\" His voice is droll. Sure.\n\nWe will see.\n\n\"Take them, as well.\"\n\nThe guard moves toward Lazarus, but his eyes flare in warning. Even in the moonlight, the shadow of red blooms on skin like bleached alabaster. \"I will walk unaided.\"\n\n\"Yeah\u2014\" Tessa says, glaring at Drek. \"Me, too.\"\n\nThey walk away, and Drek's gaze follows them until he can no longer see their forms.\n\n\"This is inviting trouble, Drek.\"\n\nHe faces Bowen, finally succumbing to the pull of his fatigue without the audience demanding answers. \"I don't want more loss. And even if the female, Tessa, has a sharp tongue\u2014\"\n\n\"She is female,\" Bowen states thoughtfully.\n\nDrek nods. \"Exactly.\" He gazes up at the full moon, wondering how this mess happened so quickly. Every solution feels insurmountable. If he kills the demonic, he is a villain for the murder of the one savior the females had. If he doesn't, it teaches his people a demonic can be trusted. That is a lie, with Lazarus perhaps proving to be the exception. And that means there is no justice for the two dead guard. As the humans say, Drek is between a rock and a hard place.\n\nThen there is the chosen. He felt a connection to her that couldn't be denied. But her manner... and his earlier thoughts of wanting to change the tradition to something with more free will make his mind full.\n\n\"You weren't even sure you wanted to go through with the pairing, Drek,\" Bowen states. He's vocalized Drek's exact thoughts.\n\n\"True.\"\n\n\"Then find out what's what with this Tanya\u2014and Tahlia.\"\n\n\"Did you feel it?\"\n\nDrek turns to Bowen. \"Feel what?\"\n\n\"The connection. The Book of Lanarre speaks of a true match having an enigmatic pull.\"\n\nDrek stares at Bowen. Lies, one of the benefits of being royal. \"No.\"\n\nBowen slides his jaw from side to side, hands going to hips. \"But one of them must be your match.\"\n\nYes, one is. Drek shrugs. \"Time will tell.\"\n\nBowen seems to accept that vague answer.\n\nDrek cannot. He must get to the bottom of the identity issue. And if a mate exists for him, she will become his. If not, she can be part of his pack in another capacity.\n\nIt's really not that complicated. Safeguarding the females is simple.\n\nThe answer to what will become of them is complicated.\n\n# CHAPTER EIGHTEEN\n\nTessa\n\n\"Fuckers!\" Tessa grates.\n\nThe male Lanarre holds his fist up, and she clamps her mouth shut.\n\n\"Get your hands off me!\" Tahlia says loudly, twisting her lithe body from side to side.\n\nThe obvious lead Were yanks her to him, clearing her feet off the forest floor. \"Do not make me beat a female.\"\n\n\"Again,\" Tessa states in a dry voice. How dare they not own up to how they converged on her and Tahlia\u2014or how bad their manners are. This is royalty?\n\nIf Drek is in charge of this group of thugs, Tessa is certainly better off with Laz... or on her own.\n\nThe lead Lanarre\u2014Tessa thinks his name is Ospere\u2014turns down his mouth. He's wolfen.\n\nBoth Tessa and Tahlia have stayed in quarter-change. Tessa doesn't even look at that bitch, Tanya. She docilely walks along. \"You entered our territory with a demonic. You are rogue. She\"\u2014he jerks his square jaw toward Tahlia, who pouts magnificently\u2014\"is Lanarre.\"\n\n\"I have told you, you\u2014oof! That I am Drek's chosen.\"\n\nThis is met with a knowing smirk. \"You do not behave as a chosen.\"\n\n\"She behaves like a female alpha who has been roughed up by males. Pissed.\" Tessa's face rocks back from the love tap given by the guard who holds her. She turns faster than he anticipates and sinks teeth sharper than human\u2014more exacting too, on his forearm.\n\nHe tosses her, and Tessa goes sprawling on her butt, landing in a heap of arms and legs with moss to thankfully cushion her fall. She flicks her tongue out, coming up with a drop of blood from the corner of her mouth. \"That the best you have, needle dick?\"\n\nOspere cocks his head, giving her a considering look. \"Why would you goad my guard, female.\"\n\n\"Because I can. And it's fine\u2014beat me. But you will never take from me who I am.\" Tessa hears her voice shake with conviction.\n\nOspere shakes his head as though weary of her. She has that effect on people.\n\n\"Bind her.\"\n\nThe one who hit her approaches with a ready smirk.\n\nTessa salivates with wanting to kick him right where it counts.\n\n\"Come here, little female.\"\n\n\"Piss off, brainless.\"\n\nHe launches.\n\nTessa avoids him and hits him on the back of the head with her laced hands. His wolfen arm, thirty percent longer and more muscled than usual reaches back and body slams her to the soft ground.\n\nStill, the wind leaves her lungs. She opens her mouth and can't breathe.\n\nHe flips her over, and her face plows into the moist vegetation of the forest floor.\n\n\"She can't breathe!\" Tahlia screams in a panic.\n\nThe Lanarre takes too much time to bind her wrists, enjoying her vulnerability, with her unprotected hindquarters on full display.\n\nHe hovers. \"Where's your demonic lover now, bitch?\" his whisper is loud enough to be heard by all.\n\nHer shame is a seed that plants itself in her brain, causing Tessa's tear ducts to fire on like light switches. Air finally returns to her lungs, and she sucks in just enough to say softly, \"At least he's got a dick.\"\n\nTessa doesn't know anything about Laz's dick, except it looked beautiful. But she'd maybe wanted to know more.\n\nThe Lanarre jerks her up, whipping Tessa around so suddenly, she groans at the onslaught, her shoulders throbbing from the abuse.\n\n\"That's enough, Erik.\"\n\n\"Yeah, Erik,\" Tessa manages.\n\nOspere jerks Tahlia beside him. \"You do not want to save yourself. However, maybe you care about this young female. She's barely beyond whelphood.\"\n\n\"But she is,\" Erik says with sick casualness.\n\nTessa's face whips to his. \"Touch her, and I'll end you.\"\n\nHe laughs in her face, his wolfen breath vile. The jerk's been eating the wrong animal diet.\n\nTessa leans back and, jumping forward, clocks him in his forehead with her own.\n\nShe's lifted from behind by the waist.\n\nInstantly, she knows it's Laz, and a part of her that had shriveled to hopelessness at his departure fans to life again.\n\nErik staggers forward, and Laz's tail wraps around Tessa, bashing Erik in the skull with the hammer head at the end of his tail.\n\nHis head bursts like a soft watermelon. Bits of brain scatter like gray seeds. Mushy, dirty gray brain matter falls before them, and Erik's body slumps to its knees.\n\nHis elevated status as Lanarre feverishly tries to repair the damage a mundane Lycan could never hope to achieve.\n\n\"I'm afraid he lost his head,\" Laz says.\n\nThree Lanarre rush him.\n\nTessa uses Laz's body, swinging her feet out, and punches them into the closest Were.\n\n\"Tahlia!\" Tessa screams.\n\nAn achingly high-pitched caw meets her fevered plea.\n\nTahlia's bird form lands on the next, talons sinking into his skull like a knife through butter. She rises, the powerful legs of the inky bird she uses in this form twisting and jerking. She breaks his neck, and he falls face forward.\n\nThe sound of bones breaking has Tessa struggling to turn in Laz's hold.\n\nHe drops her, and Tessa loses her balance, helplessly sinking to her knees. \"Shit!\" she yells.\n\nOspere has become his wolf, and Tessa slips to her knees on the carnage of his exploded form.\n\nTahlia has lighted on a strong branch directly above.\n\nTessa is kneeling like a sacrifice one yard from where Ospere growls, circling Laz.\n\nLaz's injuries make Tessa want to cry.\n\nDeep lashes run down his face, arms, and legs. He's still naked and vulnerable. Gorgeous.\n\nTessa blinks, suddenly realizing that there's something good to have come out of all this. Might as well die in a lust-induced state. She feels the stupid grin overcome her face. Old Erik got his, and Laz standing around in all his muscular naked glory's not too bad.\n\nAnd Tramack didn't get me.\n\n\"Stop!\" Ospere commands in a booming voice that makes Tessa's teeth thrum.\n\n\"Now what?\" Tahlia asks from beside her.\n\nTessa gazes up at her from her spot in the mud and filth, a black feather sticking out of her hair, and laughs. It's not the laughter of humor, but that of hysteria.\n\n*\n\n\"I can't believe Drek didn't choose to kill us,\" she states quietly. \"I guess if more guards had been killed... and now Tahlia's tied up somewhere with that phony Tanya.\"\n\n\"Nor I,\" Laz agrees.\n\nTessa chances a glance behind them. Yup, the two guards are their shadows, one in front of them and one behind.\n\nTessa trudges beside Laz.\n\n\"How did you get away from the guards?\" Tessa whispers.\n\nLaz's brow quirks. \"I heard you beyond me, and I couldn't control my actions. But they'll live.\"\n\nA vague outline of a cottage appears. Nicer digs than the Western had. It's been so long since Tessa lived with her pack of origin, so she can't be sure that improvements have been made during her absence.\n\nDoubtful. If there's one thing that's consistent, it's Tramack. He cares about one thing: himself. Not the comfort of the pack.\n\nThe small cottage appears to grow out of its surroundings. Situated perfectly between a cluster of hemlocks on one side and western red cedar on the other, it stands as a low, story and a half. A small window is anchored in the gable pitched roof like a single warm eye. A soft light glows through the glass.\n\nTessa doesn't hear the drone of generators, and this deep within the wood, she's not sure how things like electricity or plumbing reach this isolated structure. The thatched roof looks newly done, if she's any judge. It's beautiful and cozy. She doesn't want to relax her guard, but her exhaustion is taking over with each step.\n\n\"More than you deserve, female,\" Ospere remarks.\n\nShe slides her gaze to him, her tongue ready for the lashing such a comment deserves, but Laz presses a fingertip to her lips.\n\n\"Thank you for the hospitality of the Lanarre,\" Laz says with quiet intensity.\n\nTessa surveys his wounds again. They weep blood.\n\nHospitality, my ass. But she remains silent because they spared his life, even after he beat his way to the front of the group to save her from Erik's \"hospitality.\"\n\nShe looks back at his convulsing body. Fresh skull, like the membrane of a hardboiled egg, is a thin opaque sheathing covering his healing brains. Tessa shudders.\n\n\"It is sad commentary when a horned one would extend courtesy where a female of our kind holds nothing but derision.\"\n\nHow can he say that? His buddies are the one that beat them into submission.\n\nLaz touches her shoulder lightly, and she pivots on her heel, climbing the wide, bowed wood steps that lead to the front door.\n\nLaz gracefully follows, though his wounds should be causing him a lot of grief.\n\nThe Lanarre at back steps forward. He holds the solid plank door wide as they step through the threshold. \"Do not leave.\"\n\n\"Where's Tahlia going?\" she asks, frantically searching for the young female.\n\n\"She will be escorted to Drek's home.\"\n\nThat sounds bad. But she clamps her mouth shut. They haven't killed her or Laz yet. They probably won't hurt Tahlia, Tessa hopes.\n\nHis mouth puckers.\n\nTessa closes the door in his face and listens as the tumblers of a lock engage. She spins, facing Laz. \"It's completely weird that they'd leave us alone together if they believe I'm in heat.\"\n\nTessa keeps strict eye contact.\n\n\"It's baited,\" Laz says absently, his hands running over the huge logs that bisect the structure. His fingertips hover over the chinking in a dull ivory. Finally, he turns.\n\nTessa crosses her arms. \"What are you talking about? You killed two Lanarre. You accompanied a rogue female in heat. They're going to kill you\u2014slowly.\"\n\nTessa raises her hands to her face. \"Why didn't you stay gone, Laz? You're a demonic. They're keeping you alive for something awful. Look at how they treated Tahlia\u2014their possible future queen.\" She grunts her disgust.\n\nLaz peels her fingers gently away from her face.\n\nThe wounds of his own are beginning to heal. By tomorrow, they'll be gone. He brushes a hair out of her face. \"They will try.\" He looks off, eyes trained to the dark forest beyond the window. \"It is not the Lanarre who frighten me, but Praile. There is nothing they might do that would be worse than what the Master is capable of.\" His face tightens.\n\n\"That other guy\u2014Peter?\n\nA small smile erupts over his face.\n\n\"What's so funny?\" Try as she might, Tessa doesn't find anything amusing. Tahlia's somewhere. Some other Lanarre chick has decided to impersonate her, and Drek seems like a class-A asshole.\n\n\"Inside joke.\" Laz's smile widens.\n\n\"Huh. Okay. Anyway...\" She gives him a look that clearly says, get serious. \" Why is he a threat. He's demonic, like you.\"\n\nIt's Laz's turn to give her a disbelieving stare. \"We are demonic.\"\n\nTessa nods. So?\n\n\"High demons are the best of us.\"\n\n\"I remember.\"\n\nHis exhale is a rush of temper. His skin deepening to the light red she remembers so well.\n\n\"Why do you do that?\"\n\n\"Do what?\" His blond eyebrow rises. But now there's a hint of red.\n\nTessa waffles her hand between them. \"That. One minute you look like an average man, then the next, you're all demon.\"\n\n\"Average?\" he asks, a seductive lilt to his voice.\n\nThat one word heats her insides.\n\n\"Not average,\" she says, hating the squeak in her voice.\n\nHe moves his hands to her shoulders, brushing his thumbs over the curve where shoulder meets arm.\n\nHe explains by leaning forward, his mouth tickling her ear. \"It is more difficult to keep my human costume when my emotions are near the surface.\"\n\nLaz pulls back, and Tessa sways.\n\nHe is back to looking like a Viking: a blond, chiseled, tall, blue-eyed Norse specimen. She lowers her eyes.\n\nOh, Moon. I want to ride his boat. Tessa's face flames.\n\nLaz smirks as though he can read her thoughts.\n\n\"Why are you emotional right now, Laz?\"\n\nHe turns without answering, pacing away from her.\n\nShe admires the view, the muscles of his ass flexing and clenching beneath the black smoothness of the pants he was given. What is wrong with me? Oh yeah\u2014heat. But it should only be for a Lycan.\n\n\"It seems right that I would be emotional from having been captured by Lanarre\u2014Lycan royalty, no less\u2014and my commander hunts me for my wrongdoing. That my injuries take much of my remaining strength to heal. That's enough.\"\n\nTessa walks to his broad, bare back. The Lanarre provided clothing when he conceded their capture to Ospere, but the athletic pants don't fit him, and he never put the shirt on.\n\nLaz runs warm. She stifles a laugh.\n\nTessa swallows the ball of desire lodged in her throat by all that the pants showcase.\n\n\"I smell your lust, Tessa,\" he comments in a low voice.\n\nShe stops walking. \"How?\"\n\nHe slowly turns to her. The wounds of his face are now scabbed. \"I am demonic.\"\n\nRight. I guess lust is their biz.\n\n\"Ask me why those things are not the cause of my emotion? The fluctuation of my form is not caused by those extenuating circumstances. I have excellent control of the cloaks I choose to wear in this realm.\"\n\n\"Why is\u2014\" Tessa takes a deep breath. \"What is causing the emotions.\"\n\nRed water rushes through the air, and Laz suddenly stands before her.\n\nShe gasps.\n\n\"What is that?\" Her voice is shaky.\n\nLaz palms the side of her face. \"That? That is my essence. What you have seen thus far is not all that I am. This is only part of what it is to be demonic.\"\n\nTessa gets ahold of herself. \"What's made you emotional, Laz?\"\n\nSoft red moves under the surface of his skin like subtle blood. His hair darkens to gold. The flash of his tail spins above them, seemingly rotating with his thoughts. His eyes darken to gray licked by pewter.\n\nHe feathers a fingertip across her cheek, trailing his touch along her hot skin.\n\nTessa sighs.\n\n\"Proximity to my Redemptive.\" Then his lips are on hers, and Tessa's questions melt to what he's doing\u2014and what she'll allow.\n\n# CHAPTER NINETEEN\n\nScott\n\nThey're quiet as they ascend from the bunker. Julia's anxiety scoops out Scott's guts.\n\nAll he can do is fall harder into her.\n\nHe couldn't wait to have sex with Julia and get it out of his system. Scott figures there's nothing more unnatural than not bedding a soul-meld. Now he has.\n\nAnd if anything, his attachment to her is tighter. The connection is not like the noose married human men joke about, but a net of love and protection. Its weight is heavy.\n\nMaybe it's because of that spore. The thought of having to go to the sithen and worry about Julia's safety causes the Combatant inside Scott to rise. He beats the primal reaction down with a mental club. He can't be busting his form every time he feels threatened. He has to actually be threatened. None of the Combatants had known what having the Rare One present would be like until Julia was among them. Then their role wasn't just theory anymore, wasn't fun and games, but something real.\n\nSwaths of light pierce the dim interior of the cylindrical ascension as it marks they're progress.\n\nFinally, they reach the top, and Vic gives a hard twist of the spinning handle, lifting the portal.\n\n\"This is it,\" Julia says.\n\nScott doesn't reply. He feels the sludge of her anxiety, and he knows what awaits above.\n\nChaos.\n\n*\n\nVictor pops the hatch and slowly rotates on the top of the ladder rung like a human periscope. His eyes meet Scott's, and he gifts him with a slightly bemused shrug. \"Everything appears normal.\"\n\n\"Nah,\" Scott says. \"Get your ass out of my face, Vic.\"\n\nA smile flashes across his perfect features, and he hops out the top then holds out his hand to Scott. He slaps his palm into Vic's and exits. His eyes scurry over the surfaces in search of Jason's remains.\n\nEvery bit of metal sparkles. The hatch is clean and pure.\n\nScott opens his senses for danger. His nostrils flare. He's no tracker, but he can smell death underneath the obvious taint of cleaning chemicals.\n\nScott suppresses his obvious relief and bends, easily lifting Julia from the dark hole of the bunker, and her gaze skips over everything his eyes just touched.\n\nLarge liquid-topaz irises trace the spinning inset knob that opens the portal, the rim of aluminum that circles it, and the timer that is no longer counting down the hours. The floor that surrounds it is polished and glowing; the rug that covered the portal is absent.\n\nOf course. There's no way to clean what happened to Jason from fabric. At once, an image of the flail-type appendage the demonic swept into Jason's head rises like an unwanted mirage, and Scott shuts his eyes against it.\n\nHe can handle the visual, but he doesn't want Julia getting an echo of his thoughts.\n\nHer exhale speaks of defeated relief. \"I-I guess Jason's gone. Really gone.\"\n\nScott doesn't have a reply that's not painfully obvious or redundant, so he just pulls her against him, smoothing his hand over her hair.\n\nVictor's eyes meet his over the top of Julia's head. His relief mirrors Scott's own. Neither felt that Jason was anything but a way to fuck up the Region. Caldwell thought about numero uno. His human origin always got in the way of what needed to be accomplished with their people. Caldwell meant well. Scott even believes he loved Julia\u2014in his way. But it wasn't a selfless love. There were conditions.\n\nTrue love doesn't have conditions. It loves without strings, unwinding toward infinity by faith alone.\n\nHe kisses away Julia's salty tears then tilts her face up with his hands. \"It'll be okay.\"\n\nJulia nods. \"I have you.\"\n\n\"Absolutely.\"\n\nHer smile is watery but it's there, and Scott'll take it.\n\n\"Jules!\"\n\nThey whirl at the sound of Cynthia's voice.\n\nShe flies at Julia, and they embrace. \"I'm so sorry, baby.\" Cynthia steps away, fat tears rolling down her face. \"There was nothing we could do, Jules. I'm so glad you're safe. We didn't know where you guys had gone to.\"\n\nJulia nods. \"Tell me\u2014is...\"\n\nScott hears the click of her throat, and his own constricts with the overflow of emotions he feels from her.\n\n\"Is everyone okay?\"\n\n\"Well\u2014short version? Yeah. Mostly.\"\n\nJulia searches Cynthia's face, slightly chalky and tight with what Scott believes is the stress of Caldwell's death combined with wondering where the hell everyone was. Her six inches of dark-blond roots add to the scene of survival. Who has time for looks when everyone is just surviving from one island in an ocean of disaster to the next.\n\nI'd really like to catch a fucking break.\n\n\"What's the long version?\" Julia asks with a catch in her voice.\n\n\"You know...\" Cynthia's intense green eyes search Julia's face, and Scott doesn't exhale in disgust\u2014even though he knows full well what's coming. \"You know that \u02bbPeter' isn't Peter, right?\"\n\nJulia nods. \"Praile.\" Her voice is like a whip, and Scott strokes her arm. He summons comfort and allows it to pour over her like warm water. Julia's lips part, and her head tips back. \"Thank you,\" she breathes.\n\n\"Welcome.\" Scott kisses the top of her head, and Cynthia's eyes track their interaction like a hawk's.\n\nCynthia folds her arms, eyeing them up. \"Okay. So I see some stuff has changed.\"\n\nJulia's face turns pink, and love swells within Scott. He hates the new feeling of vulnerability. But when Julia turns to him, he feels the tug of the soul-meld, and its presence eases him.\n\nThere's worse things. Scott's just not used to feeling emotionally fragile. Fuck. He takes Julia's hand, tugging her away from the portal and the scene of Jason's death.\n\n\"Yes,\" Julia says, letting Scott lead her down the corridor to the parlor and the adjacent open entryway.\n\nCynthia walks alongside, trying to catch Julia's gaze and bring her back into the conversation. \"I'm not being judgy.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Julia says, giving her a quick look. \"But Jason's dead.\"\n\nTheir eyes lock, and Victor chooses that moment to silently leave. Scott would like to do the same, but Julia needs him at her back. And he's not going anywhere when he can sense how uncertain she is.\n\n\"Where\u2014what did they do with his body?\" Julia bites her lips, but tears slip out, trailing down her face.\n\n\"Ah, Jules, don't cry.\" Cynthia grips her shoulders. \"He did the right thing. You're the queen and everything, and he took Praile's murdering ass out of the equation of hurting you\u2014or whatever wonky plan the demonic had.\" Her eyes meet Scott's. \"Jace knew that Scott would protect you\u2014love you.\"\n\nJulia nods, tears dripping off her chin.\n\nScott restrains himself from swooping in there and hiding Julia. She has to face this sadness so she can move beyond it.\n\nHer inhale is a rattle of anguish. \"I know.\"\n\n\"We've buried him.\"\n\nJulia nods. \"I want to visit his grave.\" She looks at Scott.\n\nWhat can he do? Julia needs the closure. And whatever\u2014Caldwell's dead. Scott can afford to be gracious. Barely.\n\nHe understands he's got a dickhead attitude. It's a hard thing to help when his soul-meld had that prior connection. Scott will have to just work on it. Every day.\n\n\"First,\" Scott interrupts, and Julia quickly wipes her face, trying to be brave. Making the mark.\n\nHe smiles at her then gives Cynthia a narrow stare. \"Where is the fire prick?\"\n\nCynthia's laughter fades when she realizes the conversation might be too somber. \"Fire prick\u2014Praile\u2014disappeared when someone bigger and badder came along.\"\n\nScott frowns. Great, that's what we need, another fucking scenario of bullshit.\n\nCynthia scans his face. \"It's okay.\" She waves his concern away. \"It was some Lanarre prince dude, and he was all focused on getting ahold of his chosen.\"\n\n\"His which?\" Julia asks, her brows meeting in concern.\n\n\"It's that Tahlia girl. You know\u2014the Were who speaks like she's from medieval Europe?\"\n\nJulia's smile is fleeting. \"Yes, I remember\u2014she and Tessa.\"\n\n\"Well they're splittsville.\" Cynthia makes a whistling noise and Scott smiles. \"And,\" Cynthia rolls her eyes, \"They were riding shotgun with Laz.\"\n\nScott sucks in a breath.\n\nCynthia looks between the two of them. \"He's a demonic, too.\" She taps her chin. \"I don't know about the fire prick part with him, though. But Praile was pretty pissed about him taking off with the Were girls.\" Cynthia shrugs. \"Not my issue.\"\n\nHe snorts. Scott doesn't like the presence of two demonic. Hell, he didn't like any of it. He thought the demonic were done with after the battle at Region Two. He was wrong. Those two sniffing around makes it clear that was only part of it. Julia is the key. As usual. Scott and the remaining Combatants aren't going to make it easy on Praile or any demonic.\n\n\"So he's gone?\" Scott says.\n\nCynthia nods. \"For now.\"\n\n\"Are my sister and brother okay?\" Scott ruthlessly regulates his body's response. Julia doesn't need his anxiety on top of what she already has. He aims to offer emotional protection along with physical.\n\n\"Yeah, we're all okay. But there's this really crappy packmaster from the Western that's jonesing to go after Tessa...\"\n\n\"No,\" Julia says, eyes slightly wild. \"She didn't want to mate with him. Tessa told me that. It's why she was trying to leave with Tahlia.\"\n\n\"Ah!\" Cynthia says loudly, snapping her fingers. \"Drek! That's the guy who was the Lanarre prince. Man\u2014did he put a kibosh on old Tramack. What a ham-fisted fucker he is.\"\n\nJulia blinks. \"What do you mean?\"\n\nCynthia leans forward, and Scott is dying for her to see the point through. He's anxious to explore One and make sure it's secure against Praile and others who would try to harm Julia.\n\n\"Tramack missed Tessa by inches, thanks to Laz. And once Drek and his buddy found out Tahlia was gone, they took off. But I'm pretty sure that Drek showing up made Praile beat feet outta here. And us Singers were so blown away by all these weirdos showing up and swinging their dicks around, there was just kinda numb reaction.\" She spreads her hands away from her body.\n\n\"So the Lanarre guy is gone, and the Were females and Laz\u2014the other demonic, also?\"\n\nCynthia pushes her untrimmed hair behind her ear. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Where's Slash?\" Julia asks suddenly.\n\nThat's a great question. Slash is a non-Singer Scott would love to have on their team. He's level-headed.\n\n\"He's gone after Adi.\"\n\nJulia crosses her arms. \"What happened to Adi?\"\n\n\"That's a long story.\"\n\nJulia looks to Scott. \"I have time.\"\n\nNo we don't.\n\nBut Scott listens anyway, growing more troubled by the second. Scott winces as Cynthia explains that Slash forced her to leave.\n\nScott understands his desperation exactly\u2014better to eat crow later than have a mate subjected to death or a fate worse than death. The entire story makes Scott glad One isn't farther south. Nothing but a bag full of assholes for Were down there.\n\n\"So Slash is in pursuit of Adi?\" Scott asks.\n\n\"Yeah, he had to heal up here first. They'd paralyzed him.\"\n\nScott shakes his head. \"Fine. Tell me this jerk is in our jail?\"\n\n\"Sure\u2014he is. But Slash isn't a Singer. It's been explained to me that we can't involve ourselves in Were politics. Their bullshit against him and Adi? We can't punish that.\"\n\n\"That's stupid,\" Julia says.\n\nThey have plenty to concern themselves with just being Singers, so Scott's okay with the problem passing them by. \"I agree, but we're not in a great position to throw our weight around. We have the demonic who seem to be bent on coming after you. We have low numbers of Singers, and a lunatic Were packmaster that's after an alpha female Were who's not interested in him and another Were female who's looking at an arranged marriage.\" Scott plows his fingers through his short hair. This is a mess.\n\nCynthia nods. \"Yeah. Maybe you can put the fear of God in him. Discourage him from going after Tessa. After all, his goons worked Adi and Slash over. Right after they mated, by the way. Super-uncool.\"\n\nJulia's face scrunches with a look of disgusted horror.\n\nScott can't imagine what he would have done if someone had tried to hurt her after their first time together. Probably would have pulled their arms and legs off one by one.\n\nA vague smile seats itself on his face.\n\nJulia frowns. \"What are you thinking?\"\n\nOops, a bit too much emotional blow back.\n\nCynthia smiles. \"Probably the same thing any red-blooded male would be thinking if a bunch of thugs tried to spring in on them after a roll in the hay.\"\n\n\"It's not just that,\" Julia says, her tone of voice hard. \"It's that Adi and Slash had been circling being together for months. Slash hadn't wanted to go past a certain invisible line because Lawrence wouldn't have allowed the mating outside her pack; he was following Were protocol. But then Lawrence died.\"\n\n\"Yeah. Awesome,\" Cynthia says, \"except for Manny.\"\n\nJulia gives a solemn nod. \"Emmanuel was good to me.\"\n\n\"Me, too,\" Cynthia agrees quietly. A note in her voice causes Scott to study her features. Maybe she liked Manny more than anyone realized. But Scott doesn't have time to consider Cynthia's emotional state.\n\nVictor charges back into the room. \"The Were is gone.\"\n\n\"What? Tramack? Why?\" Cynthia says.\n\nVictor shrugs. \"He wasn't enough of a concern to keep in any event. His escape isn't as important as us securing the Region.\"\n\nScott nods decisively, they didn't have the people to contain him anyway. \"Agreed.\"\n\nJulia's hand moves to his forearm. \"I need us to stick together.\"\n\nScott rubs the back of her neck. \"There was never a question of that.\" He looks to Victor. \"Let's go see our people. I think they'll be a little relieved that we're okay.\"\n\n\"I hoped you guys were down there. I just didn't say it out loud,\" Cynthia says, hiking a thumb toward the bunker.\n\n\"How'd you know?\" Julia asks.\n\n\"Trackers could smell you. They'd been looking.\"\n\n\"Oh,\" Julia's eyes light on the direction of the portal at the end of the long hallway they'd just traveled.\n\nScott doesn't think she needs the constant reminder of her former husband's brains plastered everywhere.\n\nHe tugs her out of the house. Scott glances over his shoulder as Victor moves down the hall with a new rug to cover a portal best left unseen.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY\n\nAdi\n\n\"Wakey-wakey,\" Adi says softly, gently slapping Nurse Jenni's face.\n\nVivid root beer eyes blink apart rapidly. They widen, the whites looking alarmingly freaked, and Adi says, \"It's okay.\"\n\n\"It's not okay,\" Jenni says in a voice that trembles slightly. \"You've told me you're a werewolf, which I'm inclined to believe.\"\n\n\"Good practical logic there, nurse.\" Adi gives a crooked grin.\n\nJenni cringes away.\n\nMaybe quarter-change is a little too much.\n\n\"Hey, me being a werewolf isn't so bad. You knew something was off anyways. Later, you can say I was a lunatic, hopped up on LSD or something.\"\n\n\"Later?\" Jenni asks, rubbing her eyes with a fist.\n\nProbably trying to make me disappear.\n\nAdi picks her up by the armpits, and Jenni's eyes widen impossibly farther.\n\n\"Yeah. There can't be proof of our existence.\"\n\nJenni's lips purse. \"Well, bad job on getting discovered, quite frankly\u2014as you ran out and got hit by a car on a busy highway.\" She puts her hands on her hips.\n\nAdi's eyes narrow, and she suddenly scents the acute fear smell. Prey. Adi inhales deeply, realizes her eyes have gone wolfen, and calms the fuck down. Moon.\n\n\"Listen,\" Adi says, regaining control of the conversation, \"I know this is a shit ton to take in. Me being a werewolf and all. But aside from all that, I'm a woman, and as such, I feel second class. There's a reason I'm petrified and ran into the highway on purpose\u2014to escape three Lycan males.\"\n\n\"Lycan?\"\n\nAdi's nose scrunches. \"Lycan\u2014werewolf, same thing. Don't go all soft on me now. I need you to shelve your disbelief of Lycankind for just five minutes so you understand the danger I'm in. And you, by association.\"\n\nJenni's throat convulses as she swallows. \"All right.\"\n\nAdi slowly releases her grip on Jenni's Cheshire Cat scrubs. Hmmm. The wrinkled material sits up at attention from where Adi had fisted it.\n\nJenni absently smooths the material.\n\n\"This will be the quickest rundown of supernatural history I can relay.\"\n\nJenni blinks.\n\n\"I'm young. We live for hundreds of years, but I'm just out of whelphood\u2014teenage adolescence. So we go into heat for the first time two to five years past whelp.\"\n\nJenni's eyebrows sweep together. \"Heat?\" she slides her jaw back and forth. \"What does this have to do with why you threw yourself in traffic?\"\n\nAdi huffs in irritation. \"I'm getting to that.\"\n\nJenni's lips thin.\n\nAdi's struck by how pretty she would be without the harsh hair color and makeup. And terminal cancer. That'll do it.\n\n\"So I found this great male\u2014he's way older than me. I've been crushing on him since\u2014well, forever. He used to play with me when I was a whelp. He's a great warrior.\"\n\nJenni studies her.\n\nA great male. Adi clenches her fists, holding her eyes wide so tears don't fall in front of this human female she doesn't even know.\n\n\"He hurt you?\" Jenni asks quietly, getting to the heart of it like a perfectly shot arrow.\n\nCompassion rims irises that darken from the words Adi doesn't say. This chick absolutely knows Adi's pain. Her empathy makes Adi feel vulnerable, which she hates. It's too late to hold back, though. Three asshat males are waiting in the wings to take her.\n\n\"Yes,\" Adi manages. \"But those aren't the facts. I gave myself to him when the big ass admitted to loving me.\" She swipes a tear that falls despite her best efforts to hold it back. \"Then when a pack of jerk Lycan show up, they kick our butts\u2014we're outnumbered\u2014they got Slash really bad.\" Adi's eyes rise to hers. \"They paralyzed him, Jenni.\"\n\nJenni's hands go to her mouth, but Adi hears her easily. \"Slash is your husband?\"\n\nJenni's moved to stand right in front of Adi. She's much taller than Adi. \"No\u2014my mate. But it's the same thing in our world as husband in yours.\" Adi slowly lets out a painful exhale, hoping to plow through this next part. \"He told me to get the fuck away from him. That he didn't want me anymore.\" Adi chokes on the last word. She's really on a stupid rant now\u2014outing the Lycan race while confessing her embarrassing rejection and stupid faith in someone.\n\nConfusion washes over Jenni's face. \"You were hurt\u2014both of you. Why would he do that? It doesn't make sense. Actually...\" Jenni's face falls. \"None of this makes sense.\"\n\nProbably from a human perspective, that's true. \"I don't know why,\" Adi says. More tears fall, and Jenni plucks a nearby tissue from a box and hands it over.\n\n\"I bet you never thought you'd be comforting a werewolf?\" Adi says, blotting her eyes and doing a messy blow of her nose into the damp tissue.\n\n\"No,\" Jenni admits softly. \"It doesn't seem real.\"\n\nAdi gives her serious eyes. \"It is.\"\n\nThey look at each other.\n\n\"So now what? Slash...\" She pauses over his name before continuing, \"Has let you go, and there's some other Lycan\u2014?\"\n\n\"Yes. I guess Slash and I\u2014our interlude\"\u2014Adi quickly looks at Jenni, expecting condemnation, but finding a quiet understanding\u2014\"brought my heat early. And that's so bad. To be a female in heat, without a male escort...\" Adi shudders.\n\n\"So these men\u2014they somehow found you?\"\n\n\"There's no somehow about it. They scented my cycle, and without a male, I'm vulnerable.\" Adi can't keep the disdain out of her voice. \"Even if I could kick one of their asses, I can't do three.\"\n\n\"No,\" Jenni agrees easily.\n\nIn that, there's no problem figuring out the logistics of that scenario. She's a chick; Jenni knows the score.\n\n\"That's why we were overpowered to begin with. There were too many.\" Adi's eyes fill again. Moon dammit. What in the hell is wrong with me? \"There were four Lycan males and just me and Slash. We didn't stand a chance.\"\n\nJenni cups her elbows, expression pensive. \"I feel like I'll wake up any second, and you'll be a normal woman.\"\n\nAdi laughs. \"Nope.\"\n\nJenni's shoulders slump. \"Okay. So your healing powers have convinced me. You are something. But I can't just leave my post here and take off with an unidentified patient without more information.\"\n\n\"I'm not unidentified,\" Adi states reasonably.\n\nJenni rolls her eyes. \"Uh-huh. You say your name is Adrianna.\"\n\nAdi shifts her weight. \"Nobody calls me that but Slash. Adi's my nickname.\"\n\nJenni nods, nervously playing with her stethoscope. \"How can you convince me?\"\n\n\"My eyes weren't enough?\"\n\n\"That was weird,\" she concedes.\n\n\"Are you always this skeptical?\"\n\nJenni nods. \"Pretty much. And for the record, nurses are primarily in the science-math vocation. You know\u2014science. Prove it.\"\n\n\"Does anyone know about the cancer?\"\n\nJenni's face crumples, and Adi feels like an ass.\n\n\"Sorry.\"\n\nHer direct gaze moves to Adi as she inhales deeply. \"Don't be. I guess I'm in the anger stage of my diagnosis. I'm only twenty-eight and\u2014\" She tosses out a frustrated breath. \"I feel like my body's betrayed me.\"\n\nAdi gets a great idea, but she can't voice it. She knows what the pack would say: You can't save everyone. And on the heels of that: humans are lowly.\n\nBesides, she's got her own backyard to mow. Still, her epiphany niggles.\n\n\"Just get me out of here, but first, we have to camouflage my scent. And even with that, they might scent me.\"\n\n\"You smell all yummy now?\" Jenni asks. But the solemn look on Adi's face makes Jenni's smile fade.\n\nAdi nods slowly. \"Oh yeah.\"\n\nJenni frowns. \"What about Slash? Wouldn't he smell you, too?\"\n\nAdi looks at her bare feet. \"Yeah,\" she whispers.\n\n\"So you're telling me that the guy that said he loved you and wanted to be your \u02bbmate,' took your virginity then told you to get lost? Then let you go out there to be cherry-picked by wandering werewolves?\" She shakes her head in clear disbelief, flipping her palm out as if to ask for an explanation.\n\nWhen said like that, it makes Slash sound awful.\n\nMaybe he is. \"Looks like it.\"\n\n\"That's terrible.\" Then Jenni's face perks up. \"Well, we're a pair. But I have to say\u2014this Slash? He took more than your v-card.\"\n\nAdi nods, a defeated breath whistling out of her.\n\nJenni puts a hand on her shoulder.\n\nShe looks up into Jenni's compassionate face. \"You know, I'm supposed to be the bad ass werewolf here.\"\n\n\"Right now, I just see a woman with a broken heart.\"\n\nJenni's scrubs catch her tears.\n\n*\n\n\"This is desecrating the dead.\" Jenni mutters in revulsion, wrinkling her nose.\n\n\"The dead don't know anything,\" Adi says, rubbing liquefied decomposing human organs over her arms and around her neck.\n\n\"I can get in so much trouble, and it's gross.\"\n\nAdi gives her a look of pure frustration. \"I'm the one wearing the guts. I know I reek like road kill.\"\n\n\"It's so bad. And a must be against some religion somewhere. Ugh.\"\n\nProbably all of them.\n\n\"But these humans' remains had already been used for their donor purposes. This is just remnants.\" Adi gives her a be logical look.\n\n\"This better work,\" Jenni mutters.\n\nAdi grips her shoulders. \"It's not going to work. It'll only buy us time. I'm hoping, once we're inside your car\u2014\"\n\n\"What?\" Jenny screeches, horrified.\n\n\"Shh!\" Adi scans the inside of the morgue. The metallic, impersonal surfaces reflect back at her with the dimmed LED lighting. In a low voice, Adi continues, \"Once we're in your vehicle, it would take an awesome tracker to find me.\"\n\n\"We slather you with human remains and that allows you to slip away in the interim?\"\n\n\"Exactly\u2014now get my face.\"\n\nAdi closes her eyes, and Jenni marks her with cold decomposing human soup, putting two fingers' worth above her eyes and each cheekbone.\n\nJenni grimaces. \"There. Ick.\" She removes latex gloves, tossing them with two fingertips in the bio-hazard can.\n\nAdi steps back and moves to the deep washbasin. Looking at the warped mirror above the sink, she slaps the faucet lever on.\n\nThe gore of dead humans decorates her face like war paint. Her eyes are seated in the mess of blood and human tissue like stranded jewels of mixed gold, brown, and flecks of green. Adi's hair is slicked back and thrown in a messy dark-gold topknot at the crown of her head.\n\nShe does look pretty sick. Adi smiles. None of those pervs are going to dig her now. She smells like a corpse. Adi turns, winking at Jenni.\n\nJenni crosses her arms and groans. Then she says for the millionth time, \"I can't believe I'm doing this.\"\n\nAdi hides a smile. \"Me, either.\"\n\n\"Anyone ever tell you you're kind of difficult?\" Jenni asks.\n\n\"All the time.\" Adi flicks her eyes at the rolling stainless steel cart. \"Now let's toss me in the body bag and get to the garage.\"\n\n\"Right. And just for the record, I don't normally haul the dead that way. Or any way. I'm a nurse. For the living.\"\n\nAdi feels her eyes go wolfen, hot\u2014itchy. She's already quarter-changed, she has to be. But her wolf roils beneath her skin. \"I can feel the heat, Jenni.\"\n\nHer beast wants to breed, and her mate is nowhere. Not that she'd let Slash touch her again.\n\nAdi's chin kicks up and her shoulders straighten. \"The hell with it, I can live through this heat bullshit, but I gotta get out of here.\"\n\nJenni sighs. \"I'm bringing some plastic for my car.\"\n\nAdi turns so Jenni won't see the smirk. Cars. So not a priority. She slips into the cold body bag. The plastic crunches around her body as though rejecting her because she's not dead.\n\nTough.\n\nJenni's face appears above the opening. They stare at each other for a moment.\n\n\"I'm zipping you.\"\n\nAdi nods.\n\nThe zipper slides up, and the view narrows. Jenni's a couple of inches from closing it when the zipper stalls. \"You'll suffocate.\"\n\n\"It's okay,\" Adi says, already wanting to claw her way out. But Jenni leaves that tiny gap for her.\n\nThe smell of death is like a cocoon around her. Her beast doesn't like plastic\u2014or being contained.\n\nJenni turns Adi's cart in the direction of the exit, and they slap through the swinging morgue doors.\n\nCeiling lights flicker above her as they pass through the hall.\n\nThey slow. Quiet words are exchanged. Adi hears a buzz then the soft whirring of automated doors.\n\nAdi slows her vitals. She concentrates on her heartbeat and breathing. The heat cycles like a yo-yo from deep within. She focuses on the rush of her blood in her veins.\n\nThe cart stops suddenly, and Adi slides forward a little, feeling unbalanced. She almost barks at the poor human she commandeered for this little fiasco\u2014then the smell hits her.\n\nWere. They're here. Close.\n\n\"Can I help you?\" Jenni says. Her voice is neutral and indifferent, but her scent isn't.\n\nDamn.\n\nJenni's heartbeat sounds like a deer on the run. Worst physical response ever. Her cancer's scent is like riddled Swiss cheese. The Lycan males will smell her disease\u2014maybe Adi\u2014everything.\n\nWe're fucked.\n\nAdi feels responsible for Jenni's safety.\n\n\"You wear the smell of a female we are trying to locate.\"\n\nThey're not even trying to sound like human men. Moon. Adi masked her smell, but not what she'd passed to Jenni.\n\nCould I not think of that?\n\nThe male voice is growly. Adi works to stay loose and unconcerned\u2014a supreme challenge.\n\n\"What are you talking about?\" Jenni asks with convincing confusion. \"\u02bbWear the smell'?\"\n\n\"There was a female admitted in a car accident. Where is she?\"\n\nMore growl in the tone.\n\nAdi takes shallow breathes. She can't protect Jenni. Hell, she can't protect herself.\n\n\"I am not required to answer your questions, now step out of my way, or I'll call hospital security.\"\n\nAdi closes her eyes against the human female's bravery. She would make a great Were. Jenni reminds Adi of Cyn, with a filter.\n\n\"Hey!\" Jenni suddenly yells.\n\nA hand touches the body bag, and Adi tenses. Her eyeball rolling to see through the tiny gap.\n\nShe can smell Lycan male. A shadow looms, blocking out what little light pierced the small opening.\n\nOh moon.\n\nShe's never wished for Slash more than she does in that moment\u2014or hated him more.\n\nThe zipper begins to slide away.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE\n\nSlash\n\nThe landscape blurs as Slash charges expertly between branches that reach for his sprinting form.\n\nHe only slows when he needs to gather more of his mate's scent. When he picks up a cross-scent, he grinds to a halt. His talons leave deep gouges in the forest floor, and the hem of his athletic pants are drenched with moisture and dirt shot up from running. He re-ties the string at the waistband. His hands are awkward in this form, but Slash maintains it stubbornly.\n\nHe's not fucking around with his sense of smell. It's inferior in his human form, and he can't afford delays. And, unlike the females, he doesn't have the benefit of the quarter-change. It's wolfen or bust.\n\nThree Lycan males have crossed Adi's scent trail. A low growl rumbles through Slash, breaking the seal of his lips as a howl shivers at the edge of his tongue.\n\nWhy are they here? This is not a claimed territory by any Were. The Lanarre hold the Hoh Rain Forest, and all other packs are south and west of this area. They were asking for trouble, wandering uninvited in foreign Were territory.\n\nSlash's brow furrows as he sinks to his knees. Lowering his face to barely an inch above the obvious footprints of Were in wolfen form, Slash closes his eyes, inhaling deeply.\n\nThe smell causes his blood to run hotter. An instant erection hardens, throbbing painfully between his legs, and his skull aches. Teeth lengthen automatically as his body burns to be his wolf.\n\nSlash springs to his feet. A howl bursts from his throat as if torn and bloody. He feels his eyes go to those of his wolf, simmering inside the bones of his face. He holds back, knowing his restraint is not limitless, and tries for impossible calm.\n\nHis nose isn't perfect, but it's never made him a liar. Slash's heightened sense of smell tells him the horrible news:\n\nAdrianna is in heat.\n\nTheir time together did more than cement their lifelong relationship. And if he knows her cycle has begun, the other three who stumbled across her scent trail know it, as well.\n\nSlash hesitates, deliberating his odds of saving her from an uninvited mating and sentencing them both to death.\n\nIt takes him about three seconds to decide.\n\nI'll have to take my chances. Three to one is better odds than when Tramack and his people came and caught the two of them off guard.\n\nSlash pivots, crouching slightly, then leaps forward powerfully, spraying leaves, fir needles, and moist earth behind him.\n\nHis revolving wolfen eyes assist him now, sweeping his periphery as his blinding speed causes the forest to be a green smear that flanks him. Slash crashes through a creek. Hitting the other side, he stops dead.\n\nToiletries are scattered about, standing out like beacons of civilization in the middle of nature. Slash scoops up a toothbrush half-buried in the muck of the creek and raises it to his nose. He salivates as his beast rises in recognition of his mate\u2014and her heat.\n\nThe only thing his wolf wants to do is breed Adrianna. That is the very thing any other male werewolf will want to do.\n\nSlash must get to her first.\n\nHe tosses the toothbrush to the ground. He studies the ravine rising away from the creek bed. The distant hum of human vehicles rushing beyond his line of sight emits a low mechanical purr.\n\nSlash vacillates. Why would Adrianna head toward the highway? He drops to his haunches, scanning the dirt carefully. Many tracks obscure Adi's. Her shampoo bottle is crushed. The contents are a vile blue against the rich earthy colors of the forest. An altered paw print has stomped the bottle. Talons have punctured the stout tube of plastic. Slash sucks in a breath.\n\nThey pursued her. Running.\n\nAdrenaline surges. His attention hangs up at the other side of the broad creek. He furiously imagines what might have occurred.\n\nHot syrupy fear pumps through him as pins and needles bloom within his body. He sees the scene in living color. Adrianna is grooming. His eyes move to her filthy toothbrush and the burst shampoo bottle. Then his focus turns to a point directly across the water.\n\nThey saw her.\n\nWhen Adrianna noticed them, she ran. He touches the smaller altered paw print. It's smeared as though she pivoted. Hard.\n\nSlash stands, clenching and unclenching his fists.\n\nThe hold on his wolf is tenuous. Slash must make time to settle his beast, or he runs the risk of exploding his wolfen form and going to Were. And that, he doesn't need. Three shifts in fewer than twenty-four hours is an energy zapper.\n\nHe can't protect Adrianna if he's weak. He can't protect her if they have her already.\n\nMoon, help me.\n\nSlash inhales deeply, sprinting to where Adi's trail ends at the edge of the road, and gazes at the center of the highway. The beast whimpers. His eyes burn, and his vision doubles to his own and that of his beast's.\n\nAll he sees is her blood. All his beast scents is the remnants of her injury. A car whizzes by, and Slash staggers to the middle of the two-lane freeway, oblivious to the traffic.\n\nScreeching tires slice his eardrums like razor blades. Slash realizes he's slipped back to his human form automatically. It doesn't matter. Adrianna's blood fills his nostrils. What she did destroys his mind.\n\nShe threw herself into traffic.\n\nSlash doesn't howl. He leaves the catastrophic proof of Adrianna's accident and flies to the shoulder at the other side of the freeway.\n\nGlass tinkling and metal kissing metal enters Slash's dull consciousness. Drivers exit their cars, hands in fists. One look from Slash, and they slow their progress toward him. His eyes burn with the change, his body fighting to complete the form alteration.\n\nHis revolving stare narrows to slivers as they draw nearer in challenge. They study him. The human men have just enough primal instincts of self-preservation to get their asses back into their vehicles.\n\nHe dismisses them.\n\nSlash is Red. He can track.\n\nBut Adrianna's scent disappears from the spattering of blood covering the yellow dashes of the highway like an escaped ghost.\n\nSomeone took her.\n\nThe males?\n\nSlash paces the shoulder as traffic increases with the hour and the abused cars that tried to avoid him roll to the shoulder. Humans exchange insurance information, casting dark looks at Slash.\n\nThey look away when his eyes meet theirs.\n\nThe wail of sirens approach, growing louder with each whoop.\n\nHis head snaps up at the noise the humans can't hear yet.\n\nOf course. The hospital.\n\nHope floods Slash as he tracks the ambulance speeding toward him. A grin of sheer pleasure overtakes his face, and he plunges into the woods. His body streams to wolfen as he paces the ambulance. His speed tops out at the same rate of motion as flashing strobes of red and blue splash across the highway.\n\nWhen the rioting ambulance slows, so does Slash.\n\nChest heaving, he peers through the stiff branches of the forest that borders the brightly illuminated letters of the Olympic Medical Center.\n\nHis vision closes to a tunnel. He morphs to human form and steps from the woods. His pants float to his ankles, revealing his naked form to anyone who might notice.\n\nFuck.\n\nWith an impatient sigh, he jerks them up, re-cinching the drawstring, and strides toward the ER wing. The ambulance pulls up to the doors, and a medic hops out, opening the double doors at the back. His partner is inside with the patient, and the driving medic grabs hold of the handle at the foot of the gurney.\n\nSlash intercepts them neatly, never breaking stride. \"Hello.\"\n\nThe medics turn like a pair of startled birds. Their hands fall away from the gurney.\n\nSlash's nostrils flare, scenting the patient. \"He's dying. Don't bother.\" Then he turns and slaps the solid stainless handhold at the end of the gurney and shoves the whole thing back inside.\n\nLet's not have that in the mix.\n\n\"Hey!\" says the medic who drove. \"Get your hands off the fucking cot!\"\n\nSlash rotates his neck. \"Just did.\" Slash has a touch of regret as he clocks the medic, checking his swing at the last minute so he doesn't break the human's neck. There is no honor in killing a healer.\n\nAs the medic crumples, Slash catches him underneath the armpits and easily hefts him inside the ambulance, lying him beside the dying patient.\n\nThe other medic, a male who obviously sees gym time, rushes him. Were don't do gym time.\n\nSlash grabs the medic, jerking his forearm around the man's neck and hauling him against his chest.\n\nThe man bucks and writhes. He's very strong, for a human.\n\nSlash is at least four times stronger, though, even in his human form. \"I won't kill you if you answer one question.\"\n\n\"What? Fucking freak!\" he squeaks.\n\nSlash begins to wring his neck.\n\nThe medic gives a hoarse bark.\n\n\"A female came here today, young\u2014badly injured.\" Slash's heartbeat thunders like a herd of horses. He presumes Adrianna is here.\n\nBut that might be wishful thinking. Slash has loosely strung together the dots like the fibers of the finest spiderweb, waiting to be shredded.\n\n\"Yeah!\" the medic screeches, fruitlessly clawing at Slash's forearms. \"Early twenties, broken ribs and pelvis. Collapsed lung. Internal bleeding.\"\n\nSlash closes his eyes in relief. These were the responders. \"This the ambulance you used for transport?\"\n\n\"Fuck you!\" the medic bellows.\n\nI don't have time for this. Adi doesn't have time.\n\nSlash's forearm tightens.\n\n\"Yes!\"\n\nSlash drags the medic by the neck and pokes his head inside the ambulance. Mentally shelving the sight of blood flowing out of the now-dead patient, he ignores the other medic's fresh injuries.\n\nHe searches through the fine layers of scent: death, blood, injury, antiseptic, and drugs.\n\nBeneath those, Adrianna lingers. He'd missed it before, while concentrating on extracting information.\n\nSlash squeezes in a hard burst, cutting off the artery that feeds oxygen to the medic's brain. After thirty seconds of frantic thrashing, he goes limp.\n\nSlash carefully moves him inside the ambulance, and before laying the man beside the first medic, he strips the medic's uniform and puts it on himself. The fit isn't bad\u2014the human was large\u2014but the pant legs are too short. Slash closes the doors of the ambulance.\n\nTurning, he notices his fingers are shaking with tension and unspent adrenaline.\n\nAdrianna is near.\n\n*\n\nThe human herd flows past him within the sterile confines of the hospital, moving in opposing directions, never making eye contact.\n\nPerfect.\n\nSlash sights the nurse at the receptionist desk and approaches. Smooth, austere laminate in a bleached ivory tops the countertop at a height that reveals only brown eyes staring above an oversized computer screen as he approaches.\n\nHe doesn't have much time. Soon, those medics will wake up. Then they'll get attention\u2014the kind of notice Slash doesn't need.\n\nThe nurse's smile fades when she takes in Slash's face up close. The scar is a bisecting ripple of flesh that makes his features look harsh and unforgiving.\n\nSlash is unforgiving.\n\n\"Hello,\" he begins, having covertly flipped his badge in the wrong direction, hiding a face that doesn't remotely resemble the medic he just put into la-la land.\n\n\"Hi,\" she says hesitantly, shoring up into the shell of politeness expected of humans.\n\nGood girl.\n\n\"A family's arrived, asking questions about an admit.\"\n\nHer wide eyes narrow. \"Oh, for a patient?\"\n\nSlash gives a shallow nod. \"Yes. We had an early transfer in today\u2014car wreck, young woman, early twenties?\"\n\nBeautiful. Vulnerable. Unprotected. Slash swallows hard, feeling his Adam's apple like a resistant plow of flesh.\n\n\"Oh! Yes. She's Jenni's. Third floor.\" The nurse glides her mouse over a pad. She looks up at him, missing the scars now, seeing him as a person.\n\nSlash tries on a smile.\n\n\"Room 313.\"\n\n\"Great,\" Slash says then turns. \"No name?\"\n\nThe less they know, the better.\n\nShe shakes her head. Silky, fine brunette hair floats over her shoulders. Her neck is fragile, so easily smashed. Slash shoves his violent thoughts away. His emotions are really riding the edge of sanity. \"Unknown,\" she replies, her eyes drifting back to the huge screen.\n\n\"Thanks,\" he says, dashing away.\n\nSlash strides to the stairs. They'll be faster than the elevator.\n\nHe takes them two at a time. Looking first left then right, he swiftly ascertains odd numbered rooms are to the left.\n\nTrying to appear circumspect, he moves to room 313 and opens the door.\n\nEmpty.\n\nSlash enters, letting the door swing closed behind him. Moving to the bed, he can scent Adrianna everywhere. Her heat cycle is in full swing, and his erection grows like a plank of wood between his legs.\n\nHis mate is in need of breeding, and her scent saturates the hospital room, along with her injuries. The combination of smells puts his beast aggressively en pointe. An immediate headache sinks its teeth into Slash's temples.\n\nMoon, let me solve this. Quickly.\n\nHe lets the edges of himself go almost wolfen, balancing on the precipice between human and wolfen. The flush of the nearby change eases around him. His eyes sharpen, and his nose takes in every scent. He can only hold this balance between form for seconds.\n\nA human female's scent mingles with Adrianna's.\n\nThe human is diseased.\n\nSlash frowns. Maybe it's all the death in this place, and he's misreading the scents. He glosses over the human woman's scent, concentrating on Adrianna's. She's healed, but not fully.\n\nShe needs him.\n\nSlash doesn't smell the males. He smells a new trail: Adrianna's mixed with the human female's.\n\nSlash levels down, shoving his beast back in the box for now.\n\nHe leaves the room, and with an almost soundless growl, he flares his nostrils, hiking his face up.\n\nThere.\n\nSlash's face whips in the opposite direction from which he came. A sign glows in eerie white at the end of the hall.\n\nMorgue.\n\nSlash blurs to the basement of the hospital, narrowly missing two orderlies and a nurse. He's unsure what Adrianna's up to, but she's a clever female Alpha. She might already be aware of her pursuers and hatching a half-baked plan.\n\nA reactive plan because I wasn't there for her.\n\nSlowing down to appear human is seconds of torture as he delays his entry because of hospital employees. Finally, the humans pass, and Slash moves forward again.\n\nThe double doors of the morgue rise before him like a yawning stainless steel mouth.\n\nSlash slaps the doors wide, and they swing apart.\n\nThe smell hits him. Decaying flesh, tendons, and gore greet him like a punch to the gut.\n\nThings were done. Glass jars stand open, with the decaying stew of humanity inside.\n\nSlash is untroubled, except for the odor that mixes so exactly with the human sludge of the place.\n\nAdrianna.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO\n\nTessa\n\nLaz trails heat and wetness in a sultry path from her mouth to her neck. His large hands cup Tessa's shoulders as he draws her closer to him.\n\nHis head sinks between her breasts, placing tender kisses like heated sweet air.\n\n\"Laz,\" Tessa says, tipping her head back.\n\nHe catches it with his free hand, his other sliding to the small of her back and pressing her hips against his.\n\nThe erection that separates them makes Tessa open her eyes. His nearly translucent gaze meets hers, hooded and darkening with desire by the second.\n\n\"They're right outside, Laz.\"\n\n\"I do not care.\" His lips press against hers, sucking her protestations into his hot mouth.\n\nTessa groans. It's not right. She can't give herself to a demonic when there are Lanarre right outside a prison disguised as a guest cottage.\n\nShe flattens her palms on his chest and pushes.\n\nLaz releases her instantly.\n\nTessa stumbles backward, eyes wide.\n\nLaz gazes at her coldly. The warm storm clouds of his gaze from moments before have chilled to hardened sleet.\n\nTessa tries to recover. \"I'm not responsible for saving you, Laz.\"\n\nHe nods then turns away, running a finger along a table holding a solitary lamp glowing softly in the room.\n\nSteam rises from his light touch on the wood, and the outline of his fingertip burns into the wood.\n\n\"Oh, moon,\" Tessa says in a hushed voice. Her hands cover the lips he just ravished, and Laz's stare burns through her. \"Are you? Did you mean to do that?\"\n\nLaz gives casual attention to the tabletop. Small spirals of smoke from his nose, mouth, and ears drift into the space between them. \"No.\"\n\n\"I can't do this, Laz. I'm a Were. You're a demonic. We're not even the same species.\"\n\nAm I convincing him? Or am I convincing me?\n\nMaybe a little of both. Tessa folds her arms, daring Laz to contradict her logic. She's right, and she knows it.\n\nLaz doesn't contradict her. What he asks her next throws her.\n\n\"Have you ever mated with a Were?\" His words are soft, but if fire could speak, she would be aflame.\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"And have you asked yourself why?\" These words are as softly spoken, just as deadly.\n\nTessa's stunned. She's never thought about taking a male. Her last two heat cycles were agony. She sequestered herself in caves, hoping to relieve herself. But she couldn't. Only Lycan seed would salve the wound of her need.\n\nThankfully, she had a precursor that her cycle would be making an appearance, and she found isolated shelter.\n\nNow her heat cycle is just beginning\u2014and there is no shelter.\n\nTessa gazes at Laz then shuts her eyes tightly.\n\nHe would be my shelter if I could let go of my racist bullshit. Tessa's hands fall to her sides, and she clenches them into fists then releases them.\n\nTessa understands her feelings run deeper than mere racism that's keeping her heart in stasis. Males can't be trusted.\n\nThey dominate. The scars of her past won't heal. Won't let her live.\n\nIf she chooses Laz, every Were they stumbled across would challenge him. And what kind of young would they have?\n\nHotdogs, that's what. A mournful laugh escapes her lips.\n\nI can't breed him. I can't stand anyone else breeding me, either.\n\nShe will have to leave Laz to save him. To save herself.\n\nTessa is not his redemption; she is his undoing.\n\nShe opens her eyes.\n\nLaz is gone.\n\n*\n\nDrek\n\nHe softly shuts the heavy wooden door that signals the opulent entrance to his home.\n\nTwo century-year-old-growth logs bisect one another to form a twenty-foot ceiling. A chandelier that once held candles has been electrified during the past fifty years. The lights glow softly, illuminating an angry face, and another as seductress.\n\nTahlia glares at him, arms bound behind her back, encircling a large load-bearing wooden pole.\n\nThe other female, Tanya, strikes a sultry pose. Her floor-length dress is artfully swept across her form, highlighting her classic hourglass figure. The thin material sinks at the V of her thighs and wraps breasts that strain against it. In the cool air of Drek's antique log home, her nipples pebble.\n\nTahlia turns away from him. Her long, spiraling curls of ebony drape her face, partially obscuring it from his scrutiny. The tips brush along hips that flare, but are still not as filled out as Tanya's.\n\nDrek is alarmed with how young Tahlia appears, yet his gaze is uninformed, loving every inch of her body.\n\nWhen he reaches her eyes, they are deep midnight fire of hate.\n\n\"Release me,\" she says in curt command. \"I will return to my home in the Redwood Forest, and you shall be free of your obligation to mate with me.\"\n\nHer eyes tell him how much she does not want to be with him.\n\nDrek sighs, turning his attention to Tanya.\n\nHe plants his feet wide, crossing his arms. \"And you have arrived in my absence.\"\n\nShe inclines her head. \"Yes, my prince. I am your rightful chosen, and it is my cousin who tries to force her way into a relationship that is not hers.\"\n\n\"You lie,\" Tahlia says, jerking her arms against the post of a huge Douglas fir pillar that serves as both beauty and function.\n\nTanya has every attribute Drek finds comely in a Lanarre female. She is docile. Her hips are wide, her waist narrow.\n\nYet, he is drawn to Tahlia.\n\n\"I relinquish my rights to you, Drek,\" Tahlia says suddenly, watching him think. \"This lying cousin of mine can have you. I do not care.\" A tear slips out of her eye.\n\nTanya smiles triumphantly, and Tahlia looks away. Tahlia doesn't have hands to wipe away her sadness, and her grief pierces Drek.\n\n\"They're gone. My human guardians died at the hand of a ruthless, insane Were. I will return to my pack and be an outcast, rejected by my chosen.\" She raises her head defiantly, and Drek's chest tightens.\n\nThe hold she already has over him tightens. The new feelings anger Drek. He's accustomed to moving through his life decisively. His feelings of ambivalence and passion have stalled his mind.\n\n\"Ask me if I care?\" Tahlia entreats softly, and Tanya makes a small noise of annoyance.\n\n\"Do you care?\" Drek asks, as though against his will.\n\nShe vehemently shakes her head, the curls that frame her face bouncing. \"No. They can hate me. But I will not mate with a male who doesn't believe his nose. Who restrains his chosen because, as Tessa says, I speak my mind. I question your authority. I am who I was meant to be.\"\n\n\"Let her go, Prince Drek,\" Tanya says in a silky voice. \"I want to be your chosen.\"\n\nDrek turns to her, and Tanya shifts her weight, subtly crossing and uncrossing her legs.\n\nAny Were female understands that to release the smell of their sex in close proximity to a male is a sign of submission\u2014and invitation.\n\nDrek wrinkles his nose. He loves the scent, as any male would, but her motivation is beginning to wear thin on him.\n\n\"Address me as Drek,\" he commands in a curt voice.\n\n\"Yes, Drek,\" she replies in a purr.\n\nHe restrains his frustrated exhale.\n\nFemales.\n\nTanya is certainly easier.\n\nBut she is not the one. Drek is intrigued by how easily Tahlia dismisses him. A Lanarre prince would never harm a female. Technically, he has not harmed Tahlia. Though some of his guard were rough with her. I will deal with that later. Harshly.\n\nDrek would also explore the connection he feels toward her.\n\nIgnoring the pouting Tanya, he approaches Tahlia.\n\nHer head hangs. Small arms are wound around the log, tied off with gentle bindings of cloth.\n\n\"Tahlia.\"\n\nShe refuses him, keeping her nose pointed at the ground.\n\n\"Look at me.\"\n\n\"No.\" Her voice is low. Resonate. Absolute.\n\nDrek's lips quirk. He forces her chin to rise with a finger. He is so much stronger that if she doesn't want an injury, she must allow the motion.\n\nLiquid eyes full of grief drown him with her anger and choke him with despair.\n\nHe is unaware that his thumb has been absently stroking her cheek, while hazy tears drift down her dusky, smooth skin. They line the inside of his finger, gathering against the flesh dam.\n\n\"Why do you resist me?\" Drek asks, cocking his head.\n\nShe looks at him. Through him.\n\nDrek's eyes move to her mouth. It is full, with a pronounced cupid's bow. He tips his mouth to hers, hovering above the plump flesh as if summoned.\n\nHeat flushes to the surface of his skin, and he feels himself stiffen. Tahlia pulls him like a magnet, and like before, he is helpless to stop the draw of all his senses.\n\nA low moan escapes Drek, and he eases the distance.\n\nHis mouth covers her unresponsive lips, moving over the pliant hills and valleys of her lips. They part, and his tongue finds its way inside her. He groans, sweeping his hand behind her skull to touch silky curls that spring and collapse beneath his touch. Then her hair changes beneath his fingers.\n\nTahlia's mouth grows hard like bone.\n\nDrek breaks away in surprise.\n\nA bird soars above their heads, searching for an escape as bindings flutter to the ground.\n\nHer caw pierces the silence of the room.\n\nTanya screams, and Tahlia's snowy-white form dives for the fireplace.\n\n\"No!\" Drek bellows into the stillness, his lips as swollen as his cock, his heart a fist of dread.\n\nHis command mingles with the frightened ending note of Tanya's shriek.\n\nThen Tahlia is gone.\n\nDrek strides to the entrance door and realizes he's holding something in a tight grip.\n\nHe opens his hand.\n\nA pure-white feather spirals slowly to the ground.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE\n\nJulia\n\nJulia surveys the landscape.\n\nThe trees reach toward the small lake as if asking forgiveness. There's no outward sign that the dead, put there by the fey, line the shores.\n\nOnly the most sensitive shifters or a Singer Tracker would catch the scent of so many who'd perished.\n\nBut the memory will live on forever in her mind.\n\nScott slides his arm around her, and Julia's body eases. Their connection goes slack once touch is established.\n\n\"I guess it's time to get serious and hunt everyone down.\"\n\n\"I think things are plenty serious enough,\" Scott comments, a crooked smile on his face.\n\nJulia barely nods. There's something she has to do first. She places the flat of her palm on Scott's broad chest. His dark serious eyes hold hers. \"I need to see where Jason is.\"\n\nScott pulls her close. \"I wasn't a fan of Caldwell. And you can feel that, Julia. I can't hide it. But like I said, I appreciate what he did. What he sacrificed for us.\"\n\nJulia squeezes her eyes closed. \"He never got a chance, Scott. We had a different path in Alaska. Then those things got ahold of us and never let go. They killed Kevin, ruined my life, screwed up Cyn's\u2014hell, it's been nothing but a mess ever since.\"\n\n\"Not everything's a mess, Julia.\"\n\nShe opens her eyes, looking deeply into his. \"I don't mean I don't love you\u2014that we're not meant to be. I always got that on some level from the moment our hands touched. It's just that so many people have been sacrificed along the way. That's what I object to.\"\n\nScott traces a thumb over her lip lightly. \"I know,\" he says softly, bending to kiss the tip of her nose.\n\n\"Ready?\" Cyn asks from behind them.\n\nThey part, and Julia lets her fingertips trail across his muscular chest.\n\nHe grabs her hand at the last moment and squeezes her fingers. \"I'll be around.\"\n\n\"Duh,\" Cyn says, winking. \"Being all Combatant and that.\"\n\nJulia walks with Cyn toward the lake. \"He's not with\u2014\" Julia can't finish, hoping that he's not part of the mass grave she allowed.\n\n\"Nope,\" Cyn looks up quickly, kicking a rock with the toe of her bright-red Converse tennis shoe. \"He's in his own spot.\"\n\n\"Good.\" Julia releases a shaking breath.\n\nThe rest of the short hike is made in silence\u2014not the silence that's awkward and weighty, but the comfortable silence between longtime friends.\n\n\"This is exhausting,\" Cyn finally says as they reach the border of conifer trees. Feathery hemlock branches sweep toward them.\n\nRich western red cedar fills her nose, and Julia breathes deeply, fortifying herself for what's to come.\n\n\"Don't think so hard,\" she says softly.\n\n\"Sorry, I forget you're getting a bunch of feedback.\" Cyn looks up toward the sky. Fluffy cotton ball clouds drift by, obscuring the sun. \"I just can't help but miss his cantankerous ass.\"\n\n\"It's not that,\" Julia says, following Cyn as she begins to weave through the branches, holding them aside for Julia. \"It's the past that we miss.\"\n\n\"This new life,\" Cyn says, shaking her head, \"I mean\u2014what the hell? I'm a Were girl and a Singer Healer.\" She gives a defeated little shrug.\n\nJulia knows exactly how she feels.\n\nShe pops a palm up, narrowing her sights on Cyn. \"Don't even get started. I can feel your regret and loneliness for what was. And I can't do it, Cyn. I have to let go of this stuff. No matter how much we want what we had, it'll never be our \u02bbnormal' again. Kev is dead.\" Julia looks to a point ahead of them, and Cyn follows her gaze. \"Jason is dead. It's over.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Cyn says, tucking her hair behind her ear.\n\nJulia checks out her multi-colored locks and laughs. \"Nice roots.\"\n\n\"Fuck off,\" Cyn says, but she's smiling. \"Like these guys have a good box of bleach in this place?\" She tweaks a strand of dirty-blond hair with platinum ends. \"Pfft!\"\n\nJulia shakes her head, and they smile at each other. Some things are the same, and for that, Julia's relieved.\n\n*\n\nJulia sucks in a harsh breath. \"Wow.\" She smiles back at Cyn, who's leaning against a tree trunk, her leg bent at the knee. The sneaker is a bright spot of color against all the furrowed brown.\n\nThe grave is fresh.\n\nGrief washes over her, and Julia sinks to her knees. Recently churned dirt covers a nine-foot plot. The dirt is deep brown, like crushed toast. Julia dips her fingers in and runs the clumpy dirt through her fingers. When she can finally tear her eyes away, her gaze travels to the head, to a small wooden plaque carved simply with Jason's first and last name.\n\nUnderneath that it says Singer in elegant script.\n\nCyn's hand falls on Julia's shoulder, and she grips it like a lifeline.\n\n\"Ya know, if I weren't a Were girl, you'd have busted my fingers.\"\n\nJulia nods.\n\nBut she's not. Cyn is supernatural. Like Julia. Like everyone in this new life.\n\n\"Help me, Cyn.\"\n\nCyn squats beside her. Julia takes off a necklace she's been wearing for a long time. She pulls the thread of gold through the perfect circle of a wedding band she never wore.\n\nTears form in the corners of Cyn's eyes. \"God, this sucks.\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Julia agrees. She studies the temporary plaque. \"I don't want to forget what he was to me.\"\n\nCyn nods. The silence stretches for more than a minute. \"Did anyone mention it'll be stone?\" She points at the piece of wood.\n\nJulia nods.\n\nShe tips her head back, looking up at the tops of the trees. Dappled light strikes the raw dirt all around Julia, turning it to milk chocolate. But nothing about this death is sweet. Tricks of light won't take away the sting. It won't bring him back.\n\nNothing can right the wrong of the void left by Jason's absence.\n\nJulia loosens her hand around the ring that warms the inside of her palm. She stares at the circle of gold, and re-clasping the necklace, she loops it around a portion of the irregular border of wood. The fine gold chain catches, and the wedding band dangles, flipping back and forth.\n\nThe circle of the band sways, falling exactly over the O of his name.\n\nJulia's lip quivers. \"I'm so sorry, Jason.\"\n\nCyn pulls her off the grave, wrapping her arms around her best friend. \"It's gonna be okay, Jules.\"\n\nIn that moment, Julia feels like it'll never be okay again.\n\n*\n\nScott gives Julia a sympathetic look as she and Cyn exit the forest. He stands from his perch on one of the boulders that appear to grow right out of the ground, separating lake and woods.\n\n\"What?\" Julia asks, blotting her tears with her shirt sleeve.\n\n\"I know the timing's not good, baby...\"\n\n\"It's never good when the endearments start cropping up,\" Cyn remarks dryly.\n\n\"Anyone ever told you you're a pain in the ass?\" Scott says, frowning.\n\n\"Sure.\" Cyn shrugs.\n\n\"Guys,\" Julia says.\n\nCyn crosses her arms. \"Fine.\"\n\n\"Everyone knows about us being together now.\"\n\nCyn gives her a look of pure satisfaction then turns to Scott. \"Way to drop the bomb, stud-meld.\"\n\nJulia's face heats.\n\nScott scowls at Cyn.\n\n\"Did you tell people, Scott?\" Julia asks, instantly remembering every kiss, lick, suck, and everything else\u2014right after visiting Jason's grave.\n\nJulia covers her face as shame pours through her like acid.\n\nScott strides to her.\n\nJulia feels his thoughts, emotions\u2014and love. \"Oh,\" she says softly.\n\nCyn says, \"I don't have the two-way radio in my head. Spill it.\"\n\nJulia looks at Cyn. \"We have consummated\u2014\"\n\n\"I know,\" Cyn says.\n\nJulia scowls. \"Aura readers have seen Scott...\"\n\nCyn's jaw moves side to side. \"Ah. Gotcha. You guys did the deed, and now you're all rainbow.\" She slaps her hands together, knitting her fingers.\n\nJulia's chin dips. \"Something like that.\"\n\n\"Not a helluva a lot of privacy around this joint.\"\n\nScott laughs. \"None. But everyone's in the same boat. If someone can't read your mind to find out your situation\"\u2014he slides a glance Julia's way and her cheeks become pink again\u2014\"then there's an Aura reader who can out you.\"\n\n\"Being a Singer is serious mojo,\" Cyn comments thoughtfully. She taps her chin. \"Kinda glad I just fix people when Humpty Dumpty's men can't put them back together again. That telepathy shit sucks.\"\n\n\"That's fucking random, Cyn,\" Scott says.\n\nJulia takes a deep breath then lets it out as though her body's in slow motion.\n\nScott draws her close. \"You okay?\"\n\nShe nods, gives a small smile to Cyn, and returns her attention to Scott. \"You know how I feel.\"\n\n\"Yeah. But it feels more right to ask anyway.\" Julia never feels anything but right in Scott's arms. He pulls away slightly and places his palm above the mark at her belly. \"How's this doing?\"\n\nJulia shrugs. \"It doesn't bother me so much now.\"\n\nScott's expression is troubled.\n\n\"That's from Tony's little demon saber, right?\" Cyn asks.\n\nJulia nods.\n\n\"And it was given to him by that prick Praile, the demonic who\u2014\"\n\n\"Yeah,\" Julia interrupts quietly. \"The one responsible for killing Jason.\"\n\n\"And almost killing you,\" Cyn reminds her.\n\n\"Maybe not.\"\n\nThey look at Scott.\n\n\"What do you mean?\" Cyn asks.\n\n\"I mean\u2014why would Praile exert all this effort to get at Julia?\"\n\n\"Did you seriously just ask that question?\" Cyn asks, scrunching her nose. \"I mean, Julia's been tag-teamed since forever. And!\" Cyn nearly shouts. \"We did hand the demonic their ass.\" Her eyebrows rise to her hairline.\n\nScott chuckles, threading his fingers through Julia's and hauling her toward the mansion. \"Cynthia, you do have a way with words.\"\n\n\"What?\" Cyn grins. \"Praile's at the root of all our current woes, and I think he needs his dick pulled off. Cutting is simply insufficient. Not that I don't think Tessa did a stand-up job with her talons. Damn.\"\n\nScott stops in his tracks. \"You just say stuff like that? Do you ever think about how that would be?\"\n\nCyn smiles.\n\nJulia chokes back a laugh. \"Yeah, I think she really does, actually.\"\n\n\"Shit! Remind me not to get on your bad side.\"\n\n\"Consider yourself warned.\" Cyn waggles her brows.\n\nAmusement flows through their connection.\n\nScott narrows his eyes at Cyn. \"Nice friend, Julia.\"\n\n\"Hey,\" Julia says, socking him with her free hand, \"she kicks ass and takes names.\"\n\nScott shakes his head. \"No, she kicks ass and decapitates dicks.\"\n\nJulia bends over, clutching her ribs, and Scott releases her hand, putting his hands on his hips. \"Not funny, really.\"\n\n\"So funny!\" Julia cries, swiping tears of laughter.\n\n\"See?\" Cyn says, throwing her palm toward Julia. \"She appreciates my humor.\"\n\nHe scoops Julia up, tosses her over his shoulder, and swats her butt.\n\n\"Scott!\" Julia gasps, beating on his back, \"Put me down.\"\n\n\"No, ma'am, You're going to get proper discipline after our nuptials.\"\n\nJulia stills, her fingers spreading flat on his back. \"What?\"\n\nCyn jogs beside them. \"That's why Scott was looking all constipated earlier. He had to tell you the news. Now that One knows you guys figured out your love life, you get to be married. I mean\u2014what's stopping you?\"\n\nScott grips Julia's hips, and she slides down his front.\n\nGuilt, desire, and uncertainty cloud her mind. Everything's moving too fast.\n\nJason's dead. The demonic are still tearing around in parts unknown, and her people are fewer. Those who remain are scattered and unsure.\n\nScott cups her face in one large hand. \"I feel all your anxiety. But here's the thing, Julia\u2014do you have anxiety about you and me?\"\n\nCyn remains blissfully silent for once.\n\nJulia searches her heart. Each piece of her psyche holds tension, except one.\n\nThe soul-meld is the only intact thing about her right now. And no matter how her future might change, her supernatural connection with Scott holds.\n\n\"Right,\" Julia answers, noting Scott's tight eyes and tense posture. \"We feel right.\"\n\nHis fingers move from her chin and wrap the crown of her head. \"Then let's do something that's happy. There's been too much grief.\"\n\n\"I agree,\" Jen says, walking up to them, and that's all it takes.\n\nJulia's stoic veneer crumples, and her future sister-in-law holds her as she cries.\n\nNot all tears are sad.\n\nSome are cathartic.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR\n\nAdi\n\nLazily spinning silver eyes peer inside the bag where Adi tensely waits. He wrinkles his nose.\n\nLanarre.\n\nAdi's surprise is chased by a crazy thought. Adi feels like Little Red Riding Hood, ready to be eaten by the big bad wolf.\n\n\"Hello, female.\" His hot breath bathes Adi, and her beast recoils.\n\nShe makes a split decision. Sliding to quarter-change, she rolls in an agile wiggle, beginning to fall from the stainless cot and away from Romeo.\n\nThe wheels aren't locked, and the cart rocks abruptly from her sharp motion. She bursts from the bag, landing with her ass still inside the crinkling plastic as her palms slap the concrete of the underground parking structure.\n\nAdi grunts from the impact of her knees cracking against concrete. Healing fire burns along her kneecaps, momentarily weakening her.\n\nThe cart is flung, and Adi watches it hit one of the circular support pillars before it lands on the roof of a parked car. A security alarm begins to blare.\n\nAdi moves forward, getting caught up in the plastic, and kicking backward to extricate herself.\n\nStrong arms encircle her waist, lifting her from the ground.\n\nTalons burst from her fingertips, and Adi blindly swipes backward. The Were roars, his hold momentarily loosening.\n\nAdi spins.\n\nJenni's wide brown eyes find hers, a talon at her throat.\n\nAdi's breath catches. The human female's fear is like ashes in her nose.\n\n\"Is this your pet, female?\"\n\nOh my Moon.\n\nAdi backs up until a cold pillar meets her spine. She shivers with fear, chill, and desperation.\n\nThe three Lanarre males circle Adi. The one in the center easily holds a struggling Jenni.\n\nAdi fights to track their movements as they separate. \"The human doesn't matter. I threatened to kill her if she didn't get me out of here.\" Adi shrugs. Small lie.\n\nThe Lanarre swipes a finger across Jenni's throat, and the skin peels away. White at first, it quickly fills with her blood.\n\nAdi's heart sinks. She'd rolled the dice, hoping they would just let Jenni go if they assumed she meant nothing to her.\n\nShe lost that bet. \"No,\" Adi whispers fervently.\n\nHe drops Jenni, who clasps her fingers around her own neck, gasping as she drops hard to her knees.\n\nBastards. Rage uncoils like a snake preparing to strike.\n\n\"We've done you a favor then, female.\"\n\nAdi stands straighter, flinging her claws wide. \"You are Lanarre\u2014the best of us, but you'll threaten me and kill an innocent human?\"\n\n\"A human who is dying,\" another scoffs with a dismissive chuff, coming a step closer.\n\nSo let's kill her slowly. Makes so much sense.\n\n\"That doesn't matter,\" Adi says, her anger chasing tears to dryness. \"You guys aren't top dogs in my book.\" Her sarcasm rings in the barren parking lot.\n\nTheir eyes spin a little faster. \"We do not come to threaten you, female.\"\n\nRight. \"Then let me go,\" Adi says in a low voice. \"I am mated to another.\" Though Slash doesn't give a fuck, it's still technically true. They must scent the truth of her words.\n\nMaybe they don't care?\n\nThe one who grabbed her before spreads his arms inoffensively, his half-smile smug. \"Then where is your mate? And what kind of male would leave his female unprotected while she cycles?\" One of his dark eyebrows rises.\n\nAdi's gaze skates back and forth between the three.\n\nA pool of Jenni's blood spreads beneath her body, coloring the concrete black. Adi sees red\u2014literally. She would prefer their blood covering the garage floor instead of her human friend's.\n\nLoyalty has always been Adi's greatest character flaw\u2014and her greatest strength. Adi's face whips to the males.\n\nThey can fucking try me. Adi clicks her talons together, and they sound like the bones of her enemies.\n\nTheir eyes move to her aggressive stance.\n\n\"We are Lanarre; we don't hurt females.\" He sounds so insulted.\n\nIs he high? Didn't he just slit Jenni's throat? Adi laughs. \"You'll just breed me. Yeah.\"\n\n\"Of course.\" The clowns look at each other as if seeking agreement in their attempt at rape.\n\n\"We will take care of whatever young you have,\" the Were who'd laid hands on her says. His smile hangs vacantly on his face. His teeth are very sharp.\n\n\"You're not listening, pal.\"\n\nHis eyebrows jerk up. If things weren't so serious, Adi would laugh. Nothing's funny right now.\n\nJenni's bleeding out on the hard cement like discarded trash, and three males are discussing a phantom future pregnancy as though she should be all flattered by their attention.\n\nBull honkey. \"Stay where you are,\" Adi says as they fan out, eyes never leaving her.\n\nGrabber puts his hand out, palm facing her. \"We won't hurt you. We simply want to take you back to our den.\"\n\nPlacating cheese dick.\n\n\"I am not unmated. You've got to be the dumbest male I've ever had the misfortune of running into.\"\n\nAt a single yip, the males at his side rushes her.\n\nAdi does the unexpected, using the balls of her feet as she leaps to Grabber.\n\nHe reacts swiftly, but not swiftly enough.\n\nAdi has one shot. She sails toward him, and he instinctively tries to catch her, exposing his throat.\n\nAdi goes wolfen midair, sucking in a heated, pain-filled breath, and claims his open neck with her teeth.\n\nShe tears out his esophagus like a glossy worm ripped from the dirt of his flesh. Jerking her head back, jaws locked, she swings her head around, releasing a chunk of his breathing tube behind her.\n\nGrabber gasps, flailing for purchase on her suddenly bigger form. She hops away, swings her leg, and plants a foot on his chest, shooting his ass against the pillar she'd stopped cowering against.\n\nHeal that, asswipe.\n\nPowerful hands grip her upper arms, and Adi thrashes. One hand holds her nape painfully tight, and she whimpers.\n\nHer eyes meet Jenni's.\n\nSlash, Adi wails inside her mind, knowing he can't hear her. She hates that she would want a male's protection\u2014and loathes herself because she thought she already had it.\n\nThe metal door leading into the parking garage bangs against the wall, shattering into twisted curly cues of steel. They skitter across the smooth concrete like metallic sleet, rolling to a stop at the edge of Jenni's blood.\n\nSlash moves through the jagged open mouth of what used to be the doorway.\n\nTheir eyes meet. His are already wolfen green. His utter calm as he surveys gasping Grabber and the two Lanarre who hold her terrifies Adi.\n\n\"Slash,\" her beast growls out of a throat raw with her anguish.\n\nBut the Lanarre don't give a shit about what she thinks. She's an alpha female running rogue who's cycling. So Adi's fair game.\n\nShe's betting Slash won't let them hurt her even though he doesn't want her anymore. She doesn't even have time to think about why Slash would even appear.\n\nThe Lanarre's heads jerk in his direction, their stub wolfen snouts rising to scent Slash.\n\nTheir grips tighten painfully.\n\nAdi bows her head, breathing through the pain of their hold.\n\nWords are unnecessary.\n\nSlash's wolf bursts his skin. Blood, flesh, and bone fly, covering a ten foot diameter.\n\nBits of Slash's human form land like gory rain on Jenni. She attempts to cover her face, but is too weak to do so. The remnants fall into her blood.\n\n\"Slash! No!\" He can't kill the Lanarre. It's a death sentence.\n\nThen he does.\n\n*\n\nAdi crawls toward Jenni. The throbbing sound of the car alarm has finally quieted, and she has a moment's consideration of how lucky they are that no one has come down into the underground garage. The short war felt like hours, but the time was likely only minutes.\n\nSlash is ripping up pieces of the males behind her. Ominous crunching, gnashing, and flesh rending is the only noise inside the space.\n\nHe told her what he was: a male who didn't deserve her because of his deeds.\n\nHe heaves a head, and it tumbles like a bowling ball alongside Adi. It rolls to a stop, sightless eyes appearing to track her slow progress toward the bleeding nurse.\n\nShe ignores those dead eyes that seem to follow her, continuing her plodding course toward Jenni.\n\nJenni reaches for Adi. Really, it just sort of falling toward her. Adi grasps, hauling the woman into her arms.\n\nJenni coughs, and blood shoots out of her mouth.\n\nAdi's tears fall on her face.\n\n\"Is that\u2014\"\n\n\"Don't talk, Jenni.\" Adi swallows her sobs like open wounds.\n\n\"Slash?\" Jenni whispers, her eyes vaguely turning in the direction of the sounds Slash makes as he tears the Lanarre to pieces.\n\nAdi nods, pressing her fingers to Jenni's lips. \"I'm sorry. I\u2014this is my fault.\"\n\nJenni squeezes her arm. \"Is okay\u2014\" She coughs up more blood. \"Dying anyway.\"\n\nTheir eyes meet.\n\nBoth devastated.\n\nGrowling erupts behind Adi, and she shields Jenni, quickly swiveling her body in the direction of the commotion.\n\nGrabber is healed.\n\nNo.\n\nSlash has shifted back to wolfen and is circling the Lanarre.\n\n\"I am Lanarre, Red. I order you to back away. You might live yet, despite your crime against Lycan.\"\n\nAdi's eyes laser on the scattered remains of the other Lanarre.\n\nSlash doesn't answer. He grabs the other Were by the throat and smashes his head against the pillar Adi had kicked him into.\n\nGrabber sets his teeth in Slash's shoulder, and Slash howls in agony. He severs Grabber's head with his talons. A string of gristle still holds the head, and it tips backward, hitting Grabber's lower back. The gore is a gut-wrenching sight, even for her, and Adi gasps, turning her attention back to Jenni.\n\nShe's hanging on, but Adi smells her death. She's a tough human. Adi smooths her dyed-black hair back from her forehead.\n\n\"Make me\u2014\" Jenni's gaze pleads with an unfinished question.\n\nAdi's eyes widen in realization.\n\n\"Like you.\" Jenni's bright brown eyes begin to dim then close.\n\nA thread of life lingers.\n\nAdi's beast feels that barrier between life and death. Her decision made, she closes her teeth over Jenni's throat, secreting the essence of what makes Adi Lycan directly into Jenni's bloodstream.\n\nAdi's so intent on what's she's doing, she doesn't realize Slash is there until it's too late.\n\n*\n\nSlash\n\nHis mate lies in a pool of human's blood. He doesn't know the state of her injury, but he intends to find out.\n\nSlash returns his attention to the last Lanarre male he would bring to true death. He knows the repercussions for this particular sin.\n\nAnd they are worth it.\n\nSlash was doomed from the moment he scented the males' lust for his female.\n\nThey will not have her, he thought.\n\nAnd then Slash had not thought much more. He did.\n\nHis eyes move to the disaster of what is left of the royal branch of Lycan, and he sniffs in disgust. So much for the caretakers of females.\n\nWithout another glance, he moves toward his mate. He stops when he sees what she does next.\n\n\"Adrianna!\" Slash roars.\n\nShe ignores him.\n\nHe grabs her gently and attempts to pry her off the dying female.\n\nAdi slaps his hands away.\n\nSlash could easily overpower her. She is a small female. But he doesn't want to force her.\n\nSlash wants to love her. Desperately.\n\n\"Adrianna\u2014don't condemn her. She is not born of us.\"\n\n\"Get your hands off me!\"\n\nShe turns to face him, lips bloody, teeth longer than a human's. Her hair is a rat's nest, and her eyes are filled with fear and anger\u2014directed at him, no doubt.\n\nStill, she is beautiful. Her scent wipes away rational thought.\n\n\"You lost the right to order me around when you told me to\u2014\" Her lips trembles, and Slash aches to kiss it. \"When you told me to \u02bbget the fuck away from you.' I believe those were your words.\"\n\nSlash winces at her reminder. But they have more important matters.\n\n\"And stop looking at me like that!\" she yells.\n\nSlash cannot help the way he looks at her and says the obvious, \"You're in heat.\"\n\nAdi rolls her eyes. \"Gee, Einstein, ya think?\"\n\nThere's no time for her willfulness at the moment. \"We need to get out of here. Now. Where there are some Lycan, there are more.\"\n\n\"Whatever!\" Adi says, gently depositing the human on the ground, and stands.\n\nShe pokes Slash in the chest. \"Those guys were Lanarre, Slash.\"\n\nAdi has a point, he admits to himself. \"I'm aware of that, Adrianna.\"\n\n\"Then why in the world did you kill them?\" she cries, her heart in her eyes. She smacks his broad chest then cradles her hand. \"Why, Slash? They'll hunt you for killing Lanarre. If I mean so little to you, why would you take the risk?\"\n\nSlash eyes her lips, full of blood.\n\nBeautiful.\n\nHe bends to hover over her mouth. \"Because there is no reason to take another breath\u2014unless you're in it.\"\n\nThen his mouth falls on hers, ravishing every bit of plump flesh.\n\nSlash tastes the blood of their enemies.\n\nBodies are scattered everywhere, the human female might live, die, or become a Were. But none of that matters. The female in his arms is all that's important.\n\nShe squirms.\n\nSlash reluctantly loosens his grip at her hips, searching Adrianna's face.\n\nWhen her hand strikes his cheek, he doesn't move away.\n\n\"Stop lying to me!\"\n\nSlash chuckles. Adrianna's still pissed at him, and rightfully so.\n\n\"Jerk!\" she screams in his face, touching the mouth he just kissed. His eyes go to her lips, and it's all he can do not to kiss her again. Her heat pushes at him, pummeling him.\n\nBut humans approach. \"I'm sorry, Adrianna. But you must know...\"\n\n\"I know that you're a dick. And that you slept with me then told me to leave. How could you?\"\n\nVoices can be heard not too far off. Their ears prick in unison.\n\nAdi's tears cloud her eyes. Slash thumbs a few off as they fall, then sucks them off his digit, tasting the salt of her sadness.\n\n\"Stop,\" Adi's voice quavers.\n\n\"Never.\" Slash cradles her face. \"I made you leave. I said what I knew would hasten it, Adrianna. Tramack could have come back for you. And then what would have happened? In my paralyzed and unhealed state?\"\n\nSlash sees in her face that she intuits the potential.\n\n\"So you didn't really want me to leave?\"\n\nHe hates how small her voice sounds. He put that tone there. Him. He tips his forehead to hers, sliding his fingers to her neck and fingering her skin gently. \"Adrianna, I love you more than the moon.\"\n\n\"No Lycan loves anything more than the moon, Slash.\"\n\n\"I am not any Lycan.\" Pulling away, he stares deeply into hazel eyes gone gold with her beast. \"I am the male who loves you.\"\n\nHumans appear inside the ruined doorway, take a look at the carnage, and start screaming and shouting.\n\nSlash takes her hand and pulls her from the garage.\n\nAdi tugs, and he turns to see why she's stalling.\n\nHer eyes go to where the human female was, but she is gone.\n\nSlash captures Adi in his arms and runs.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE\n\nTessa\n\nShe thought he'd gone, but Laz had visually tortured her with how quickly he moved.\n\nHe stands before her in a blur of red flesh.\n\nLaz smooths his hands over Tessa's breasts, kneading them, and her core pulses once, aching for more. He seems to sense her need, dipping his hand to cover her mound.\n\nWhen he slips a finger over her yoga pants and between her folds, she gasps then groans, pushing her hips against his seeking finger.\n\n\"Laz,\" she says against his mouth.\n\n\"What may I do to ease you?\"\n\nOh Moon, make love to me until I can't walk. Tessa says, \"I want to do this\u2014I do, but we're in this place with all the Lanarre, and they know I'm in heat and\u2014\"\n\nHe presses his wandering fingers to her lips, and she kisses the tips. They're like bathwater against her flesh. \"Then let us leave. We will escape this place, and no one shall rule us.\"\n\nTessa wants that.\n\nShe wants him.\n\n\"I am not Lycan. I can never be.\" He tips her chin up, looking deeply into her eyes, and Tessa is lost in the smoke of his gaze. \"But I was made for you\u2014and you for me.\"\n\n\"How, Laz? How is that even possible?\"\n\nHe shakes his head. \"I do not know. But what I do know is, there is a fragment of the demonic. Those of us that are not fully of the devil. And because of this ancient DNA, we can sometimes be given a second chance in a realm other than Hades. A roll of the genetic dice, if you will.\"\n\nHe's so earnest, Tessa almost believes him.\n\nHis fingers skate lightly across her features, and she shivers. Trembling with want, she shakes beneath the heat of his touch. \"The myth is that you will know your Redemptive immediately, but she will not know you. You're more than a freedom from the prison of my station. You're a chance for happiness and a new life. You are labeled correctly. Tessa.\" He kisses her softly on the mouth, and she helplessly moans against him. \"You are my redemption.\"\n\n\"Lazarus, Lazarus, Lazarus,\" a low voice chastises, and Tessa whirls. The horned fucker.\n\nLaz shoves her behind himself protectively. \"Praile.\"\n\nPraile puts his clawed hands, tipped by ebony nails, on his hips and cocks his head. \"Yes, Praile,\" he mocks. \"You have frustrated me to no end.\"\n\nHis gaze falls on Tessa, and whatever brave thoughts she entertains, flee.\n\nIt's fair to consider he's going to want a little payback.\n\nTessa tries to inch away.\n\nLaz glances at her. \"Do not leave my side.\"\n\nPraile's eyes narrow, sighting them like an eagle with prey in range. \"This lowly female bitch shall die a slow death.\" Praile grabs his dick through loose pants and squeezes it. Tessa's eyes go to his hand at his crotch. \"All better, my little mutt. Despite your reprehensible actions.\" He glowers at her as though she gave him a paper cut.\n\nThat makes Tessa so much more scared than an outward threat. She feels her bladder give a little hiccup.\n\n\"You've interrupted the Master's important work, you pathetic female. And that work will commence and be seen through.\" His eyes move to Laz. \"I don't know what provoked you to leave me bleeding and dickless in the dirt of the angelic compound, but I will see a punishment so terrible it will be as though you eternally perish.\" Praile taps a short black nail against his chin. \"Actually, that is the exact definition of residing in hades. Sublime.\"\n\nTessa finds her voice. \"And when you put it like that, I'm sure Laz will just run and volunteer for your brand of bullshit.\"\n\n\"Lazarus,\" Praile says, giving him a look so full of malice that Tessa's knees feel weak.\n\nLaz squeezes her hip where his hand rests.\n\n\"Move aside and let me take my revenge on a female who would think to injure a high demon in such a fashion.\"\n\nTessa scans the blackness outside the windows. Where are the Lanarre? The silence is loud.\n\nHer eyes meet the demonic's.\n\nPraile smiles. \"They sleep, little bitch. There is no one to help you. Lazarus knows his place. Whatever infatuation he might have mentioned so he might stick his hot ineffective wick in your pathetic pussy is false. He will not turn his back on the Master and survive.\" He spreads his deep-red arms in a gesture implying how reasonable his words are. How absolute.\n\nHis horns glow like spikes of shadowed ink on his head.\n\n\"Laz didn't lie to me.\" Tessa glances at Laz, whose face is like pale-red stone.\n\nHe shakes his head, offering a slit of a grin. Small spirals of steam leak out as he speaks, \"We are demonic. Deceit is like breathing for our kind. Test him, Were female.\"\n\nTessa looks uncertainly at Laz, who continues to stare intently at Praile.\n\n\"Did he tell you that you were his Redemptive, perhaps?\"\n\nTessa's breath catches in her chest, and she whirls to face him again.\n\nPraile laughs gleefully, tipping his head back. Gales of perverse chuckles tumble out of a mouth. His tongue and teeth are black, and his gums are very red. \"Do not feel too aghast. Every demon has from time to time desired a little tail from the surface.\" He smiles, and thick steam streams from his mouth. Eyes like black obsidian discs of pure evil regard her.\n\n\"Laz,\" Tessa says in a low voice. \"What is he saying?\"\n\nLaz takes a step away from her. Her fingertips trail over his smooth back as he walks toward Praile.\n\n\"Have you had her yet?\" Praile asks, and Laz shakes his head.\n\n\"Did you do as I ask? Feign our getaway, so that the Rare One will be unsuspecting?\"\n\nLaz nods. \"Yes.\"\n\nTessa swallows her gorge. Not a great time to let hurt, nerves, and the potential for a smackdown get the best of her.\n\nPraile claps his hands, rubbing them together. \"Excellent. Now...\" His glittering black orbs study Tessa. \"I do believe we have a little time for sport with this one before the Lanarre wake from their little nappy.\"\n\nThey turn and face Tessa.\n\nLaz's eyes are as dark as Praile's.\n\nThey move toward her, and Tessa's screams fill the cottage.\n\n*\n\nDrek\n\nDrek rushes out the front entrance to his home, and the sound of a female's screams shatter eardrums sensitive to a pin dropping.\n\nHer terror beats at him.\n\nTahlia's escape set his nerve endings on fire. The farther she is from him, the more Drek realizes he's made a grave error in judgement.\n\nHe trips over a body and catches himself on a stout wood porch post. Looking down, he finds Bowen lying on his back, snoring softly.\n\n\"Bowen!\" Drek yells, toeing him.\n\nNothing.\n\nHe peers into the gloom of the woods. Lanarre guards litter the ground, appearing to have dropped where they stood.\n\nDrek turns, making sure Tanya is still secure against the pole. He gives her an apologetic look and leaves her.\n\n\"Wait!\" she shrieks. \"You can't just leave me here!\"\n\nHe strides toward the sound of screaming that makes the fine hairs at his nape stand at attention.\n\nDrek halts when he gets a whiff of an odor as offensive as vampire's, though most Lycan are unable to smell, either.\n\nDemonic.\n\nA layer of red vapor hovers like poisonous gas over the sleeping Lanarre.\n\nThe screams make more sense now.\n\nHe moves to the guest cottage, his eyes rising heavenward in search of a white bird\u2014his chosen. Drek was too ignorant to see and act accordingly.\n\nHe jogs to the steps, imagining Bowen's commentary had he been awake and by his side.\n\nA low voice growls words that let Drek know what he is dealing with\u2014not an enemy, but a relation of sorts.\n\nThat's why the Lanarre sleep but are not dead.\n\nDrek will handle this spawn of the devil.\n\nHis gaze moves a last time to the inky blanket of sky dotted with the stars like coarse, sprinkled salt.\n\nTahlia is not there.\n\nWhen the door doesn't open, he rams it with his shoulder, and it bursts wide.\n\nThe demonic are converging on Tessa.\n\nShe's wolfen and in fighting posture.\n\nDrek moves in to assist, and the distant sound of birdsong reaches his ears.\n\nThe music distracts him, and thoughts of Tahlia crowd his logic, enticing his mind that it might be she.\n\nDrek's hesitation is his undoing as the demonic attacks.\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX\n\nSlash\n\nSlash doesn't stop running until his legs grow numb. His lungs are an oven of slow-burning fire. He and Adrianna are deep within the bounds of the woods. Safe.\n\nFor now.\n\nSlash slows to a jog, feeling gimpy because his limbs refuse to cooperate. When he stops, he gently swings Adrianna around by her arms. She sways, and Slash draws her in against him.\n\n\"If I'm exhausted, you must be beyond exhausted,\" she says against his heaving chest.\n\nSlash is. But he's been through more than this. So he simply nods.\n\nAdrianna pulls away, looking worse for wear. Her hair is matted with leaves and needles.\n\nSlash smiles, gently pushing the mess of her hair back from her forehead.\n\n\"I must look like shit.\" She stares at her feet.\n\nSlash scents her uncertainty, and so much more.\n\n\"Adrianna.\"\n\nShe looks up at him, and Slash fights to not give her the profile of his face that remains unscarred.\n\n\"We will get cleaned up. We will feed. We will rest.\"\n\nShe puts her hands on her hips, hazel eyes flashing. \"And this too shall pass? Pfft!\"\n\nShe stomps away, and Slash follows her. Each step he takes is agony. Slash returns to his human form and scents for food.\n\nHe scents nothing he can hunt without shifting again, and he's out of steam. His mate is in heat, and Slash doesn't think he's seen the last of her temper after their misunderstanding.\n\nAdrianna suddenly whirls, and the small hairs of his body rise in response to her beast\u2014and her heat. Slash stifles a groan. Regardless of how beat he is, his beast senses his mate's hunger.\n\n\"You took us away from the rain forest?\"\n\nSlash nods. They don't need to travel deeper into Lanarre territory. What they would do to him for killing the Lanarre would be slow and without mercy.\n\nAdrianna takes his hands. \"I'm still so pissed at you, I could spit.\"\n\nSlash has only silence.\n\n\"But\u2014\" She gives him troubled eyes. \"I guess what you said makes sense. I would have never left you otherwise.\"\n\n\"I know,\" Slash says.\n\nThey smile cautiously at each other. \"But what about my heat?\"\n\nSlash wearily swipes his head with a hand. \"It's not typical. However, it was probably our coming together that caused it.\"\n\n\"I'm young for heat, Slash.\"\n\nHe nods and pulls her to him, wrapping his arms around her.\n\n\"Can't we just\u2014you know\u2014not.\"\n\nHe chuckles. \"I'm afraid not. I couldn't keep my hands off you if I tried.\"\n\nAdrianna's eyes fill with tears, but she doesn't cry. \"I'm too young to have a whelp, Slash.\"\n\nHe cups her chin. \"You were not too young to become my mate or share your body with me.\"\n\nHigh color floods her cheeks. \"You got me there.\"\n\n\"It's not about \u02bbgetting you.'\" Slash lets his hand drop, and he stares off into the woods, his eyes searching the pockets of gloom. \"It's that we're mature enough. And for whatever reason, our union was strong. We complement each other well, or this would not have triggered such a response.\"\n\n\"You're the old guy. I'm just a young pup.\"\n\nSlash had felt guilty about that. But no more. She pursued him. He fought it. Fought his feelings and desire. Fought his lack of confidence over his attractiveness. Finally, she'd convinced him.\n\nIn all the years of Slash's life, he'd never been moved to have a mate. And when he was, she's been barely out of whelphood and was the most stubborn, mouthy female he'd ever met. Slash was reticent in comparison. What did the humans say? Ah yes: opposites attract.\n\nNo shit.\n\n\"Hey,\" Adrianna calls softly, startling Slash from his thoughts.\n\nHe grabs her hand and lifts it, kissing the layer of skin that is grimy from their trek through the woods\u2014and their killing.\n\n\"I'm not going to just hump right now out in the woods. I don't care if my crotch goes up in flames.\" She crosses her arms, and Slash barks out a laugh.\n\n\"I think I might be able to restrain myself just long enough to find shelter.\" His lips tilt.\n\nAdrianna runs her finger over the worst of his scar\u2014the one that mars his lips\u2014and he allows it. No one but him has ever touched his scar.\n\n\"When did this happen?\"\n\nSlash's smile fades. He figured he would have to tell her sooner or later. \"It was a war between Lanarre and Were. It's when their dominance was firmly established.\" Slash laughs, but it's hollow inside the thick woods.\n\n\"I assumed the Lanarre have always been top of the food chain.\"\n\nSlash widens his stance, crossing his arms and tucking his palms underneath his biceps. He rolls his lips together, absently bending the small ball of scar tissue between his lips.\n\n\"Slash.\"\n\nHe looks up. \"Sorry. I'm scattered.\" He taps his temple, procrastinating the storytelling.\n\n\"The Lanarre are really no more than the strongest of us. This was well before your time, but it shows a lack of historic study of Lycan.\"\n\nAdrianna nods. \"So shoot me. Not into books.\"\n\nThe corner of Slash's lips turn up. So young. \"Packs of Lycans would gravitate toward similar werewolves. Before we knew it, the weak congregated with each other\u2014\"\n\n\"And so did the strong,\" Adrianna finished, understanding flooding her features.\n\nHe pointed at her. \"Exactly.\" He chops his hands away from his body, \"So females began to become sick. Too much interbreeding of the same types of animal. Diversity was lost.\"\n\nA sick expression pastes itself on Adrianna's face.\n\n\"The males didn't thrive, but they weren't so easily taken by death.\"\n\nSlash meets her eyes significantly.\n\n\"That's when our females became scarce.\"\n\nSlash nods. \"It was the males' faults for not recognizing the problem and putting a protocol of prevention in place soon enough.\" Slash feels his face screw up in disgust.\n\nAdrianna is uncharacteristically quiet.\n\n\"When the Reds found that they were down to only a few viable females, we knew that we needed to refresh the gene pool.\"\n\nAdrianna leans forward, and Slash squeezes her shoulder. She shivers. A wave of need rolls through them.\n\nSlash gasps as though warm bathwater has been poured over him.\n\nHe clenches his teeth. \"Adi.\"\n\nShe shivers again. \"Can't help it\u2014and can I just say how weird it is that you call me that?\"\n\nSlash shakes his head as though he can shake off her heat. The strongest of the sensation subsides, but a residue lingers like an electrical charge over his skin.\n\nThey let a minute pass. Finally, Slash thinks he can speak. \"When talk reached us of the Lanarre hoarding females, at first we didn't think it was possible.\"\n\nAdrianna stares at him, eyes wide.\n\n\"All of us, from Alaska, from here, converged on the various Lycan packs.\"\n\n\"How many?\" she asks.\n\nSlash's eyes go wolfen. \"All.\"\n\n\"The Great Massacre.\"\n\nSlash gives her a slight nod.\n\nAdrianna searches his face. \"Even I know of that. They used liquid silver on their own kind.\"\n\nHis smile is sardonic, his finger traces part of the scar of his face. Her eyes track the movement. \"Anything to protect their females.\"\n\n\"But they wouldn't be protecting us. They'd be keeping us,\" Adrianna says, hand to chest.\n\nSlash nods. A soft prison is still a prison.\n\nAdrianna approaches him. He doesn't flinch when she lightly follows the worst of the scarring. Her finger runs from the small bumpy line that bisects his eyebrow, narrowly missing his eye then resurfacing like a jagged lightning strike at the highest bridge of his cheekbone, where it swoops to make a curling small knot of flesh at his cupid's bow.\n\nHer fingers feather against his lips. \"You didn't die.\"\n\n\"No.\" He smiles beneath her touch, chuckling softly.\n\nAdrianna punches him, and he catches her wrist before her fist lands.\n\n\"Come here.\" Slash jerks her to him and plants his mouth against hers.\n\nAdrianna molds her body to his, and Slash is soft and tender against her.\n\nOnly her.\n\n*\n\n\"Oh my Moon! When will we get there?\"\n\nSlash stifles an irritated sigh. Sometimes Adrianna reminds him of her youth when he knew her as a whelp.\n\nThey trudge through the deepest part of the forest.\n\nHe stays her with a hand. \"Do you see that?\"\n\nAdrianna scans the darkness, eyes narrowing. She finally sights what he already has. \"That creepy Hansel and Gretel cottage? Yeah,\" she says with exaggerated slowness.\n\nSlash turns to her. \"We must find shelter.\"\n\nAdrianna blushes, looking properly chastised. But her vague sadness pulls at him.\n\n\"Heart of my heart,\" Slash says, placing his palm on her chest as he recites the ancient words of his kind.\n\nAdrianna covers his hand with her own. \"Soul of my soul.\"\n\n\"What harms you, harms me.\"\n\nAdrianna's shoulders slump. \"Fine. When you entreat the ancient words, only a real douche wouldn't reply.\"\n\nSlash grins suddenly. Sometimes it's not bad to be almost four hundred years old.\n\n\"I'm thinking about the nurse, Jenni.\" Adi bites her lip.\n\n\"Let's walk to the little house as you share your troubles.\" Slash holds out his palm.\n\nShe sighs but takes his hand. His wolf notices her nearness and touch. His beast roils beneath Slash's flesh uncomfortably. The urge to breed is unbearable, like an itch that is just out of reach of being scratched.\n\nThey move down a little slope where the trees thin, only to climb back up a gentle knoll. When they reach the top, the small dark cottage stands at odds with the surrounding forest.\n\nAdrianna draws closer to Slash without being aware. He strokes the back of her hand with his thumb.\n\n\"I might have turned Jenni, and she's got no guidance. She might be wolfing around somewhere without a clue.\"\n\nSlash is half-listening. He does care about Adrianna's thoughts and self-doubts. But the male in him is uneasy.\n\nSlash has not lived this long without listening to his instincts.\n\nHe steps forward to the broad, well-worn steps. They're unusually wide, given the small scale of the house. Slash notes old dirt and a general absence of habitation.\n\n\"I just bit her, and poof!\" Adrianna's free hand swings up. \"I don't know for sure if she lived or died.\"\n\n\"Or crawled away to lick her wounds,\" Slash says absently as he fingers the large pole that anchors the top of the steps.\n\nAdrianna slaps his back, and he barely feels it. \"You're not listening!\"\n\nHe steps onto the porch. The old wood tongue-in-groove slats are edged with moss, slowly succumbing to the elements in their damp climate.\n\n\"What you should really ask yourself is what are the ramifications your bite might have while you're in heat.\"\n\n\"What?!\" Adrianna shrieks.\n\nSlash covers her mouth with his hand, pulling her tight against his chest. His skin crawls. His eyes chase over the tops of ground-hugging ferns, moss, and discarded pinecones from trees that perpetuate life from the earth. The thick greenery suffocates the strangled moonlight.\n\nHis pupils dilate to access whatever light is available.\n\nNothing.\n\nHe slowly removes his hand, and Adrianna opens her mouth. Slash shakes his head, putting a finger to his lips. Her eyebrows whip up. But she's quiet, looking around the immediate vicinity. The forest is silent.\n\nToo silent.\n\n\"I don't like it,\" Adrianna whispers.\n\nSlash gives her a cautioning look but wraps his fingers around her arm. With a jerk of his chin, he indicates the door.\n\nAdrianna gives one more glance around the dim woods, the light eaten by the high canopy, and derelict moonlight, then she follows Slash.\n\nHe places his hand on the knob, old tin with a beaded perimeter, and turns the handle.\n\nThe door swings open on well-oiled hinges.\n\nTwin barrels of a shotgun ease into his face from about a foot away. \"Step closer, and I'll decorate my walls with your brains.\"\n\nSlash freezes.\n\nAdrianna yelps.\n\nThe old woman with the gun chuckles. \"Well, that ward didn't hold worth a damn. Come in, lovebirds.\" She snorts. \"Or are you waiting for some trolls to come knocking, eh?\"\n\nSlash stupidly holds his position, stunned. What creature is this?\n\n\"Are ya daft?\" She cocks an eyebrow to her snow-white hairline. \"I said to come inside. I don't invite twice, Red.\"\n\nHer bushy brows drop as she gives him the best evil eye he's ever received.\n\nSlash gives a pointed look at the shotgun.\n\n\"Ah!\" she says, chortling. \"It's not loaded! If it comes to shooting ne'er\u2013do\u2013wells, all hope is lost.\"\n\n\"Why?\" Adrianna asks with uncharacteristic timidity.\n\nThe old woman rolls to her toes, trying to catch a glimpse of Adrianna. Slash moves her behind him.\n\nHer eyes move over the two knowingly. \"You're no threat. No you're not.\"\n\nSlash is puzzled but unwilling to let his guard down completely.\n\nHer chest puffs up, and she moves swiftly around Slash, who angles Adrianna away, facing her the entire time. She rests the shotgun behind the door with the butt down and kicks the door closed.\n\nA solid brass bar falls down into a crooked little holder nailed into the wood casing.\n\n\"Who are you?\" Adrianna asks.\n\nWho indeed?\n\n\"Nosey, aren't ya? You come to my house\u2014uninvited\u2014and think to just barge in\u2014\"\n\n\"We didn't think it was occupied,\" Adrianna said.\n\n\"Well it is, isn't it, Were female?\"\n\nShe turns, showing them her back, and shuffles quickly to a stove where a kettle brews. Steam evaporates as quickly as it rises. She turns, cocking an eyebrow, and puffs out an irritated breath.\n\n\"I'm a witch, girl. And you're on private property.\"\n\nEasy to remedy. \"We will leave.\"\n\n\"Can't.\" She says the one word as both answer and command.\n\nThe hair on his nape rises. \"Why not?\"\n\n\"Did ya hear me? I know a Red Were such as yourself hears better than me. The trolls, fool. You didn't sense them when you and your woman were flouncing around, making a racket that led straight to my door?\"\n\nSlash can feel Adrianna's pulse through their threaded fingers. \"This is the Hansel and Gretel house. We're screwed.\"\n\nThe witch's face changes, smoothing into a grin. \"I haven't heard mention of that in years.\" She gives a little sigh, as though nostalgic.\n\n\"So you eat kids?\" Adrianna asks only a little in jest.\n\nShe shakes her head while Slash sizes up their chances of escape.\n\n\"No. That's another witch.\"\n\nAdrianna's grip becomes crushing.\n\n\"Then what do you eat?\"\n\nThe witch puts her hands at her hips, a long skirt hiding her fingers. \"Food.\"\n\n\"Like people?\"\n\nHer nose scrunches up. \"No, I'm a good witch. As good as the two of you are.\"\n\nSlash is skeptical of that claim. And if she knew of his transgressions, she might be less forgiving.\n\nThe witch narrows her eyes at them. \"I smell death on you, Were. But rightful death carries a different scent than wrongful, yes?\"\n\nSlash nods slowly. Wise words.\n\n\"The two of you crossed a ward I've had in place since I could hardly hold a wand.\"\n\n\"You use a wand?\" Adrianna asks.\n\nHer face tightens. \"What do you take me for? A novice? Of course I don't need a wand anymore.\"\n\n\"Sorry,\" Adrianna says, and Slash bites back a laugh.\n\n\"So how did we get past the ward?\"\n\nThe witch gives them a sly glance, full of confidence and something else that makes Slash uneasy.\n\n\"True love.\"\n\n# CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN\n\nJulia\n\nTwo weeks later\n\nJulia blinks, and before she knows what's happening, Jen has dressed her in a gauzy dress of deep cream bordering on yellow. Beads of glass grace the square neckline and cup the outside of her shoulders. Her hair is elaborately pinned up at the crown of her head with half hanging down between her shoulders in loose curls.\n\nWhen she's breathed through her nerves, she descends the winding staircase in the mansion.\n\nScott is waiting at the bottom.\n\nHis broad shoulders strain against a tailored snowy-white button-down shirt, such a perfect contrast to his dark hair and eyes. A crisp bowtie graces his throat. Black pants encase slim hips and long legs.\n\nHe isn't wearing a coat.\n\nScott is so handsome, Julia gets a lump in her throat. Holding back tears, she admires her creamy satin heels, feeling so overwhelmed.\n\nThen his arms are around her. Scott lifts her off the floor and holds her against him. Subtle fragrance of spicy male and Scott's unique scent floods her nose, and he lets her slip down his front.\n\nShe turns in his arms, looking around her and blinking rapidly to expel her laughter. Tears.\n\nShock.\n\nAll the Singers who lived through the genocide have gathered. New faces mingle with familiar ones, and a sigh slides between her lips. Small children, though there aren't many, try their best for quiet. But babies still squall, and mothers silence them with a kiss or a word.\n\nJulia's at a lost, but Cyn nails it.\n\n\"Wow,\" she says reverently.\n\n\"When did all this happen?\" Julia asks Scott. She can feel his pride swell inside her, brimming over from his own emotional grid to her own. His thoughts mingle with hers, and she takes his hand.\n\nThey did this for us, Julia sends them through the bridge of their meld.\n\nScott nods.\n\nThe edge of day burns into night. Small twinkling lights are strung from both corners of the broad front porch to tall softly illuminated lamps piercing the ground. Each lamp holds a glass oblong light. Many children hold the last of summer's wildflowers in lazy bouquets of drooping petals in every color of the rainbow.\n\nScott's hold tightens on her hand.\n\n\"This is all for us,\" Julia says in wonder.\n\nScott nods. \"It's about time.\"\n\nJulia couldn't have married Scott when she was married to Jason. Their rules are different. They'd allow so much because of the fact that she was the Rare One, but in her heart, Julia was still human, still culturally bound to the principles she was brought up with.\n\nA sudden thought occurs to her, and she turns to Scott. \"Do Singers really get married?\" She'd heard the term joining, but never marriage, as humans thought of it. As Julia had.\n\nHis smile is crooked, and Julia narrows her eyes. \"Tell me.\"\n\nHe frowns. \"We handfast.\"\n\nHandfast. Julia smiles at the term as voices in the crowd softly swell.\n\n\"Isn't that kinda medieval?\" Cyn asks quietly as she surveys the assembled crowd, and Julia laughs. \"I don't know, really.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" Scott says, \"definitely ancient.\"\n\nI guess for Singers, everything is about tradition.\n\n\"You look gorgeous, Jules,\" Cyn says.\n\nJulia smooths her hands over her dress then hugs Cyn tightly, but she pulls away. \"I don't want to wreck your dress with all my blubbering.\"\n\nJulia smiles through her own tears. \"Blubber away.\"\n\nCyn nods, biting her lip to keep from outright bawling. Cyn leans forward and whispers in her ear, \"He'd want this, Jules.\"\n\nCyn doesn't have to tell her who, but Julia asks quietly, \"What?\"\n\n\"Your happiness.\"\n\nJulia steps away, still holding Cyn's hands, and they smile through their tears. Julia nods quickly.\n\nScott asks from her elbow. \"Are you ready?\"\n\nJulia feels Jason's grave behind her, in the past. That life is dead, along with her husband. Julia realizes she's been grieving bit by bit for Jason since long before he died.\n\nShe gives a decisive nod. \"Yes.\"\n\nScott smiles, running his knuckles in a light caress over her jaw.\n\nThey move toward where Victor stands, a ribbon of ivory draped over his hands.\n\n*\n\nVictor carefully and securely ties their right hands together.\n\nThe silk cloth is wide and strong, with a slight shimmer. The colors of the sky have washed the grounds in tones of sherbet, raspberry, and deep blue, and the soft murmur of her people is a dim noise inside her head. For once, she doesn't keep them out, only quiets them.\n\nJulia wants to feel their joy as though it's her own.\n\nScott looks into Julia's eyes. His are shadows in his face, but inside the dark gaze is warmth, love, and something deeper than any human male has the capacity to feel.\n\nVictor's words flow over them. With each one, she feels their bond tighten.\n\nJulia can still refuse, deny Scott\u2014and crawl back into the hole of her grief or hang onto the past that's a wisp of vibrant memory that makes her at once happy and sad.\n\nBut she won't.\n\nJulia lets everything she feels for Scott fill her expression and what she's committed to being with him.\n\nHe nods, his gaze capturing Victor's, who studies them as he gives the final word of the ceremony.\n\n\"Agape.\"\n\nHe describes a special form of love that transcends this realm. The heavenly love is a perfect word for those with angelic blood.\n\nVictor unties the binding and gives two rings to Scott. They glow in polished white gold from years of wear.\n\nJulia holds her breath as Scott slips one ring on her finger. The metal is cold and way too big.\n\nShe glances at him sharply, her lips quirking.\n\n\"Just wait,\" Scott whispers.\n\nJulia feels the metal begin to heat and looks down at the ring changing on the left ring finger of her hand. It slims, moving like a molten circle of fire, narrowing and growing smaller until it fits perfectly.\n\nJulia's head jerks up, and Scott holds his hand high, palm facing her. He flutters his fingers while his ring grows larger. The circle of gold matches hers in every way, but his is stuck at his middle knuckle.\n\nAs she watches, the narrow band appears to shimmer, enlarging until it slips over the knuckle then growing smaller again until it is seated perfectly between his first and middle knuckles.\n\nShe gasps in a happy little breath.\n\nAfter all Julia has witnessed, she's so pleased to see a small miracle like this\u2014one that doesn't maim, kill, or cause grief.\n\n\"A simple magic,\" Victor comments, after watching her expression.\n\nJulia looks at her hand, stretching her fingers out to admire the simple slim band.\n\nScott pulls her into his strong embrace, drawing her close enough to kiss.\n\nThen he does kiss her, deeply and thoroughly. His lips are soft and tender against her mouth.\n\nThe crowd applauds, and Scott turns her to face them.\n\nShe leans against his hardness, and he places his forearm against her chest.\n\nThe Singers come: Truman, Cyn, Jen, and Michael.\n\nJulia finds herself missing a few people who have not been found or have been killed. Brendan.\n\nWilliam.\n\nReagan. Jacqueline\u2014once so intent on killing Julia, and now finding a new life within the sithen and maybe her full sanity along with it.\n\nJulia's palm moves to her stomach, where the spore still lingers.\n\nEverything is finally right in her life, though not by any means she would have wanted. However, her future is uncertain. But that's the one thing in life she can count on: uncertainty.\n\nAs people come to receive them and she stands underneath an altar of softly lit twigs, Julia gazes into Scott's face. His expression is cautiously hopeful.\n\nFor now, that's enough.\n\n*\n\nAfter\n\nJulia\n\n\"This is too much, Scott!\"\n\n\"No\u2014after all we've been through, it's barely enough.\"\n\nHe smirks, and she gives him a light slap on his bicep, but he catches her against him, wrapping her in his arms.\n\n\"It's customary on the night of handfasting to use this bed\u2014this room.\"\n\nJulia scans the large room, formerly Marcus's, and heaves a sigh. His bed was replaced by a carved one made of wood. Clearly medieval and gothic, it stands out in a room many years newer.\n\n\"Lots of mixed architecture here,\" Julia comments.\n\nScott presses a soft kiss to her lips. \"I am not here to discuss furniture.\"\n\nJulia smiles, holding her face away. \"I know that.\"\n\nScott motions toward the en suite bathroom, where he just turned off the hot water tap. Julia can't see inside, but she moves toward the doorway, peeking inside.\n\n\"Oh!\" she says more loudly than she intended. \"It's beautiful.\"\n\nShe turns to Scott, and he is smugly pleased. \"Did you plan all this?\"\n\nScott lifts a shoulder. \"I'd love to take credit, but the Singers who take care of the royal line had this arranged after Father's death.\"\n\nScott looks down, running a finger along the edge of a tub so huge it could easily fit two.\n\nThe thought makes Julia blush. Though they've already crossed that bridge, she finds room for shyness.\n\n\"You miss him,\" she states.\n\nHe nods. \"This isn't about Father, though.\" Scott holds out his hand, and she slides hers inside.\n\nTheir connection tightens like a gasp of air, winding them tightly together.\n\n\"I never get tired of the way that feels,\" he says, a little out of breath.\n\nMe, either.\n\nHe smiles at her telepathic comment.\n\nHis finger dips in the water. He saunters closer, reaching behind her hair and unhooking the top latch of her dress. He slowly unzips it to the small of her back, and Julia steps out of the circle of creamy material.\n\nScott's eyes catch on her breasts. There was no room for a bra in the tight bodice. She sees in his face that he approves.\n\nJulia moves to the edge of the tub, giving him a look of invitation.\n\nScott follows.\n\n*\n\nScott\n\nScott stands before her, naked, wrapping a towel around her body and blotting the streaming water from her heated, fragrant flesh.\n\nJulia admires the muscles as they dance with his deliberate movements. Each stroke and caress of the towel has her closer to wanting him.\n\nShe's wound so tightly with desire, standing is an effort.\n\nJulia places her hands on his shoulders, and he looks up, his eyes level with her sex.\n\nHeat rises to the surface of her skin from the look he gives her.\n\nScott leans forward, his tongue licking a lone drop, and Julia hisses in a breath, tipping her head back and clutching his shoulders.\n\n\"Scott,\" she breathes.\n\n\"Yes.\" He moves his tongue a little lower, delving between her slit.\n\nJulia cries out softly.\n\nHer chin lowers, her eyes meeting his.\n\n\"More?\" he asks, his breath hot against the most tender part of her.\n\nJulia doesn't speak, nodding.\n\nStrong hands grasp her hips and open her to him.\n\nJulia's legs tremble as his tongue moves deeper, digging between her folds.\n\nShe moistens at his touch, at the residual emotional sensations they share through the meld.\n\nWhen her knees weaken, he pulls away, holding her so she won't fall, and swoops her easily into his arms. His erection rests between them.\n\nSomehow, he finds his way to the bed, hair still damp from their bath of mutual exploration. A drop of water trails like melted ice from his hairline and falls between her breasts.\n\nJulia shivers.\n\nScott lowers her to the bed and spreads her legs with his palms, visually feasting on her nakedness.\n\nWhen Julia moves to close her thighs, he pins them open with his large hands. \"Don't. You're beautiful\u2014and finally mine. Let me take you in.\"\n\nAnd like a sponge soaked in love and lust, Julia relaxes her knees.\n\nScott bends over her, lapping the drop of water that lingers between her breasts and then presses them together, first laving one nipple and the next. He goes back and forth, always allowing his breath to warm her in a path of fire that ends in the wet torture of her nipples.\n\nThey harden inside his mouth, and Julia makes a small aching sound, arching her back. He captures her against him, plunging a finger deep inside as he gives an insistent pull with the smallest bit of teeth at her nipple.\n\nJulia sighs as pain and intense pleasure mix, opening her eyes to see his.\n\nScott silently gazes down at her.\n\n\"I feel you\u2014how hard you are, how much you want this,\" Julia whispers.\n\n\"You have a small idea.\" He places Julia's hand on his length.\n\nI can't take all that. She gives him a sly grin.\n\nHe smiles back. You seemed to do pretty good last time.\n\nJulia's face flames to life, and she laughs softly, giving him a squeeze.\n\nScott gasps, his stomach muscles clenching and releasing with the sensation of her hand on him. \"I'll go if you keep up your handiwork.\"\n\n\"Nice pun, husband.\"\n\n\"My king,\" he corrects, the corners of his lips twitching.\n\nJulia pouts a little. She squeezes him again then rolls to her knees. They face each other on the bed, though he's so much taller, she's really eye level with his chest.\n\nJulia runs her free hand down the smooth muscles of his chest, trailing her fingers back and forth between the discs of his nipples. They harden, and she lays her head against his heart.\n\nHe rolls his hand down her damp hair. \"I love you, Julia.\"\n\nShe does something she hasn't tried before, pushing the brunt of her feelings in a tight knot toward him, through Scott. His eyes widen, and his hands slide from her upper back to the lower, convulsively tightening.\n\n\"Ah,\" he says in soft wonder. \"That's how you feel?\"\n\nJulia nods, biting her lip. Her feelings are so profound and intense, it's easier to just think them through the connection. Words are insufficient.\n\nWhen Scott reciprocates, her core pools with moisture. His arousal and want of her is so acute, it incites the reaction of desire from her even more strongly.\n\nHis eyes darken. \"Lie down.\"\n\nJulia does without hesitation. They're not in a bunker and desperate to survive. It's a new chapter, and Julia feels a fresh boldness.\n\nScott parts her thighs with two strong hands. His fingertips softly brush her entrance, and Julia pants, wanting more and remembering what's already happened.\n\nJulia doesn't tell Scott what she wants. Her emotions swarm through them, and they both tense and relax with the sensation of their connection.\n\nHe folds over her body, fingers digging into her thighs, and Julia softly shouts, \"Yes!\"\n\nHer fingers grab his head as Scott dips into her folds, gently pulling apart the slick skin of her arousal.\n\nJulia sits up as Scott jerks her hips forward. \"Ah!\" she yells, hanging onto his shoulders as he licks first one fold then the next.\n\nWhen his thumb presses on her clit and begins to slowly churn the tiny bundle of nerves, Julia's orgasm crashes into her like a river of pleasure, chased by Scott's arousal and happiness over her reaction.\n\n\"Please,\" Julia whimpers as he looks up. She latches onto the muscular globes of his butt, gathering him closer.\n\nHer channel pulses for him. To be filled. To be owned.\n\nScott seats himself between her legs and rocks slowly inside, stretching her.\n\nJulia squirms beneath him, loving the sensation of him inside. He's large, and she tries to adjust her hips.\n\nScott stills. \"Am I hurting you?\"\n\nShe smiles.\n\n\"So I'm sort of a full meal deal?\"\n\nJulia pops her hips forward, and the smirk becomes a slack-jawed look of surprise. \"Don't do that, Julia. I won't last.\" His voice is part chastisement and part pleasure\n\nJulia laughs softly, dancing her hips under his slow, precise thrusting. Finally, he bottoms out inside her and groans, pressing his forehead against hers. Their bodies lock together as though they were made for each other.\n\nThey are.\n\n\"I don't want this to end,\" Julia says, gasping as he moves inside her.\n\n\"Me, either, but you keep moving like that\u2014and there's no way.\" Scott feathers a trail of kisses along her throat then moves inside her again and again.\n\n\"Julia,\" his voice tight.\n\nBut she already knows. His orgasm shivers through them, his last thrust buried inside her so deeply it's as if they're one body. One mind.\n\nOne soul.\n\nScott's release brings hers, and Julia calls out his name. Their mutual pleasure mingles until neither know where it began and where it ends. They hold each other for a long time, heartbeats slowing to a synced rhythm.\n\n\"Will it be like that every time?\" Julia asks softly, stroking his back. He plays with a lock of her hair, the tips dry inside his fingertips.\n\nScott's jaw jerks back, and he grins. \"Wanna see?\"\n\nShe does. Her answer flows through their meld.\n\nScott gathers her close.\n\nEPILOGUE\n\nOne month later\n\n\"Ready?\" Scott asks, and Julia nods, letting out a protracted exhale. \"Hey. Come 'ere.\" He pulls Julia against him, shielding her with his much larger body.\n\nHe leans away slightly, thumb lightly stroking the wetness on her cheekbone. \"You know I won't let anything happen to you.\"\n\nShe nods.\n\n\"So why the tears?\"\n\nScott delves deep. Her psyche's an open book to him. After four weeks of living with her as her husband, Scott is even more pleased that destiny gifted Julia to him. He doesn't deserve her.\n\nYet she's his.\n\n\"I don't want to leave,\" she admits.\n\n\"I feel that.\" He gathers her small hand against his chest then leans down so they're looking into each other's eyes. \"We have to address the spore. I've already told you, my Combatant side is uneasy about the thing being inside you. I can't relax until it's outta there.\"\n\nJulia nods slowly.\n\nHe feels her emotions through their bond.\n\n\"We can't start a family until that little piece of evil is gone.\"\n\n\"I know,\" she leans her forehead against his chest.\n\n\"Besides, you know we have to go to faerie anyway. You made the promise to Tharell. Ultimately, you made it to faerie.\"\n\nJulia shakes her head. \"I don't know what Singers, if any, are going to want to possibly align in arranged marriages with the fey. They're very different from us.\"\n\nHe tips her chin up. \"But compatible.\"\n\n\"True.\" She gnaws on her delectable lips, giving Scott ideas. She giggles. \"Quit that, sex demon.\"\n\n\"Speaking of...\" Scott raises his eyebrows, the standing question between them.\n\n\"Yes!\" Julia says, trying to pull away, but Scott holds her close.\n\n\"Repeat after me. Praile can't find me as easily without the spore.\"\n\nShe frowns. \"Stop.\"\n\nScott scowls, letting his displeasure flow through their bond. Normally, he shields Julia. It's his role. But right now, he can't rest easy until that thing's out of her. And Victor said the fey would have the answer.\n\nHe's never wished more for his father's advice than he does now. Marcus would have known just what to do.\n\nBut fucking Praile put an end to a lot of the wisdom of their race through his lackey, Tony. Now it's up to Scott to close this loop. This tiny possibility that while Julia holds the spore, she's somehow made more vulnerable; he can't let that potential exist.\n\nThe evil seed only remains dormant because of their meld. But that doesn't satisfy Scott. He wants it gone.\n\n\"The fey have powerful magic.\"\n\n\"And you're sure there's no Singers that can expunge it?\"\n\nScott exhales harshly. \"No. All our talents are more about manipulating environment. Except Healers. And they're not equipped to address problems from other realms. The origin of this fucking thing isn't even from here.\"\n\nHe steps away, hands trailing from her hips, and paces in front of the mansion.\n\n\"I'll go,\" Julia says quietly.\n\nScott turns. \"You know I wouldn't press this if I didn't think it was important.\"\n\n\"I do know that.\"\n\nHe walks back to Julia, takes her hand, and raises it to his lips. Scott kisses her knuckles then lays the side of his face against the back of her hand. \"I understand how much you like how things have settled here. How unsettled your life's been these past three years until now.\"\n\n\"Almost four,\" she corrects.\n\nHis eyes move to her features, taking in the gorgeous glow on her skin, eyes like whiskey fire, and a body that rocks his world.\n\n\"What remains of the Combatant, Region One, and all of Two will stay behind. We know what to look for. One is fortified. Vic's got it.\"\n\n\"But where's Praile?\" Julia asks.\n\nScott feels the fear inside her words.\n\n\"If he was going to come back, he would have. That's part of why I want to get this out of you fast.\" He moves his palm to approximately where the sword pierced her during the battle at Two. \"Let's not make it easy for that fire dick.\"\n\nJulia's smile is faint, but it's better than nothing. \"Okay.\"\n\n\"And,\" Scott says with a coy tone, \"it won't be too shabby to see green boy, Jacqueline, and Delilah.\"\n\n\"I want to know where the others are, like Reagan.\"\n\n\"Julia\u2014\" Scott groans. \"We can't save the whole damn bunch of supes.\"\n\nShe kicks a stone with the toe of her sneaker just as their car pulls up. The sleek black SUV resembles a vehicle straight out of a spy movie.\n\nScott knows Julia's not quite used to the queen bit, but since she was hurt back at Two, she appears to appreciate the extra protection. Still, she's grown complacent with the meld, knowing all Scott's emotions and being telepathic enough to embarrass him sometimes.\n\nJulia would be blind, deaf, and dumb not to know the depth of his feelings for her. She senses their bond in her dreams, she told him.\n\nVictor hops out the front of the vehicle and opens the center door of the souped-up rig, and Scott leads Julia to the black vehicle.\n\nTheir reflection shines back at them.\n\nHer reluctance thrums through their connection, and he empathizes. She's had a fucked-up last few years. And One is the first place she's felt at home in a long time. Caldwell's death, Praile's pursuit, the massacre\u2014she's been through enough to make a sane person rethink things.\n\nThe soul-meld has repaired a lot of the damage, but not all. Scott's got her back.\n\nAnd a ton more.\n\nHe grins, slapping her lightly on the butt as she hikes herself in, shooting him a glare. But he sees the smile around the edges of her lips.\n\nIt'll be okay, he says through their meld.\n\nScott will make sure of it.\n\n\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\n\nTHE END\n\nRead More\n\nBook 7\n\nNever miss a new release! Subscribe:\n\nTRB News\n\n***Love BLOOD? Please read on for a sample from another TRB work....\n\nTHE REFLECTIVE\n\nA Reflection Series Novel\n\nBook 1\n\nNew York Times Bestselling Author\n\nTAMARA ROSE BLODGETT\n\nAll Rights Reserved.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2013-14 Tamara Rose Blodgett\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.\n\nwww.tamararoseblodgett.com\n\nTRB Facebook Fan Page\n\nCover art by Phatpuppyart.com\n\nEditing suggestions provided by Red Adept Editing\n\nSynopsis\n\nThose born Reflective are the only beings with the ability to jump between worlds. With The Cause firmly entrenched by years of highly stylized military-type training in combat of every kind, they use their natural born ability for inter-dimensional travel to police worlds where wrongdoing has overtaken civility.\n\nAs an elite Reflective, Jeb Merrick finds himself partnered with a rare female Reflective. Merrick is convinced that she can do nothing but slow him down. Beth Jasper is small, in both stature and mindset. When they are thrust together as partners, Merrick vows that she will receive the same neutral treatment as a male. Merrick cannot allow the unlikely union of Beth Jasper to get in the way of finding his prophesied soulmate.\n\nBeth discovers she is partnered with the cockiest of all pureblood Reflectives and struggles to maintain her composure with a hostile partner whose loyalty she doesn't possess.\n\nCan the Reflectives uphold The Cause, reach a point of compromise and find their chosen soul mates?\n\nTHE CAUSE\n\nFirst: Right the Wrong\n\nSecond: Bear No Injustice\n\nThird: Change Not What Must Be\n\n# Prologue\n\ntwenty years before\n\nThe midwife made her way along ancient cobblestoned streets, her shoes catching in the crevices though Principle knew, her shoes were as sensible as they come.\n\nAs was her occupation.\n\nShe would arrive in the birthing ward at exactly eight a.m. for her twelve-hour shift. Of course, it would not be twelve hours\u2014it would be for however long the woman labored.\n\nAnd if a Reflective were born ....\n\nJust the thought of the potential for that caused a nervous thrill to flutter deep within Florence, as it did each time she worked.\n\nThe Reflective newborns must be swaddled in special non-reflective blankets. A baby would not be lost on her shift because it was a prodigy who jumped at a mirror or other reflective surface left uncovered.\n\nDear Principle. She shuddered, thinking about what the punishment would be for that. As it was, midwives couldn't use any surgical instruments that were not brushed stainless steel, and since the last unfortunate incident, the midwives had since moved to an all-ceramic surgical unit.\n\nFlorence swept up the massive steps. The rise of the treads was so low the stairs felt more like a gentle slope than true steps.\n\nThe sparkling flakes of charcoal that clung to the thick white granite reminded her that the sun still shone brightly, though their version of autumn would soon be here.\n\nA shadow fell over Florence, and she twisted to look at the sky, her foot on the top step, her hand on the solid brass door handle that opened to the birthing center.\n\nA swarm of butterflies, so thick it blocked the cerulean of the sky, dropped false night all around her as they flew through the rectangular vents that fed the ventilation system in warmer months.\n\nThe ports were a deliberate architectural feature that allowed entry to the only creature in their world that could identify a Reflective\n\nSo many.\n\nFlorence stood in stunned wonder. She had witnessed butterflies come to mark the birth of a Reflective, but never in such a great number.\n\nTheir importance was such that her world was named in their honor: Papilio, Sector Ten.\n\nTheir path created a rainbow of iridescent color, which poured like water through the narrow vents that had been carved in the solid stone of the birthing center.\n\nAll who lived in their world were born in similar structures.\n\nHowever, Florence was one of few birthing center workers who had seen the highest incidence of Reflective births. She had requested placement to this one. After a five-year waiting period, she'd been assigned to the most prestigious.\n\nShe snapped out of her reverie as the last of the mingling kaleidoscope of insects funneled through the slits underneath the eaves of a copper roof, now aged a deep verdigris.\n\nFlorence tore open the heavy door.\n\nShe didn't hear it clank behind her as she ran the length of the corridor to the floor that housed laboring mothers.\n\n*\n\nFlorence burst through the swinging doors as a man and a woman stood over a cradle.\n\nConfused, Florence skidded to a stop.\n\nWhat is this?\n\nThis... appeared to be the parents in front of a babe so new that some of the vernix still coated the wee one, her arms swinging as she howled.\n\nTwo nurses, one at the end of her shift and one in training, hung back.\n\nOh, for the love of all that is good. She stalked over to the newborn.\n\nFlorence halted as the sight overtook them all.\n\nTheir breath.\n\nTheir thoughts.\n\nEverything but the scene itself melted away for those who witnessed the post-birth spectacle.\n\nThe butterflies descended, floating in a lazy spiral as the opalescent sunlight washed over their multicolored wings.\n\nThe chubby arms of the baby girl swirled and pumped, slowing as the butterflies drew nearer, and her echoing screams gradually grew quiet.\n\nThe insects lighted on the rails of the basinet in a portentous group, their wings moving in a steady sweep to maintain balance.\n\nTheir appearance froze the parents' breath in their throats.\n\nThe moment swelled and grew in the stillness of the nursery, where rows upon rows of cradles pressed against the other. The parents watched the butterflies flutter precariously on the polished sides of the newborn's bed, landing only on hers and no other.\n\nTheir appearance was beautiful... final.\n\nFlorence strained to hear the mother's voice.\n\n\"She is Reflective,\" she said in a sorrowful tone.\n\nHer mate squeezed her hand so tightly her knuckles turned white.\n\n\"Yes,\" he replied, just as gravely.\n\nTheir gaze met in perfect understanding of what the future held for their daughter: a life as mercenary, hunter and hunted.\n\nThis was an honor and privilege among their people.\n\nFlorence closed her eyes in sympathy. A female Reflective\u2014every parents dream... and nightmare.\n\n*\n\nfive years later\n\nBeth shot the plain glass marble across the stretch of earth, watching the glass orb tumble and spin as it met the others she'd shot in a smack of hardened glass. It swerved at the last moment, ricocheting off a shooter, and came to stand where she'd intended.\n\nAll the other children her age could play with any marble they chose, but she possessed no mercury-coated marbles.\n\nBeth Jasper was a solitary girl.\n\nBut not one who lacked intelligence. Beth had felt the sadness from Papa and Mama and knew she would soon leave for the building that had a big shining silver papilio above the entrance.\n\nMama and Papa had taken her there the previous week to meet with a man who had a nose like the water birds that gathered near her family's pond.\n\nHis nose made it very difficult for her not to giggle. Beth sometimes had a problem with laughing when she shouldn't.\n\nBeth had observed and stood watch over her new surroundings, remembering what her adoptive parents had told her.\n\nBeth, you must let us do the talking. Under no circumstances should you volunteer to train for a combative role. There are alternative roles for female Reflectives.\n\nBeth crinkled her face at the memory. She understood all of what they wanted of her, and she would not shuffle papers and sit behind a desk, looking like the dolls she had given up playing with.\n\nAll Reflectives were far more mature than their human counterparts from the other twelve sectors.\n\nBeth spoke like a teen, though she was five cycles. She puzzled through things that confounded adults.\n\nShe was faster, stronger, and brighter.\n\nBeth was female.\n\nWhen Commander Rachett of the Reflective Militia, who operated under The Cause leaned forward and delved deep, he tried to pierce young Beth's very soul. She met him halfway.\n\nHer small body leaned boldly toward his, unafraid.\n\nIn their people's ancient language of Latin, he posed the question: What role will you fill within The Cause, young Beth?\n\nBeth narrowed her eyes, and Rachett's eyebrows raised slowly.\n\nHe had studied her, no doubt because she was a half-breed, and female besides. She had met his stare with an unwavering gaze.\n\n\"A combative role, of course,\" Beth said in her childlike voice, though the meaning was very adult, because she understood and communicated like one.\n\n\"No! Beth...\" her mama said.\n\nBeth swung her legs back and forth underneath the chair. Her eyes drifted to the candy dish poised at the edge of the desk before returning to the commander's.\n\nBeth's stare matched Rachett's.\n\nRachett had to know what she was: a warrior. The attribute was either present, or it wasn't.\n\nHer papa stood.\n\n\"We can't have her fight. She is female... and not big for her gender.\" Her father's face pleaded with Rachett to see reason.\n\nCommander Rachett wasn't known as a reasonable man.\n\nRachett steepled his fingers underneath his chin, looking at Beth's adoptive parents. Good people, common folk who were loyal to The Cause, believers in the Principle.\n\nRachett's gaze shifted to Beth. He scrutinized her face: eyes like crushed brown velvet; hair like a raven's wing; and skin like polished marble, pale but not pasty.\n\nShe is too beautiful to fight, he must have thought with regret.\n\nBeth saw that future remorse on his face.\n\nThen he looked at her hands, long-fingered and limber.\n\nHis eyes shifted back to hers.\n\n\"Beth?\" he asked softly.\n\n\"Yes, Commander Rachett?\" Her small fingers held something.\n\nHe frowned, obviously distracted from his planned comment.\n\n\"What do you have in your hand?\"\n\nShe opened her palm, revealing a large reflective marble\u2014a shooter coated with hard-laced mercury.\n\nRachett sucked in his breath.\n\n\"That's a locator.\"\n\nHer parents looked at each other.\n\n\"Where did you get that, Beth?\" her papa asked carefully.\n\nBeth's eyes touched on the worry that each face held, and she felt her face scrunch.\n\n\"They hand them out at the front entrance...\" Rachett said thoughtfully before Beth could answer.\n\nBeth nodded carefully. The nice lady had given it to her to entertain herself with.\n\n\"Do you know what those are for?\" Rachett asked her.\n\nShe nodded again.\n\nBeth knew. She liked the feeling of the smooth glossy surface. Her fingers worked over the cylindrical perfection delicately, with reverence.\n\n\"It is for those Reflectives who need to find their sector,\" Rachett explained neutrally.\n\nHe smiled down at her.\n\nBeth was certain he understood she wasn't a regular five cycle.\n\nThen his smile faded as he no doubt recalled her gender. Beth was weary of being thought of as lesser because she was a girl.\n\nShe'd heard the whispers of the bullying that was so commonplace within the ranks of the Reflectives.\n\nThough, of course, everyone had heard the story of the swarm that had descended on her day of birth.\n\nPapiliones did not lie.\n\nRachett shook his head, obviously having made his decision. It was safer\u2014for everyone.\n\nBeth narrowed her eyes on the vision of his soft thoughts of her future role.\n\nRachett stood. As did Beth and the parents who were not of her blood.\n\n\"I'm sorry. Beth will be placed in... inter-dimensional communication training. An excellent program and critical calling for the female Reflective,\" Rachett stated, lacing his hands together, effectively closing the meeting.\n\n\"Thank Principle,\" Beth's mother murmured. She shot Beth a look that let her know she had been naughty for sharing her crazy intentions after being instructed to remain silent.\n\nHeat began to build in Beth's chest. She recognized it immediately: anger.\n\nIt began at the core of her body and swam out like molten lava, lashing through her circulatory system in defiance of being contained.\n\nBeth did not want to be a weak female.\n\nShe was not.\n\nThen Beth did what all children do\u2014she threw a tantrum.\n\nBeth threw the marble at Commander Rachett.\n\n\"No!\" she shouted in a clear, bell-like voice that stung the ears and raised the hair on the back of his neck.\n\nBeth's body reacted to her emotions and the spinning ball of glass coated by the forbidden mercury.\n\nIt spun, and Beth tracked it automatically, as if it were as natural as taking her next breath. It was part and parcel of being Reflective.\n\nThe heat inside her body coalesced, bursting painfully and beautifully, and she gasped as the ball moved toward her, then slammed into her in midair.\n\nHer small body morphed into the narrow strip of shimmering ribbon that all Reflectives become when they jump.\n\nBeth allowed all of it to happen in an instinctual slide of circumstance and raw emotion. Her new form lashed like a shining whip, absorbing into the shell of the spinning glass as it sailed in the air for its two seconds of flight.\n\nCoolness washed away the heat, and she spun with the ball... and went somewhere else, in a falling stream of fire bathed by ice.\n\nRachett stilled, dazed, as the ball that Beth Jasper had used for transport shattered at his feet.\n\nHe and Beth's parents stood stock-still, their bearings gone.\n\nCommander Rachett picked up a shard, and one of his eyes caught in the mirror-like image. He didn't like what he saw there\u2014fear.\n\nHis own, and that of Beth Jasper's future within The Cause.\n\n# CHAPTER ONE\n\nJeb Merrick\n\npresent day\n\nJeb strolled dead center into the group of Reflectives who'd come to attend the finals of the new class of Reflective trainees.\n\nThe entire coliseum was packed nut to butt, and the ground beside the ring was standing room only.\n\nIt was the female, Jeb determined easily\u2014she was the draw for the day. If he were honest with himself, he would have admitted the same. After all, the last female combative had been killed in action over a decade ago. Jeb had heard of it, but it had been before his time.\n\nThis one was different.\n\nFor one, she bore the scars of their calling. Her elegant limbs were littered with pockmarking and wounds in various stages of healing. Even with the advanced recuperative powers of a Reflective, Jasper was a mess.\n\nIt was such a shame; she was a beautiful female, if not the Papilio ideal. She'd refused to become the he-she that many assumed she would and had retained her femininity, despite the brutal calling of the Reflective. He supposed her gender could be to some advantage in a mission to one of the other sectors.\n\nJeb found a corner and put his back to it, watching the small group of inductees warm their bodies inside the practice area before the final sparring.\n\nJeb liked to possess a vantage point that allowed him to see everyone coming through the portals, windows, and otherwise. His height put Jeb at further advantage. With his six-feet-four frame, he skimmed most of the heads in his line of sight.\n\nThe ones he couldn't see over were of his kind, Reflective warriors of The Cause.\n\nHis eyes instinctively scanned the vast interior of the coliseum. He took in the stands filled with the government of his world. English was not their first language, but it was used in more than three quarters of the worlds they policed. Latin was the primary and native language of Papilio.\n\nAll Reflectives were fluent in the primary languages of the thirteen sectors they held as their responsibility. Latin was spoken exclusively by Papiliones.\n\nJeb stood up straighter, gaining another couple inches of precious visual real estate and caught sight of his own team. At age twenty-three, they were three years past their own graduations.\n\nHis team began taking up the remaining corners of the main floor surrounding the ring, while the civilian population moved upward in soaring floor-to-ceiling tiers with marble benches.\n\nThe thousands of people who'd sat there before this crowd had worn broad divots in the soft cream-and-peach-veined marble. Centuries worth of observers had witnessed the annual ceremony.\n\nAll welcomed the newest recruits. The civilians did not want to know how they were protected. They wanted to know only that they were.\n\nJeb felt a smirk form.\n\nSometimes he wondered why he jumped.\n\nHe grew solemn as he waited, and then he saw her\u2014Beth Jasper.\n\nHe'd seen her about in the Barringer Quadrant, shopping for sundries and such things\u2014but he'd never been so close. A different woman seemed to have inhabited her body today.\n\nGone was her softness he'd seen in his earlier observances. Instead, he saw a woman with nothing but hard angles and planes. An indifferent and cool stare met those of her team and those that she would fight.\n\nNot a one had softness for her.\n\nBeth stood alone.\n\nJeb looked at the five others\u2014all male\u2014and a slight furrow tied his brows together.\n\nShe was sorely outmatched physically, though the recruits were all equal in years. Recruits graduated each year in small groups, all at twenty cycles of age, as was tradition.\n\nJeb studied Jasper, assessing her as all Reflectives could. She stood at five feet two, and curves she couldn't mask, even beneath the bland Reflective uniform, stood in stark relief. Her tight black braid stopped at her waist. An unusual length for a woman of his people, it was an unheard of length for a Reflective.\n\nPerhaps it was a bid for femininity in a role that was exclusively male?\n\nJeb reluctantly moved his gaze to the other five in turn, searching for his new partner. Jeb found babysitting loathsome but necessary. Otherwise, they would have a troupe of Reflectives bouncing from one world to the next, where they shouldn't land.\n\nJeb felt his lips twitch. He had been the same when he was twenty cycles: an ignorant hot head. His former mentor had seen fit to beat him into understanding. The Cause did not tolerate ignorance\n\nIt was Jeb's turn to mentor a new recruit since his three-year first partnering was at an end.\n\nThe interior lights of the coliseum switched on, spreading the solar-powered illumination to every corner. It washed the faces of the Reflective inductees in an eerie mockery of false illness, casting a sickly yellow over their flesh.\n\nReflective Kennet stood in the far corner, exactly opposite of Jeb's position, and lifted his chin in greeting then received one in return. Kennet was wearing his dress uniform. He was on duty. That meant his ass could be snatched to one of the other twelve sectors at any time.\n\nYet, he was here.\n\nJeb allowed his eyes to run over his compatriots dress uniform, noting the deep navy, which looked black from a distance. The Reflective crest was the only striking addition.\n\nThe butterfly rode high against his left breast, standing vigil over his heart. The iridescent rendering had been executed with real gold and silver, and microscopic jewels were used in the multicolored threading. Only a small shift of movement was necessary for the crest to alert passersby that the uniformed people were Reflective.\n\nThey were the slaves of protection for Papilio.\n\nJeb's musing was cut short as the chime donged six times for the six candidates.\n\nAll would fight and be judged in various degrees of worthiness. The illegal betting had been deep and vicious.\n\nBeth Jasper was the underdog.\n\nHumanity had come to see the female fall.\n\nThere were only two rules: no blades and no death.\n\nHe studied the graceful Jasper as she warmed up. Had he been a betting man, he would have bet on her.\n\nJeb Merrick understood much could be accomplished without death as an end result. He was profoundly happy that he was not standing in that ring, preparing to beat a female into the mat. Jeb wasn't sure he could have done it.\n\nHe understood it for the weakness it was.\n\nJeb's eyes fell on the favored male in the class, Lance Ryan.\n\nLance could do it.\n\nJeb took in the young man's predatory eyes, which were trained on Jasper, tensed without being aware. The idea had seemed fine when he'd entertained attending the ritualistic Reflective ceremony. It was a bloodthirsty hold-over from centuries past. Yet, like many traditions that were no longer necessary, it had flourished.\n\nJeb unconsciously leaned forward as the first recruit stepped forward and bumped fists with the well-known Ryan. Well-known for being a jack ass, Jeb thought.\n\nNo one truly liked Ryan, yet he had garnered the respect of many through brute force and jumping prowess.\n\nRespect earned through fear instead of deeds is not truly respect.\n\nRyan was ferocious in sparring and the martial arts. A keen jumper, he was rumored to be able to jump through reflections as small as a fist\u2014but not while they were in motion.\n\nThat was a rare skill.\n\nHe had heard of only one Reflective who could jump as a drop of rain fell from the sky. Jeb shook his head in disbelief. Legend... yet, he wished he could have been there to witness such a thing.\n\nThe men raised their fists from the greeting then placed them over the plain insignia of their sparring tunics.\n\nThey stepped away from one another.\n\nA huge gong sounded, making Jeb's teeth thrum, and the two recruits burst into each other with a smack of flesh and bone.\n\nJeb couldn't help but be riveted.\n\nRyan's beauty as a fighter was an awesome thing to behold. He landed punch after punch\u2014all organ strikes\u2014into his opponent.\n\nThe other man\u2014Jude Calvin was Kennet's new partner, Jeb vaguely remembered\u2014came in close and took away Ryan's considerable strike advantage.\n\nCalvin wrapped his substantial arms around Ryan's torso, swinging a man that weighed two hundred fifty pounds as if he weighed an ounce, and pile drove him into the mat.\n\nSpectators felt the impact as a reverberating punch.\n\nRyan shot out his arm and smashed his flat palm into Calvin's nose. Ryan ignored the low boo from the crowd.\n\nBlood burst from the offense, shooting like a bright-red geyser as Ryan leapt off the mat, smearing the mess he'd made of his equal.\n\nJeb's head swiveled toward a female voice rising above the crowd's noise.\n\n\"Shoot, Calvin... shoot!\"\n\nA small fist swung above her head for emphasis, and the crowd hissed their displeasure at Jasper's coaching from the sidelines.\n\nCalvin shot, taking Ryan's long legs out from underneath him as he sprang forward, his nose bleeding like a sieve.\n\nCommander Rachett stood in the corner of the ring in typical stoic silence, his body tense like a snake before it strikes, as Ryan's body smacked the mat then took a hard bounce, making an echoing slap that silenced the crowd.\n\nJeb heard the oohs and aahs of low-grade fear all around him.\n\nThis time, Ryan rolled Calvin over and twisted his arm into an unnatural pretzel position. Shit, Jeb thought, he's got him in an arm bar. He'd picked up the classic move from a jump to Sector Three, Earth.\n\nA place he should not have visited yet, Jeb thought with unease. The class-seven world was for partnered jumps only.\n\nCalvin tapped out, hitting Ryan lightly on the leg behind his own.\n\nBeth Jasper told Jeb what would happen next. Like a cat losing its balance, she moved forward as Ryan snapped the arm he had locked behind Calvin. He roared in agony, holding his injured limb as Ryan's boot came high over his head to smash his face.\n\nJeb stilled.\n\nSurely Rachett will disallow this?\n\nBeth moved behind Ryan, like a shimmer of water on a sheet of glass.. She executed a spinning kick that knocked the standing man on his ass. Beth bounced away in avoidance, her fists riding beside her jaw, fear swimming in her eyes.\n\nCalm in its economical movements, her body belied the windows to her soul.\n\nRachett stepped away as medics pulled the moaning and shocked Calvin away.\n\nHe would heal.\n\nBut that's not the fucking point, is it?\n\nRyan lacked integrity\u2014a critical component of the militia that comprised the Reflective.\n\nRyan stood, his eyes nailing Beth. Her timely intervention had screwed the order.\n\nThey circled each other cautiously.\n\nJeb knew Jasper had no friends within the trainees circle. However, she'd moved almost compulsively to help Calvin.\n\nWhile every other recruit had observed another being cut down unfairly, Jasper had acted.\n\nAnd she would pay.\n\nPrinciple, this will not end well.\n\nJeb's guts churned. He wasn't easily affected by fights and blood, but as they said on Sector Three: this was wrong on a hundred different levels.\n\nJasper backed up, neatly outside of Ryan's long reach, which was easily twice her own. She appeared to be following her training, relying on a drumbeat that was part of every Reflective's internal clock.\n\nIt wasn't enough, though. Ryan caught Jasper before she had a chance to block his assault. He nailed her gut in a sucker punch then landed a subsequent fist into her jaw.\n\nBeth was already moving evasively, thank Principle, or she would have been out and at his mercy.\n\nRyan showed no mercy.\n\nJasper fell in a spinning backward arc, landing with her palms splayed behind her to arrest her fall. Blood from her cut lip splattered the mat.\n\nRyan stalked toward her, hatred leaking from his every pore. Their final match played out in a sick parody. Unforgiving eyes watched Jasper from every corner of the mat.\n\nRachett's tense voice rumbled from a distance, \"Get the fuck up, Jasper.\"\n\nJeb's felt his face tighten into a scowl, though Rachett had been just as tough when Jeb was a recruit.\n\nJasper swung her head back and forth as though clearing it.\n\nBlood from the blow she'd taken fell like scarlet rain.\n\nRyan smiled, his hands curling into abusive fists of presumed victory. He spoke quietly so only Jasper heard, though Jeb leaned forward to try to catch his words, as did everyone else.\n\nThe roar of the crowd made it impossible.\n\n\"This ends here, Jasper.\"\n\nA cruel smile overtook his face. \"The Reflective doesn't have room for mongrel females.\"\n\nJeb's eyes sharpened on her utter stillness.\n\nHer form began to waver, shimmering on top of the bloody mat.\n\nJeb squinted at her, thinking maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him.\n\nThe noise of the crowd was disorientating.\n\nRyan flicked the switchblade as smoothly as he'd been trained to do. Training blades were all ceramic.\n\nJasper wore the scars to attest to that, but reflective blades could still be had on the black market for the right price.\n\nLooks like Ryan paid.\n\nJeb watched the shining metal, his innate ability instantly online around a reflection, and his talent hummed with want. His eyes met Kennet's, and all eyes went to Rachett, wondering what he would do to Ryan for producing an illegal weapon.\n\nThe blade's mirrored surface shimmered in the low lights that bathed the interior of the coliseum.\n\nHoly fuck.\n\nJeb began to push through the people. The situation was going to get ugly.\n\nNo, check that\u2014gruesome.\n\nRyan planned to murder Beth Jasper; maybe he always had.\n\nJeb could let an inductee take licks, abuse, and unfairness. But one Reflective would not kill another on his watch.\n\nWhy, for the love of the Principle, has Rachett not interfered?\n\n\"Hey!\" a man protested as Jeb pushed him aside.\n\nThen he saw Jeb's uniform and silently moved, as did everyone else in his path.\n\nThe crowd parted like the Earth's fabled Red Sea parting; Reflectives had that effect.\n\nJeb grabbed the ropes around the perimeter, hesitating as Rachett bellowed too late, \"No blades!\"\n\nHis voice carried a note of high-keening fear.\n\nJeb swung to face his Commander.\n\nHe had never seen or heard fear from Rachett. When all inequalities of the fight had been dismissed\u2014Ryan's size against Beth and her gender\u2014he'd finally taken notice when an illegal weapon was produced.\n\nIt was beyond bizarre. None of it made sense.\n\nJeb saw the whites of Jasper's eyes. The inky tail of her braid was wet with her blood. Ryan's blade swung so close to her face that its breeze lifted wisps of her hair. She crab walked backward in an awkward scuttle of escape.\n\nRyan braced himself as his commander screamed for Ryan to stop, but he ignored the directive.\n\nRachett stepped forward too late to stop his best inductee from gutting another recruit as a justified elimination tactic and grabbed Ryan's arm.\n\nBut the knife was gone.\n\nIt was already singing through the air in an expert trajectory aimed at Beth.\n\nThe blade spun in the combustible silence of the coliseum as the crowd held a collective breath.\n\nJeb strode toward Jasper, but she seemed unaware as her dark eyes tracked the knife.\n\nJeb's eye's hadn't lied. One moment, she was solid. The next, she became opaque.\n\nThen she was gone.\n\nJeb had seen many jumps, but never a female's\u2014and never into something so small. The crowd watched as a glittering rope of iridescent white, like a pearl with a rainbow wash, slammed into the blade.\n\nJasper's body disappeared then reappeared in the thin reflective ribbon of the jump as it collided with the metal, as she'd meant to.\n\nWhen the knife landed in the mat, its tip sank deep into the soft surface with a twang.\n\nThe silence was deafening.\n\nBeth Jasper had vanished. Only her blood remained as grim testimony to her presence moments before.\n\nRachett fisted Ryan's tunic, jerking him close.\n\n\"You dumb fuck,\" he began with the quiet menace he was known for. \"All you had to accomplish was keeping weapons out of it. You could have pummeled her into the mat in a fair spar.\"\n\nHis eyes pegged Ryan's in blatant disgust.\n\n\"Now\"\u2014his flat eyes locked with Ryan's\u2014\"she's jumped. She won because you couldn't contain your shit.\"\n\nJeb's eyes connected with Kennet, who was across the ring from where he stood, and the other man was just as stunned. Jeb glanced at the blade embedded in the mat and shook his head in disbelief.\n\n\"There's no way!\" one of the Reflective recruits said quietly. \"That's a six-inch surface. She's a half-breed... nobody can jump that.\" He scoffed.\n\nBut somebody had. Beth Jasper, female, half-breed... had just shown her hand.\n\nIt looked like aces high.\n\nThe crowd began to disperse, their eyes roving for the missing Reflective female who had just made history.\n\nThere would be no jeering in her future, only jealousy.\n\nRachett reiterated what they'd always known, though a few had chosen to ignore.\n\n\"The Principle chooses who it will. There is no logic. That's why when we have an opponent. We do not underestimate their skills. Let this be a lesson to all who fight,\" Rachett expounded, spinning in a slow, deliberate circle, his eyes falling on the inductee recruits, the Reflectives, and the lesser audience who remained.\n\n\"Be ready,\" he finished, landing a final, leaden glance on Ryan before he stalked out of the coliseum. Guards moved up beside Ryan. His infraction would land him on Sector One, for certain. No Reflective wished to jump there.\n\nThis was an epic clusterfuck if there has ever been one.\n\nJeb groaned.\n\nAs the recruits filtered out, Ryan's defiant gaze challenged all who dared look his way as he was cuffed with non-reflective cuffs. One of the guards jerked the blade out of the mat, giving Ryan narrow eyes.\n\nJeb's gaze squared off with Ryan until he dropped his gaze and the guards escorted him out.\n\nJeb stared after Ryan's back. He ran a frustrated hand through his cropped hair.\n\nHe knew what this disturbing mess meant for him. Jeb would be tasked with locating Jasper. His primary task was retrieval. He was meant to be reassigned momentarily.\n\nHowever, it seemed that it would take longer than a moment.\n\nThe crowd thinned, and Jeb stared at the drying blood on the mat, the comments of those around him the same.\n\nAwe mixed with fear was a bad combination. It could be a recipe for many things. When Beth returned, what reception would she find waiting?\n\nHe knew the people would forget Ryan's transgressions against her. All they would remember was her jump.\n\nHe would never forget it.\n\nJeb lifted his head at a small noise. Daphne, a beautiful Reflective, came toward him, her hips swaying so he would notice. And he did.\n\nBut even as her lush body moved toward him like water finding a crack in a stone, his mind was on another female, the newest member of The Cause: Beth Jasper, a jumper without compare\u2014and his new partner.\n\n# CHAPTER TWO\n\nBeth rolled out of her self-imposed tunnel of fire and ice without finesse or regard to safety.\n\nHer reaction wasn't too different from that of brave soldiers cornered at the edge of a cliff. As the enemy closes in, do they stay and get slaughtered? Or do they jump, hoping to live and fight another day?\n\nBeth had jumped.\n\nShe'd leapt at a spinning blade that made her nauseated to track. She'd known what the landing would be.\n\nHowever, she'd been at the theoretical cliff as Ryan's knife beared down, not a soul to stand in her defense.\n\nBeth exited the tunnel like an infant during a birth gone wrong.\n\nShe hurtled out of the sucking chasm that quantified the pathway that only Reflectives could travel and tried to loosen her body, remembering Rachett's words:\n\n\"Behave like a drunk imbecile when you land\u2014every piece of you loosen,\" he'd said, and Beth remembered the truth in his pale eyes. \"Remember, the Principle guards drunks and small children.\"\n\nThere'd been good-natured laughs all around\u2014but not at this moment.\n\nBeth knew she would land without forethought.\n\nI'll heal.\n\nHer body naturally tensed for landing, and she knew to resist that instinct.\n\nPain lanced her as she was purged from the end of the pathway. And Beth fell. Hard.\n\nThe crushing impact stole her breath.\n\nShe lay on a pebbly surface of rough stone, watching cumulus clouds form deep ripples in the blue sky as her lungs begged for oxygen.\n\nThe temperature was sultry. Her fingertips burned against the surface of the stone.\n\nHer chest opened to the insufferable heat and Beth took great whooping gulps of oven-like air.\n\n\"Mommy, mommy,\" a youngling called out.\n\nOh no, Beth thought, experimentally moving her toes, witnesses.\n\nA loud roaring filled Beth's ears, and she tried to move to find its source, but she could not force her body to cooperate.\n\nTwo forms blocked the fluffy white clouds, their shadows cooling her. The little one had long blonde hair, too much brown to be truly light. In one hand, she fisted a bear, and the thumb of her other hand was in her mouth.\n\n\"Why is the lady in the middle of the road?\"\n\nGood question. Beth tried to move and moaned through a hiss of pain. Back's broken. Her situation was almost as bad as Ryan trying to have her meet the Maker.\n\nA woman, too young to be the child's mother, leaned forward. \"Are you okay?\"\n\nNo, I've fractured some vertebrae, and I'm on the wrong damn planet, but otherwise, things are just great. Beth did a mental eye roll and began to review their diction.\n\nAll sector language had been hammered into her from the time she was five cycles.\n\nEnglish, twenty-first century, Sector Three\u2014Earth.\n\n\"Yeah,\" Beth croaked in English through her teeth.\n\nThe planet was a Hades of a lot different than its simulations. Beth hadn't jumped, except for brief explorations, and had never encountered other beings other than when she'd traveled when she was five.\n\nThat had not gone well.\n\nThe little girl cocked her head and gave Beth a strange look.\n\nBetter work on my accent.\n\nThe woman moved out of her line of vision and the roaring gnashing gears became unbearable.\n\nWhat in the inferno is that?\n\nBeth screamed in pain when she tried to move herself, vulnerable and laid out Principle knew where.\n\n\"Shhh.\" The little girl touched her arm with sticky hands. \"Mimi be right back.\"\n\nBoots crunched closer, and Beth tensed.\n\nShe could do nothing, but it was difficult to not act the warrior even as injured as she was.\n\nA male of considerable size moved in front of her and Beth assessed him. Six feet, two hundred pounds. He moved with a languid peace, and she knew instantly that he could handle himself in a moderate engagement.\n\nAll Reflectives assessed. It was part of who they were.\n\nBeth was pleased by the knowledge that he would not last in match with her, though he had her by nine inches and ninety pounds.\n\nHe stooped; his light brown eyes were kind.\n\n\"Well, little lady, looks like someone's dumped ya here.\"\n\nHe spit a stream of brown liquid to the side.\n\nClever male. Beth's lips curled.\n\nThen he touched her, and she shouted, \"Do not!\"\n\nShe panted, her hands gripping his shoulders. \"Move me,\" she finished.\n\nHe smiled.\n\n\"You're not staying in the road, girl.\" His eyebrows shot up to a fine bristle of dark-blond hair circling his head like a golden down. Beth tried to shift and cried out through her clenched lips.\n\n\"No, no... girl. Hold your horses.\"\n\nBeth searched around for animals. Seeing none, she turned back to him.\n\n\"Literal little thing, ain't ya?\"\n\nAnother brown stream followed the first, and Beth wrinkled her nose. Vile.\n\n\"Jeremy... we can't just leave her here.\"\n\nWith her eyes, Beth followed the woman named Mimi.\n\nBeth scanned her vitals. A light film of sweat dewed her forehead, and she wrung slick hands over and over in a nervous roll of reaction with a swamped pulse as if she had a bird trapped at the hollow of her throat.\n\nBeth's eyes went to the small one, and she gave her a tired smile. The male\u2014Jer-e-may...? Jeremy\u2014had slipped his hands underneath Beth's back.\n\nHis eyes widened.\n\n\"She's full of blood, Mimi...\"\n\nThe young woman came forward, her eyes searching Beth's body carefully, and too late, Beth understood what Mimi was looking at.\n\nHer sparring uniform was still whole, spattered with blood and bearing an emblem that was as foreign as she was in this world.\n\n\"Let's take her to the hospital,\" Jeremy determined, and Beth stiffened as he lifted her.\n\nThree's could never study her body. They would find things they shouldn't.\n\nBeth screamed as agony tore through her.\n\nThat was when Merrick made his entrance, and all Hades broke loose.\n\n*\n\nJeb\n\nJeb folded his arms across his chest mummy style and felt the final twist when he would be expunged. Then he flung his arms wide at the last moment, moving his legs as though he were walking in midair.\n\nSoon enough, his feet would meet something solid.\n\nHe hit the ground, his shins singing with the impact. Jeb was grateful it wasn't a slope but a manmade material. He could have gone ass over tea kettle if he'd landed on a hill.\n\nHe had.\n\nJeb ran at a full-out sprint to shake off the momentum of the jump, then slowed to a jog, then a walk.\n\nHe shook out his palms, restoring the feeling in his extremities. He knew from experience it would be a full minute before he was fully rejuvenated.\n\nHe stopped, closing his eyes.\n\nReflectives' hearing was the finest of any being, save vampires.\n\nJeb heard Jasper scream, and his head snapped in that direction.\n\nHe did not slow upon seeing the three humans that hailed from Sector Three.\n\nHe gauged the century to the decade from their clothing. Then he determined the year when the male who posed the greatest threat spoke.\n\n\"What the hell is this?\" The male rose, cradling Jasper, whose face appeared more pale than usual.\n\nJeb let his sensors run from his body like tendrils, feeling her injuries. She was badly hurt from the fall: L-1 and 3 were fractured. Jasper's foot twitched, but her legs remained immobile.\n\nHer dark cautious eyes found him.\n\n\"Merrick,\" she rasped.\n\nJeb mentally revised his superficial diagnosis. Her vocals were compromised, and he determined through greater psychic exploration that C-2 was damaged, as well. He exhaled loudly.\n\n\"Jasper,\" he greeted.\n\nHe executed his internal exam of the male who held his yet-to-be-assigned partner, and Merrick found him wanting.\n\nJeb dismissed him to assess the females. One\u2014caucasian, early twenties, five feet six, one hundred thirty pounds\u2014held the hands of a youngling, perhaps four years of age.\n\nHe dismissed them as well.\n\nThreats processed and noted, Jeb crossed his arms, folding them over his awful, classic twenty-first-century garb of stiff denim that made his balls feel like prisoners in a greenhouse and thieved his mobility.\n\nHowever, they were the clothes of... Jeb looked down at his locator fashioned of mercury: 2030.\n\nHe had been to Sector Three many times. He wrinkled his nose as he detected the levels of pollution exceeding those he was accustomed to.\n\n\"This is my wife. I'll take her to...\" Jeb considered his vocabulary carefully. \"To seek medical treatment.\"\n\nHe smiled, pushing it into his eyes. Humans liked that. It settled them like colts about to run. They hadn't seen his landing, so his lies should work.\n\nThe male's brows dropped over his eyes like a brick.\n\n\"I don't know who the hell you really are, but your ass just dropped out of the sky, and whatever claim you have on this young woman is null and void, Jack.\"\n\nJack?\n\n\"Is he an alien?\" the youngling asked, with wide, distrusting eyes.\n\nFuck.\n\nBeth grimaced. \"Smooth, Merrick, way to blend in.\"\n\nJeb scowled at her, stalking toward the male, who did not back down.\n\nDoes he not know that Jeb Merrick is a warrior of The Cause? Of course not. However, it was imperative only that Jeb know.\n\nThe Code ran through his mind, a blend of language from thirteen worlds, policed by only one.\n\nThe Reflectives will advance nothing, protect all, exploit the evil for what it is and defend The Cause without exception.\n\n\"Yes, I know it looks a little out of the ordinary.\"\n\nThe youngling popped a thumb into her mouth.\n\nIt was not going well. He would have to extract moments from these humans' brains. He gave a disgusted sigh; extraction was his least favorite task. It was akin to mental rape, or the thrall the vamps were known for.\n\nJeb calculated the distance at ten meters.\n\n\"Jasper, I need the distance.\"\n\nThe male glanced down at Beth, and she extracted a small silver sphere that glinted in the late sun of the day like captured silver.\n\nJasper held up the marble, and Jeb narrowed his vision on the warped and glossy pewter finish.\n\nHe could do a jump with something that small from his distance.\n\nHeat washed through his body as Jeb pushed his being toward the sphere.\n\nHe could see his pale gray eye reflected even at that distance.\n\nThe concentration to jump took seconds.\n\nJeb thought only of the sphere. When nothing but the shape was in his mind, he spun out toward it. His body snapped like a rubber band and flashed to Jasper in a heartbeat.\n\nSuddenly, Jeb was nose to nose with the male.\n\n\"Give me the woman,\" Jeb commanded, his mental dominance sliding into the male before him.\n\nHis arms went loose, and Beth began to slide out of his grasp.\n\nJeb caught Jasper easily as the male, slack jawed, awaited new orders.\n\nJasper bit her lip to keep from crying out, and Jeb tucked her arm under his own. He looked at the people who stared at him. His gaze shifted to the youngling; nothing could be done with her.\n\nThe younglings' resistance because of their age was renown.\n\nHe worked on the man and woman until they believed they had pulled over from fatigue and that his appearance was no more than a bad dream.\n\nThe youngling was different.\n\nHe sent the young one's protectors away and dropped to his haunches easily, though Jasper lay like a dead weight within his hold.\n\n\"Don't... hurt her,\" Jasper whispered in their native tongue, gritting her teeth against her pain.\n\nHer eyes fluttered as she fought fatigue. She was badly injured and her body was trying to heal itself through rest.\n\n\"I am not a savage.\"\n\n\"I have heard stories,\" she replied in Latin.\n\nJeb was disgusted that Jasper would think him capable of harming a youngling.\n\nHe focused on the girl, but Jasper's comment rung inside his skull unpleasantly.\n\n\"Little one,\" he began, switching to English. \"Who do you think we are?\"\n\nThe little girl looked carefully at Jasper.\n\nThen her eyes moved to Jeb, and she looked unafraid.\n\n\"Angels,\" she replied with the logic of a four-year-old.\n\nJeb went through his mental inventory, looking for the meaning, and though they were not the perfect heavenly creatures the girl thought they were, it was a safe identifier.\n\nJeb smiled at her.\n\n\"That's right,\" he lied smoothly as he cupped his large hand over the back of her head.\n\n\"Thank you for your watch care after my partner.\"\n\nShe nodded, though she thought the angel spoke oddly.\n\nThe lovely people blinked away like falling stars in the middle of a little-traveled road, while her relatives sat like corpses in the cab of Uncle Jeremy's truck.\n\nShe stared until twilight descended and her adult relatives finally awoke as though they'd just had a deep sleep.\n\n*\n\n\"Principle, that was close,\" Jasper whispered.\n\nShe flicked her eyes to Jeb's and added, \"I think you hurt me worse on the return.\"\n\n\"Your grateful attitude blows me away.\"\n\n\"I hate Earth vernacular.\"\n\n\"Tough, get used to it.\"\n\nJeb sat beside her, his mind on that hot Reflective he'd had to leave behind instead of giving her what she clearly needed.\n\nBasically, he hadn't gotten his rocks off because he'd had to chase Jasper down like a skipper. Jeb understood he wasn't being entirely fair. If Jasper hadn't leapt, she would've been killed. Still, his fun had been curtailed, and it made him exceedingly grumpy.\n\nHe plowed his fingers through his tousled hair and expelled a frustrated breath, leaning back in the chair near her bedside.\n\n\"Please, I'm hungry,\" Jasper said, her upturned lips telling Jeb that she was pleased by his temporary slave status.\n\nJeb glared at her as he spooned another mouthful of the gelatin into her full lips, now marred only by a shallow cut and a yellowing bruise. Days of healing had taken only hours.\n\nHer back would be fully mended by the morrow.\n\nA glob of the green goo sat on one plump lip, and he scooped it off and stuffed it into her mouth.\n\nNot that it would keep that sharp tongue at bay.\n\n\"What of Rachett?\" Beth asked. She gnawed thoughtfully at her bottom lip in between bites, giving away her emotions.\n\nJeb busied himself with stirring the green translucent grub. It jiggled obscenely as he loaded another spoonful.\n\nJasper put her palm up to ward off another bite, and he noted how small\u2014and strong\u2014her hands were.\n\nJeb dipped his eyes to the bowl then set it down. \"He attends to Ryan.\"\n\nJasper put her face in her hands.\n\nGo ahead, cry, weak female, Jeb thought uncharitably, his old prejudices vying for position.\n\nBut she simply swiped at her face, raw with healing wounds.\n\n\"Attends to... or disciplines?\" she asked, a defiant hook to her chin.\n\nHe grinned despite himself.\n\nBeth Jasper obviously knew the tenor of their commander. \"A little of both, I imagine.\"\n\nJasper did not smile; she appeared serious, and Jeb found his smile fading as he looked into her delicate face.\n\nHer eyes were as hard as his own.\n\n\"Ryan will retaliate.\"\n\nJeb nodded. \"If he was smart... he would not. It was a clear victory. But he will not be pleased to have been bested by a female.\"\n\n\"It is not that I am female,\" Jasper commented.\n\nHer brown eyes laid hold on his gray ones, and he cocked an eyebrow, folding his arms over his chest.\n\n\"Then what is it, for I know you die on the vine to tell me.\"\n\nJasper rolled her large eyes in her head. \"It is that I am better.\"\n\nJeb inclined his head, conceding the obvious. \"As a jumper.\" He stood, throwing out his hands. \"I have not seen the like.\"\n\nSuddenly, Jeb whirled around. Overcome with curiosity, he gripped the ceramic bars on the hospital bed. His movement caused the thin snaking plastic tube that bit her flesh with a needle to sway like an undulating snake.\n\nJasper smiled. \"And only Rachett truly knew what I was capable of.\" Her hands toyed with the many threads of the unraveling border of the wool blanket that covered her.\n\n\"Why? It is a rare gift, to jump into something that small. Why would you not spread the proof of that talent far and wide?\" Jeb asked, twirling in a neat circle in the middle of the room.\n\nJasper met his eyes, and Jeb saw something there that caused him to stop moving.\n\n\"Because,\" Jasper whispered, \"that was not small.\"\n\nJeb felt the air still in his lungs as he moved nearer to her bed. \"Look at me, Jasper.\"\n\nHer gaze rose, unwavering and dark, full of secrets.\n\n\"The six-inch blade in motion... that is not small?\"\n\nJasper shook her head.\n\nJeb pulled a chair across the floor, and it shrieked in protest as it scraped the floor. He twirled it around and sat in it backward. \"Tell me.\"\n\nThe air left her lungs, and she whispered the truth for the first time since their Commander had discovered what she was capable of, since that day when she had leapt into the locator sphere.\n\n\"Mist,\" she answered.\n\nJeb put a fist over his mouth to stifle a noise.\n\nThey were in such trouble. Not he... but a partner that could jump through mist particles? His eyes couldn't even track something so small because of their sheer diminutive size. It did not bode well.\n\nShe leapt by intuition. Somehow, she knew it reflected and could jump into the body of the mist? Unheard of.\n\nAnd she was female besides.\n\nWho is Beth Jasper, and what is her purpose?\n\nShe looked at him with guarded hope, and the look he returned was everything he felt\u2014dislike.\n\n# CHAPTER THREE\n\nBeth\n\nBeth's face fell. Merrick might have been her new partner, but he was definitely not friendly. He treated her like a child he'd had to rescue and feed.\n\nIf Beth could have been an independent, she would have chosen to do so straightaway. However, that wasn't the way of the Reflective. They were partnered for a reason. And though she had not officially been advanced from her inductee status to full Reflective, she suspected Commander Rachett would see it through.\n\nHe was a tough man shaped by experience, but he was fair.\n\nThat was why Beth was surprised that he hadn't anticipated her jump when confronted by Ryan's contraband weapon. The prick.\n\nBeth stubbornly adjusted herself in the bed. I'll be damned if I ask Merrick. He was all but whistling from boredom.\n\n\"You can go. I'm fine,\" Beth said, smoothing her palms down the itchy blanket.\n\nJeb let the front legs of his chair slam down, and it caused Beth to jump. \"Nope... you're the new part of our little team, and I have to suck it up... kind of like a bad marriage.\"\n\n\"You know, I guess you're having some residual from being at Three?\"\n\nMerrick shrugged his broad shoulders.\n\n\"It takes time to come down from the foreign high.\" He winked and Beth felt a tension leave her that she didn't know she held. Merrick could be okay when he wanted to be.\n\n\"Where... have you...\"\n\n\"I like Sector Thirteen best,\" Merrick replied casually, his eyes flicking to hers then away.\n\n\"Not Earth?\"\n\nMerrick shook his head, leaning back in the chair again.\n\nIt tilted dangerously, his muscular weight causing it to creak as he laced his hands behind his head and regarded her thoughtfully.\n\n\"No, Earth's a pain in my ass. They have great language\u2014colorful.\" He gave a short laugh. \"But they take a shit where they live. And the pollution, the crime... and I think we have a tech storm brewing that we'll have to address before too long. Actually, I know it.\"\n\nBeth held a secret desire to visit all the planets.\n\nShe looked at her clenched hands. Her greatest desire was not to police the planets they held steward over but to explore them.\n\nShe kept it to herself, along with the fact that she'd just dumped herself on Earth by random accident. That hadn't been a visit; it'd been a catastrophe.\n\nShe owed her five years of service to the Reflective, and then she was free to explore and find the one who was destined for her\u2014a promised soul mate.\n\nThat is, if Beth survived her service.\n\nThe nature of the Reflective duties were always the issue. With a death rate of one in two, there was no guarantee that a Reflective would live long enough to claim the prize of his or her other half.\n\nStill, the proverbial carrot dangled before them.\n\nBeth raised her chin and leveled her stare at Merrick. He was not a chatty male. His words, like his actions, were economical.\n\nHe came from a family of pureblood Reflectives, and the old feelings of isolation kicked in. Beth did not look Reflective, she was female... and she was small even for her gender.\n\nBut Rachett had seen that essential spark within her and included her in the training.\n\nShe asked him, \"Earth? We will be assigned there?\"\n\nHe nodded. \"Yes, it's only a matter of time. The handwriting's on the wall.\"\n\nHe'd used an interesting idiom that heralded from the Earth people's Bible, a relic of prophesy. Their Bible was not unlike Papilio scrolls that spoke of the Principle. An intersecting bit of beliefs, she supposed.\n\n\"Why thirteen?\" she asked, wondering why that planet held his interest most.\n\n\"I can't manipulate the Band.\"\n\n\"Ah...\" Beth instantly remembered her training of that world. A primitive people had been saved by a futuristic, but interfering, group from Three. Interesting domiciles on that planet, she remembered.\n\n\"So the challenge then?\"\n\nMerrick grunted in enigmatic response, taking a piece of candy out of his pocket. He threw it into his mouth, then jawed it around.\n\nWithout warning, the door burst open.\n\nMerrick jumped from mid-lean, tossing the chair out of the way.\n\nLance Ryan entered, slapping the door against the wall.\n\n*\n\nBeth slithered out of the bed, lightly touching her toes on the cold tile of the hospital floor.\n\nShe scanned the room for anything to use as a weapon or possible escape.\n\nDamn, her weapons were hung neatly from a new uniform at the back of a chair in the corner.\n\nOf course they were.\n\nWho needs weapons when there is an armed Reflective at the door? Beth narrowed her eyes. The guard had been bought and paid for by Ryan, obviously.\n\nBeth's gaze bored into Merrick's muscular back, and her heart stuttered. Merrick would never go against Ryan.\n\nThey were most likely in cahoots. That was probably why Merrick had been so cavalier, feeding her and taking care of his injured partner as they were required to do in the event of mishap.\n\nShe was doomed.\n\nMaybe not.\n\nShe took a deep breath, contemplating the unthinkable. Beth's eyes roamed the four corners of the room, trying to locate anything reflective.\n\nBut the hospital had been scrubbed of anything that could refract.\n\n\"Well, hi ya, Ryan,\" Merrick greeted him like an old friend, still in full Earth dialect.\n\nRyan frowned.\n\n\"Get out of the way, Merrick.\"\n\nBeth backed up, moving toward the window, glancing outside.\n\nShe was at the metaphorical cliff again. She wasn't healed fully from the last jump. Her injuries would certainly be worse if she jumped again.\n\nSo few held Beth in any regard that it might have been her only free pass that Merrick had been sent to collect her.\n\nNo one would come a second time. Her jump would leave her trapped in a foreign sector void of her people, unable to travel decisively without locators.\n\nJumping was dangerous without a focus sphere.\n\nShe could end up anywhere... or any time.\n\nBeth shuddered. But she supposed that fate was better than death.\n\n\"Nope, can't do that, you colossal fuckup.\"\n\nBeth turned around, her mouth agape.\n\nDid I just hear Merrick right? She had, judging by the expression on Lance Ryan's smug face.\n\nThat awareness in Ryan's expression was beginning to leak away.\n\nAnd Merrick's delivery had been the most comedic of all. He'd spoken as if he were commenting on the weather and had found it fine.\n\n\"Let me pass, Merrick. No one wants her to live.\"\n\nBeth's eyes met his over Merrick's shoulder. \"You'd be doing the world a favor if you took a coffee break right now. Just let it happen.\"\n\nMerrick planted his feet, his arms loose at his sides, and regarded Ryan like a bug. Beth had moved into his peripheral vision. She'd also caught sight of an outside streetlamp through the window.\n\nIts glass solar panels shone like a black mirror.\n\nRyan somehow knows, knows I ready myself. My desperation is plain to whoever searches for it.\n\nHer body bore the scars of his physical bullying. Her mind held them, as well.\n\nHeat climbs, searing her insides, Beth's heartbeat is a whoosh of blood in her ears.\n\nRyan's eyes snagged on Beth, then with a roar, he surged forward.\n\nMerrick pivoted on his right foot. Already focused on her mark, Beth saw them as only a pinpoint in her vision.\n\nThe shining ebony at the crown of the lamp beckoned.\n\nThen she heard the crack of bone against bone, and blood arced up, hitting the ceiling with such force that it rained back down on the men.\n\nThe sound stopped everything\u2014her focus, her jump.\n\nBeth stood frozen as Merrick went toe-to-toe with Ryan.\n\n*\n\nJeb\n\nHonorless fuck.\n\nJeb was disgusted the guard at Jasper's door had let Ryan through. He was even further disgusted that she'd considered jumping without having sufficient time to heal. Being a sensitive Reflective, he could sense jumping readiness.\n\nDuring the battle in the coliseum, he had sensed Beth's jump before anyone else had. He possessed her signature now.\n\nRyan charged, and something in Beth's expression gave her away. It would be the first thing he would teach her as her partner: a blank face.\n\nBeth didn't have one. A shadow of her every feeling clouded her face. She was, as the people of Sector-Three Earth were fond of saying, an open book.\n\nRyan was a dirty fighter\u2014no surprise there\u2014who thought to take hold of Jeb and unbalance him.\n\nRyan latched onto Jeb's wrist and attempted a foot sweep.\n\nJeb countered, twisting his wrist viciously in the opposite direction of the hold, breaking it instantly as he grabbed Ryan's forearm. He stepped into the fight, not away.\n\nAs he jerked Ryan into the circle of reach, he swung his fist into Ryan's jaw.\n\nAlways engage, never retreat.\n\nThe Reflective motto, he thought with sour pleasure as Ryan moved with him, an apt dance partner in their mutual violence.\n\nRyan head butted Jeb in a deft, hard move with perfect timing.\n\nIt rang Jeb's bell, but his skull was hard, and he spun his cocked fist, driving it a second time the short distance from his hip to Ryan's jaw.\n\nAnd like perfectly cracked glass, his jaw rocketed back, spraying blood onto the ceiling as his teeth speared his own tongue.\n\nJeb popped his flattened palms into Ryan's chest as though he wanted to launch him into the wall or stop his heart.\n\nRyan slammed into the wall, his head smacking the surface\n\nJeb stalked toward Ryan, his fists like meaty hammers of punishment.\n\nBarely breathing, Ryan slid down the wall, his eyes at half-mast.\n\n\"Are we done here, Ryan?\" Merrick asked.\n\nRyan gave the smallest nod possible, his mouth a yawning horror of blood and gore.\n\nMerrick turned to check on Jasper.\n\nThe sun's final rays backlit her, bathing her in red light like a watercolor of blood. It ran down her arms, accentuating her delicate build, and instead of looking sinister, it did the opposite.\n\nShe seemed terribly fragile.\n\n\"Merrick!\" Beth screamed.\n\nHe dropped down and spun.\n\nRyan was above him, a small dagger in one hand, coated with blood.\n\nHis own blood.\n\nHis fingers found the wound and came away slick.\n\nMerrick saw red.\n\n\"You fucking pussy,\" he hissed.\n\nRyan smiled through a mouthful of his own blood and spit it to the side, where it splattered like dumped paint on the pure-white tiles.\n\n\"I'm a pussy that just fucked you.\"\n\n\"Not yet,\" Merrick said.\n\nFuck it, I'll heal on the way. He'd kept his gift a secret, though Ryan would be enlightened forevermore.\n\nAs light as a feather, a smooth rectangle of paper-thin mercury-coated ceramic slipped out of his specially made pocket in Merrick's pants. He tossed, and it landed on top of their mixed blood on the floor.\n\nIt provided a single destination jump.\n\nRyan's expression showed true fear as Merrick punched the blade from the younger man's hand. It hit the floor with a jarring clatter of metal against ceramic.\n\nRyan reacted as all instinctual Reflectives would have\u2014he ground his fist into Merrick's knife wound.\n\nBut Merrick was already on point.\n\nHis eyes held on the flat surface of the locator even as he winced in pain.\n\nHe grabbed Ryan's collar, fisting the material tightly.\n\nThey jumped\u2014only one did so willingly.\n\nMerrick could hear Jasper calling his name down the tunnel the Reflectives traveled.\n\n*\n\nJeb had found himself a dandy of a slope, his fist still attached to Ryan, where it continued its brutal hold.\n\nJeb went ripping down an embankment of sharp prairie grass that sliced and poked as they mowed through it, finally landing on their backs at the bottom.\n\nHe'd thought of Thirteen\u2014and that's where they'd landed.\n\nMerrick was, of course, in perfect health, having healed completely during the jump. The glory in that was Ryan was yet unaware of Jeb's mended state of affairs.\n\nMerrick jumped to his feet and immediately kicked Ryan in the ribs.\n\n\"I swear to Principle I will leave you in this place if you do not retire your vendetta against Beth Jasper.\"\n\nRyan spit more blood into the pasture grass that speared his back. \"What... you want the half-breed?\"\n\nJeb said nothing. Fool.\n\nRyan looked up at him.\n\n\"She is assigned to me, and she is injured. I can't help who I get partnered with any better than you can. I will not stand by and let you kill another Reflective because of your jealousy.\"\n\n\"I am not jealous of that mongrel,\" Ryan growled, coming to his hands and knees.\n\n\"I suffered through her inclusion for the past fifteen years,\" he offered as a lame excuse.\n\n\"No.\" Jeb gazed at the worthless Ryan. \"I'm sure the reverse of that is true.\"\n\n\"Earth lover.\" Ryan spat at his feet.\n\nJeb rolled his eyes, pegging his hands on his hips. \"Yes, I do enjoy Earth. Your point?\"\n\n\"My point is she could be anything... she is not fully Papilion. Does that not bother you?\"\n\n\"I am not looking to breed her but to partner her.\"\n\n\"That is all females are good for.\"\n\nThis is useless. Ryan was a lost cause, but Jeb could teach him caution. He did not wish to look over his shoulder for the next five years while partnered with Jasper.\n\nRyan stood, wisely keeping a respectable distance from Merrick.\n\n\"Where the hell are we?\" His eyes narrowed on Jeb. \"Where did you bring me?\" He whipped his head around, taking in the faraway opaque dome-shaped structures.\n\nA great forest stood to the north of their position.\n\n\"Sector Thirteen,\" Jeb replied coolly.\n\nRyan's face paled. Jeb imagined that took some doing.\n\nHe grinned.\n\n\"This is the most dangerous sector you dick.\"\n\nJeb shook his head. \"Not the most dangerous.\" No one traveled to One by choice\u2014that was a death wish.\n\nJeb noted that he was not the only Reflective who had picked up the local Earth dialect with some precision.\n\nRyan lowered his voice as though anyone could hear them in the middle of the wilderness of this world.\n\nA whisper of cloth against wheat made Merrick turn.\n\nHow wrong I was.\n\nThings instantly went from teaching a lesson to survival, as was often the way of a jump.\n\nA group of men of various sizes, ages, and bearing circled Merrick and Ryan, just out of striking range.\n\n\"Who the hell are they?\" Ryan asked, suddenly less combative toward Merrick than he'd been moments before.\n\n\"The Fragment,\" Jeb answered, sliding his remaining dagger out of the weapons pocket of his trousers.\n\nMade of ceramic, it was designed to survive a jump, as metal could not survive Reflective journeys.\n\nThe cold porcelain was smooth, with a specially arced tip. It was serrated on only one side.\n\nOne of the men in the group called out, \"Join us or die.\"\n\nRyan said, \"I don't know this dialect. I have only used the high language of Thirteen.\"\n\n\"Just another reason why Jasper should remain.\"\n\n\"Fuck me\u2014why?\" Ryan asked, one eye on the group, which was closing in, and the other on Merrick.\n\n\"She is fluent in all sectors.\"\n\nJeb moved forward, hoping to injure enough men so that he could escape. They did not want to find themselves buried within the knot of the Fragment.\n\nThey took no prisoners.\n\n*\n\nBeth\n\nRachett tore into the hospital room, and Beth nearly climbed out of her skin.\n\nThe air still rippled with residual disturbance from Merrick's jump.\n\n\"Where is Ryan?\" Rachett barked.\n\nBeth took a deep breath. \"He jumped with Merrick.\"\n\nRachett's jaw moved back and forth. \"No... Merrick would not take a jump with Ryan.\"\n\n\"I don't think it was voluntary.\"\n\nThey looked at each other.\n\nRachett seemed to notice Beth was in a hospital gown, flashing her backside to the window behind her.\n\n\"The residual still remains,\" she said quickly, throwing her palm toward the shimmering air pocket between them.\n\nRachett studied the area, locked onto something and drove his palm through it in a slicing gesture that ended in his cupped fingers bringing the air back to his nose.\n\nHe waved that little bit he'd collected back and forth in front of his face.\n\n\"What signature?\" Beth asked, moving to stand in front of him, her eyes on his hands as he smelled the air.\n\nHis face fell into grim lines. \"Sector Thirteen.\"\n\nRachett turned to Beth. \"You're so damn hot to jump, jump that.\"\n\nBeth took a step back. \"But... I'm a female. I don't have clearance for that sector.\"\n\nEveryone understood how treacherous that sector was. It had a terrible shortage of females, an estimated one to every fifteen males.\n\nShe would be delivering herself into the lion's den.\n\n\"Afraid?\" Rachett taunted.\n\nBeth stared at him. \"I've never been afraid a day in my life.\"\n\nAnxiety is not fear.\n\n\"That's my girl. Now\"\u2014he touched her shoulder so briefly that Beth thought she imagined it\u2014\"get Ryan back. We have somewhere he needs to go.\"\n\nBeth paused then hit the affirmative decisively. \"Yes, sir.\"\n\nHe laid the universal locator on the hospital bed. Its sheen reflected the spattered blood on the ceiling. Rachett's eyes followed hers.\n\nWhen they lowered to meet hers again, he made no comment.\n\nRachett never asked once if she was well enough to jump... or if she wanted to.\n\nBeth was Reflective, and that was answer enough.\n\nRead More\n\nThe Reflection Series, 1-3\n\nVAMPIRE\n\nAn Alpha Claim Brief-Bites\u00ae Novelette\n\nEpisode 1\n\nNew York Times Bestselling Author(s)\n\nMARATA EROS\n\nTAMARA ROSE BLODGETT\n\nAll Rights Reserved.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2015 Marata Eros\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2015 Tamara Rose Blodgett\n\nNo part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher.\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.\n\nwww.tamararoseblodgett.com\n\nTRB Facebook Fan Page\n\nMarata Eros FB Fan Page\n\nCover art by: Willsin Rowe\n\nProofed by: Corinna\n\n# Synopsis\n\nNarah Adrienne is a bounty enforcer in the near future. She runs the seedy side of her game, capturing criminals too dangerous for the local law enforcement. Using unorthodox methods, she finds herself in the crosshairs of the Magistrate for too many allowable kills for the quarter.\n\nAnd her head hurts like hell.\n\nAeslin is part of an elite vampire squad of Turners. A rare sect of vampire scouts who possess the ability to find women with enough undead blood to be turned into full vampire. As the numbers of the supernaturals dwindle, it is the hope of the Nobles that extinction can be a thing of the past with female hybrids.\n\nIn a race against time and common enemies, can Aeslin find the one female who is meant to be turned and also his parallel soul? Or will the fabled carrot the Nobles dangle turn out to be a lie perpetuated by desperation?\n\n# Chapter 1\n\nNarah\n\nMy legs are kicked up on the desk, the toes of my left combat boot stacked on the heel of my right. I lean my feet a couple of inches to the left and look at my boss.\n\nKinda wish I hadn't.\n\nThe tongue-lashing was going to be brutal, and not the fun kind. I just barely hold back a snort of self-serving comedy.\n\n\"Narah,\" Casper leans into the desk, edging a butt cheek on the only part not covered by my assortment of shit. My eyebrow cocks. Perturbed doesn't cover it. If I wanted a butt on my desk, I'd ask.\n\n\"What?\" I bark with anticipation.\n\nA vein in Casper's forehead throbs and I dial it back some. No need to bring the guy to heart failure.\n\n\"What?\" I repeat more good-naturedly, though both of us know I'm nothing of the sort.\n\nHe sighs, scrubbing a palm over his face. Hair almost as white as swan feathers glows under the LED lighting in my tiny office, and his glacial eyes tighten, fighting for a view of my face over the top of my boot.\n\nI jack my feet down and stuff them underneath my desk. My fingers itch to go to my smart phone. Anything to not commit to this conversation.\n\n\"You know we appreciate your skill set.\"\n\nBlah, blah, stinking-blah.\n\n\"But we can't have you pulling firearms on all your bounties.\"\n\nMy bottom lip pops out in a pout. \"It was a very small gun, Casper.\" I put my index and thumb almost touching.\n\n\"Using manstopper ammunition?\"\n\nHe might have a small point.\n\n\"Outlawed in 1898,\" Casper adds.\n\nI shrug a bare shoulder, my tank top skin-tight against my small frame. I find loose clothes are handles to make a bludgeon against me easier. I nail the targets but if there's nothing for them to grab onto, so much the better.\n\n\"I like antique weaponry and ammunition,\" I say with deliberate nonchalance.\n\n\"Really?\" Casper says and I wince at the sound of his voice. \"Let's run down the list of target fatalities.\"\n\nHmmm.\n\n\"Target 103, lethal stabbing.\"\n\nI lean back in my chair and cock my neck back, staring at the dingy ceiling. A water stain has spread out from the center in a pattern of copper lines that somehow resemble a flower opening.\n\nIt's sort of like watching clouds outside, but inside.\n\n\"Narah!\"\n\nI sigh, answering the ceiling. \"Yeah.\"\n\n\"Target 424, beheading.\"\n\nYeah, that'd been messy.\n\n\"Again, I was in fear for my life,\" I say, not sounding defensive.\n\nAt. All.\n\n\"Thirteen times?\" Casper asks softly.\n\nMy chin snaps down and I meet his eyes. Mine are big and golden hazel like a cat's, and that's why I hide them behind my aviator shades. The sun hurts like hell. I've always been sensitive to sunlight.\n\nI shrug. It'll get me nowhere to fight with Casper. Who has the nickname in the office of, The Ghost. No one says it to his face though. I fight a snicker.\n\n\"We are the last profession for use of lethal force, you know. It's not goddamned 2015, when everyone thought all physical force was necessary in some capacity.\"\n\nI'm in the wrong era, I muse with regret.\n\n\"We are the last stand against the criminals of our time. When the police can't nail them, then it's up to us. But Narah,\" Casper scrubs his head, his crewcut bristling from the contact, \"we can't have you killing all the targets. They must be brought to justice.\"\n\nAnd of course, if I kill a target, Casper doesn't get credits. That's what this is really about. I bring in the most targets in our office. I get results and he gets credits for my hard work.\n\nWe stare at each other. I won't break and Casper knows it. \"You're the finest bounty hunter we have. Your instincts are uncanny, and you never let being a woman get in your way...\"\n\nI lunge to my feet and Casper jerks to his, eyeing me warily.\n\nGood, my desk is finally free of his ass.\n\n\"Nothing about me being a woman comes into play here.\"\n\nCasper shoots out an exhale like a cannon. \"Everything about it matters. You're smaller, you're vulnerable to things a man could never be.\"\n\nRape is the clear inference.\n\n\"You think a man can't be raped?\" I bark out a laugh. \"You think that my looks don't disarm. They do, Cas.\" My eyes laser down on him and his shift away. \"You know I'm a proficient, Level Ten.\"\n\n\"Nothing to sneeze at,\" he concedes and opens his mouth to add more, perhaps dig his grave a little deeper.\n\nI raise my palm. Nothing to sneeze at. I can feel a royal conniption fit brewing. \"No. If I've killed while gunning for a target,\" Casper frowns at my wording which causes me to grin, \"then they needed dying. Period.\"\n\nCasper walks to my office door. \"I'm sorry, Narah, I've done what I could, but the law states that there can't be more than ten sanctions in one quarter. You have thirteen. I got the bonus three waived.\" He whips his palm in the air like he's performing a magic trick. \"Now you'll have to go before the magistrate.\"\n\nFuck. They'd plug me a second ass after a first class reaming. If\u2014if I could even bounty again.\n\nI jerk my leather jacket off the back of my chair and sling it on. A bright headache, a new friend of mine of late, settles into my temples with zeal. I press my fingers against my head.\n\nI hate not having a target. The chase is the one thing that makes my life worth living. No longer an outcast\u2014always in the game.\n\nNow the rules are being threatened.\n\nAnd all I want to do is play.\n\n# Chapter 2\n\nAeslin\n\nEdan jerks a thumb my way, throwing a towel I deftly catch. I dab at the sweat running like a river from my scalp and making its way to the waistband of my work out gear.\n\n\"Corcoran's asking for you.\"\n\nI look at him, narrowing my eyes.\n\n\"Hey man, don't kill the messenger,\" Edan's hands spread away from his body.\n\nHe'd look so much more innocent if he had even one spot of bare skin. Edan's tatted from head to toe. Well... that's not entirely accurate. Don't think his feet hold the tats of our species. Or his face.\n\nTurners are required to be marked.\n\nIt's grounds for immediate execution to civilian vampires if they touch us. After all, we're the only savior of our dying race. They can't miss our marks. In the human world, tattoos no longer stand out. We hide in plain sight now.\n\nI flick irritated eyes to him. \"I'm on leave, Edan.\"\n\nHe shrugs. \"You know the drill. If a female comes on the radar, we're all on alert.\"\n\nI throw the damp towel in the soiled laundry hamper. I'm bone tired. Not physically\u2014mentally. So many scouting expeditions and coming up empty handed has taken its toll. I rub a hand on my nape, trying to make a raw spot. \"I've worked a solid quarter\u2014nothing.\"\n\nMy eyes meet his. Edan's looks are unusual for a Turner. Most of the sub-sect of vampire Turners possess dark coloring. Our only unified feature are silver eyes. Edan's are amber. Some kind of genetic throw back. My own hair is a deep chestnut, more red than what is considered fashionable. And if we want to enjoy female vampire company, it matters. They're few and far between. If they can't be our mates, it's only for release. And that's become an empty vessel.\n\n\"But what if we have a live one?\"\n\nI smirk at his words. \"You mean undead, right?\"\n\nEdan throws up his hands. He's muscled, like the rest of us. Mandatory training makes our bodies at battle readiness. Last month we'd just missed a female by minutes.\n\nShe'd been sterilized. Technically, it'd been on our watch.\n\nThe loss had brought the entire team down and morale had not recovered.\n\nEdan spoke my thoughts, \"We need this, Aeslin. We need a female. They're so vulnerable to the Hunters...\"\n\nI toss my palm up. \"We've been over this. It's a race against them. And they got to that female first.\" I see guilt on his face and know mine looks the same.\n\n\"Then why can't you see that every lead should be followed?\"\n\nTired of fucking losing, that's why. Or just tired.\n\nMy eyes feel like they're on fire when I glare at Edan, a Turner I've fought shoulder to shoulder beside. \"You don't think it haunts my fucking every thought that she could have belonged to one of us?\"\n\n\"Does it?\" Edan asks in soft disbelief.\n\n\"Yes,\" I hiss defensively.\n\n\"Then join us.\"\n\nI don't want another dead end. Another disappointment. \"I'm not rested.\"\n\n\"So when has that ever mattered?\" he asks.\n\nSince that female was lost, I think but don't say.\n\n*\n\nCorcoran stands at the window when I walk into his office and shut the door.\n\nHe doesn't turn.\n\nCorcoran is a Noble.\n\nA politically correct word for being in charge of the Turners. But he became a Noble the hard way, having been a Turner first and struggling through the ranks to prove himself invaluable to the cause. Now he rules over the Turners of our region with an iron fist.\n\nHell, in his day, there was a female turned every month. Now we were lucky to turn one a quarter. However, there was one biological advantage. A human female with vampire blood once turned, was always meant for her biological other half. Lucky bastard. It meant offspring.\n\nA chance at happiness.\n\nWith Hunters killing off every vampire they could, our numbers continued to dwindle. In the last half-century, one in two females who possessed enough of the blood of our kind had been sterilized before they could be turned, negating their vampire ancestry and the ability to have children.\n\nA Turners' goals were two-fold. Find the hybrid vampire females before the Hunters did, and determine how they were setting their sights on the rare females.\n\nEasier said than done.\n\n\"Aeslin,\" Corcoran said as greeting.\n\nI remain silent.\n\nCorcoran turns, eyeing me up. \"You look rested.\" He sounds hopeful. We both know I've had only four days respite.\n\nI need a month.\n\nI haven't taken enough blood, had enough sex, slept inside the ground as I should. A lot of have nots on the short list of my exhaustion.\n\nI lift my shoulders in an answer that isn't one. It will do no good to rehash the discussion I had with Edan.\n\nCorcoran says something under his breath. It sounds suspiciously like a curse.\n\n\"You're the best I have, Aeslin,\" he says quietly.\n\n\"Let Edan take it. Hell\u2014Jaryn could...\"\n\nHis gaze darkens. Eyes not the common light gray of the Turner are pewter in a face devoid of emotions. Corcoran's gaze is a coming storm.\n\n\"I need you on this.\"\n\nThat's just what Edan said. \"I mean no disrespect...\"\n\n\"Yes, you do,\" he says with the barest bit of humor.\n\nMy lips thin. \"Yes.\"\n\n\"She's a Turn, Aeslin. I know it.\" Corcoran closes his fingers into a fist.\n\nMy breath leaks out of me in defeat. \"Okay.\"\n\nI simply don't believe anymore. There's been so many dry runs I can't remember the last one that wasn't.\n\n\"She's sending out pheromones like a distress signal.\"\n\n\"Who called it?\"\n\nHis face closes down. \"Torin.\"\n\nCorcoran and Torin don't see eye-to-eye. I say nothing, waiting. I'm not political and won't immerse myself in it now.\n\nCorcoran slams a fist against the wall that bisects the bulletproof windows. \"She's bounty.\"\n\nHis frustration gets my attention. Hell, her occupation stalls me and I unlace my fingers and straighten my posture. \"What?\"\n\n\"Damn,\" he grits through his teeth, knowing full-well the risks of this acquisition.\n\nI tell him anyway. \"Too high profile,\" I state, hands going to my hips.\n\n\"She's manifesting.\"\n\nDammit.\n\n\"Is Torin sure she's a Turn?\"\n\nCorcoran exhales in a rush, taking a rough palm down his face, nodding.\n\nI suck in a deep breath. \"I'll do it.\"\n\nCorcoran looks relieved. \"You know the risk?\"\n\nHell yes. But another sterilized female? That we don't need. Can't stand.\n\n\"Yes,\" I answer.\n\nIf Torin's got a bead on her, then so do the Hunters.\n\nThe thought of a female out there and vulnerable tightens my guts. This is the part of my job I hate. However small, the emotion is there in my suppressed emotional makeup. The hardest to squelch, the most damning.\n\nHope.\n\n# Chapter 3\n\nMatthews\n\nRio raises the paper in the air. \"Right from the top, Matthews!\"\n\nI snap my head up, my back on the bench as I flick my eyes to Rio then back to the bar. My arms shake from exertion but I can't take my eyes off the weights I'm pressing. Not unless I want my body as a pancake.\n\n\"Spot me, asshole,\" I grit.\n\n\"Right! Sorry hoss.\"\n\nI'd roll my eyes if I wasn't so fucking plowed from fatigue.\n\nRio appears upside down and above me. His hands hover over the bar, I lift, as I take the last rep by storm. I heave another.\n\n\"No clanking,\" Rio chimes.\n\nGonna kill his ass.\n\nBeads of sweat roll, burning into my eyes as I gently set the bar on the brackets. It's almost soundless.\n\nRio smirks.\n\nHe whips the paper around and I duck out from underneath the three hundred pound weighted barbell set.\n\n\"God damn\u2014you're a beast, Matthews!\" Rio chortles.\n\n\"Give that to me and stop with the verbal diarrhea.\"\n\nRio's face tightens. \"Fine, fuck. You need to get laid if you're going to get your jock strap in a bunch all the time.\"\n\nI jerk the paper out of his hand and read the words.\n\nAssignment thirteen.\n\nI smile.\n\nThirteen is my lucky number.\n\nI give the paper back to Rio. \"Gonna save the world, brother.\"\n\n\"On your life.\"\n\n\"I hope not,\" Rio winks and begins to walk off.\n\n\"Specs?\" I yell after him.\n\n\"Same delivery as usual.\" I shouldn't ask, it's protocol but I like to hear the words anyway. It makes me uneasy when things are changed. I like routine\u2014crave it.\n\nI sit on the weight bench, thumbing the missive. A thrill races through my body.\n\nI'm a Hunter.\n\nAnd being a Hunter is bigger than me.\n\nIt's for humanity.\n\nPeople walk the streets; eating, sleeping, shitting and humping. They never realize there's an entire underworld of supernaturals vying for the top of the ecological heap. They're oblivious to the danger that sweeps past them like an unrelenting current.\n\nHunters have been in place since ancient times. Our opposition have the same sorcerer's blood that we possess.\n\nDruid.\n\nBoth sides descend from priests of the highest order.\n\nBut instead of exterminating the vermin, they are saviors of those that would harm who we're sworn to protect. They believe in perpetuation, and we believe in sterilization.\n\nThe Harborer's are the nemesis of our kind. Brothers by blood, enemies by deed.\n\nThe sooner we wipe out the supernaturals, the sooner the threat to mankind will end. And we're making steady progress.\n\nI move through the expansive gym where all Hunters hone their forms, turning sideways to pass between the heavy equipment. I've worked myself so bulky I'm at the point of losing grace. However, no Hunter wants to be distracted by their own lack of strength when they've got an assignment to fulfill.\n\nI'll get the details of my next sanction and be done. Hopefully it's another kill. Nothing gets my rocks off more than nailing one of the fangs myself. A larger threat would be a Harborer showing up for the same assignment. But they are fewer in number than Hunters. Vampires are the greater threat.\n\nEven a skilled Hunter full of quality bloodline magic can find himself in the death embrace of a clever fang and poof\u2014dead meat. The ultimate threat of being turned by one of them hangs over every one of us.\n\nNo Hunter wants to deal with that potential. Get in, kill the fuckers, and get the hell out.\n\nSimple.\n\n*\n\nI run my high security keycard through the slot and the door to my penthouse suite whispers open. I move through and the door slides closed behind me. The midwestern skyline bleeds a purple and red sunset over downtown Sioux Falls as it colors my floor like beaten fruit.\n\nI stretch and the vertebrae in my back give a satisfying round of pops. I toss my car keys in a low bowl of Mexican pottery that sits on top of a table hugging the jog out in the foyer.\n\nThe floor plan is one of my choosing. It's narrow in the entrance and widens to an open living room and kitchen combination.\n\nNot that I do a shit ton of cooking. My lips pull at the thought of cooking as I cruise to my fridge. I open it, and true to form, there's no food, but plenty of beer. I grab one and pop the lid using a sterling band on my right ring finger. It's hell on beer caps.\n\nI take a hard pull, taking the frosty beer to half empty and move to the view seen through my floor to ceiling glass windows.\n\nPhilips Street is overrun with tourists enjoying the bronze statues and Native American shops that dot the area. My excellent night vision is not necessary at the moment. Not with twilight promising nighttime. I roll the cool bottle against my forehead as my gaze wanders and sigh.\n\nI have twelve hours before response is required for the sanction.\n\nI set the nearly empty beer on a low thick glass coffee table. A hot shower and catching five hours of sleep is my entire goal before this mission. I'm beat. Chasing down hybrids is a full-time job.\n\nWalking to the wall that rounds to the hall leading to the bathroom, I pass a palm over a glass sculpture that hangs like artwork.\n\nIt's not.\n\nA brilliant blue spiderweb of light harmlessly lasers over my skin, reading the unique lines of my hand. A single chime sounds in the silence and the front slides away to reveal a black hole.\n\nI pull out a cylinder that rests inside.\n\nIt'll have all the instructions for assignment thirteen. Name, birthdate, location. My sector covers the midwest states. There are twelve of us serving this area.\n\nA vial with a syringe is enclosed in an thick airtight lucite case. My pulse quickens.\n\nIt'll be my first.\n\nA woman.\n\nHunters sanction male hybrids. It's the Hunters' core belief that women should be protected. None of us kill females. I don't allow myself to touch on what happens when a rare hybrid is located and a Hunter won't sterilize. The penalty is severe and immediate for lack of follow through.\n\nOr the disastrous transgression of mating with a hybrid, though rare, it's not unheard of. Those are grounds for a Kill Order.\n\nI set my dark thoughts aside as the specs fall out last, rolled neatly with the traditional black satin ribbon keeping them in a tight circle.\n\nI pop the ribbon and look over the specs, reading them twice.\n\nOccupation: Bounty Enforcer.\n\nI whistle low in the back of my throat. I'm all for a challenge.\n\nI slug the rest of my beer back, running a fingertip over the name.\n\nNarah Adrienne.\n\nI crush the specs, having already committed them to memory. I walk over to my fireplace and toss the crumpled parchment inside the firebox. Striking a match on the base of my boot, I throw the lit match inside and watch it burn. A low flame bursts over the ancient paper and renders the message unreadable.\n\nAsh rises up the flu. Ms. Adrienne's fate is not yet set in stone.\n\nI smile at the thought of destiny. Here I come, sweetheart.\n\n#\n\nRead More\n\nVampire Alpha Claim 1-6\n\n***Please read on for a sample of another Marata Eros work ....\n\nThank you for your attention:\n\nMarata Eros is the pen name for Tamara Rose Blodgett.\n\nThe following sample contains\/is intended for:\n\n18+ audience\n\nProfanity\n\nExtreme violence\n\nDisturbing themes\n\nReader discretion advised.\n\nMight contain triggers.\n\nREAPERS\n\nA Druid Series Novella\n\nVolume 1\n\nNew York Times Bestselling author\n\nMARATA EROS\n\nAll Rights Reserved.\n\nCopyright \u00a9 2011 Marata Eros\n\nThis book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.\n\nThis ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to a legitimate retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.\n\nMarata Eros Website\n\nMarata Eros FB Fan Page\n\nEdited by Hazel Novak\n\n# Synopsis\n\nThe vampires are a dying race, their females sterile. When it's discovered that human females of Druid ancestry can be viable breeders... the harvest begins.\n\nRachel Collins is a young woman living in the frozen north of Alaska in a dead-end job with a circular life. She yearns for something more.\n\nWhen murders begin taking place in the city where she lives, she and her girlfriend try to be more cautious, only to be caught in the middle of a dangerous situation in which an unlikely savior emerges.\n\nCan Rachel escape her destiny while two different factions hunt her?\n\n# CHAPTER ONE\n\nI looked at the clock, yet again... and knew that if my boss caught me I'd be toast. Safe in my cubicle, I swung my gaze away from the dreaded time and looked for Michelle. She'd be hanging by the cooler, which she was.\n\nMichelle caught me looking and lifted her chin up in greeting and grinned. She knew what I was about. It was all about getting out of here and doing something for ourselves. It had been a Long-Damn-Week and I was going to let my hair down and have some fun.\n\nMichelle wrapped up her conversation with one of the petty chicks that lounged all day while we picked up the slack.\n\nAs Michelle walked toward me, I thought that maybe we wouldn't have to change: pencil skirts, thigh high stockings, stacked heels and blouses that yoked just where they should be to look sexy, nothing too much.\n\nMichelle stood in front of me, tapping a foot. \"Watching the time won't help it go faster.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know, but I feel like the day should have ended already.\"\n\n\"I've got an idea, let's go to Spinners tonight,\" she nearly squealed in delight. I wasn't feelin' the love on that place. It was always packed with a rough crowd and you had to beat the guys off with a bat.\n\nMichelle saw my expression and started to wheedle immediately, \"Listen, give it a half hour and if it's super-lame, we'll just bail and go somewhere else. Like that brewery place... what's it's name?\"\n\n\"Talbot's,\" I replied absently.\n\nShe snapped her fingers. \"That's it!\"\n\n\"Listen,\" she leaned forward and our hair mingled together, \"that new gal... with the red hair...\"\n\n\"Molly?\" I said, automatically looking around for her.\n\n\"Yeah,\" she waved her hand, dismissing the name. \"She was talking about that piece of creepy news that's been circulating today.\"\n\nI looked at her blankly.\n\n\"Oh for shit's sake, Rachel! Don't you pay attention to anything?\"\n\n\"Not really,\" I said noncommittally. My life was beyond boring right now. I worked here, hung out with Michelle, worked out, read, fed my cat. I was dying for some Excitement. Dying. But the news wasn't going to deliver. Excitement... no way.\n\n\"You're hopeless! Anyway,\" she sounded the syllables out slowly, \"there's been another killing. Another bleed-out.\"\n\nThat got my attention.\n\nIt had been almost a month since the first murder and they still hadn't found the killer.\n\nThen there were the rapes.\n\nSomehow, it was all connected. Men were killed and drained dry of their blood and if there were women with them, they were raped.\n\nBut none of the women could remember the attack or their attacker.\n\nOur gazes locked. \"So... they found another body. Two, actually.\" Michelle said ominously, waggling two fingers.\n\nGreat. Just when I thought we could flounce around for the weekend. Talk about a wet blanket.\n\n\"Maybe... we shouldn't go to Spinners then. I mean, if it's not safe.\"\n\n\"Eff-that, you're going! I just wanted to spread the gory gossip.\"\n\n\"That's kinda sick, you know.\"\n\nMichelle nodded vigorously, she knew.\n\nI sighed. There was no getting out of it once Michelle had her mind set. And, in my soul... if I didn't get a break from this job and do something out-of-body, I'd scream.\n\n\"I gotcha talked right into it, don't I?\" Her eyes sparkled.\n\n\"I guess but, we need to be careful, especially now,\" I said in a conspirator's whisper.\n\n\"Hell, I'm more worried about the regular guys.\"\n\n\"Were the women... you know, was there blood... there?\" I asked.\n\nShe spun back around, her skirt twirling a little with the motion. \"That's the major weird thing, they had all been bitten, but still had their blood. Only a pint gone.\"\n\nWell, wasn't that just comforting.\n\nMichelle winked as she sauntered off, hips swaying. \"Pick ya up at seven sharp.\"\n\nShe didn't wait for me to respond. Michelle knew she had me, hook, line and sinker.\n\nI gathered up all my stuff, slipped my heels back on my feet and headed for the door.\n\nUnfortunately, my dragon lady of a boss was blocking my way.\n\n\"Miss Collins, I see you're ready to leave.\" She looked at her behemoth of a wristwatch. \"Two minutes after five.\" She raised a humongous unibrow at me and I stifled a giggle. It was hard to be pissed at her when she looked so ridiculous.\n\nAlmost.\n\n\"Yes. That's traditionally when the work day ends for us here, Ms. Hogan,\" I replied, thinking with mild irritation that Hogan had me by the short hairs. She knew I needed the job, she couldn't lambast me for leaving when the work day was through, technically. But... she liked to make me feel diminished for leaving so close to the chiming of the clock.\n\nHogan looked me over from head to toe, taking in my long black hair, so deep a black it had blue highlights in the right light. My eyes were a pale blue, I was shapely but not skinny, and on the tall side. I didn't consider myself a hot number but I held my own. Hogan, on the other hand looked like she was always trolling for a new bridge.\n\nI had discreetly pressed my elbow into the elevator button and it dinged just as she opened her mouth to mention something else equally unimportant, her jowls swinging as she popped her mouth open then closed it again.\n\nI felt my escape portal open at my back and walked backwards into its gaping mouth, never more glad to be out of mortar range of the enraged cow, aka my boss.\n\nShe glowered at me, starting to waddle forward and I blurted out, \"Have a great weekend!\" The door swept closed in front of me.\n\nI did a mental forehead-wipe. Thank God I was out of there.\n\nAs the elevator descended I prepared myself for the onslaught of cold weather, my car would need at least five minutes to heat up. The days were long here in the north and heating my car in the underground parking garage was just part of what we did in Alaska.\n\nThe elevator doors hissed apart and the cold air swept into the tight space, momentarily stealing my breath. I huddled my full length coat around myself, silently wishing the car was already warm. I rushed out of the elevator's cocoon of heat, my heels making clicking sounds on the concrete as I made my way to my car. If you could call it that.\n\nAs I approached I knew my car stood out, it was a Smart Car and Michelle liked to tease and say it was a toaster that I drove, not a real car. I smiled, she had me there.\n\nI fumbled with my keys, finally yanking my glove off with my teeth, groaning as the cold air assaulted my fingertips, making them instantly numb.\n\n\"Hey, Rachel,\"\n\nI dropped my keys on the ground, spinning, my hand to my heart.\n\nIt was Erik, a guy from work. My shoulders slumped in relief. He scared the shit out of me.\n\n\"Scare you?\" he smiled.\n\nI smiled back tentatively. He had really been pursuing me and I wasn't that interested. I couldn't put my finger on it exactly but there was just something off about him.\n\nErik approached me and I stiffened a little, but he bent over, jerking the keys off the ground and put a finger through the loop of my key fob and hung them off his finger in front of my nose.\n\nI tried to snatch them and he yanked them just out of reach.\n\n\"Meet me for dinner,\" he stated, his eyes steady on my face, disconcerting.\n\n\"Ah... Michelle and I are going out tonight,\" I said, trying to distract him.\n\n\"Rain check?\" he pressed, never stopping his eye contact. I was starting to get nervous.\n\nDamn.\n\nI resisted the supreme urge to look around, seeing if there was anyone else. But there wasn't, I could feel the absence of others. I sure wasn't short on woman's intuition. Just another creepy service we offer, I thought, getting the heebie-jeebies.\n\nI closed my coat tighter around me and his eyes tracked the movement, a smile spreading on his face. \"I'll let you go, I know you have plans.\" But his face told another tale. I didn't think he'd forget my rebuff anytime soon.\n\nI held my hands out and I was happy to notice that they weren't shaking. He'd really put me in a creeped out mood and I wasn't happy about it.\n\nHe dropped the keys into my cupped hands and smiled again, tipping an imaginary hat.\n\nI turned after his back was to me and stabbed the key into the lock, opening the door in one movement I slid behind the wheel, slapping the flat of my palm on the lock after it closed. I heard the simultaneous click in the silence of the car and let the breath out I didn't realize I'd been holding.\n\nHoly-hell.\n\nI turned on the car and stewed for the five minutes, all the while wishing I could have driven off.\n\nThat encounter with Erik had put a bad taste in my mouth. Like diet pop, but somehow worse.\n\nI pulled out of the bowels of the building, the night as black as when the day started. I entered traffic and began the drive to my condo, almost in the heart of downtown.\n\nI couldn't wait to be home.\n\nI threw my lights on, and glancing right then left I was so startled that I almost let my foot off the brake into opposing traffic.\n\nErik sat behind the wheel of his car. He'd having sat there the entire time... waiting for me.\n\nI gunned it at the first hole in traffic that appeared. What a whacko!\n\nI'd have to tell Michelle he was a nut-job. She'd have him cracked in no time.\n\n****\n\nI had my head thrown back and my lips parted, the last swipe of mascara almost perfect... there! I stood back and looked at my reflection: definitely not work attire. I was so glad I made the decision to not perk up the whole mess with just a new top. Michelle probably would have flogged me if I had anyway. She'd be dressed-to-kill (as usual). I needed to make an effort. Sometimes, I wondered why I bothered. Michelle would go, shine, get picked-up, bang some anonymous stud in the bathroom or wherever, and I would sip my drink wishing I could go home and curl up with a book. I sighed. That's okay. She was... my vicarious slutty friend. And I loved her.\n\nI grabbed my vanilla body spray and squirted a last dab. If I got to dancing a lot, I'd be glad I wore it. It was frigid outside but once we were inside Spinners, with all the bodies packed in there, it'd be a different story.\n\nI heard the doorknob jiggle and caught sight of Michelle coming through the doorway looking delectable in her slut suit. She twirled for me so I could get the full effect.\n\n\"That should be illegal!\" I nearly screamed. She had a micro-mini on that was two part: it cupped her ass and was barely legal (skimming the indecent exposure laws by a millimeter). It was hot pink, setting off her platinum hair to perfection. She \"helped\" the color of said hair, but not by a lot. Michelle was a rare thing up here in the frozen north and I was betting that it was her coloring that got her so much attention, and the boobs... and the outfits. And, and....\n\nI smiled as she circled me like a shark, gauging my potential for Attracting the Opposite Sex.\n\n\"I don't know... is this the shortest skirt you have?\" Her brows closed the distance between her eyes.\n\nI self-consciously ran my hand over my short black skirt, it barely covered the lace of my thigh-highs... a gorgeous pair that I had splurged on from Italy.\n\n\"Yeah, I can't go much shorter without the lace tops showing.\"\n\nMichelle gave me a blank look. \"Seriously, that's part of the allure.\"\n\n\"Ah... no. I say let them guess. It is underwear after all.\"\n\n\"I say show it!\" Michelle said.\n\n\"Mystery,\" I replied.\n\nShe threw her hand up. \"Whatever, I give up. At least you did right by the top.\"\n\nI had almost not worn it, it was a scorching crimson and showed off my raven hair, my eyes stranded like startled jewels in my pale face. It left my arms bare and was tucked inside the skirt.\n\nMichelle allowed her glance to linger a moment longer on my outfit, then shook her head as we walked out. I gave a quick pet to Caesar the cat and waltzed out.\n\n# CHAPTER TWO\n\nSpinners was packed as usual and we jockeyed for position, awkwardly elbowing everyone without trying to maim people. It was always this way.\n\nI couldn't believe our luck! I spied a couple of bar stools and we raced over there to stake our claim before they were snatched up. We perched our butts on the stools, aimlessly looking around at the bodies packed together, dancing the night away. I noticed they had already opened all the windows, allowing the sub-twenty degree air in. It didn't matter, it felt like a balmy eighty where we sat.\n\nThe bartender got our drinks. I sipped on a Blue Hawaiian and Michelle had Sex on the Beach (of course). She swung her leg back and forth and I was getting a spot-on flash of bright red panties... and so were a bunch of guys, judging from the expression of the gaggle of hunks sitting across from us.\n\n\"So what happened with Erik?\"\n\n\"Yeah!\" I yelled to be heard over the din. \"He did this weird thing with my keys...\" and I told her the whole thing. Michelle leaned forward to catch everything because the noise was swallowing my words.\n\nShe leaned back against the bar, her elbows flung back and her wrists dangling off the edge, looking thoughtful. For Michelle that meant she was quiet for more than one minute.\n\nFinally she said, \"Yeah, you want to stay away from him. I hear he went out with some girl and date-raped her.\"\n\nPerfect, I thought. That'd kinda been the vibe I was getting off him. Wasn't sure that confirmation was the greatest thing in this case, being as how I worked with the weirdo.\n\nWonderful.\n\nI was momentarily distracted when two of the cute guys across the way sidled over to us. The one on the right was almost as blonde as Michelle but that's where the similarity ended. He was a head taller than her with brown eyes and a face that had seen acne in its youth. I guess he was ruggedly handsome. He spent time in the gym; it was in the set of his shoulders, the way he moved... like he had purpose.\n\nTonight his purpose was Michelle.\n\nHis eyes never left the foot that swung, traveling up to the apex of what the skirt almost showed. He looked like a dog ready to mount a bitch. It did something for her because her foot stopped swinging and she gave him the come hither look.\n\nThe night was Going to Plan.\n\n\"Want to dance, cutie-pie?\" she asked, batting her eyelashes. He all but panted while I rolled my eyes in my head. I just couldn't do it. It's not that I'd never had sex. Casual just wasn't a main entree. I dreamed that there was someone for me in my future. Someone that I could share something with. I felt almost like... almost like I was waiting.\n\nMichelle argued there was plenty to be shared. She was into sharing.\n\nGenerous Michelle.\n\nI watched her on the dance floor, plastered to Rugged, grinding for all she was worth, he was all over her and she was loving it.\n\nI took my eyes off them and looked at the guy in front of me. He was way cuter than Rugged. He had the enigmatic something that made a girl want to get a little closer.\n\nSo I did.\n\n\"Do you want to dance?\" he asked.\n\nI nodded. He held out his hand, which was big I noticed. I tried not to think about how it would feel to have those hands roaming over my body but couldn't quite do it. He took me up against him and I molded against his torso. As those hands came to rest on the small of my back, the heat from them warmed me. He looked into my eyes and they held a promise of a fun night... if that's what I wanted. I didn't grind against him but I could feel that he was happy to be there. He smiled at me, knowing I was aware of his arousal.\n\nHe clutched me tighter and lowered his face next to mine and whispered, \"Your friend's gone.\" Now he was kissing my neck.\n\nUnease crept its way along my body. Usually Michelle gave me some kind of signal or something. I looked around for her trying not to feel frantic.\n\n\"Where did they go?\" I semi-shouted at him.\n\n\"Outside!\" He inclined his head in the direction of the door.\n\n\"You want to go find them?\" he asked, his fingers already twining in mine.\n\nI looked down at our clasped hands and that feeling of unease bloomed in me again. I couldn't shake it. I understood on some level that I was just getting residual anxiety from the strange encounter with Erik and letting that cloud my thinking. I wasn't going to take it out on this guy.\n\n\"Yeah, let's find them,\" I said decisively.\n\nI should have listened to that voice inside my head.\n\n# CHAPTER THREE\n\nThe wind was up and tore at the light outfit I had chosen for dancing inside. It simply wasn't enough. But the guy, (Matt, he'd told me as we hurried out) had said he thought they'd be in the car.\n\n\"How much further?\" I asked as I shivered in the light coat I'd slung on without a care before we left.\n\nI cared now, I was freezing my half-naked ass off.\n\n\"Not much,\" he wrapped an arm around my shoulders as we walked and that helped.\n\nSure enough, another block of parked cars revealed a car that was running.\n\nI could see a flash of pink in the car, but barely.\n\nWhat was happening? It was Michelle but there were... others.\n\nOther men.\n\nMy foreboding slammed back over me, washing away all tact. I went to wrench the car door open and Matt stopped me.\n\n\"They're busy.\"\n\n\"Ah duh, Einstein, I can see that. But I don't know if she was planning on being this busy,\" I said, seeing that there were at least two guys in there.\n\nMatt put his hands up, as if to say, hey, no problem, just sayin'.\n\nIrritating jerk.\n\nSighing, I tore open the door and was entirely unprepared for what I saw before me:\n\nMichelle had Rugged behind her shoving his cock right up to her groin, the whole length of him digging in, sparing her nothing, his balls slapping her ass. The other guy, who I vaguely remembered sitting across the way from us, had his hand fisted in all that blonde hair and was pressing her face up and down on the shaft of his dick.\n\nWhen the door opened, Rugged's eyes flew open and his gaze met mine. His body was pumping and working behind Michelle his hand reached over and slapped her ass and she moaned, her head working up and down the shaft of the prick she had in her mouth.\n\nI didn't think she had planned on this and I yelled, \"Michelle!\"\n\nShe tried to take her head off the cock she was on but he shoved her back down and she gagged. \"I'm gonna spray my cum you dumb bitch, keep sucking.\"\n\nShe squirmed to try and get away and Rugged held her hips, pounding into her harder. I backed away with my hand covering my mouth.\n\nMichelle wasn't fooling around... she was getting raped.\n\nI swung around to get help and Matt wrapped his arms around me. One of his big hands that I'd admired so much earlier covered my mouth so I couldn't scream.\n\nAdrenaline slammed into me like a sheet of cold water.\n\nDragging me into the front seat of the car he threw me across and I bounced once, almost landing against the opposite door. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew what was going to happen as Rugged said hoarsely, \"God... I'm gonna cum in her snatch right now, oh God!\"\n\nThe whole car rocked as he plunged his length into Michelle and the other guy torqued her head down on him and said, \"Swallow it... that's it, swallow it. Ahhh... that's right,\" he groaned, throwing his head back, his lips slightly parted.\n\nI started to fully panic then, scrambling across the seat, my skirt hiking around my hips as I struggled to reach the door.\n\nMatt landed on top of me and all the air in my lungs went out in a rush. I couldn't breathe and was in a state of sheer panic, Matt was not the guy I had taken him for.\n\nNeither were his friends.\n\nI could hear Michelle sobbing softly and the rustle of her clothes as she tried to adjust everything.\n\nTwo heads and upper chests appeared over the top of the back seat as Matt's engorged arousal pressed along my inner thigh, trying to gain entrance, his pants long gone.\n\n\"You gotta a live one there,\" Guy X said.\n\n\"Not as 'live' as the bitch we just did,\" Rugged replied, laughing.\n\nThe sweet air of the car's interior entered in a rush, filling my lungs to capacity and I screamed for all I was worth, tearing something loose in the process. Matt's hand clamped over my mouth and I bit him, trying to meet my teeth together. He snatched his hand away and bellowed. I knew what was coming as I was pinned under him, his other hand came down with depressing speed and accuracy, slamming into my cheekbone, my head rocketing back against the door.\n\nMy head swam and his fingers dug at my panties while the other men watched....\n\nJust when I thought there wasn't a hope in the world, the driver's side door was torn open, the hinges shrieking, then releasing in the process. The door was flung behind the figure that filled the opening.\n\nI was seeing him upside down but the guys in the back seat summed it up, \"What the fuck? Who the fuck are you?\"\n\nHe was my savior... whoever he was.\n\nMatt was backing off me in a hurry, leaving me to the stranger's mercy. With my head spinning all I saw was a strong jaw, black jeans, boots and a bad-ass leather zip-up. As he leaned down, the whiteness of his teeth gleamed in the interior dome light of the car, his nearly bald head had an inky wash of short black hair covering it, the shirt breaking open at the neck to reveal a tattoo that crawled up his neck.\n\nHe wasn't big on conversation, his hand snaking out in a lethal punch that terminated on Matt's nose. There was a sickening crunch and he backed up, howling. His bleeding hand with my teethmarks held what I was sure was a broken nose as he fell right outside the car on his ass.\n\nThe stranger looked down at me then and his eyes were a startling blue, not icy pale like mine. They were nearly white in a face that was pale, his lush mouth a deep scarlet slash. He looked me over carefully, but only a second or two as he was going to have to deal with Rugged and Guy X. Those two had gotten out of the car and I was too weak to even turn over and see things right side up. If he'd meant me harm, it would have happened.\n\nAt least that's what I told myself.\n\nRugged and Guy X faced him. \"You could have had a piece of this action, if you'd asked nice.\"\n\nThe stranger looked briefly at Michelle who was trying to stop crying, the sobs turning to hitching hiccups. Then he spared a glance in my direction, taking in my clothes in disarray, my face starting to swell from the blow I'd received.\n\n\"They do not look as though it was the attention they wished for,\" the stranger responded.\n\nI noticed that he was enormously big compared to the two men who had abused Michelle. And that was saying something because Matt had me by inches and I was five-eight.\n\nRugged said, \"You talk funny.\"\n\n\"As do you,\" Stranger said.\n\nGuy X circled around him, taking his measure as a male. \"I think you need an ass-kicking. You've beat the shit out of our car in the middle of fuckin' winter in this cold-ass place, ruined another piece of easy tail for me and my buds here. You gotta get what's comin' to ya.\"\n\nStranger looked at them as they rushed him at the same time. From my angle I saw everything upside down and in slow motion. Rugged came at him like a charging bear and Stranger swung his arm forward in a stiffened knife jab move and with the flat of the palm he landed it square in Rugged's nose. He stared blankly for a moment then fell like a box of rocks, his nose shattered. Guy X was a slow learner and grabbed him from behind and latched onto his wind pipe. Stranger grabbed the forearm which held him, crushing it before my eyes just using the one hand, while the other spun Guy X around to stare at him. He was howling, taking great lungfuls of air to bellow louder.\n\n\"Stop that noise,\" Stranger said.\n\nAnd he did.\n\nThe stranger stared into the eyes of Guy X. \"Tilt your head.\"\n\nGuy X looked like he was in a fog, as if he was not in command of his mind. He cocked his head to the extreme left. The long, clean line of his neck was exposed under the street lamp, the artificial light casting a ghostly yellow on the flesh of his throat.\n\nThe stranger reared back like a snake and hissing, struck Guy X's neck. His teeth as he arced above Guy X's neck was something I would never forget:\n\nThey were fangs.\n\nI was riveted. My presumed savior was not a man... he was something else. I had to get out of here. I tried to sit up and my head swam. I was woozy from the blow. The stranger had gathered Guy X in his arms and was taking great gulps from him but his eyes were pinned on me.\n\nTime to go.\n\nI looked over the back seat and met Michelle's horrified eyes. Her mascara had made its way all over her face and I said, \"Let's get out of here. Right now.\"\n\nI slid out of the car, one of my high heels falling off and was met by another stranger. This one had blonde hair and the same icy-blue eyes as the other.\n\nThey were busy tonight.\n\nThis one was all over Matt. He sucked at his neck while Matt made disconcerting mewling sounds underneath him. He lifted his mouth off Matt long enough to hiss at Michelle, which got us moving.\n\nWe backed away, both my shoes left on the sidewalk. They watched us but did not follow, taking the last of the men's blood. Their lives ebbed as we watched.\n\n\"What are they?\" Michelle whispered.\n\n\"Ah... I think we've just been saved by those blood-killers.\"\n\n\"They... they raped the women...\"\n\nWe looked at each other, dawning comprehension mirrored in our expressions.\n\nWe ran.\n\nWe ran until my lungs burned, the images of them sucking those guys lives away etched permanently in my brain. We were within sight of my car when we saw them leaning against it, one dark, the other light.\n\n\"Holy shit,\" Michelle stammered.\n\nYeah, that.\n\nThey came off the car at the same moment like perfectly choreographed twins. But it was the dark one that made my heart speed in my chest.\n\nThey came to stand before us. \"We need to scrub them both. They have seen entirely too much,\" the blonde one said, his stare going from Michelle to me.\n\nThe dark one laid his icy gaze on me and I shivered. From what I didn't know but his gaze penetrated my bone and marrow.\n\n\"Holy shit,\" Michelle said again.\n\nI seconded that.\n\nStill I said nothing while they looked at us for a long moment. \"No. The blonde one forgets. This one, no.\"\n\n\"Why, Cole?\" the blonde stranger asked. \"She is fair of face and figure, but there are many...\"\n\n\"You cannot smell her?\" Cole asked.\n\nThe blonde's head whipped around and his penetrating gaze was suddenly all for me; I backed away.\n\nFinally, he shook his head. \"All I smell is their fear. They smell like prey.\"\n\n\"Underneath that, Nathan.\"\n\nOne moment he was ten feet away and the next he had his arms around me and I screamed. Michelle started to run but faster than my eyes could track, the one named Cole had her in his arms, his hand covering her mouth and the fingers of those long hands feathered her temple. And I'd thought Matt's hand had been big... my God, his were palming her entire face.\n\nVoices drifted down, the blonde's face was buried in my neck and I began to hyperventilate. Images flooded my mind of my would-be rapists not finishing what they started, distracted with death-by-blood loss.\n\n\"Be still,\" he said, his fangs bursting out of his mouth.\n\nI thrashed around and he turned to Cole. \"She will not follow my command.\"\n\n\"Will it so,\" Cole said.\n\nHe buried his nose in my neck, breathing my scent in, his fangs grazing the skin of my neck. Lifting his head he said, \"Breeder.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"We must take her. There are so few left. This one is... she is rare.\"\n\nA drunken group stepped out into our little mess and Michelle began hollering, \"Help, help!\"\n\nA couple of the guys broke away from the pack and made their way over to us, Cole stood away from Michelle and the blonde released me slowly, like he didn't want to stop touching me.\n\nAs they approached the males, they looked into their eyes and each stranger said, \"Leave this place.\" One of the men grabbed his temples with his hands, shaking his head like he couldn't release the clutches of something.\n\n\"That one has a strong mind,\" Nathan said.\n\n\"Some of the cattle do,\" Cole said.\n\nCattle.\n\nI started to back away, subtly getting Michelle's attention. We were almost to the car when Cole's head whipped around. \"You... will not leave.\"\n\nMichelle began hollering again but the men walked away. The one who shook his head cast a final glance behind him. As we watched he massaged his temple, continuing to walk away.\n\nThey retraced their steps toward us and my heart sank. We could not outrun something we couldn't see move, something that crushed a man's face with one swipe, disintegrated an arm with a grip strong enough to pulverize bone. As they drew nearer, their fangs stood out of their mouths, barbed points ready to pierce our flesh.\n\nMichelle latched on to my hand and I prepared myself for the worst.\n\n\"You cannot thirst.\"\n\n\"No, but the blonde one's fear is an aphrodisiac,\" Nathan said.\n\n\"Yes, but think on this Nathan: has she not already been degraded enough by the human scum we dispatched?\" Cole said.\n\n\"Yes,\" Nathan ground out. \"You speak true.\"\n\n\"Then scrub her and we take the female breeder.\"\n\nNathan approached Michelle and she started to wail, her screams broken only by her next breath.\n\nThe blonde was suddenly in front of her. Squeezing her throat lightly, he cut off her screaming and the sudden silence filled the parking area. The snow was falling softly around us, some of the flakes catching in my eyelashes. Nathan stared deeply into Michelle's eyes. Finally he moved away and she stood there, blank faced, in a zombie-like stupor.\n\n\"What did you do to her?\" I whispered.\n\n\"Something we cannot do for you,\" Cole remarked.\n\nI backed away and they tracked me. \"I am not going with you,\" I said, proud that my voice only shook a little.\n\n\"We understand your fear, but you will come with us. How do you humans put it? It is non-negotiable.\"\n\n\"You don't understand anything! You two... whatever-you-are, sucked our attacker's blood. They died and now you're calling me some kind of 'breeder'. No offense, but it's not looking too good on my end.\"\n\nMy eyes bounced from one to the other of them. I couldn't follow their movements, just when I thought I had one in my sights they moved so fast they were both suddenly one foot away from me, each holding an arm. I opened my mouth to scream and Cole put his mouth on mine, stifling any sound I could manage. His kiss blossomed and spread to the center of me, making my panties instantly moisten. I'd never had a reaction like this in my life.\n\nOf course, I'd always made out with human men.\n\nMy fear was in my throat but my biology was never touched by it. I couldn't move my arms but as my mouth moved against his, he released my arm and I wound it around his neck, pressing his lips harder against mine and he groaned and pulled me against him. My mind played tug-of-war, my intellect was screaming that he was some creature of the night. He'd killed two men before my eyes but my center bloomed for him; heat stretching and spreading from between my legs. My nipples hardened and he reached behind me, placing his hands under my thighs. Never breaking from the kiss, he lifted me up and I wound my legs around his waist.\n\n\"She is so eager,\" Nathan said, releasing my other arm. He circled us, grabbing a piece of my hair and flicking it behind my shoulder.\n\nThat broke through the heat of the moment and my intellect slammed back into place. I broke away and shoved at his chest with my hands. He let me slide down his body and when my feet hit the pavement, the cold moved up my legs, freezing that searing heat before it progressed.\n\nI gave Nathan a dirty look, noticing Michelle still stood there in the same position, gooseflesh covering her arms, her teeth chattering.\n\n\"I don't know what you are, or why this is happening but I just want you to go... now. I will get my friend and I home without any help from you.\" I folded my arms across my chest.\n\n\"Your body speaks for what you want. It speaks for what you are.\"\n\n\"Oh?\" I arched my eyebrow. \"What is it that I am?\"\n\n\"It is what is in your blood, you are of Druid blood. They are the only humans that may breed with us.\"\n\nDruid? What the hell was that?\n\nOkay, next question:\n\n\"What are you?\"\n\nThey looked at each other. \"We are Vampire, witch,\" Cole said as if that should have been obvious.\n\nWitch? Had the conversation devolved to name-calling at two a.m.?\n\n\"Do you know of your people?\"\n\nI couldn't believe I was standing out here in twenty degree weather talking to a couple of guys claiming to be vampires. I felt incredibly stupid to have kissed the one... Cole.\n\n\"Ah, no. I'm adopted. Okay, while all this is interesting, it's time to go.\"\n\nI turned to Michelle, who had a spot of drool coming out of her mouth. God, what did they do to her? I walked over to her, grabbing a limp arm and started dragging her to my car.\n\nSuddenly, they stood in front of me.\n\n\"Would you stop doing that!\" I said, fear choking me.\n\nA smile spread over Cole's face. \"Doing what?\" His fangs were smaller now that he wasn't trying to French me.\n\nSirens began in the distance and we all looked in their direction.\n\n\"The human police,\" Nathan said.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"Another time, breeder,\" Cole said. He licked his finger and touched it on my forehead. \"I mark you for another time, very soon.\"\n\nThey disappeared into thin air and I was left with Michelle, the approaching cops, and a pulsing core that wept for the vampire that was now gone.\n\n#\n\nRead More\n\nDruid 1-3, currently FREE for a limited time!\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# Acknowledgments\n\nI published both The Druid and Death Series, in 2011 with the encouragement of my husband, and continued because of you, my Reader. Your faithfulness through comments, suggestions, spreading the word and ultimately purchasing my work with your hard-earned money gave me the incentive, means and inspiration to continue.\n\nThere are no words that are sufficiently adequate to express my thankfulness for your support.\n\nI truly feel connected to my readers. It is obvious to me, but I'll say the words anyway for clarity: a written work is just words on pages if they are not read by my readers. As I write this I get a lump in my throat; your enjoyment of my work affects me that deeply.\n\nYou guys are the greatest, each and every one of ya~\n\nTamara\n\nxoxo\n\nSpecial Thanks:\n\nYou, my reader.\n\nMy husband, who is my biggest fan.\n\nCameren, without who, there would be no books.\n\n|  |\n\n---|---|---\n\n# About the Author\n\nwww.TamaraRoseBlodgett.com\n\nTamara Rose Blodgett: happily married mother of four sons. Dark fiction writer. Reader. Dreamer. Home restoration slave. Tie dye zealot. Coffee addict. Digs music.\n\nShe is also the New York Times Bestselling author of A Terrible Love, written under the pen name, Marata Eros, and over ninety-five other titles, to include the #1 international bestselling erotic Interracial\/African-American TOKEN serial and her #1 bestselling Amazon Dark Fantasy novel, Death Whispers. Tamara writes a variety of dark fiction in the genres of erotica, fantasy, horror, romance, sci-fi and suspense. She lives in the midwest with her family and three, disrespectful dogs.\n\nConnect with Tamara:\n\nTRB News\n\nMarata Eros News\n\nInstagram\n\nPinterest\n\nBLOG\n\nFaceBook\n\nTwitter\n\nSubscribe to my YouTube Channel\n\nExclusive Excerpts!\n\nComedic Quips\n","meta":{"redpajama_set_name":"RedPajamaBook"}}
+{"text":"\n\n#### \u00cdndice\n\nPortadilla\n\n\u00cdndice\n\nPr\u00f3logo\n\nDedicatoria\n\nCita\n\nCap\u00edtulo I\n\nCap\u00edtulo II\n\nCap\u00edtulo III\n\nCap\u00edtulo IV\n\nCap\u00edtulo V\n\nCap\u00edtulo VI\n\nCap\u00edtulo VII\n\nCap\u00edtulo VIII\n\nCap\u00edtulo IX\n\nCap\u00edtulo X\n\nCap\u00edtulo XI\n\nCap\u00edtulo XII\n\nCap\u00edtulo XIII\n\nCap\u00edtulo XIV\n\nCap\u00edtulo XV\n\nCap\u00edtulo XVI\n\nCap\u00edtulo XVII\n\nCap\u00edtulo XVIII\n\nCap\u00edtulo XIX\n\nCap\u00edtulo XX\n\nSobre el autor\n\nCr\u00e9ditos\n\nGrupo Santillana\n\n### PR\u00d3LOGO\n\nCOMENC\u00c9 ESTA novela en Lima, a mediados de 1972, y la segu\u00ed escribiendo, con m\u00faltiples y a veces largas interrupciones, en Barcelona, La Romana (Rep\u00fablica Dominicana), Nueva York, y de nuevo Lima, donde la termin\u00e9 cuatro a\u00f1os despu\u00e9s. Me la sugiri\u00f3 un autor de radioteatros que conoc\u00ed de joven, al que sus melodram\u00e1ticas historias devoraron el seso por un tiempo. Para que la novela no resultara demasiado artificial, intent\u00e9 a\u00f1adirle un collage autobiogr\u00e1fico: mi primera aventura matrimonial. Este empe\u00f1o me sirvi\u00f3 para comprobar que el g\u00e9nero novelesco no ha nacido para contar verdades, que \u00e9stas, al pasar a la ficci\u00f3n, se vuelven siempre mentiras (es decir, unas verdades dudosas e inverificables).\n\nMe cost\u00f3 trabajo dar una forma aceptable a aquellos episodios que, sin serlo, parecieran los guiones de Pedro Camacho, y volcar en ellos los estereotipos, excesos, cursiler\u00edas y truculencias caracter\u00edsticos del g\u00e9nero, tomando la distancia ir\u00f3nica indispensable pero sin que se volvieran caricatura. El melodrama ha sido una de mis debilidades precoces, atizada por las desgarradoras pel\u00edculas mexicanas de los a\u00f1os cincuenta, y el tema de esta novela me permiti\u00f3 asumirlo, sin escr\u00fapulos. Las sonrisas y burlas no llegan a ocultar del todo, en el narrador de este libro, a un sentimental propenso a los boleros, las pasiones desaforadas y las intrigas de follet\u00edn.\n\nMARIO VARGAS LLOSA\n\nLondres, 30 de junio de 1999\nA Julia Urquidi Illanes, a quien tanto debemos yo y esta novela.\nEscribo. Escribo que escribo. Mentalmente me veo escribir que escribo y tambi\u00e9n puedo verme ver que escribo. Me recuerdo escribiendo ya y tambi\u00e9n vi\u00e9ndome que escrib\u00eda. Y me veo recordando que me veo escribir y me recuerdo vi\u00e9ndome recordar que escrib\u00eda y escribo vi\u00e9ndome escribir que recuerdo haberme visto escribir que me ve\u00eda escribir que recordaba haberme visto escribir que escrib\u00eda y que escrib\u00eda que escribo que escrib\u00eda. Tambi\u00e9n puedo imaginarme escribiendo que ya hab\u00eda escrito que me imaginar\u00eda escribiendo que hab\u00eda escrito que me imaginaba escribiendo que me veo escribir que escribo.\n\nSALVADOR ELIZONDO, El graf\u00f3grafo\n\n### I\n\nEN ESE tiempo remoto, yo era muy joven y viv\u00eda con mis abuelos en una quinta de paredes blancas de la calle Ochar\u00e1n, en Miraflores. Estudiaba en San Marcos, Derecho, creo, resignado a ganarme m\u00e1s tarde la vida con una profesi\u00f3n liberal, aunque, en el fondo, me hubiera gustado m\u00e1s llegar a ser un escritor. Ten\u00eda un trabajo de t\u00edtulo pomposo, sueldo modesto, apropiaciones il\u00edcitas y horario el\u00e1stico: director de Informaciones de Radio Panamericana. Consist\u00eda en recortar las noticias interesantes que aparec\u00edan en los diarios y maquillarlas un poco para que se leyeran en los boletines. La redacci\u00f3n a mis \u00f3rdenes era un muchacho de pelos engomados y amante de las cat\u00e1strofes llamado Pascual. Hab\u00eda boletines cada hora, de un minuto, salvo los de mediod\u00eda y de las nueve, que eran de quince, pero nosotros prepar\u00e1bamos varios a la vez, de modo que yo andaba mucho en la calle, tomando cafecitos en la Colmena, alguna vez en clases, o en las oficinas de Radio Central, m\u00e1s animadas que las de mi trabajo.\n\nLas dos estaciones de radio pertenec\u00edan al mismo due\u00f1o y eran vecinas, en la calle Bel\u00e9n, muy cerca de la plaza San Mart\u00edn. No se parec\u00edan en nada. M\u00e1s bien, como esas hermanas de tragedia que han nacido, una, llena de gracias y, la otra, de defectos, se distingu\u00edan por sus contrastes. Radio Panamericana ocupaba el segundo piso y la azotea de un edificio flamante, y ten\u00eda, en su personal, ambiciones y programaci\u00f3n, cierto aire extranjerizante y snob, \u00ednfulas de modernidad, de juventud, de aristocracia. Aunque sus locutores no eran argentinos (habr\u00eda dicho Pedro Camacho) merec\u00edan serlo. Se pasaba mucha m\u00fasica, abundante jazz y rock, y una pizca de cl\u00e1sica, sus ondas eran las que primero difund\u00edan en Lima los \u00faltimos \u00e9xitos de Nueva York y de Europa, pero tampoco desde\u00f1aban la m\u00fasica latinoamericana siempre que tuviera un m\u00ednimo de sofisticaci\u00f3n; la nacional era admitida con cautela y s\u00f3lo al nivel del vals. Hab\u00eda programas de cierto relente intelectual, Semblanzas del Pasado, Comentarios Internacionales, e incluso en las emisiones fr\u00edvolas, los Concursos de Preguntas o el Trampol\u00edn a la Fama, se notaba un af\u00e1n de no incurrir en demasiada estupidez o vulgaridad. Una prueba de su inquietud cultural era ese Servicio de Informaciones que Pascual y yo aliment\u00e1bamos, en un altillo de madera construido en la azotea, desde el cual era posible divisar los basurales y las \u00faltimas ventanas teatinas de los techos lime\u00f1os. Se llegaba hasta \u00e9l por un ascensor cuyas puertas ten\u00edan la inquietante costumbre de abrirse antes de tiempo.\n\nRadio Central, en cambio, se apretaba en una vieja casa llena de patios y de vericuetos, y bastaba o\u00edr a sus locutores desenfadados y abusadores de la jerga, para reconocer su vocaci\u00f3n multitudinaria, plebeya, crioll\u00edsima. All\u00ed se propalaban pocas noticias, y all\u00ed era reina y se\u00f1ora la m\u00fasica peruana, incluyendo la andina, y no era infrecuente que los cantantes indios de los coliseos participaran en esas emisiones abiertas al p\u00fablico que congregaban muchedumbres, desde horas antes, a las puertas del local. Tambi\u00e9n estremec\u00edan sus ondas, con prodigalidad, la m\u00fasica tropical, la mexicana, la porte\u00f1a, y sus programas eran simples, inimaginativos, eficaces: Pedidos Telef\u00f3nicos, Serenatas de Cumplea\u00f1os, Chismograf\u00eda del Mundo de la Far\u00e1ndula, el Acetato y el Cine. Pero su plato fuerte, repetido y caudaloso, lo que, seg\u00fan todas las encuestas, le aseguraba su enorme sinton\u00eda, eran los radioteatros.\n\nPasaban media docena al d\u00eda, por lo menos, y a m\u00ed me divert\u00eda mucho espiar a los int\u00e9rpretes cuando estaban radi\u00e1ndolos: actrices y actores declinantes, hambrientos, desastrados, cuyas voces juveniles, acariciadoras, cristalinas, difer\u00edan terriblemente de sus caras viejas, sus bocas amargas y sus ojos cansados. \u00abEl d\u00eda que se instale la televisi\u00f3n en el Per\u00fa no les quedar\u00e1 otro camino que el suicidio\u00bb, pronosticaba Genaro hijo, se\u00f1al\u00e1ndolos a trav\u00e9s de los cristales del estudio, donde, como en una gran pecera, los libretos en las manos, se los ve\u00eda formados en torno al micro, dispuestos a empezar el cap\u00edtulo veinticuatro de La familia Alvear. Y, en efecto, qu\u00e9 decepci\u00f3n se hubieran llevado esas amas de casa que se enternec\u00edan con la voz de Luciano Pando si hubieran visto su cuerpo contrahecho y su mirada estr\u00e1bica, y qu\u00e9 decepci\u00f3n los jubilados a quienes el cadencioso rumor de Josefina S\u00e1nchez despertaba recuerdos, si hubieran conocido su papada, sus bigotes, sus orejas aleteantes, sus v\u00e1rices. Pero la llegada de la televisi\u00f3n al Per\u00fa era a\u00fan remota y el discreto sustento de la fauna radioteatral parec\u00eda por el momento asegurado.\n\nSiempre hab\u00eda tenido curiosidad por saber qu\u00e9 plumas manufacturaban esas seriales que entreten\u00edan las tardes de mi abuela, esas historias con las que sol\u00eda darme de o\u00eddos donde mi t\u00eda Laura, mi t\u00eda Olga, mi t\u00eda Gaby o en las casas de mis numerosas primas, cuando iba a visitarlas (nuestra familia era b\u00edblica, miraflorina, muy unida). Sospechaba que los radioteatros se importaban, pero me sorprend\u00ed al saber que los Genaros no los compraban en M\u00e9xico ni en Argentina sino en Cuba. Los produc\u00eda la CMQ, una suerte de imperio radiotelevisivo gobernado por Goar Mestre, un caballero de pelos plateados al que alguna vez, de paso por Lima, hab\u00eda visto cruzar los pasillos de Radio Panamericana sol\u00edcitamente escoltado por los due\u00f1os y ante la mirada reverencial de todo el mundo. Hab\u00eda o\u00eddo hablar tanto de la CMQ cubana a locutores, animadores y operadores de la radio \u2014para los que representaba algo m\u00edtico, lo que el Hollywood de la \u00e9poca para los cineastas\u2014 que Javier y yo, mientras tom\u00e1bamos caf\u00e9 en el Bransa, alguna vez hab\u00edamos dedicado un buen rato a fantasear sobre ese ej\u00e9rcito de pol\u00edgrafos que, all\u00e1, en la distante Habana de palmeras, playas paradis\u00edacas, pistoleros y turistas, en las oficinas aireacondicionadas de la ciudadela de Goar Mestre, deb\u00edan de producir, ocho horas al d\u00eda, en silentes m\u00e1quinas de escribir, ese torrente de adulterios, suicidios, pasiones, encuentros, herencias, devociones, casualidades y cr\u00edmenes que, desde la isla antillana, se esparc\u00eda por Am\u00e9rica Latina, para, cristalizado en las voces de los Lucianos Pandos y las Josefinas S\u00e1nchez, ilusionar las tardes de las abuelas, las t\u00edas, las primas y los jubilados de cada pa\u00eds.\n\nGenaro hijo compraba (o, m\u00e1s bien, la CMQ vend\u00eda) los radioteatros al peso y por telegrama. Me lo hab\u00eda contado \u00e9l mismo, una tarde, despu\u00e9s de pasmarse cuando le pregunt\u00e9 si \u00e9l, sus hermanos o su padre daban el visto bueno a los libretos antes de propalarse. \u00ab\u00bfT\u00fa ser\u00edas capaz de leer setenta kilos de papel?\u00bb, me repuso, mir\u00e1ndome con esa condescendencia benigna que le merec\u00eda la condici\u00f3n de intelectual que me hab\u00eda conferido desde que vio un cuento m\u00edo en el Suplemento Dominical de El Comercio: \u00abCalcula cu\u00e1nto tomar\u00eda. \u00bfUn mes, dos? \u00bfQui\u00e9n puede dedicar un par de meses a leerse un radioteatro? Lo dejamos a la suerte, y, hasta ahora, felizmente, el Se\u00f1or de los Milagros nos protege\u00bb. En los mejores casos, a trav\u00e9s de agencias de publicidad, o de colegas y amigos, Genaro hijo averiguaba cu\u00e1ntos pa\u00edses y con qu\u00e9 resultados de sinton\u00eda hab\u00edan comprado el radioteatro que le ofrec\u00edan; en los peores, decid\u00eda por los t\u00edtulos o, simplemente, a cara o sello. Los radioteatros se vend\u00edan al peso porque era una f\u00f3rmula menos tramposa que la del n\u00famero de p\u00e1ginas o de palabras, en el sentido de que era la \u00fanica posible de verificar. \u00abClaro \u2014dec\u00eda Javier\u2014, si no hay tiempo para leerlas, menos todav\u00eda para contar todas esas palabras\u00bb. Lo excitaba la idea de una novela de sesenta y ocho kilos y treinta gramos, cuyo precio, como el de las vacas, la mantequilla y los huevos, determinaba una balanza.\n\nPero este sistema creaba problemas a los Genaros. Los textos ven\u00edan plagados de cubanismos, que, minutos antes de cada emisi\u00f3n, el propio Luciano y la propia Josefina y sus colegas traduc\u00edan al peruano como pod\u00edan (siempre mal). De otro lado, a veces, en el trayecto de La Habana a Lima, en las panzas de los barcos o de los aviones, o en las aduanas, las resmas mecanografiadas sufr\u00edan deterioros y se perd\u00edan cap\u00edtulos enteros, la humedad los volv\u00eda ilegibles, se traspapelaban, los devoraban los ratones del almac\u00e9n de Radio Central. Como esto se advert\u00eda s\u00f3lo a \u00faltima hora, cuando Genaro pap\u00e1 repart\u00eda los libretos, surg\u00edan situaciones angustiosas. Se resolv\u00edan salt\u00e1ndose el cap\u00edtulo perdido y ech\u00e1ndose el alma a la espalda, o, en casos graves, enfermando por un d\u00eda a Luciano Pando o a Josefina S\u00e1nchez, de modo que en las veinticuatro horas siguientes se pudieran parchar, resucitar, eliminar sin excesivos traumas, los gramos o kilos desaparecidos. Como, adem\u00e1s, los precios de la CMQ eran altos, result\u00f3 natural que Genaro hijo se sintiera feliz cuando descubri\u00f3 la existencia y las dotes prodigiosas de Pedro Camacho.\n\nRecuerdo muy bien el d\u00eda que me habl\u00f3 del fen\u00f3meno radiof\u00f3nico porque ese mismo d\u00eda, a la hora del almuerzo, vi a la t\u00eda Julia por primera vez. Era hermana de la mujer de mi t\u00edo Lucho y hab\u00eda llegado la noche anterior de Bolivia. Reci\u00e9n divorciada, ven\u00eda a descansar y a recuperarse de su fracaso matrimonial. \u00abEn realidad, a buscarse otro marido\u00bb, hab\u00eda dictaminado, en una reuni\u00f3n de familia, la m\u00e1s lenguaraz de mis parientes, la t\u00eda Hortensia. Yo almorzaba todos los jueves donde el t\u00edo Lucho y la t\u00eda Olga, y ese mediod\u00eda encontr\u00e9 a la familia todav\u00eda en piyama, cortando la mala noche con choritos picantes y cerveza fr\u00eda. Se hab\u00edan quedado hasta el amanecer, chismeando con la reci\u00e9n llegada, y despachado entre los tres una botella de whisky. Les dol\u00eda la cabeza, mi t\u00edo Lucho se quejaba de que su oficina andar\u00eda patas arriba, mi t\u00eda Olga dec\u00eda que era una verg\u00fcenza trasnochar fuera de s\u00e1bados, y la reci\u00e9n llegada, en bata, sin zapatos y con ruleros, vaciaba una maleta. No le incomod\u00f3 que yo la viera en esa facha en la que nadie la hubiera tomado por una reina de belleza.\n\n\u2014As\u00ed que t\u00fa eres el hijo de Dorita \u2014me dijo, estamp\u00e1ndome un beso en la mejilla\u2014. \u00bfYa terminaste el colegio, no?\n\nLa odi\u00e9 a muerte. Mis leves choques con la familia, en ese entonces, se deb\u00edan a que todos se empe\u00f1aban en tratarme todav\u00eda como un ni\u00f1o y no como lo que era, un hombre completo de dieciocho a\u00f1os. Nada me irritaba tanto como el Marito; ten\u00eda la sensaci\u00f3n de que el diminutivo me regresaba al pantal\u00f3n corto.\n\n\u2014Ya est\u00e1 en tercero de Derecho y trabaja como periodista \u2014le explic\u00f3 mi t\u00edo Lucho, alcanz\u00e1ndome un vaso de cerveza.\n\n\u2014La verdad \u2014me dio el puntillazo la t\u00eda Julia\u2014 es que pareces todav\u00eda una guagua, Marito.\n\nDurante el almuerzo, con ese aire cari\u00f1oso que adoptan los adultos cuando se dirigen a los idiotas y a los ni\u00f1os, me pregunt\u00f3 si ten\u00eda enamorada, si iba a fiestas, qu\u00e9 deporte practicaba, y me aconsej\u00f3, con una perversidad que no descubr\u00eda si era deliberada o inocente pero que igual me lleg\u00f3 al alma, que apenas pudiera me dejara crecer el bigote. A los morenos les sentaba y eso me facilitar\u00eda las cosas con las chicas.\n\n\u2014\u00c9l no piensa en faldas ni en jaranas \u2014le explic\u00f3 mi t\u00edo Lucho\u2014. Es un intelectual. Ha publicado un cuento en el Dominical de El Comercio.\n\n\u2014Cuidado que el hijo de Dorita nos vaya a salir del otro lado \u2014se ri\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia y yo sent\u00ed un arrebato de solidaridad con su ex marido. Pero sonre\u00ed y le llev\u00e9 la cuerda. Durante el almuerzo se dedic\u00f3 a contar unos horribles chistes bolivianos y a tomarme el pelo. Al despedirme, pareci\u00f3 que quer\u00eda hacerse perdonar sus maldades, porque me dijo con un gesto amable que alguna noche la acompa\u00f1ara al cine, que le encantaba el cine.\n\nLlegu\u00e9 a Radio Panamericana justo a tiempo para evitar que Pascual dedicara todo el bolet\u00edn de las tres a la noticia de una batalla campal, en las calles ex\u00f3ticas de Rawalpindi, entre sepultureros y leprosos, publicada por \u00daltima Hora. Luego de preparar tambi\u00e9n los boletines de las cuatro y las cinco, sal\u00ed a tomar un caf\u00e9. En la puerta de Radio Central encontr\u00e9 a Genaro hijo, euf\u00f3rico. Me arrastr\u00f3 del brazo hasta el Bransa: \u00abTengo que contarte algo fant\u00e1stico\u00bb. Hab\u00eda estado unos d\u00edas en La Paz, por cuestiones de negocios, y all\u00ed hab\u00eda visto en acci\u00f3n a ese hombre plural: Pedro Camacho.\n\n\u2014No es un hombre sino una industria \u2014corrigi\u00f3, con admiraci\u00f3n\u2014. Escribe todas las obras de teatro que se presentan en Bolivia y las interpreta todas. Y escribe todas las radionovelas y las dirige y es el gal\u00e1n de todas.\n\nPero m\u00e1s que su fecundidad y versatilidad, le hab\u00eda impresionado su popularidad. Para poder verlo, en el Teatro Saavedra de La Paz, hab\u00eda tenido que comprar entradas de reventa al doble de su precio.\n\n\u2014Como en los toros, imag\u00ednate \u2014se asombraba\u2014. \u00bfQui\u00e9n ha llenado jam\u00e1s un teatro en Lima?\n\nMe cont\u00f3 que hab\u00eda visto, dos d\u00edas seguidos, a muchas jovencitas, adultas y viejas arremolinadas a las puertas de Radio Illimani esperando la salida del \u00eddolo para pedirle aut\u00f3grafos. La McCann Erickson de La Paz, por otra parte, le hab\u00eda asegurado que los radioteatros de Pedro Camacho ten\u00edan la mayor audiencia de las ondas bolivianas. Genaro hijo era eso que entonces comenzaba a llamarse un empresario progresista: le interesaban m\u00e1s los negocios que los honores, no era socio del Club Nacional ni un \u00e1vido de serlo, se hac\u00eda amigo de todo el mundo y su dinamismo fatigaba. Hombre de decisiones r\u00e1pidas, despu\u00e9s de su visita a Radio Illimani convenci\u00f3 a Pedro Camacho que se viniera al Per\u00fa, como exclusividad de Radio Central.\n\n\u2014No fue dif\u00edcil, all\u00e1 lo ten\u00edan al hambre \u2014me explic\u00f3\u2014. Se ocupar\u00e1 de las radionovelas y yo podr\u00e9 mandar al diablo a los tiburones de la CMQ.\n\nTrat\u00e9 de envenenar sus ilusiones. Le dije que acababa de comprobar que los bolivianos eran antipatiqu\u00edsimos y que Pedro Camacho se llevar\u00eda p\u00e9simo con toda la gente de Radio Central. Su acento caer\u00eda como pedrada a los oyentes y, por su ignorancia del Per\u00fa, meter\u00eda la pata a cada instante. Pero \u00e9l sonre\u00eda, intocado por mis profec\u00edas derrotistas. Aunque nunca hab\u00eda estado aqu\u00ed, Pedro Camacho le hab\u00eda hablado del alma lime\u00f1a como un bajopontino y su acento era soberbio, sin eses ni erres pronunciadas, de la categor\u00eda terciopelo.\n\n\u2014Entre Luciano Pando y los otros actores lo har\u00e1n papilla al pobre forastero \u2014so\u00f1\u00f3 Javier\u2014. O la bella Josefina S\u00e1nchez lo violar\u00e1.\n\nEst\u00e1bamos en el altillo y convers\u00e1bamos mientras yo pasaba a m\u00e1quina, cambiando adjetivos y adverbios, noticias de El Comercio y La Prensa para El Panamericano de las doce. Javier era mi mejor amigo y nos ve\u00edamos a diario, aunque fuera s\u00f3lo un momento, para constatar que exist\u00edamos. Era un ser de entusiasmos cambiantes y contradictorios, pero siempre sinceros. Hab\u00eda sido la estrella del Departamento de Literatura de la Cat\u00f3lica, donde no se vio antes a un alumno m\u00e1s aprovechado, ni m\u00e1s l\u00facido lector de poes\u00eda, ni m\u00e1s agudo comentarista de textos dif\u00edciles. Todos daban por descontado que se graduar\u00eda con una tesis brillante, ser\u00eda un catedr\u00e1tico brillante y un poeta o un cr\u00edtico igualmente brillante. Pero \u00e9l, un buen d\u00eda, sin explicaciones, hab\u00eda decepcionado a todo el mundo, abandonando la tesis en la que trabajaba, renunciando a la literatura y a la Universidad Cat\u00f3lica e inscribi\u00e9ndose en San Marcos como alumno de Econom\u00eda. Cuando alguien le preguntaba a qu\u00e9 se deb\u00eda esa deserci\u00f3n, \u00e9l confesaba (o bromeaba) que la tesis en que hab\u00eda estado trabajando le hab\u00eda abierto los ojos. Se iba a titular Las paremias en Ricardo Palma. Hab\u00eda tenido que leer las Tradiciones peruanas con lupa, a la caza de refranes, y como era concienzudo y riguroso, hab\u00eda conseguido llenar un caj\u00f3n de fichas eruditas. Luego, una ma\u00f1ana, quem\u00f3 el caj\u00f3n con las fichas en un descampado \u2014\u00e9l y yo bailamos una danza apache alrededor de las llamas filol\u00f3gicas\u2014 y decidi\u00f3 que odiaba la literatura y que hasta la econom\u00eda resultaba preferible a eso. Javier hac\u00eda su pr\u00e1ctica en el Banco Central de Reserva y siempre encontraba pretextos para darse un salto cada ma\u00f1ana hasta Radio Panamericana. De su pesadilla paremiol\u00f3gica le hab\u00eda quedado la costumbre de infligirme refranes sin ton ni son.\n\nMe sorprendi\u00f3 mucho que la t\u00eda Julia, pese a ser boliviana y vivir en La Paz, no hubiera o\u00eddo hablar nunca de Pedro Camacho. Pero ella me aclar\u00f3 que jam\u00e1s hab\u00eda escuchado una radionovela, ni puesto los pies en un teatro desde que interpret\u00f3 la Danza de las horas, en el papel de Crep\u00fasculo, el a\u00f1o que termin\u00f3 el colegio donde las monjas irlandesas (\u00abNo te atrevas a preguntarme cu\u00e1ntos a\u00f1os hace de eso, Marito\u00bb). \u00cdbamos caminando desde la casa del t\u00edo Lucho, al final de la avenida Armend\u00e1riz, hacia el Cine Barranco. Me hab\u00eda impuesto la invitaci\u00f3n ella misma, ese mediod\u00eda, de la manera m\u00e1s artera. Era el jueves siguiente a su llegada, y, aunque la perspectiva de ser otra vez v\u00edctima de los chistes bolivianos no me hac\u00eda gracia, no quise faltar al almuerzo semanal. Ten\u00eda la esperanza de no encontrarla, porque la v\u00edspera \u2014los mi\u00e9rcoles en la noche eran de visita a la t\u00eda Gaby\u2014 hab\u00eda o\u00eddo a la t\u00eda Hortensia comunicar con el tono de quien est\u00e1 en el secreto de los dioses:\n\n\u2014En su primera semana lime\u00f1a ha salido cuatro veces y con cuatro galanes diferentes, uno de ellos casado. \u00a1La divorciada se las trae!\n\nCuando llegu\u00e9 donde el t\u00edo Lucho, luego de El Panamericano de las doce, la encontr\u00e9 precisamente con uno de sus galanes. Sent\u00ed el dulce placer de la venganza al entrar a la sala y descubrir, sentado junto a ella, mir\u00e1ndola con ojos de conquistador, flamante de rid\u00edculo en su traje de otras \u00e9pocas, su corbata mariposa y su clavel en el ojal, al t\u00edo Pancracio, un primo hermano de mi abuela. Hab\u00eda enviudado hac\u00eda siglos, caminaba con los pies abiertos marcando las diez y diez, y en la familia se comentaban maliciosamente sus visitas porque no ten\u00eda reparo en pellizcar a las sirvientas a la vista de todos. Se pintaba el pelo, usaba reloj de bolsillo con leontina plateada y se lo pod\u00eda ver a diario, en las esquinas del jir\u00f3n de la Uni\u00f3n, a las seis de la tarde, piropeando a las oficinistas. Al inclinarme a besarla, susurr\u00e9 al o\u00eddo de la boliviana, con toda la iron\u00eda del mundo: \u00abQu\u00e9 buena conquista, Julita\u00bb. Ella me gui\u00f1\u00f3 un ojo y asinti\u00f3. Durante el almuerzo, el t\u00edo Pancracio, luego de disertar sobre la m\u00fasica criolla, en la que era un experto \u2014en las celebraciones familiares ofrec\u00eda siempre un solo de caj\u00f3n\u2014, se volvi\u00f3 hacia ella y, relamido como un gato, le cont\u00f3: \u00abA prop\u00f3sito, los jueves en la noche se re\u00fane la Pe\u00f1a Felipe Pinglo, en La Victoria, el coraz\u00f3n del criollismo. \u00bfTe gustar\u00eda o\u00edr un poco de verdadera m\u00fasica peruana?\u00bb. La t\u00eda Julia, sin vacilar un segundo y con una cara de desolaci\u00f3n que a\u00f1ad\u00eda el insulto a la calumnia, contest\u00f3 se\u00f1al\u00e1ndome: \u00abF\u00edjate qu\u00e9 l\u00e1stima. Marito me ha invitado al cine\u00bb. \u00abPaso a la juventud\u00bb, se inclin\u00f3 el t\u00edo Pancracio, con esp\u00edritu deportivo. Luego, cuando hubo partido, cre\u00ed que me salvaba pues la t\u00eda Olga pregunt\u00f3: \u00ab\u00bfEso del cine era s\u00f3lo para librarte del viejo verde?\u00bb. Pero la t\u00eda Julia la rectific\u00f3 con \u00edmpetu: \u00abNada de eso, hermana, me muero por ver la del Barranco, es impropia para se\u00f1oritas\u00bb. Se volvi\u00f3 hacia m\u00ed, que escuchaba c\u00f3mo se decid\u00eda mi destino nocturno, y, para tranquilizarme a\u00f1adi\u00f3 esta exquisita flor: \u00abNo te preocupes por la plata, Marito. Yo te invito\u00bb.\n\nY ah\u00ed est\u00e1bamos, caminando por la oscura quebrada de Armend\u00e1riz, por la ancha avenida Grau, al encuentro de una pel\u00edcula que, para colmo, era mexicana y se llamaba Madre y amante.\n\n\u2014Lo terrible de ser divorciada no es que todos los hombres se crean en la obligaci\u00f3n de proponerte cosas \u2014me informaba la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Sino que por ser una divorciada piensan que ya no hay necesidad de romanticismo. No te enamoran, no te dicen galanter\u00edas finas, te proponen la cosa de buenas a primeras con la mayor vulgaridad. A m\u00ed me lleva la trampa. Para eso, en vez de que me saquen a bailar, prefiero venir al cine contigo.\n\nLe dije que muchas gracias por lo que me tocaba.\n\n\u2014Son tan est\u00fapidos que creen que toda divorciada es una mujer de la calle \u2014sigui\u00f3, sin darse por enterada\u2014. Y, adem\u00e1s, s\u00f3lo piensan en hacer cosas. Cuando lo bonito no es eso, sino enamorarse, \u00bfno es cierto?\n\nYo le expliqu\u00e9 que el amor no exist\u00eda, que era una invenci\u00f3n de un italiano llamado Petrarca y de los trovadores provenzales. Que eso que las gentes cre\u00edan un cristalino manar de la emoci\u00f3n, una pura efusi\u00f3n del sentimiento, era el deseo instintivo de los gatos en celo disimulado detr\u00e1s de las palabras bellas y los mitos de la literatura. No cre\u00eda en nada de eso, pero quer\u00eda hacerme el interesante. Mi teor\u00eda er\u00f3tico-biol\u00f3gica, por lo dem\u00e1s, dej\u00f3 a la t\u00eda Julia bastante incr\u00e9dula: \u00bfcre\u00eda yo de veras esa idiotez?\n\n\u2014Estoy contra el matrimonio \u2014le dije, con el aire m\u00e1s pedante que pude\u2014. Soy partidario de lo que llaman el amor libre, pero que, si fu\u00e9ramos honestos, deber\u00edamos llamar, simplemente, la c\u00f3pula libre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3pula quiere decir hacer cosas? \u2014se ri\u00f3. Pero al instante puso una cara decepcionada\u2014: En mi tiempo, los muchachos escrib\u00edan acr\u00f3sticos, mandaban flores a las chicas, necesitaban semanas para atreverse a darles un beso. Qu\u00e9 porquer\u00eda se ha vuelto el amor entre los mocosos de ahora, Marito.\n\nTuvimos un amago de disputa en la boleter\u00eda por ver qui\u00e9n pagaba la entrada, y, luego de soportar hora y media de Dolores del R\u00edo, gimiendo, abrazando, gozando, llorando, corriendo por la selva con los cabellos al viento, regresamos a casa del t\u00edo Lucho, tambi\u00e9n a pie, mientras la gar\u00faa nos mojaba los pelos y la ropa. Entonces, hablamos de nuevo de Pedro Camacho. \u00bfEstaba realmente segura que no lo hab\u00eda o\u00eddo mencionar jam\u00e1s? Porque, seg\u00fan Genaro hijo, era una celebridad boliviana. No, no lo conoc\u00eda ni siquiera de nombre. Pens\u00e9 que a Genaro le hab\u00edan metido el dedo a la boca, o que, tal vez, la supuesta industria radioteatral boliviana era una invenci\u00f3n suya para lanzar publicitariamente a un plum\u00edfero aborigen. Tres d\u00edas despu\u00e9s conoc\u00ed en carne y hueso a Pedro Camacho.\n\nAcababa de tener un incidente con Genaro pap\u00e1, porque Pascual, con su irreprimible predilecci\u00f3n por lo atroz, hab\u00eda dedicado todo el bolet\u00edn de las once a un terremoto en Ispah\u00e1n. Lo que irritaba a Genaro pap\u00e1 no era tanto que Pascual hubiera desechado otras noticias para referir, con lujo de detalles, c\u00f3mo los persas que sobrevivieron a los desmoronamientos eran atacados por serpientes que, al desplomarse sus refugios, afloraban a la superficie col\u00e9ricas y sibilantes, sino que el terremoto hab\u00eda ocurrido hac\u00eda una semana. Deb\u00ed convenir que a Genaro pap\u00e1 no le faltaba raz\u00f3n y me desfogu\u00e9 llamando a Pascual irresponsable. \u00bfDe d\u00f3nde hab\u00eda sacado ese refrito? De una revista argentina. \u00bfY por qu\u00e9 hab\u00eda hecho una cosa tan absurda? Porque no hab\u00eda ninguna noticia de actualidad importante y \u00e9sa, al menos, era entretenida. Cuando yo le explicaba que no nos pagaban para entretener a los oyentes sino para resumirles las noticias del d\u00eda, Pascual, moviendo una cabeza conciliatoria, me opon\u00eda su irrebatible argumento: \u00abLo que pasa es que tenemos concepciones diferentes del periodismo, don Mario\u00bb. Iba a responderle que si se empe\u00f1aba, cada vez que yo volviera las espaldas, en seguir aplicando su concepci\u00f3n tremendista del periodismo, muy pronto estar\u00edamos los dos en la calle, cuando apareci\u00f3 en la puerta del altillo una silueta inesperada. Era un ser peque\u00f1ito y menudo, en el l\u00edmite mismo del hombre de baja estatura y el enano, con una nariz grande y unos ojos extraordinariamente vivos, en los que bull\u00eda algo excesivo. Vest\u00eda de negro, un terno que se advert\u00eda muy usado, y su camisa y su corbatita de lazo ten\u00edan m\u00e1culas, pero, al mismo tiempo, en su manera de llevar esas prendas hab\u00eda algo en \u00e9l de atildado y de compuesto, de r\u00edgido, como en esos caballeros de las viejas fotograf\u00edas que parecen presos en sus levitas almidonadas, en sus chisteras tan justas. Pod\u00eda tener cualquier edad entre treinta y cincuenta a\u00f1os, y luc\u00eda una aceitosa cabellera negra que le llegaba a los hombros. Su postura, sus movimientos, su expresi\u00f3n parec\u00edan el desmentido mismo de lo espont\u00e1neo y natural, hac\u00edan pensar inmediatamente en el mu\u00f1eco articulado, en los hilos del t\u00edtere. Nos hizo una reverencia cortesana y con una solemnidad tan inusitada como su persona se present\u00f3 as\u00ed:\n\n\u2014Vengo a hurtarles una m\u00e1quina de escribir, se\u00f1ores. Les agradecer\u00eda que me ayuden. \u00bfCu\u00e1l de las dos es la mejor?\n\nSu dedo \u00edndice apuntaba alternativamente a mi m\u00e1quina de escribir y a la de Pascual. Pese a estar habituado a los contrastes entre voz y f\u00edsico por mis escapadas a Radio Central, me asombr\u00f3 que de figurilla tan m\u00ednima, de hechura tan desvalida, pudiera brotar una voz tan firme y melodiosa, una dicci\u00f3n tan perfecta. Parec\u00eda que en esa voz no s\u00f3lo desfilara cada letra, sin quedar mutilada ni una sola, sino tambi\u00e9n las part\u00edculas y los \u00e1tomos de cada una, los sonidos del sonido. Impaciente, sin advertir la sorpresa que su facha, su audacia y su voz provocaban en nosotros, se hab\u00eda puesto a escudri\u00f1ar y como a olfatear las dos m\u00e1quinas de escribir. Se decidi\u00f3 por mi veterana y enorme Remington, una carroza funeraria sobre la que no pasaban los a\u00f1os. Pascual fue el primero en reaccionar:\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs usted un ladr\u00f3n o qu\u00e9 es usted? \u2014lo increp\u00f3 y yo me di cuenta que me estaba indemnizando por el terremoto de Ispah\u00e1n\u2014. \u00bfSe le ocurre que se va a llevar as\u00ed nom\u00e1s las m\u00e1quinas del Servicio de Informaciones?\n\n\u2014El arte es m\u00e1s importante que tu Servicio de Informaciones, trasgo \u2014lo fulmin\u00f3 el personaje, ech\u00e1ndole una ojeada parecida a la que merece la alima\u00f1a pisoteada, y prosigui\u00f3 su operaci\u00f3n. Ante la mirada estupefacta de Pascual, que, sin duda, trataba de adivinar (como yo mismo) qu\u00e9 quer\u00eda decir trasgo, el visitante intent\u00f3 levantar la Remington. Consigui\u00f3 elevar el armatoste al precio de un esfuerzo descomunal, que hinch\u00f3 las venitas de su cuello y por poco le dispara los ojos de las \u00f3rbitas. Su cara se fue cubriendo de color granate, su frentecita de sudor, pero \u00e9l no desist\u00eda. Apretando los dientes, tambale\u00e1ndose, alcanz\u00f3 a dar unos pasos hacia la puerta, hasta que tuvo que rendirse: un segundo m\u00e1s y su carga lo iba a arrastrar con ella al suelo. Deposit\u00f3 la Remington sobre la mesita de Pascual y qued\u00f3 jadeando. Pero apenas recobr\u00f3 el aliento, totalmente ignorante de las sonrisas que el espect\u00e1culo nos provocaba a m\u00ed y a Pascual (\u00e9ste se hab\u00eda llevado ya varias veces un dedo a la sien para indicarme que se trataba de un loco), nos reprendi\u00f3 con severidad:\n\n\u2014No sean indolentes, se\u00f1ores, un poco de solidaridad humana. \u00c9chenme una mano.\n\nLe dije que lo sent\u00eda mucho pero que para llevarse esa Remington tendr\u00eda que pasar primero sobre el cad\u00e1ver de Pascual, y, en \u00faltimo caso, sobre el m\u00edo. El hombrecillo se acomodaba la corbatita, ligeramente descolocada por el esfuerzo. Ante mi sorpresa, con una mueca de contrariedad y dando muestras de una ineptitud total para el humor, repuso, asintiendo gravemente:\n\n\u2014Un tipo bien nacido nunca desaira un desaf\u00edo a pelear. El sitio y la hora, caballeros.\n\nLa providencial aparici\u00f3n de Genaro hijo en el altillo frustr\u00f3 lo que parec\u00eda ser la formalizaci\u00f3n de un duelo. Entr\u00f3 en el momento en que el hombrecito pertinaz intentaba de nuevo, amorat\u00e1ndose, tomar entre sus brazos a la Remington.\n\n\u2014Deje, Pedro, yo lo ayudo \u2014dijo, y le arrebat\u00f3 la m\u00e1quina como si fuera una caja de f\u00f3sforos. Comprendiendo entonces, por mi cara y la de Pascual, que nos deb\u00eda alguna explicaci\u00f3n, nos consol\u00f3 con aire risue\u00f1o\u2014: Nadie se ha muerto, no hay de qu\u00e9 ponerse tristes. Mi padre les repondr\u00e1 la m\u00e1quina prontito.\n\n\u2014Somos la quinta rueda del coche \u2014protest\u00e9 yo, para guardar las formas\u2014. Nos tienen en este altillo mugriento, ya me quitaron un escritorio para d\u00e1rselo al contador, y ahora mi Remington. Y ni siquiera me previenen.\n\n\u2014Cre\u00edamos que el se\u00f1or era un ladr\u00f3n \u2014me respald\u00f3 Pascual\u2014. Entr\u00f3 aqu\u00ed insult\u00e1ndonos y con prepotencias.\n\n\u2014Entre colegas no debe haber pleitos \u2014dijo, salom\u00f3nicamente, Genaro hijo. Se hab\u00eda puesto la Remington en el hombro y not\u00e9 que el hombrecito le llegaba exactamente a las solapas\u2014. \u00bfNo vino mi padre a hacer las presentaciones? Las hago yo, entonces, y todos felices.\n\nAl instante, con un movimiento veloz y autom\u00e1tico, el hombrecillo estir\u00f3 uno de sus bracitos, dio unos pasos hacia m\u00ed, me ofreci\u00f3 una manita de ni\u00f1o, y, con su preciosa voz de tenor, haciendo una nueva genuflexi\u00f3n cortesana, se present\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Un amigo: Pedro Camacho, boliviano y artista.\n\nRepiti\u00f3 el gesto, la venia y la frase con Pascual, quien, visiblemente, viv\u00eda un instante de supina confusi\u00f3n y era incapaz de decidir si el hombrecillo se burlaba de nosotros o era siempre as\u00ed. Pedro Camacho, despu\u00e9s de estrecharnos ceremoniosamente las manos, se volvi\u00f3 hacia el Servicio de Informaciones en bloque, y, desde el centro del altillo, a la sombra de Genaro hijo que parec\u00eda tras \u00e9l un gigante y que lo observaba muy serio, levant\u00f3 el labio superior y arrug\u00f3 la cara en un movimiento que dej\u00f3 al descubierto unos dientes amarillentos, en una caricatura o espectro de sonrisa. Se tom\u00f3 unos segundos, antes de gratificarnos con estas palabras musicales, acompa\u00f1adas de un adem\u00e1n de prestidigitador que se despide:\n\n\u2014No les guardo rencor, estoy acostumbrado a la incomprensi\u00f3n de la gente. \u00a1Hasta siempre, se\u00f1ores!\n\nDesapareci\u00f3 en la puerta del altillo, dando unos saltitos de duende para alcanzar al empresario progresista que, con la Remington a cuestas, se alejaba a trancos hacia el ascensor.\n\n### II\n\nERA UNA de esas soleadas ma\u00f1anas de la primavera lime\u00f1a en que los geranios amanecen m\u00e1s arrebatados, las rosas m\u00e1s fragantes y las buganvillas m\u00e1s crespas, cuando un famoso galeno de la ciudad, el doctor Alberto de Quinteros \u2014frente ancha, nariz aguile\u00f1a, mirada penetrante, rectitud y bondad en el esp\u00edritu\u2014 abri\u00f3 los ojos y se desperez\u00f3 en su espaciosa residencia de San Isidro. Vio, a trav\u00e9s de los visillos, el sol dorando el c\u00e9sped del cuidado jard\u00edn que encarcelaban vallas de crotos, la limpieza del cielo, la alegr\u00eda de las flores, y sinti\u00f3 esa sensaci\u00f3n bienhechora que dan ocho horas de sue\u00f1o reparador y la conciencia tranquila.\n\nEra s\u00e1bado y, a menos de alguna complicaci\u00f3n de \u00faltimo momento con la se\u00f1ora de los trillizos, no ir\u00eda a la cl\u00ednica y podr\u00eda dedicar la ma\u00f1ana a hacer un poco de ejercicio y a tomar una sauna antes del matrimonio de Elianita. Su esposa y su hija se hallaban en Europa, cultivando su esp\u00edritu y renovando su vestuario, y no regresar\u00edan antes de un mes. Otro, con sus medios de fortuna y su apostura \u2014sus cabellos nevados en las sienes y su porte distinguido, as\u00ed como su elegancia de maneras, despertaban miradas de codicia incluso en se\u00f1oras incorruptibles\u2014, hubiera aprovechado la moment\u00e1nea solter\u00eda para echar algunas canas al aire. Pero Alberto de Quinteros era un hombre al que ni el juego, ni las faldas ni el alcohol atra\u00edan m\u00e1s de lo debido, y entre sus conocidos \u2014que eran legi\u00f3n\u2014 circulaba este apotegma: \u00abSus vicios son la ciencia, su familia y la gimnasia\u00bb.\n\nOrden\u00f3 el desayuno y, mientras se lo preparaban, llam\u00f3 a la cl\u00ednica. El m\u00e9dico de guardia le inform\u00f3 que la se\u00f1ora de los trillizos hab\u00eda pasado una noche tranquila y que las hemorragias de la operada del fibroma hab\u00edan cesado. Dio instrucciones, indic\u00f3 que si ocurr\u00eda algo grave lo llamaran al Gimnasio Remigius, o, a la hora de almuerzo, donde su hermano Roberto, e hizo saber que al atardecer se dar\u00eda una vuelta por all\u00e1. Cuando el mayordomo le trajo su jugo de papaya, su caf\u00e9 negro y su tostada con miel de abeja, Alberto de Quinteros se hab\u00eda afeitado y vest\u00eda un pantal\u00f3n gris de corduroy, unos mocasines sin taco y una chompa verde de cuello alto. Desayun\u00f3 echando una ojeada distra\u00edda a las cat\u00e1strofes e intrigas matutinas de los peri\u00f3dicos, cogi\u00f3 su malet\u00edn deportivo y sali\u00f3. Se detuvo unos segundos en el jard\u00edn a palmear a Puck, el engre\u00eddo foxterrier que lo despidi\u00f3 con afectuosos ladridos.\n\nEl Gimnasio Remigius estaba a pocas cuadras, en la calle Miguel Dasso, y al doctor Quinteros le gustaba andarlas. Iba despacio, respond\u00eda a los saludos del vecindario, observaba los jardines de las casas que a esa hora eran regados y podados, y sol\u00eda parar un momento en la Librer\u00eda Castro Soto a elegir algunos best-sellers. Aunque era temprano, ya estaban frente al Davory los infalibles muchachos de camisas abiertas y cabelleras alborotadas. Tomaban helados, en sus motos o en los guardabarros de sus autos sport, se hac\u00edan bromas y planeaban la fiesta de la noche. Lo saludaron con respeto, pero, apenas los dej\u00f3 atr\u00e1s, uno de ellos se atrevi\u00f3 a darle uno de esos consejos que eran su pan cotidiano en el gimnasio, eternos chistes sobre su edad y su profesi\u00f3n, que \u00e9l soportaba con paciencia y buen humor: \u00abNo se canse mucho, doctor, piense en sus nietos\u00bb. Apenas lo oy\u00f3 pues estaba imaginando lo linda que se ver\u00eda Elianita en su vestido de novia dise\u00f1ado para ella por la casa Christian Dior de Par\u00eds.\n\nNo hab\u00eda mucha gente en el gimnasio esa ma\u00f1ana. S\u00f3lo Coco, el instructor, y dos fan\u00e1ticos de las pesas, el Negro Humilla y Perico Sarmiento, tres monta\u00f1as de m\u00fasculos equivalentes a los de diez hombres normales. Deb\u00edan de haber llegado no hac\u00eda mucho tiempo, estaban todav\u00eda calentando:\n\n\u2014Pero si ah\u00ed viene la cig\u00fce\u00f1a \u2014le estrech\u00f3 la mano Coco.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTodav\u00eda en pie, a pesar de los siglos? \u2014le hizo adi\u00f3s el Negro Humilla.\n\nPerico se limit\u00f3 a chasquear la lengua y a levantar dos dedos, en el caracter\u00edstico saludo que hab\u00eda importado de Texas. Al doctor Quinteros le agradaba esa informalidad, las confianzas que se tomaban con \u00e9l sus compa\u00f1eros de gimnasio, como si el hecho de verse desnudos y de sudar juntos los nivelara en una fraternidad donde desaparec\u00edan las diferencias de edad y posici\u00f3n. Les contest\u00f3 que si necesitaban sus servicios estaba a sus \u00f3rdenes, que a los primeros mareos o antojos corrieran a su consultorio donde ten\u00eda listo el guante de jebe para auscultarles la intimidad.\n\n\u2014C\u00e1mbiate y ven a hacer un poco de warm up \u2014le dijo Coco, que ya estaba saltando en el sitio otra vez.\n\n\u2014Si te viene el infarto, no pasas de morirte, veterano \u2014lo alent\u00f3 Perico, poni\u00e9ndose al paso de Coco.\n\n\u2014Adentro est\u00e1 el tablista \u2014oy\u00f3 decir al Negro Humilla, cuando entraba al vestuario.\n\nY, en efecto, ah\u00ed estaba su sobrino Richard, en buzo azul, calz\u00e1ndose las zapatillas. Lo hac\u00eda con desgano, como si las manos se le hubieran vuelto de trapo, y ten\u00eda la cara agria y ausente. Se qued\u00f3 mir\u00e1ndolo con unos ojos azules totalmente idos y una indiferencia tan absoluta que el doctor Quinteros se pregunt\u00f3 si no se hab\u00eda vuelto invisible.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo los enamorados se abstraen as\u00ed \u2014se acerc\u00f3 a \u00e9l y le revolvi\u00f3 los cabellos\u2014. Baja de la luna, sobrino.\n\n\u2014Perdona, t\u00edo \u2014despert\u00f3 Richard, enrojeciendo violentamente, como si lo acabaran de sorprender haciendo algo sucio\u2014. Estaba pensando.\n\n\u2014Me gustar\u00eda saber en qu\u00e9 maldades \u2014se ri\u00f3 el doctor Quinteros, mientras abr\u00eda su malet\u00edn, eleg\u00eda un casillero y comenzaba a desvestirse\u2014. Tu casa debe ser un desbarajuste terrible. \u00bfEst\u00e1 muy nerviosa Elianita?\n\nRichard lo mir\u00f3 con una especie de odio s\u00fabito y el doctor pens\u00f3 qu\u00e9 le ha picado a este muchacho. Pero su sobrino, haciendo un esfuerzo notorio por mostrarse natural, esboz\u00f3 un amago de sonrisa:\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, un desbarajuste. Por eso me vine a quemar un poco de grasa, hasta que sea hora.\n\nEl doctor pens\u00f3 que iba a a\u00f1adir: \u00abDe subir al pat\u00edbulo\u00bb. Ten\u00eda la voz lastrada por la tristeza, y tambi\u00e9n sus facciones y la torpeza con que anudaba los cordones y los movimientos bruscos de su cuerpo revelaban incomodidad, malestar \u00edntimo, desasosiego. No pod\u00eda tener los ojos quietos: los abr\u00eda, los cerraba, fijaba la vista en un punto, la desviaba, la regresaba, volv\u00eda a apartarla, como buscando algo imposible de encontrar. Era el muchacho m\u00e1s apuesto de la tierra, un joven dios bru\u00f1ido por la intemperie \u2014hac\u00eda tabla aun en los meses m\u00e1s h\u00famedos del invierno y descollaba tambi\u00e9n en el b\u00e1squet, el tenis, la nataci\u00f3n y el fulbito\u2014, al que los deportes hab\u00edan modelado un cuerpo de esos que el Negro Humilla llamaba \u00ablocura de maricones\u00bb: ni gota de grasa, espaldas anchas que descend\u00edan en una tersa l\u00ednea de m\u00fasculos hasta la cintura de avispa y unas largas piernas duras y \u00e1giles que habr\u00edan hecho palidecer de envidia al mejor boxeador. Alberto de Quinteros hab\u00eda o\u00eddo con frecuencia a su hija Charo y a sus amigas comparar a Richard con Charlton Heston y sentenciar que todav\u00eda era m\u00e1s churro, que lo dejaba botado en pinta. Estaba en primer a\u00f1o de Arquitectura, y, seg\u00fan Roberto y Margarita, sus padres, hab\u00eda sido siempre un modelo: estudioso, obediente, bueno con ellos y con su hermana, sano, simp\u00e1tico. Elianita y \u00e9l eran sus sobrinos preferidos y por eso, mientras se pon\u00eda el suspensor, el buzo, las zapatillas \u2014Richard lo esperaba junto a las duchas, dando unos golpecitos contra los azulejos\u2014, el doctor Alberto de Quinteros se apen\u00f3 al verlo tan turbado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAlg\u00fan problema, sobrino? \u2014le pregunt\u00f3, como al descuido, con una sonrisa bondadosa\u2014. \u00bfAlgo en que tu t\u00edo pueda echarte una mano?\n\n\u2014Ninguno, qu\u00e9 ocurrencia \u2014se apresur\u00f3 a contestar Richard, encendi\u00e9ndose de nuevo como un f\u00f3sforo\u2014. Estoy regio y con unas ganas b\u00e1rbaras de calentar.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLe llevaron mi regalo a tu hermana? \u2014record\u00f3 de pronto el doctor\u2014. En la Casa Murgu\u00eda me prometieron que lo har\u00edan ayer.\n\n\u2014Una pulsera bestial \u2014Richard hab\u00eda comenzado a saltar sobre las losetas blancas del vestuario\u2014. A la flaca le encant\u00f3.\n\n\u2014De estas cosas se encarga tu t\u00eda, pero como sigue paseando por las Europas, tuve que escogerla yo mismo \u2014el doctor Quinteros hizo un gesto enternecido\u2014: Elianita, vestida de novia, ser\u00e1 una aparici\u00f3n.\n\nPorque la hija de su hermano Roberto era en mujer lo que Richard en hombre: una de esas bellezas que dignifican a la especie y hacen que las met\u00e1foras sobre las muchachas de dientes de perla, ojos como luceros, cabellos de trigo y cutis de melocot\u00f3n, luzcan mezquinas. Menuda, de cabellos oscuros y piel muy blanca, graciosa hasta en su manera de respirar, ten\u00eda una carita de l\u00edneas cl\u00e1sicas, unos rasgos que parec\u00edan dibujados por un miniaturista del oriente. Un a\u00f1o m\u00e1s joven que Richard, acababa de terminar el colegio, su \u00fanico defecto era la timidez \u2014tan excesiva que, para desesperaci\u00f3n de los organizadores, no hab\u00edan podido convencerla de que participara en el Concurso Miss Per\u00fa\u2014 y nadie, entre ellos el doctor Quinteros, pod\u00eda explicarse por qu\u00e9 se casaba tan pronto y, sobre todo, con qui\u00e9n. Ya que el Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez ten\u00eda algunas virtudes \u2014bueno como el pan, un t\u00edtulo de Business Administration por la Universidad de Chicago, la compa\u00f1\u00eda de fertilizantes que heredar\u00eda y varias copas en carreras de ciclismo\u2014 pero, entre los innumerables muchachos de Miraflores y San Isidro que hab\u00edan hecho la corte a Elianita y que hubieran llegado al crimen por casarse con ella, era, sin duda, el menos agraciado y (el doctor Quinteros se avergonz\u00f3 por permitirse este juicio sobre quien, dentro de pocas horas, pasar\u00eda a ser su sobrino) el m\u00e1s soso y tontito.\n\n\u2014Eres m\u00e1s lento para cambiarte que mi mam\u00e1, t\u00edo \u2014se quej\u00f3 Richard, entre saltos.\n\nCuando entraron a la sala de ejercicios, Coco, en quien la pedagog\u00eda era una vocaci\u00f3n m\u00e1s que un oficio, instru\u00eda al Negro Humilla, se\u00f1al\u00e1ndole el est\u00f3mago, sobre este axioma de su filosof\u00eda:\n\n\u2014Cuando comas, cuando trabajes, cuando est\u00e9s en el cine, cuando paletees a tu hembra, cuando chupes, en todos los momentos de tu vida, y, si puedes, hasta en el f\u00e9retro: \u00a1hunde la panza!\n\n\u2014Diez minutos de warm ups para alegrar el esqueleto, Matusal\u00e9n \u2014orden\u00f3 el instructor.\n\nMientras saltaba a la soga junto a Richard, y sent\u00eda que un agradable calor iba apoder\u00e1ndose interiormente de su cuerpo, el doctor Quinteros pensaba que, despu\u00e9s de todo, no era tan terrible tener cincuenta a\u00f1os si uno los llevaba as\u00ed. \u00bfQui\u00e9n, entre los amigos de su edad, pod\u00eda lucir un vientre tan liso y unos m\u00fasculos tan despiertos? Sin ir muy lejos, su hermano Roberto, pese a ser tres a\u00f1os menor, con su rolliza y abotagada apariencia y la precoz curvatura de espalda, parec\u00eda llevarle diez. Pobre Roberto, deb\u00eda de estar triste con la boda de Elianita, la ni\u00f1a de sus ojos. Porque, claro, era una manera de perderla. Tambi\u00e9n su hija Charo se casar\u00eda en cualquier momento \u2014su enamorado, Tato Soldevilla, se recibir\u00eda dentro de poco de ingeniero\u2014 y tambi\u00e9n \u00e9l, entonces, se sentir\u00eda apenado y m\u00e1s viejo. El doctor Quinteros saltaba a la soga sin enredarse ni alterar el ritmo, con la facilidad que da la pr\u00e1ctica, cambiando de pie y cruzando y descruzando las manos como un gimnasta consumado. Ve\u00eda, en cambio, por el espejo, que su sobrino saltaba demasiado r\u00e1pido, con atolondramiento, tropez\u00e1ndose. Ten\u00eda los dientes apretados, brillo de sudor en la frente y guardaba los ojos cerrados como para concentrarse mejor. \u00bfAlg\u00fan problema de faldas, tal vez?\n\n\u2014Basta de soguita, flojonazos \u2014Coco, aunque estaba levantando pesas con Perico y el Negro Humilla, no los perd\u00eda de vista y les llevaba el tiempo\u2014. Tres series de sit ups. Sobre el pucho, f\u00f3siles.\n\nLos abdominales eran la prueba de fuerza del doctor Quinteros. Los hac\u00eda a mucha velocidad, con las manos en la nuca, en la tabla alzada a la segunda posici\u00f3n, aguantando la espalda a ras del suelo y casi tocando las rodillas con la frente. Entre cada serie de treinta dejaba un minuto de intervalo en que permanec\u00eda tendido, respirando hondo. Al terminar los noventa, se sent\u00f3 y comprob\u00f3, satisfecho, que hab\u00eda sacado ventaja a Richard. Ahora s\u00ed sudaba de pies a cabeza y sent\u00eda el coraz\u00f3n acelerado.\n\n\u2014No acabo de entender por qu\u00e9 se casa Elianita con el Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez \u2014se oy\u00f3 decir a s\u00ed mismo, de pronto\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 le ha visto?\n\nFue un acto fallido y se arrepinti\u00f3 al instante, pero Richard no pareci\u00f3 sorprenderse. Jadeando \u2014acababa de terminar los abdominales\u2014 le respondi\u00f3 con una broma:\n\n\u2014Dicen que el amor es ciego, t\u00edo.\n\n\u2014Es un excelente muchacho y seguro que la har\u00e1 muy feliz \u2014compuso las cosas el doctor Quinteros, algo cortado\u2014. Quer\u00eda decir que, entre los admiradores de tu hermana, estaban los mejores partidos de Lima. Mira que basurearlos a todos para terminar aceptando al Pelirrojo, que es un buen chico, pero tan, en fin...\n\n\u2014\u00bfTan calzonudo, quieres decir? \u2014lo ayud\u00f3 Richard.\n\n\u2014Bueno, no lo hubiera dicho con esa crudeza \u2014aspiraba y expulsaba el aire el doctor Quinteros, abriendo y cerrando los brazos\u2014. Pero, la verdad, parece algo ca\u00eddo del nido. Con cualquier otra ser\u00eda perfecto, pero a Elianita, tan linda, tan viva, el pobre le llora \u2014se sinti\u00f3 inc\u00f3modo con su propia franqueza\u2014. Oye, no lo tomes a mal, sobrino.\n\n\u2014No te preocupes, t\u00edo \u2014le sonri\u00f3 Richard\u2014. El Pelirrojo es buena gente y si la flaca le ha hecho caso por algo ser\u00e1.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Tres series de treinta side bonds, inv\u00e1lidos! \u2014rugi\u00f3 Coco, con ochenta kilos sobre la cabeza, hinchado como un sapo\u2014. \u00a1Hundiendo la panza, no bot\u00e1ndola!\n\nEl doctor Quinteros pens\u00f3 que, con la gimnasia, Richard olvidar\u00eda sus problemas, pero, mientras hac\u00eda flexiones laterales, lo vio ejecutar los ejercicios con renovada furia: la cara se le descompon\u00eda de nuevo en una expresi\u00f3n de angustia y malhumor. Record\u00f3 que en la familia Quinteros hab\u00eda abundantes neur\u00f3ticos y pens\u00f3 que a lo mejor al hijo mayor de Roberto le hab\u00eda tocado en suerte mantener esa tradici\u00f3n entre las nuevas generaciones, y, despu\u00e9s, se distrajo pensando que, despu\u00e9s de todo, tal vez hubiera sido m\u00e1s prudente darse un salto a la cl\u00ednica antes del gimnasio para echar un vistazo a la se\u00f1ora de los trillizos y a la operada del fibroma. Luego ya no pens\u00f3, pues el esfuerzo f\u00edsico lo absorbi\u00f3 enteramente y, mientras bajaba y sub\u00eda las piernas (\u00a1Leg rises, cincuenta veces!), flexionaba el tronco (\u00a1Trunk twist con bar, tres series, hasta botar los bofes!), hac\u00eda trabajar la espalda, el torso, los antebrazos, el cuello, obediente a las \u00f3rdenes de Coco (\u00a1Fuerza, tatarabuelo!, \u00a1M\u00e1s r\u00e1pido, cad\u00e1ver!), fue tan s\u00f3lo un pulm\u00f3n que recib\u00eda y expel\u00eda aire, una piel que escup\u00eda sudor y unos m\u00fasculos que se esforzaban, cansaban y sufr\u00edan. Cuando Coco grit\u00f3 \u00a1Tres series de quince pull-overs con mancuernas! hab\u00eda alcanzado su tope. Trat\u00f3, sin embargo, por amor propio, de hacer cuando menos una serie con doce kilos, pero fue incapaz. Estaba exhausto. La pesa se le escap\u00f3 de las manos al tercer intento y tuvo que soportar las bromas de los pesistas (\u00a1Las momias a la tumba y las cig\u00fce\u00f1as al jard\u00edn zool\u00f3gico!, \u00a1Llamen a la funeraria!, \u00a1Requiescat in pace, Amen!), y ver, con muda envidia, c\u00f3mo Richard \u2014siempre apurado, siempre furioso\u2014 completaba su rutina sin dificultad. No bastan la disciplina, la constancia, pens\u00f3 el doctor Quinteros, las dietas equilibradas, la vida met\u00f3dica. Eso compensaba las diferencias hasta cierto l\u00edmite; pasado \u00e9ste, la edad establec\u00eda distancias insalvables, muros invencibles. M\u00e1s tarde, desnudo en la sauna, ciego por el sudor que le chorreaba entre las pesta\u00f1as, repiti\u00f3 con melancol\u00eda una frase que hab\u00eda le\u00eddo en un libro: \u00a1Juventud, cuyo recuerdo desespera! Al salir, vio que Richard se hab\u00eda unido a los pesistas y que alternaba con ellos. Coco le hizo un adem\u00e1n burl\u00f3n, se\u00f1al\u00e1ndolo:\n\n\u2014El buen mozo ha decidido suicidarse, doctor.\n\nRichard ni siquiera sonri\u00f3. Ten\u00eda las pesas en alto y su cara, empapada, roja, con las venas salientes, mostraba una exasperaci\u00f3n que parec\u00eda a punto de volcarse contra ellos. Al doctor le pas\u00f3 la idea de que su sobrino, de pronto, iba a aplastarles las cabezas a los cuatro con las pesas que ten\u00eda en las manos. Les hizo adi\u00f3s y murmur\u00f3: \u00abNos vemos en la iglesia, Richard\u00bb.\n\nDe vuelta en su casa, lo tranquiliz\u00f3 saber que la mam\u00e1 de los trillizos quer\u00eda jugar al bridge con unas amigas en su cuarto de la cl\u00ednica y que la operada del fibroma hab\u00eda preguntado si ya hoy podr\u00eda comer wantanes sopados en salsa de tamarindo. Autoriz\u00f3 el bridge y el want\u00e1n, y, con toda calma, se puso terno azul oscuro, camisa de seda blanca y una corbata plateada que sujet\u00f3 con una perla. Perfumaba su pa\u00f1uelo cuando lleg\u00f3 carta de su mujer, a la que Charito hab\u00eda a\u00f1adido una posdata. La hab\u00edan despachado de Venecia, la ciudad catorce del tour, y le dec\u00edan: \u00abCuando recibas \u00e9sta habremos hecho por lo menos siete ciudades m\u00e1s, todas lind\u00edsimas\u00bb. Estaban felices y Charito muy entusiasta con los italianos, \u00abunos artistas de cine, papi, y no te imaginas qu\u00e9 piropeadores, pero no le vayas a contar a Tato, mil besos, chau\u00bb.\n\nFue andando hasta la Iglesia de Santa Mar\u00eda, en el \u00f3valo Guti\u00e9rrez. Era todav\u00eda temprano y comenzaban a llegar los invitados. Se instal\u00f3 en las filas de adelante y se entretuvo observando el altar, adornado con lirios y rosas blancas, y los vitrales, que parec\u00edan mitras de prelados. Una vez m\u00e1s constat\u00f3 que esa iglesia no le gustaba nada, por su \u00edrrita combinaci\u00f3n de yeso y ladrillos y sus pretenciosos arcos oblongos. De tanto en tanto saludaba a los conocidos con sonrisas. Claro, no pod\u00eda ser menos, todo el mundo iba llegando a la iglesia: parientes remot\u00edsimos, amigos que resucitaban despu\u00e9s de siglos, y, por supuesto, lo m\u00e1s graneado de la ciudad, banqueros, embajadores, industriales, pol\u00edticos. Este Roberto, esta Margarita, siempre tan fr\u00edvolos, pensaba el doctor Quinteros, sin acritud, lleno de benevolencia para con las debilidades de su hermano y su cu\u00f1ada. Seguramente que, en el almuerzo, echar\u00edan la casa por la ventana. Se emocion\u00f3 al ver entrar a la novia, en el momento en que romp\u00edan los compases de la marcha nupcial. Estaba realmente bell\u00edsima, en su vaporoso vestido blanco, y su carita, perfilada bajo el velo, ten\u00eda algo extraordinariamente gr\u00e1cil, leve, espiritual, mientras avanzaba hacia el altar, con los ojos bajos, del brazo de Roberto, quien, corpulento y augusto, disimulaba su emoci\u00f3n adoptando aires de due\u00f1o del mundo. El Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez parec\u00eda menos feo, enfundado en su flamante chaqu\u00e9 y con la cara resplandeciente de felicidad, y hasta su madre \u2014una inglesa desgarbada que, pese a vivir un cuarto de siglo en el Per\u00fa, todav\u00eda confund\u00eda las preposiciones\u2014 parec\u00eda, en su largo traje oscuro y su peinado de dos pisos, una se\u00f1ora atractiva. Es cierto, pens\u00f3 el doctor Quinteros, el que la sigue la consigue. Porque el pobre Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez hab\u00eda perseguido a Elianita desde que eran ni\u00f1os, y la hab\u00eda asediado con delicadezas y atenciones que ella recib\u00eda invariablemente con ol\u00edmpico desd\u00e9n. Pero \u00e9l hab\u00eda soportado todos los desplantes y malacrianzas de Elianita, y las terribles bromas con que los chicos del barrio celebraban su resignaci\u00f3n. Muchacho tenaz, reflexionaba el doctor Quinteros, lo hab\u00eda logrado, y ah\u00ed estaba ahora, p\u00e1lido de emoci\u00f3n, deslizando el aro en el dedo anular de la muchacha m\u00e1s linda de Lima. La ceremonia hab\u00eda terminado y, en medio de una masa rumorosa, haciendo inclinaciones de cabeza a diestra y siniestra, el doctor Quinteros avanzaba hacia los salones de la iglesia cuando divis\u00f3, de pie junto a una columna, como apart\u00e1ndose asqueado de la gente, a Richard.\n\nMientras hac\u00eda cola para llegar hasta los novios, el doctor Quinteros tuvo que festejar una docena de chistes contra el gobierno que le contaron los hermanos Febre, dos mellizos tan id\u00e9nticos que, se dec\u00eda, ni sus propias mujeres los diferenciaban. Era tal el gent\u00edo que el sal\u00f3n parec\u00eda a punto de desplomarse; muchas personas hab\u00edan permanecido en los jardines, esperando turno para entrar. Un enjambre de mozos circulaba ofreciendo champa\u00f1a. Se o\u00edan risas, bromas, brindis, y todo el mundo dec\u00eda que la novia estaba lind\u00edsima. Cuando el doctor Quinteros pudo al fin llegar hasta ella, vio que Elianita segu\u00eda compuesta y lozana pese al calor y la apretura. \u00abMil a\u00f1os de felicidad, flaquita\u00bb, le dijo, abraz\u00e1ndola, y ella le cont\u00f3 al o\u00eddo: \u00abCharito me llam\u00f3 esta ma\u00f1ana desde Roma para felicitarme, y tambi\u00e9n habl\u00e9 con la t\u00eda Mercedes. \u00a1Qu\u00e9 amorosas de llamarme!\u00bb. El Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez, sudando, colorado como un camar\u00f3n, chisporroteaba de felicidad: \u00ab\u00bfAhora tambi\u00e9n tendr\u00e9 que decirle t\u00edo, don Alberto?\u00bb. \u00abClaro, sobrino \u2014lo palme\u00f3 el doctor Quinteros\u2014, y tendr\u00e1s que tutearme\u00bb.\n\nSali\u00f3 medio asfixiado del estrado de los novios y, entre flashes de fot\u00f3grafos, roces, saludos, pudo llegar al jard\u00edn. All\u00ed la condensaci\u00f3n humana era menor y se pod\u00eda respirar. Tom\u00f3 una copa y se vio envuelto, en una ronda de m\u00e9dicos amigos, en interminables bromas que ten\u00edan como tema el viaje de su mujer: Mercedes no volver\u00eda, se quedar\u00eda con alg\u00fan franchute, en los extremos de la frente comenzaban ya a brotarle unos cuernitos. El doctor Quinteros, mientras les llevaba la cuerda, pens\u00f3 \u2014recordando el gimnasio\u2014 que hoy le tocaba estar en la berlina. A ratos ve\u00eda, por sobre un mar de cabezas, a Richard, al otro extremo del sal\u00f3n; en medio de muchachos y muchachas que re\u00edan: serio y fruncido, vaciaba las copas de champa\u00f1a como agua. \u00abTal vez le apena que Elianita se case con Ant\u00fanez \u2014pens\u00f3\u2014; tambi\u00e9n \u00e9l hubiera querido alguien m\u00e1s brillante para su hermana\u00bb. Pero no, lo probable es que estuviera atravesando una de esas crisis de transici\u00f3n. Y el doctor Quinteros record\u00f3 c\u00f3mo \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n, a la edad de Richard, hab\u00eda pasado un periodo dif\u00edcil, dudando entre la medicina y la ingenier\u00eda aeron\u00e1utica. (Su padre lo hab\u00eda convencido con un argumento de peso: en el Per\u00fa, como ingeniero aeron\u00e1utico no hubiera tenido otra salida que dedicarse a las cometas o al aeromodelismo.) Tal vez Roberto, siempre tan absorbido en sus negocios, no estaba en condiciones de aconsejar a Richard. Y el doctor Quinteros, en uno de esos arranques que le hab\u00edan ganado el aprecio general, decidi\u00f3 que, un d\u00eda de \u00e9stos, con toda la delicadeza del caso, invitar\u00eda a su sobrino y sutilmente explorar\u00eda la manera de ayudarlo.\n\nLa casa de Roberto y Margarita estaba en la avenida Santa Cruz, a pocas cuadras de la Iglesia de Santa Mar\u00eda, y, al t\u00e9rmino de la recepci\u00f3n en la parroquia, los invitados al almuerzo desfilaron bajo los \u00e1rboles y el sol de San Isidro, hacia el caser\u00f3n de ladrillos rojos y techos de madera, rodeado de c\u00e9sped, de flores, de verjas, y primorosamente decorado para la fiesta. Al doctor Quinteros le bast\u00f3 llegar a la puerta para comprender que la celebraci\u00f3n iba a superar sus propias predicciones y que asistir\u00eda a un acontecimiento que los cronistas sociales llamar\u00edan \u00absoberbio\u00bb.\n\nA lo largo y a lo ancho del jard\u00edn se hab\u00edan puesto mesas y sombrillas, y, al fondo, junto a las perreras, un enorme toldo proteg\u00eda una mesa de n\u00edveo mantel, que corr\u00eda a lo largo de la pared, erizada de fuentes con entremeses multicolores. El bar estaba junto al estanque de agallados peces japoneses y se ve\u00edan tantas copas, botellas, cocteleras, jarras de refrescos, como para quitar la sed a un ej\u00e9rcito. Mozos de chaquetilla blanca y muchachas de cofia y delantal recib\u00edan a los invitados abrum\u00e1ndolos desde la misma puerta de calle con pisco sours, algarrobinas, vodkas con maracuy\u00e1, vasos de whisky, gin o copas de champa\u00f1a, y palitos de queso, papitas con aj\u00ed, guindas rellenas de tocino, camarones arrebozados, volovanes y todos los bocaditos concebidos por la inventiva lime\u00f1a para abrir el apetito. En el interior, enormes canastas y ramos de rosas, nardos, gladiolos, alel\u00edes, claveles, apoyados contra las paredes, dispuestos a lo largo de las escaleras o sobre los alf\u00e9izares y los muebles, refrescaban el ambiente. El parquet estaba encerado, las cortinas lavadas, las porcelanas y la plater\u00eda relucientes y el doctor Quinteros sonri\u00f3 imaginando que hasta los huacos de las vitrinas hab\u00edan sido lustrados. En el vest\u00edbulo hab\u00eda tambi\u00e9n un buffet, y en el comedor se explayaban los dulces \u2014mazapanes, queso helado, suspiros, huevos chimbos, yemas, coquitos, nueces con alm\u00edbar\u2014 alrededor de la impresionante torta de bodas, una construcci\u00f3n de tules y columnas, cremosa y arrogante, que arrancaba trinos de admiraci\u00f3n a las se\u00f1oras. Pero lo que concitaba la curiosidad femenina, sobre todo, eran los regalos, en el segundo piso; se hab\u00eda formado una cola tan larga para verlos que el doctor Quinteros decidi\u00f3 r\u00e1pidamente no hacerla, pese a que le hubiera gustado saber c\u00f3mo luc\u00eda en el conjunto su pulsera.\n\nDespu\u00e9s de curiosear un poco por todas partes \u2014estrechando manos, recibiendo y prodigando abrazos\u2014 retorn\u00f3 al jard\u00edn y fue a sentarse bajo una sombrilla, a degustar con calma su segunda copa del d\u00eda. Todo estaba muy bien, Margarita y Roberto sab\u00edan hacer las cosas en grande. Y aunque no le parec\u00eda excesivamente fina la idea de la orquesta \u2014hab\u00edan retirado las alfombras, la mesita y el aparador con los marfiles para que las parejas tuvieran donde bailar\u2014 disculp\u00f3 esa inelegancia como una concesi\u00f3n a las nuevas generaciones, pues, ya se sab\u00eda, para la juventud fiesta sin baile no era fiesta. Comenzaban a servir el pavo y el vino y ahora Elianita, de pie en el segundo pelda\u00f1o de la entrada, estaba arrojando su bouquet de novia que decenas de compa\u00f1eras de colegio y del barrio esperaban con las manos en alto. El doctor Quinteros divis\u00f3 en un rinc\u00f3n del jard\u00edn a la vieja Venancia, el ama de Elianita desde la cuna: la anciana, conmovida hasta el alma, se limpiaba los ojos con el ruedo de su delantal.\n\nSu paladar no alcanz\u00f3 a distinguir la marca del vino pero supo inmediatamente que era extranjero, acaso espa\u00f1ol o chileno y tampoco descart\u00f3 \u2014dentro de las locuras del d\u00eda\u2014 que fuera franc\u00e9s. El pavo estaba tierno, el pur\u00e9 era una mantequilla, y hab\u00eda una ensalada de coles y pasas que, pese a sus principios en materia de dieta, no pudo dejar de repetir. Saboreaba una segunda copa de vino y empezaba a sentir una agradable somnolencia cuando vio venir a Richard hacia \u00e9l. Balanceaba una copa de whisky en la mano; ten\u00eda los ojos vidriosos y la voz cambiante:\n\n\u2014\u00bfHay algo m\u00e1s est\u00fapido que una fiesta de matrimonio, t\u00edo? \u2014murmur\u00f3, haciendo un adem\u00e1n despectivo hacia todo lo que los rodeaba y dej\u00e1ndose caer en la silla de al lado. La corbata se le hab\u00eda corrido, una manchita fresca afeaba la solapa de su terno gris, y en sus ojos, adem\u00e1s de vestigios de licor, hab\u00eda empozada una oce\u00e1nica rabia.\n\n\u2014Bueno, te confieso que yo no soy un gran entusiasta de las fiestas \u2014dijo con bonhom\u00eda el doctor Quinteros\u2014. Pero que no lo seas t\u00fa, a tu edad, me llama la atenci\u00f3n, sobrino.\n\n\u2014Las odio con toda mi alma \u2014susurr\u00f3 Richard, mirando como si quisiera desaparecer a todo el mundo\u2014. No s\u00e9 por qu\u00e9 maldita sea estoy aqu\u00ed.\n\n\u2014Imag\u00ednate lo que habr\u00eda sido para tu hermana que no vinieras a su boda \u2014el doctor Quinteros reflexionaba sobre las cosas necias que hace decir el alcohol: \u00bfacaso no hab\u00eda visto \u00e9l a Richard divirti\u00e9ndose en las fiestas como el que m\u00e1s? \u00bfNo era un eximio bailar\u00edn? \u00bfCu\u00e1ntas veces hab\u00eda capitaneado su sobrino a la pandilla de chicas y chicos que ven\u00edan a improvisar un baile en los cuartos de Charito? Pero no le record\u00f3 nada de eso. Vio c\u00f3mo Richard apuraba su whisky y ped\u00eda a un mozo que le sirviera otro.\n\n\u2014De todos modos, anda prepar\u00e1ndote \u2014le dijo\u2014. Porque cuando te cases, tus padres te har\u00e1n una fiesta m\u00e1s grande que \u00e9sta.\n\nRichard se llev\u00f3 el flamante vaso de whisky a los labios y, despacio, entrecerrando los ojos, bebi\u00f3 un trago. Luego, sin alzar la cabeza, con voz sorda y que lleg\u00f3 al doctor como algo muy lento y casi inaudible, musit\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Yo no me casar\u00e9 nunca, t\u00edo, te lo juro por Dios.\n\nAntes de que pudiera responderle, una estilizada muchacha de cabellos claros, silueta azul y gesto decidido se plant\u00f3 ante ellos, cogi\u00f3 a Richard de la mano y, sin darle tiempo a reaccionar, lo oblig\u00f3 a levantarse:\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo te da verg\u00fcenza estar sentado con los viejos? Ven a bailar, sonso.\n\nEl doctor Quinteros los vio desaparecer en el zagu\u00e1n de la casa y se sinti\u00f3 bruscamente inapetente. Segu\u00eda repicando en el pabell\u00f3n de sus o\u00eddos, como un eco perverso, esa palabrita, \u00abviejos\u00bb, que con tanta naturalidad y voz tan deliciosa hab\u00eda dicho la hijita menor del arquitecto Arambur\u00fa. Despu\u00e9s de tomar el caf\u00e9, se levant\u00f3 y fue a echar un vistazo al sal\u00f3n.\n\nLa fiesta estaba en su esplendor y el baile se hab\u00eda ido propagando, desde esa matriz que era la chimenea donde hab\u00edan instalado a la orquesta, a los cuartos vecinos, en los que tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda parejas que bailaban, cantando a voz en cuello los chachach\u00e1s y los merengues, las cumbias y los valses. La onda de alegr\u00eda, alimentada por la m\u00fasica, el sol y los alcoholes hab\u00eda ido subiendo de los j\u00f3venes a los adultos y de los adultos a los viejos, y el doctor Quinteros vio, con sorpresa, que incluso don Marcelino Huapaya, un octogenario emparentado a la familia, meneaba esforzadamente su crujiente humanidad, siguiendo los compases de Nube gris, con su cu\u00f1ada Margarita en brazos. La atm\u00f3sfera de humo, ruido, movimiento, luz y felicidad produjo un ligero v\u00e9rtigo al doctor Quinteros; se apoy\u00f3 en la baranda y cerr\u00f3 un instante los ojos. Luego, risue\u00f1o, feliz \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n, estuvo observando a Elianita, que, todav\u00eda vestida de novia pero ya sin velo, presid\u00eda la fiesta. No descansaba un segundo; al t\u00e9rmino de cada pieza, veinte varones la rodeaban, solicitando su favor, y ella, con las mejillas arreboladas y los ojos lucientes, eleg\u00eda a uno diferente cada vez y retornaba al torbellino. Su hermano Roberto se materializ\u00f3 a su lado. En vez del chaqu\u00e9, ten\u00eda un liviano terno marr\u00f3n y estaba sudoroso pues acababa de bailar.\n\n\u2014Me parece mentira que se est\u00e9 casando, Alberto \u2014dijo, se\u00f1alando a Elianita.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 lind\u00edsima \u2014le sonri\u00f3 el doctor Quinteros\u2014. Has echado la casa por la ventana, Roberto.\n\n\u2014Para mi hija lo mejor del mundo \u2014exclam\u00f3 su hermano, con un retint\u00edn de tristeza en la voz.\n\n\u2014\u00bfD\u00f3nde van a pasar la luna de miel? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 el doctor.\n\n\u2014En Brasil y Europa. Es el regalo de los pap\u00e1s del Pelirrojo \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3, divertido, hacia el bar\u2014. Deb\u00edan partir ma\u00f1ana temprano, pero, a este paso, mi yerno no estar\u00e1 en condiciones.\n\nUn grupo de muchachos ten\u00edan cercado al Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez y se turnaban para brindar con \u00e9l. El novio, m\u00e1s colorado que nunca, riendo algo alarmado, trataba de enga\u00f1arlos mojando los labios en su copa, pero sus amigos protestaban y le exig\u00edan vaciarla. El doctor Quinteros busc\u00f3 a Richard con la mirada, pero no lo vio en el bar, ni bailando, ni en el sector del jard\u00edn que descubr\u00edan las ventanas.\n\nOcurri\u00f3 en ese momento. Terminaba el vals \u00cddolo, las parejas se dispon\u00edan a aplaudir, los m\u00fasicos apartaban los dedos de las guitarras, el Pelirrojo hac\u00eda frente al vig\u00e9simo brindis, cuando la novia se llev\u00f3 la mano derecha a los ojos como para espantar a un mosquito, trastabille\u00f3 y, antes de que su pareja alcanzara a sostenerla, se desplom\u00f3. Su padre y el doctor Quinteros permanecieron inm\u00f3viles, creyendo tal vez que hab\u00eda resbalado, que se levantar\u00eda al instante muerta de risa, pero el revuelo que se arm\u00f3 en el sal\u00f3n \u2014las exclamaciones, los empujones, los gritos de la mam\u00e1: \u00ab\u00a1Hijita, Eliana, Elianita!\u00bb\u2014 los hizo correr tambi\u00e9n a ayudarla. Ya el Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez hab\u00eda dado un salto, la levantaba en brazos, y, escoltado por un grupo, la sub\u00eda por la escalera, tras la se\u00f1ora Margarita, que iba diciendo \u00abPor aqu\u00ed, a su cuarto, despacio, con cuidadito\u00bb, y ped\u00eda \u00abUn m\u00e9dico, llamen a un m\u00e9dico\u00bb. Algunos familiares \u2014el t\u00edo Fernando, la prima Chabuca, don Marcelino\u2014 tranquilizaban a los amigos, ordenaban a la orquesta reanudar la m\u00fasica. El doctor Quinteros vio que su hermano Roberto le hac\u00eda se\u00f1as desde lo alto de la escalera. Pero qu\u00e9 est\u00fapido, \u00bfacaso no era m\u00e9dico?, \u00bfqu\u00e9 esperaba? Trep\u00f3 los pelda\u00f1os a trancos, entre gente que se abr\u00eda a su paso.\n\nHab\u00edan llevado a Elianita a su dormitorio, una habitaci\u00f3n decorada de rosa que daba sobre el jard\u00edn. Alrededor de la cama, donde la muchacha, todav\u00eda muy p\u00e1lida, comenzaba a recobrar el conocimiento y a pesta\u00f1ear, permanec\u00edan Roberto, el Pelirrojo, el ama Venancia, en tanto que su madre, sentada a su lado, le frotaba la frente con un pa\u00f1uelo empapado en alcohol. El Pelirrojo le hab\u00eda cogido una mano y la miraba con embelesamiento y angustia.\n\n\u2014Por lo pronto, todos ustedes se me van de aqu\u00ed y me dejan solo con la novia \u2014orden\u00f3 el doctor Quinteros, tomando posesi\u00f3n de su papel. Y, mientras los llevaba hacia la puerta\u2014: No se preocupen, no puede ser nada. Salgan, d\u00e9jenme examinarla.\n\nLa \u00fanica que se resisti\u00f3 fue la vieja Venancia; Margarita tuvo que sacarla casi a rastras. El doctor Quinteros volvi\u00f3 a la cama y se sent\u00f3 junto a Elianita, quien lo mir\u00f3, entre sus largas pesta\u00f1as negras, aturdida y miedosa. \u00c9l la bes\u00f3 en la frente y, mientras le tomaba la temperatura, le sonre\u00eda: no pasaba nada, no hab\u00eda de qu\u00e9 asustarse. Ten\u00eda el pulso algo agitado y respiraba ahog\u00e1ndose. El doctor advirti\u00f3 que llevaba el pecho demasiado oprimido y la ayud\u00f3 a desabotonarse:\n\n\u2014Como de todas maneras tienes que cambiarte, as\u00ed ganas tiempo, sobrina.\n\nCuando not\u00f3 la faja tan ce\u00f1ida, comprendi\u00f3 inmediatamente de qu\u00e9 se trataba, pero no hizo el menor gesto ni pregunta que pudieran revelar a su sobrina que \u00e9l sab\u00eda. Mientras se quitaba el vestido, Elianita hab\u00eda ido enrojeciendo terriblemente y ahora estaba tan turbada que no alzaba la vista ni mov\u00eda los labios. El doctor Quinteros le dijo que no era necesario que se quitara la ropa interior, s\u00f3lo la faja, que le imped\u00eda respirar. Sonriendo, mientras con aire en apariencia distra\u00eddo iba asegur\u00e1ndole que era la cosa m\u00e1s natural del mundo que el d\u00eda de su boda, con la emoci\u00f3n del acontecimiento, las fatigas y trajines precedentes, y, sobre todo, si se era tan loca de bailar horas de horas sin descanso, una novia tuviera un desmayo, le palp\u00f3 los pechos y el vientre (que, al ser liberado del abrazo poderoso de la faja, hab\u00eda literalmente saltado) y dedujo, con la seguridad de un especialista por cuyas manos han pasado millares de embarazadas, que deb\u00eda estar ya en el cuarto mes. Le examin\u00f3 la pupila, le hizo algunas preguntas tontas para despistarla, y le aconsej\u00f3 que descansara unos minutos antes de volver a la sala. Pero, eso s\u00ed, que no siguiera bailando tanto.\n\n\u2014Ya ves, s\u00f3lo era un poco de cansancio, sobrina. De todas maneras, te voy a dar algo, para contrarrestar las impresiones del d\u00eda.\n\nLe acarici\u00f3 los cabellos y, para darle tiempo a serenarse antes de que entraran sus pap\u00e1s, le hizo algunas preguntas sobre el viaje de bodas. Ella le respond\u00eda con voz l\u00e1nguida. Hacer un viaje as\u00ed era una de las mejores cosas que pod\u00edan ocurrirle a una persona; \u00e9l, con tanto trabajo, jam\u00e1s podr\u00eda darse tiempo para un recorrido tan completo. Y ya iban para tres a\u00f1os que no hab\u00eda estado en Londres, su ciudad preferida. Mientras hablaba, ve\u00eda a Elianita esconder con disimulo la faja, ponerse una bata, disponer sobre una silla un vestido, una blusa con cuello y pu\u00f1os bordados, unos zapatos, y volver a tenderse en la cama y cubrirse con el edred\u00f3n. Se pregunt\u00f3 si no habr\u00eda sido mejor hablar francamente con su sobrina y darle algunos consejos para el viaje. Pero no, la pobre hubiera pasado un mal rato, se hubiera sentido muy inc\u00f3moda. Adem\u00e1s, sin duda habr\u00eda estado viendo a un m\u00e9dico a escondidas todo este tiempo y estar\u00eda perfectamente al tanto de lo que deb\u00eda hacer. De todas maneras, llevar una faja tan ajustada era un riesgo, hubiera podido pasar un susto de verdad, o, en el futuro, perjudicar a la criatura. Lo emocion\u00f3 que Elianita, esa sobrina en la que s\u00f3lo pod\u00eda pensar como en una ni\u00f1a casta, hubiera concebido. Se lleg\u00f3 a la puerta, la abri\u00f3, y tranquiliz\u00f3 a la familia en voz alta para que lo oyera la novia:\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 m\u00e1s sana que ustedes y yo, pero muerta de fatiga. M\u00e1ndenle comprar este calmante y d\u00e9jenla descansar un rato.\n\nVenancia se hab\u00eda precipitado al dormitorio y, por sobre el hombro, el doctor Quinteros vio a la vieja criada haciendo mimos a Elianita. Entraron tambi\u00e9n sus padres y el Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez se dispon\u00eda a hacerlo, pero el doctor, discretamente, lo tom\u00f3 del brazo y lo llev\u00f3 con \u00e9l hacia el cuarto de ba\u00f1o. Cerr\u00f3 la puerta:\n\n\u2014Ha sido una imprudencia que en su estado estuviera bailando as\u00ed toda la tarde, Pelirrojo \u2014le dijo, con el tono m\u00e1s natural del mundo, mientras se jabonaba las manos\u2014. Ha podido tener un aborto. Acons\u00e9jale que no use faja, y menos tan apretada. \u00bfQu\u00e9 tiempo tiene? \u00bfTres, cuatro meses?\n\nFue en ese momento que, veloz y mort\u00edfera como una picadura de cobra, la sospecha cruz\u00f3 la mente del doctor Quinteros. Con terror, sintiendo que el silencio del cuarto de ba\u00f1o se hab\u00eda electrizado, mir\u00f3 por el espejo. El Pelirrojo ten\u00eda los ojos incr\u00e9dulamente abiertos, la boca torcida en una mueca que daba a su cara una expresi\u00f3n absurda, y estaba l\u00edvido como muerto.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTres, cuatro meses? \u2014lo oy\u00f3 articular, ator\u00e1ndose\u2014. \u00bfUn aborto?\n\nSinti\u00f3 que se le hund\u00eda la tierra. Qu\u00e9 bruto, qu\u00e9 animal eres, pens\u00f3. Y, ahora s\u00ed, con atroz precisi\u00f3n, record\u00f3 que todo el noviazgo y la boda de Elianita era una historia de pocas semanas. Hab\u00eda apartado la vista de Ant\u00fanez, se secaba las manos demasiado despacio y su mente buscaba ardorosamente alguna mentira, una coartada que sacara a ese muchacho del infierno al que acababa de empujarlo. S\u00f3lo atin\u00f3 a decir algo que le pareci\u00f3 tambi\u00e9n est\u00fapido:\n\n\u2014Elianita no debe saber que me he dado cuenta. Le he hecho creer que no. Y, sobre todo, no te preocupes. Ella est\u00e1 muy bien.\n\nSali\u00f3 r\u00e1pidamente, mir\u00e1ndolo de soslayo al pasar. Lo vio en el mismo sitio, los ojos clavados en el vac\u00edo, ahora la boca tambi\u00e9n abierta y la cara cubierta de sudor. Sinti\u00f3 que echaba llave al cuarto de ba\u00f1o desde adentro. Va a ponerse a llorar, pens\u00f3, a darse de cabezazos y a jalarse los pelos, va a maldecirme y a odiarme m\u00e1s todav\u00eda que a ella y que a \u00bfqui\u00e9n? Bajaba las escaleras despacio, con una desoladora sensaci\u00f3n de culpa, lleno de dudas, mientras iba repitiendo como un aut\u00f3mata a la gente que Elianita no ten\u00eda nada, que bajar\u00eda ahora mismo. Sali\u00f3 al jard\u00edn y respirar una bocanada de aire le hizo bien. Se acerc\u00f3 al bar, bebi\u00f3 un vaso de whisky puro y decidi\u00f3 irse a su casa sin esperar el desenlace del drama que, por ingenuidad y con las mejores intenciones, hab\u00eda provocado. Ten\u00eda ganas de encerrarse en su escritorio y, arrellanado en su sill\u00f3n de cuero negro, sumergirse en Mozart.\n\nEn la puerta de calle, sentado en el pasto, en un estado calamitoso, encontr\u00f3 a Richard. Ten\u00eda las piernas cruzadas como un Buda, la espalda apoyada en la verja, el terno arrugado y cubierto de polvo, de manchas, de hierbas. Pero fue su cara la que distrajo al doctor del recuerdo del Pelirrojo y de Elianita y lo hizo detenerse: en sus ojos inyectados el alcohol y el furor parec\u00edan haber aumentado en dosis id\u00e9nticas. Dos hilillos de baba colgaban de sus labios y su expresi\u00f3n era lastimosa y grotesca.\n\n\u2014No es posible, Richard \u2014murmur\u00f3, inclin\u00e1ndose y tratando de hacer incorporarse a su sobrino\u2014. Tus padres no pueden verte as\u00ed. Ven, vamos a la casa hasta que se te pase. Jam\u00e1s cre\u00ed que te ver\u00eda en este estado, sobrino.\n\nRichard lo miraba sin verlo, con la cabeza colgante, y aunque, obediente, trataba de levantarse, las piernas le flaqueaban. El doctor tuvo que tomarlo de los dos brazos y casi alzarlo en peso. Lo hizo andar, sujet\u00e1ndolo de los hombros; Richard se balanceaba como un mu\u00f1eco de trapo y parec\u00eda irse de bruces a cada momento. \u00abVamos a ver si conseguimos un taxi\u00bb, murmur\u00f3 el doctor, par\u00e1ndose al borde de la avenida Santa Cruz y sosteniendo a Richard de un brazo: \u00abPorque andando no llegas ni a la esquina, sobrino\u00bb. Pasaban algunos taxis, pero ocupados. El doctor ten\u00eda la mano levantada. La espera, sumada al recuerdo de Elianita y Ant\u00fanez, y la inquietud por el estado de su sobrino, comenzaban a ponerlo nervioso, a \u00e9l, que nunca hab\u00eda perdido la calma. En ese momento distingui\u00f3, en el murmullo incoherente y bajito que escapaba de los labios de Richard, la palabra \u00abrev\u00f3lver\u00bb. No pudo menos que sonre\u00edr, y, poniendo al mal tiempo buena cara, dijo, como para s\u00ed mismo, sin esperar que Richard lo escuchara o le respondiera:\n\n\u2014\u00bfY para qu\u00e9 quieres un rev\u00f3lver, sobrino?\n\nLa respuesta de Richard, que miraba el vac\u00edo con errabundos ojos homicidas, fue lenta, ronca, clar\u00edsima:\n\n\u2014Para matar al Pelirrojo \u2014hab\u00eda pronunciado cada s\u00edlaba con un odio glacial. Hizo una pausa, y, con la voz bruscamente rajada, a\u00f1adi\u00f3\u2014: O para matarme a m\u00ed.\n\nSe le volvi\u00f3 a trabar la lengua y Alberto de Quinteros ya no entendi\u00f3 lo que dec\u00eda. En eso par\u00f3 un taxi. El doctor empuj\u00f3 a Richard al interior, dio al chofer la direcci\u00f3n, subi\u00f3. En el instante en que el auto arrancaba, Richard rompi\u00f3 a llorar. Se volvi\u00f3 a mirarlo y el muchacho se dej\u00f3 ir contra \u00e9l, apoy\u00f3 la cabeza en su pecho y sigui\u00f3 sollozando, con el cuerpo movido por un temblor nervioso. El doctor le pas\u00f3 una mano por los hombros, le revolvi\u00f3 los cabellos como hab\u00eda hecho un rato antes con su hermana, y tranquiliz\u00f3 con un gesto que quer\u00eda decir \u00abel chico ha tomado demasiado\u00bb al chofer que lo miraba por el espejo retrovisor. Dej\u00f3 a Richard encogido contra \u00e9l, llorando y ensuci\u00e1ndole con sus l\u00e1grimas, babas y mocos su terno azul y su corbata plateada. No pesta\u00f1e\u00f3 siquiera, ni se agit\u00f3 su coraz\u00f3n, cuando en el incomprensible soliloquio de su sobrino, alcanz\u00f3 a entender, dos o tres veces repetida, esa frase que, sin dejar de ser atroz, sonaba tambi\u00e9n hermosa y hasta pura: \u00abPorque yo la quiero como hombre y no me importa nada de nada, t\u00edo\u00bb. En el jard\u00edn de la casa, Richard vomit\u00f3, con recias arcadas que asustaron al foxterrier y provocaron miradas censoras en el mayordomo y las sirvientas. El doctor Quinteros llev\u00f3 a Richard del brazo hasta el cuarto de hu\u00e9spedes, lo hizo enjuagarse la boca, lo desnud\u00f3, lo meti\u00f3 en la cama, le hizo tragar un fuerte somn\u00edfero, y permaneci\u00f3 a su lado, calm\u00e1ndolo con palabras y gestos afectuosos \u2014que sab\u00eda que el muchacho no pod\u00eda o\u00edr ni ver\u2014 hasta que lo sinti\u00f3 dormir el sue\u00f1o profundo de la juventud.\n\nEntonces, llam\u00f3 a la cl\u00ednica y dijo al m\u00e9dico de guardia que no ir\u00eda hasta el d\u00eda siguiente a menos de alguna cat\u00e1strofe, instruy\u00f3 al mayordomo que no estar\u00eda para nadie que llamara o viniera, se sirvi\u00f3 un whisky doble y fue a encerrarse en el cuarto de m\u00fasica. Puso en el tocadiscos un alto de piezas de Albinoni, Vivaldi y Scarlatti, pues hab\u00eda decidido que unas horas venecianas, barrocas y superficiales, ser\u00edan un buen remedio para las graves sombras de su esp\u00edritu, y, hundido en la c\u00e1lida blandura de su sill\u00f3n de cuero, la pipa escocesa de espuma de mar humeando entre los labios, cerr\u00f3 los ojos y esper\u00f3 que la m\u00fasica operara su inevitable milagro. Pens\u00f3 que \u00e9sta era una ocasi\u00f3n privilegiada para poner a prueba esa norma moral que hab\u00eda hecho suya desde joven y seg\u00fan la cual era preferible comprender que juzgar a los hombres. No se sent\u00eda horrorizado ni indignado ni demasiado sorprendido. M\u00e1s bien advert\u00eda una rec\u00f3ndita emoci\u00f3n, una benevolencia invencible, mezclada de ternura y de piedad, cuando se dec\u00eda que ahora s\u00ed estaba clar\u00edsimo por qu\u00e9 una muchacha tan linda hab\u00eda decidido casarse de pronto con un bobo y por qu\u00e9 al rey de la tabla hawaiana, al buen mozo del barrio, no se le conoci\u00f3 nunca enamorada y por qu\u00e9 siempre hab\u00eda cumplido sin protestar, con diligencia tan encomiable, las funciones de chaper\u00f3n de su hermana menor. Mientras saboreaba el perfume del tabaco y degustaba el placentero fuego de la bebida, se dec\u00eda que no hab\u00eda que preocuparse demasiado por Richard. \u00c9l encontrar\u00eda la manera de convencer a Roberto que lo enviara a estudiar al extranjero, a Londres por ejemplo, una ciudad donde encontrar\u00eda novedades e incitaciones suficientes para olvidar el pasado. Lo inquietaba, en cambio, lo com\u00eda de curiosidad lo que pasar\u00eda con los otros dos personajes de la historia. Mientras la m\u00fasica lo iba embriagando, cada vez m\u00e1s d\u00e9biles y espaciadas, un remolino de preguntas sin respuesta giraba en su mente: \u00bfabandonar\u00eda el Pelirrojo esa misma tarde a su temeraria esposa? \u00bfLo habr\u00eda hecho ya? \u00bfO callar\u00eda y, dando una indiscernible prueba de nobleza o estupidez, seguir\u00eda con esa ni\u00f1a fraudulenta que tanto hab\u00eda perseguido? \u00bfEstallar\u00eda el esc\u00e1ndalo o un pudoroso velo de disimulaci\u00f3n y orgullo pisoteado ocultar\u00eda para siempre esa tragedia de San Isidro?\n\n### III\n\nVOLV\u00cd A VER a Pedro Camacho pocos d\u00edas despu\u00e9s del incidente. Eran las siete y media de la ma\u00f1ana, y, luego de preparar el primer bolet\u00edn, estaba yendo a tomar un caf\u00e9 con leche al Bransa, cuando, al pasar por la ventanilla de la porter\u00eda de Radio Central, divis\u00e9 mi Remington. La sent\u00ed funcionando, o\u00ed el sonido de sus gordas teclas contra el rodillo, pero no vi a nadie detr\u00e1s de ella. Met\u00ed la cabeza por la ventana y el mecan\u00f3grafo era Pedro Camacho. Le hab\u00edan instalado una oficina en el cub\u00edculo del portero. En el cuarto, de techo bajo y paredes devastadas por la humedad, la vejez y los graffiti, hab\u00eda ahora un escritorio en ruinas pero tan aparatoso como la m\u00e1quina que tronaba sobre sus tablas. Las dimensiones del mueble y de la Remington se tragaban literalmente la figurilla de Pedro Camacho. Hab\u00eda a\u00f1adido al asiento un par de almohadas, pero aun as\u00ed su cara s\u00f3lo llegaba a la altura del teclado, de modo que escrib\u00eda con las manos al nivel de los ojos y daba la impresi\u00f3n de estar boxeando. Su concentraci\u00f3n era absoluta, no advert\u00eda mi presencia pese a estar a su lado. Ten\u00eda los desorbitados ojos fijos en el papel, tecleaba con dos dedos, se mord\u00eda la lengua. Llevaba el terno negro del primer d\u00eda, no se hab\u00eda quitado el saco ni la corbatita de lazo y, al verlo as\u00ed, absorto y atareado, con su cabellera y su atuendo de poeta decimon\u00f3nico, r\u00edgido y grave, sentado frente a ese escritorio y esa m\u00e1quina que le quedaban tan grandes y en esa cueva que les quedaba a los tres tan chica, tuve una sensaci\u00f3n de algo entre lastimoso y c\u00f3mico.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 madrugador, se\u00f1or Camacho \u2014lo salud\u00e9, metiendo la mitad del cuerpo en la habitaci\u00f3n.\n\nSin apartar los ojos del papel, se limit\u00f3 a indicarme, con un movimiento autoritario de la cabeza, que me callara o esperase, o ambas cosas. Opt\u00e9 por lo \u00faltimo, y, mientras \u00e9l terminaba su frase, observ\u00e9 que ten\u00eda la mesa cubierta de papeles mecanografiados, y que en el suelo hab\u00eda algunas hojas arrugadas, enviadas all\u00ed a falta de basurero. Poco despu\u00e9s apart\u00f3 las manos del teclado, me mir\u00f3, se puso de pie, me estir\u00f3 su diestra ceremoniosa y respondi\u00f3 a mi saludo con una sentencia:\n\n\u2014Para el arte no hay horario. Muy buenos d\u00edas, mi amigo.\n\nNo averig\u00fc\u00e9 si sent\u00eda claustrofobia en ese cubil porque, estaba seguro, me hubiera contestado que al arte le conven\u00eda la incomodidad. M\u00e1s bien, lo invit\u00e9 a tomar un caf\u00e9. Consult\u00f3 un artefacto prehist\u00f3rico que bailoteaba en su mu\u00f1eca delgadita y murmur\u00f3: \u00abDespu\u00e9s de hora y media de producci\u00f3n, me merezco un refrigerio\u00bb. Camino del Bransa, le pregunt\u00e9 si siempre empezaba a trabajar tan temprano y me repuso que, en su caso, a diferencia de otros creadores, la inspiraci\u00f3n era proporcional a la luz del d\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Amanece con el sol y con \u00e9l va calentando \u2014me explic\u00f3, musicalmente, mientras, a nuestro alrededor, un muchacho so\u00f1oliento barr\u00eda el aserr\u00edn lleno de puchos y suciedades del Bransa\u2014. Comienzo a escribir con la primera luz. Al mediod\u00eda mi cerebro es una antorcha. Luego, va perdiendo fuego y a eso de la tardecita paro porque s\u00f3lo quedan brasas. Pero no importa, ya que en las tardes y en las noches es cuando m\u00e1s rinde el actor. Tengo mi sistema bien distribuido.\n\nHablaba demasiado en serio y me di cuenta que apenas parec\u00eda notar que yo segu\u00eda all\u00ed; era de esos hombres que no admiten interlocutores sino oyentes. Como la primera vez, me sorprendi\u00f3 la absoluta falta de humor que hab\u00eda en \u00e9l, pese a las sonrisas de mu\u00f1eco \u2014labios que se levantan, frente que se arruga, dientes que asoman\u2014 con que aderezaba su mon\u00f3logo. Todo lo dec\u00eda con una solemnidad extrema, lo que, sumado a su perfecta dicci\u00f3n, a su f\u00edsico, a su ropaje extravagante y a sus ademanes teatrales, le daba un aire terriblemente ins\u00f3lito. Era evidente que cre\u00eda al pie de la letra todo lo que dec\u00eda: se lo notaba, a la vez, el hombre m\u00e1s afectado y el m\u00e1s sincero del mundo. Trat\u00e9 de descenderlo de las alturas art\u00edsticas en las que peroraba al terreno mediocre de los asuntos pr\u00e1cticos y le pregunt\u00e9 si ya se hab\u00eda instalado, si ten\u00eda amigos aqu\u00ed, c\u00f3mo se sent\u00eda en Lima. Esos temas terrenales le importaban un comino. Con un dejo impaciente me contest\u00f3 que hab\u00eda conseguido un atelier no lejos de Radio Central, en el jir\u00f3n Quilca, y que se sent\u00eda a sus anchas en cualquier parte, porque \u00bfacaso la patria del artista no era el mundo? En vez de caf\u00e9 pidi\u00f3 una infusi\u00f3n de yerbaluisa y menta, que, me instruy\u00f3, adem\u00e1s de grata al paladar, \u00abentonaba la mente\u00bb. La apur\u00f3 a sorbos cortos y sim\u00e9tricos, como si contara el tiempo exacto para llevarse la taza a la boca, y, apenas termin\u00f3, se puso de pie, insisti\u00f3 en repartir la cuenta, y me pidi\u00f3 que lo acompa\u00f1ara a comprar un plano con los barrios y calles de Lima. Encontramos lo que quer\u00eda en un puesto ambulante del jir\u00f3n de la Uni\u00f3n. Estudi\u00f3 el plano despleg\u00e1ndolo contra el cielo y aprob\u00f3 con satisfacci\u00f3n los colorines que diferenciaban a los distritos. Exigi\u00f3 un recibo por los veinte soles que costaba.\n\n\u2014Es un instrumento de trabajo y deben abonarlo los mercaderes \u2014decret\u00f3, mientras regres\u00e1bamos a nuestros trabajos. Tambi\u00e9n su andar era original: r\u00e1pido y nervioso, como si temiera perder el tren. En la puerta de Radio Central, al despedirnos, me se\u00f1al\u00f3 su apretada oficina como quien exhibe un palacio:\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 pr\u00e1cticamente en la calle \u2014dijo, contento consigo mismo y con las cosas\u2014. Es como si trabajara en la vereda.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo lo distrae tanto ruido de gente y de autos? \u2014me atrev\u00ed a insinuar.\n\n\u2014Al contrario \u2014me tranquiliz\u00f3, feliz de gratificarme con una \u00faltima f\u00f3rmula\u2014: Yo escribo sobre la vida y mis obras exigen el impacto de la realidad.\n\nYa me iba, cuando volvi\u00f3 a llamarme con el dedo \u00edndice. Mostr\u00e1ndome el plano de Lima, me pidi\u00f3 de manera misteriosa que, m\u00e1s tarde o ma\u00f1ana, le proporcionara algunos datos. Le dije que encantado.\n\nEn mi altillo de Panamericana, encontr\u00e9 a Pascual con el bolet\u00edn de las nueve listo. Comenzaba con una de esas noticias que le gustaban tanto. La hab\u00eda copiado de La Cr\u00f3nica, enriqueci\u00e9ndola con adjetivos de su propio acervo: \u00abEn el proceloso mar de las Antillas, se hundi\u00f3 anoche el carguero paname\u00f1o Shark, pereciendo sus ocho tripulantes, ahogados y masticados por los tiburones que infestan el susodicho mar\u00bb. Cambi\u00e9 \u00abmasticados\u00bb por \u00abdevorados\u00bb y suprim\u00ed \u00abproceloso\u00bb y \u00absusodicho\u00bb antes de darle el visto bueno. No se enoj\u00f3, porque Pascual no se enojaba nunca, pero dej\u00f3 sentada su protesta:\n\n\u2014Este don Mario, siempre jodi\u00e9ndome el estilo.\n\nToda esa semana hab\u00eda estado tratando de escribir un cuento, basado en una historia que conoc\u00eda por mi t\u00edo Pedro, quien era m\u00e9dico en una hacienda de Ancash. Un campesino asust\u00f3 a otro, una noche, disfraz\u00e1ndose de pishtaco (diablo) y sali\u00e9ndole al encuentro en medio del ca\u00f1averal. La v\u00edctima de la broma se hab\u00eda asustado tanto que descarg\u00f3 su machete sobre el pishtaco y lo mand\u00f3 al otro mundo con el cr\u00e1neo partido en dos. Luego, huy\u00f3 al monte. Alg\u00fan tiempo despu\u00e9s, un grupo de campesinos, al salir de una fiesta, hab\u00edan sorprendido a un pishtaco merodeando por el poblado y lo mataron a palos. El muerto result\u00f3 ser el asesino del primer pishtaco, que usaba disfraz de diablo para visitar de noche a su familia. Los asesinos, a su vez, se hab\u00edan echado al monte, y, disfrazados de pishtacos, ven\u00edan en las noches a la comunidad, donde dos de ellos hab\u00edan sido ya exterminados a machetazos por aterrorizados campesinos, quienes, a su vez, etc\u00e9tera. Lo que yo quer\u00eda contar no era tanto lo ocurrido en la hacienda de mi t\u00edo Pedro, como el final que se me ocurri\u00f3: que en un momento dado, entre tanto pishtaco de mentiras, se deslizaba el diablo vivito y coleando. Iba a titular mi cuento El salto cualitativo y quer\u00eda que fuese fr\u00edo, intelectual, condensado e ir\u00f3nico como un cuento de Borges, a quien acababa de descubrir por esos d\u00edas. Dedicaba al relato todos los resquicios de tiempo que me dejaban los boletines de Panamericana, la universidad y los caf\u00e9s del Bransa, y tambi\u00e9n escrib\u00eda en casa de mis abuelos, a mediod\u00eda y en las noches. Esa semana no almorc\u00e9 donde ninguno de mis t\u00edos, ni hice las visitas acostumbradas a las primas, ni fui al cine. Escrib\u00eda y romp\u00eda, o, mejor dicho, apenas hab\u00eda escrito una frase me parec\u00eda horrible y recomenzaba. Ten\u00eda la certeza de que una falta de caligraf\u00eda o de ortograf\u00eda nunca era casual, sino una llamada de atenci\u00f3n, una advertencia (del subconsciente, Dios o alguna otra persona) de que la frase no serv\u00eda y era preciso rehacerla. Pascual se quejaba: \u00abCaracho, si los Genaros descubren ese desperdicio de papel, lo pagaremos del sueldo\u00bb. Por fin, un jueves cre\u00ed tener el cuento acabado. Era un mon\u00f3logo de cinco p\u00e1ginas; al final se descubr\u00eda en el narrador al propio diablo. Le le\u00ed El salto cualitativo a Javier en mi altillo, despu\u00e9s de El Panamericano de las doce.\n\n\u2014Excelente, hermano \u2014sentenci\u00f3, aplaudiendo\u2014. \u00bfPero todav\u00eda es posible escribir sobre el diablo? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no un cuento realista? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no suprimir al diablo y dejar que todo pase entre los pishtacos de mentiras? O, si no, un cuento fant\u00e1stico, con todos los fantasmas que se te antojen. Pero sin diablos, sin diablos, porque eso huele a religi\u00f3n, a beater\u00eda, a cosas pasadas de moda.\n\nCuando se fue, hice a\u00f1icos El salto cualitativo, lo ech\u00e9 a la papelera, decid\u00ed olvidarme de los pishtacos y me fui a almorzar donde el t\u00edo Lucho. All\u00ed me enter\u00e9 que hab\u00eda brotado algo que parec\u00eda un romance entre la boliviana y alguien que yo conoc\u00eda de o\u00eddas: el hacendado y senador arequipe\u00f1o Adolfo Salcedo, emparentado de alg\u00fan modo con la tribu familiar.\n\n\u2014Lo bueno del pretendiente es que tiene plata y posici\u00f3n y que sus intenciones con Julia son serias \u2014comentaba mi t\u00eda Olga\u2014. Le ha propuesto matrimonio.\n\n\u2014Lo malo es que don Adolfo tiene cincuenta a\u00f1os y todav\u00eda no ha desmentido esa acusaci\u00f3n terrible \u2014replicaba el t\u00edo Lucho\u2014. Si tu hermana se casa con \u00e9l tendr\u00e1 que ser casta o ad\u00faltera.\n\n\u2014Esa historia con Carlota es una de las t\u00edpicas calumnias de Arequipa \u2014discut\u00eda la t\u00eda Olga\u2014. Adolfo tiene todo el aire de ser un hombre completo.\n\nLa historia del senador y de do\u00f1a Carlota la conoc\u00eda yo muy bien porque hab\u00eda sido tema de otro cuento que los elogios de Javier mandaron al basurero. Su matrimonio conmovi\u00f3 al sur de la rep\u00fablica pues don Adolfo y do\u00f1a Carlota pose\u00edan ambos tierras en Puno y su alianza ten\u00eda resonancias latifund\u00edsticas. Hab\u00edan hecho las cosas en grande, cas\u00e1ndose en la bella Iglesia de Yanahuara, con invitados venidos de todo el Per\u00fa y un banquete pantagru\u00e9lico. A las dos semanas de luna de miel, la novia hab\u00eda plantado al marido en alg\u00fan lugar del mundo y regresado escandalosamente sola a Arequipa y anunciado, ante la estupefacci\u00f3n general, que pedir\u00eda la anulaci\u00f3n del matrimonio a Roma. La madre de Adolfo Salcedo encontr\u00f3 a do\u00f1a Carlota un domingo, a la salida de misa de once, y en el mismo atrio de la catedral la increp\u00f3 con furia:\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 abandonaste as\u00ed a mi pobre hijo, bandida?\n\nCon un gesto magn\u00edfico, la latifundista pune\u00f1a hab\u00eda respondido en alta voz, para que oyera todo el mundo:\n\n\u2014Porque, a su hijo, eso que tienen los caballeros s\u00f3lo le sirve para hacer pip\u00ed, se\u00f1ora.\n\nHab\u00eda conseguido anular el matrimonio religioso y Adolfo Salcedo era una fuente inagotable de chistes en las reuniones familiares. Desde que hab\u00eda conocido a la t\u00eda Julia, la asediaba con invitaciones al Grill Bol\u00edvar y al 91, le regalaba perfumes y la bombardeaba con canastas de rosas. Yo estaba feliz con la noticia del romance y esperaba que la t\u00eda Julia apareciera para lanzarle alg\u00fan dardo sobre su nuevo candidato. Pero me dej\u00f3 con los crespos hechos porque fue ella la que, al presentarse en el comedor, a la hora del caf\u00e9 \u2014llegaba con un alto de paquetes\u2014 anunci\u00f3 con una carcajada:\n\n\u2014Los chismes eran ciertos. El senador Salcedo no resopla.\n\n\u2014Julia, por Dios, no seas malcriada \u2014protest\u00f3 la t\u00eda Olga\u2014. Cualquiera creer\u00eda que...\n\n\u2014Me lo ha contado \u00e9l mismo, esta ma\u00f1ana \u2014aclar\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia, feliz con la tragedia del latifundista.\n\nHab\u00eda sido muy normal hasta que cumpli\u00f3 veinticinco a\u00f1os. Entonces, durante unas infortunadas vacaciones en Estados Unidos, sobrevino el percance. En Chicago, San Francisco o Miami \u2014la t\u00eda Julia no se acordaba\u2014 el joven Adolfo hab\u00eda conquistado (cre\u00eda \u00e9l) a una se\u00f1ora en un cabaret, y ella se lo llev\u00f3 a un hotel, y estaba en plena acci\u00f3n cuando sinti\u00f3 en la espalda la punta de un cuchillo. Se volvi\u00f3 y era un tuerto que med\u00eda dos metros. No lo hirieron, no le pegaron, s\u00f3lo le robaron el reloj, una medalla, sus d\u00f3lares. As\u00ed comenz\u00f3. Nunca m\u00e1s. Desde entonces, vez que estaba con una dama e iba a entrar en acci\u00f3n sent\u00eda el fr\u00edo del metal en la columna, ve\u00eda la cara averiada del tuerto, se pon\u00eda a transpirar y se le bajaban los \u00e1nimos. Hab\u00eda consultado montones de m\u00e9dicos, de psic\u00f3logos, y hasta a un curandero de Arequipa, que lo hac\u00eda enterrarse vivo, las noches de luna, al pie de los volcanes.\n\n\u2014No seas mala, no te burles, pobrecito \u2014temblaba de risa la t\u00eda Olga.\n\n\u2014Si estuviera segura que se va a quedar siempre as\u00ed, me casar\u00eda con \u00e9l, por su plata \u2014dec\u00eda inescrupulosamente la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. \u00bfPero, y si yo lo curo? \u00bfTe imaginas a ese vejestorio tratando de recuperar el tiempo perdido conmigo?\n\nPens\u00e9 en la felicidad que habr\u00eda causado a Pascual la aventura del senador arequipe\u00f1o, el entusiasmo con que le hubiera consagrado un bolet\u00edn entero. El t\u00edo Lucho le advert\u00eda a la t\u00eda Julia que si se mostraba tan exigente no encontrar\u00eda un marido peruano. Ella se quejaba de que, aqu\u00ed tambi\u00e9n, como en Bolivia, los buenos mozos fueran pobres y los ricos feos, y de que cuando aparec\u00eda un buen mozo rico siempre estuviera casado. De pronto, se encar\u00f3 conmigo y me pregunt\u00f3 si no hab\u00eda asomado toda esa semana por miedo a que me arrastrara otra vez al cine. Le dije que no, invent\u00e9 ex\u00e1menes, le propuse que fu\u00e9ramos esa noche.\n\n\u2014Regio, a la del Leuro \u2014decidi\u00f3, dictatorialmente\u2014. Es una pel\u00edcula en la que se llora a mares.\n\nEn el colectivo, de regreso a Radio Panamericana, le estuve dando vueltas a la idea de intentar otra vez un cuento con la historia de Adolfo Salcedo; algo ligero y risue\u00f1o, a la manera de Somerset Maugham, o de un erotismo malicioso, como en Maupassant. En la radio, la secretaria de Genaro hijo, Nelly, estaba ri\u00e9ndose sola en su escritorio. \u00bfCu\u00e1l era el chiste?\n\n\u2014Ha habido un l\u00edo en Radio Central entre Pedro Camacho y Genaro pap\u00e1 \u2014me cont\u00f3\u2014. El boliviano no quiere ning\u00fan actor argentino en los radioteatros o dice que se va. Consigui\u00f3 que Luciano Pando y Josefina S\u00e1nchez lo apoyen y se ha salido con su gusto. Van a cancelarles los contratos, \u00bfqu\u00e9 bueno, no?\n\nHab\u00eda una feroz rivalidad entre los locutores, animadores y actores nativos y los argentinos \u2014llegaban al Per\u00fa por oleadas, muchos de ellos expulsados por razones pol\u00edticas\u2014 y me imagin\u00e9 que el escriba boliviano hab\u00eda hecho esa operaci\u00f3n para ganarse la simpat\u00eda de sus compa\u00f1eros de trabajo abor\u00edgenes. Pero no, pronto descubr\u00ed que era incapaz de esa clase de c\u00e1lculos. Su odio a los argentinos en general, y a los actores y actrices argentinos en particular, parec\u00eda desinteresado. Fui a verlo despu\u00e9s del bolet\u00edn de las siete, para decirle que ten\u00eda un rato libre y pod\u00eda ayudarlo con los datos que necesitaba. Me hizo pasar a su cubil y, con un gesto munificente, me ofreci\u00f3 el \u00fanico asiento posible, fuera de su silla: una esquina de la mesa que le serv\u00eda de escritorio. Segu\u00eda con su saco y su corbatita de lazo, rodeado de papeles mecanografiados, que apil\u00f3 cuidadosamente junto a la Remington. El plano de Lima, clavado con tachuelas, cubr\u00eda parte de la pared. Ten\u00eda m\u00e1s colorines, unas extra\u00f1as figuras con l\u00e1piz rojo y unas iniciales distintas en cada barrio. Le pregunt\u00e9 qu\u00e9 eran esas marcas y letras.\n\nAsinti\u00f3, con una de esas sonrisitas mec\u00e1nicas, en las que hab\u00eda siempre una \u00edntima satisfacci\u00f3n y una especie de benevolencia. Acomod\u00e1ndose en la silla, peror\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Yo trabajo sobre la vida, mis obras se aferran a la realidad como la cepa a la vid. Para eso lo necesito. Quiero saber si ese mundo es o no es as\u00ed.\n\nEstaba se\u00f1al\u00e1ndome el plano y yo acerqu\u00e9 la cabeza para tratar de descifrar lo que quer\u00eda decirme. Las iniciales eran herm\u00e9ticas, no alud\u00edan a ninguna instituci\u00f3n ni persona reconocible. Lo \u00fanico claro era que hab\u00eda aislado en c\u00edrculos rojos los barrios dis\u00edmiles de Miraflores y San Isidro, de La Victoria y del Callao. Le dije que no entend\u00eda nada, que me explicara.\n\n\u2014Es muy f\u00e1cil \u2014me repuso, con impaciencia y voz de cura\u2014. Lo m\u00e1s importante es la verdad, que siempre es arte, y, en cambio, la mentira no, o s\u00f3lo rara vez. Debo saber si Lima es como lo he marcado en el plano. Por ejemplo, \u00bfcorresponden a San Isidro las dos Aes? \u00bfEs un barrio de Alto Abolengo, de Aristocracia Afortunada?\n\nHizo \u00e9nfasis en las Aes iniciales, con una entonaci\u00f3n que quer\u00eda decir \u00abS\u00f3lo los ciegos no ven la luz del sol\u00bb. Hab\u00eda clasificado los barrios de Lima seg\u00fan su importancia social. Pero lo curioso era el tipo de calificativos, la naturaleza de la nomenclatura. En algunos casos hab\u00eda acertado, en otros la arbitrariedad era absoluta. Por ejemplo, admit\u00ed que las iniciales MPA (Mesocracia Profesionales Amas de casa) conven\u00eda a Jes\u00fas Mar\u00eda, pero le advert\u00ed que resultaba bastante injusto estampar en La Victoria y El Porvenir la atroz divisa VMMH (Vagos Maricones Maleantes Hetairas) y sumamente discutible reducir el Callao a MPZ (Marineros Pescadores Zambos) o el Cercado y El Agustino a FOLI (F\u00e1mulas Operarios Labradores Indios).\n\n\u2014No se trata de una clasificaci\u00f3n cient\u00edfica sino art\u00edstica \u2014me inform\u00f3, haciendo pases m\u00e1gicos con sus manitas pigmeas\u2014. No me interesa toda la gente que compone cada barrio, sino la m\u00e1s llamativa, la que da a cada sitio su perfume y su color. Si un personaje es ginec\u00f3logo debe vivir donde le corresponde y lo mismo si es sargento de la polic\u00eda.\n\nMe someti\u00f3 a un interrogatorio prolijo y divertido (para m\u00ed, pues \u00e9l manten\u00eda su seriedad funeral) sobre la topograf\u00eda humana de la ciudad, y advert\u00ed que las cosas que le interesaban m\u00e1s se refer\u00edan a los extremos: millonarios y mendigos, blancos y negros, santos y criminales. Seg\u00fan mis respuestas, a\u00f1ad\u00eda, cambiaba o suprim\u00eda iniciales en el plano con un gesto veloz y sin vacilar un segundo, lo que me hizo pensar que hab\u00eda inventado y usaba ese sistema de catalogaci\u00f3n hac\u00eda tiempo. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 hab\u00eda marcado s\u00f3lo Miraflores, San Isidro, La Victoria y el Callao?\n\n\u2014Porque, indudablemente, ser\u00e1n los escenarios principales \u2014dijo, paseando sus ojos saltones con suficiencia napole\u00f3nica sobre los cuatro distritos\u2014. Soy hombre que odia las medias tintas, el agua turbia, el caf\u00e9 flojo. Me gustan el s\u00ed o el no, los hombres masculinos y las mujeres femeninas, la noche o el d\u00eda. En mis obras siempre hay arist\u00f3cratas o plebe, prostitutas o madonas. La mesocracia no me inspira y tampoco a mi p\u00fablico.\n\n\u2014Se parece usted a los escritores rom\u00e1nticos \u2014se me ocurri\u00f3 decirle, en mala hora.\n\n\u2014En todo caso, ellos se parecen a m\u00ed \u2014salt\u00f3 en su silla, con la voz resentida\u2014. Nunca he plagiado a nadie. Se me puede reprochar todo, menos esa infamia. En cambio, a m\u00ed me han robado de la manera m\u00e1s inicua.\n\nQuise explicarle que lo del parecido a los rom\u00e1nticos no hab\u00eda sido dicho con \u00e1nimo de ofenderlo, que era una broma, pero no me o\u00eda porque, de pronto, se hab\u00eda enfurecido extraordinariamente, y, gesticulando como si se hallara ante un auditorio expectante, despotricaba con su magn\u00edfica voz:\n\n\u2014Toda Argentina est\u00e1 inundada de obras m\u00edas, envilecidas por plum\u00edferos rioplatenses. \u00bfSe ha topado usted en la vida con argentinos? Cuando vea uno, c\u00e1mbiese de vereda, porque la argentinidad, como el sarampi\u00f3n, es contagiosa.\n\nHab\u00eda palidecido y le vibraba la nariz. Apret\u00f3 los dientes e hizo una mueca de asco. Me sent\u00ed confuso ante esa nueva expresi\u00f3n de su personalidad y balbuce\u00e9 algo vago y general, era lamentable que en Am\u00e9rica Latina no hubiera una ley de derechos de autor, que no se protegiera la propiedad intelectual. Hab\u00eda vuelto a meter la pata.\n\n\u2014No se trata de eso, a m\u00ed no me importa ser plagiado \u2014replic\u00f3, m\u00e1s furioso a\u00fan\u2014. Los artistas no trabajamos por la gloria, sino por amor al hombre. Qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s quisiera yo que mi obra se difundiera por el mundo, aunque sea bajo otras r\u00fabricas. Lo que no se les puede perdonar a los cac\u00f3grafos del Plata es que alteren mis libretos, que los encanallen. \u00bfSabe usted lo que les hacen? Adem\u00e1s de cambiarles los t\u00edtulos y los nombres a los personajes, por supuesto. Los condimentan siempre con esas esencias argentinas...\n\n\u2014La arrogancia \u2014lo interrump\u00ed, seguro de dar esta vez en el clavo\u2014, la cursiler\u00eda.\n\nNeg\u00f3 con la cabeza, despectivamente, y pronunci\u00f3, con una solemnidad tr\u00e1gica y una voz lenta y cavernosa que retumb\u00f3 en el cubil, las \u00fanicas dos palabrotas que le o\u00ed decir nunca:\n\n\u2014La cojudez y la mariconer\u00eda.\n\nSent\u00ed deseos de jalarle la lengua, de saber por qu\u00e9 su odio a los argentinos era m\u00e1s vehemente que el de las gentes normales, pero, al verlo tan descompuesto, no me atrev\u00ed. Hizo un gesto de amargura y se pas\u00f3 una mano ante los ojos, como para borrar ciertos fantasmas. Luego, con expresi\u00f3n dolida, cerr\u00f3 las ventanas de su cubil, cuadr\u00f3 el rodillo de la Remington y le coloc\u00f3 su funda, se acomod\u00f3 la corbatita de lazo, sac\u00f3 de su escritorio un grueso libro que se puso bajo el sobaco y me indic\u00f3 con un gesto que sali\u00e9ramos. Apag\u00f3 la luz y, de afuera, ech\u00f3 llave a su cueva. Le pregunt\u00e9 qu\u00e9 libro era \u00e9se. Le pas\u00f3 afectuosamente la mano por el lomo, en una caricia id\u00e9ntica a la que podr\u00eda haber hecho a un gato.\n\n\u2014Un viejo compa\u00f1ero de aventuras \u2014murmur\u00f3, con emoci\u00f3n, alcanz\u00e1ndomelo\u2014. Un amigo fiel y un buen ayudante de trabajo.\n\nEl libro, publicado en tiempos prehist\u00f3ricos por Espasa Calpe \u2014sus gruesas tapas ten\u00edan todas las manchas y rasgu\u00f1os del mundo y sus hojas estaban amarillentas\u2014 era de un autor desconocido y de prontuario pomposo (Adalberto Castej\u00f3n de la Reguera, Licenciado por la Universidad de Murcia en Letras Cl\u00e1sicas, Gram\u00e1tica y Ret\u00f3rica), y el t\u00edtulo era extenso: Diez Mil Citas Literarias de los Cien Mejores Escritores del Mundo. Ten\u00eda un subt\u00edtulo: \u00abLo que dijeron Cervantes, Shakespeare, Moli\u00e8re, etc\u00e9tera, sobre Dios, la Vida, la Muerte, el Amor, el Sufrimiento, etc\u00e9tera...\u00bb.\n\nEst\u00e1bamos ya en la calle Bel\u00e9n. Al darle la mano se me ocurri\u00f3 mirar el reloj. Sent\u00ed p\u00e1nico: eran las diez de la noche. Ten\u00eda la sensaci\u00f3n de haber estado media hora con el artista y en realidad el an\u00e1lisis sociol\u00f3gico-chismogr\u00e1fico de la ciudad y la abominaci\u00f3n de los argentinos hab\u00eda demorado tres. Corr\u00ed a Panamericana, convencido de que Pascual habr\u00eda dedicado los quince minutos del bolet\u00edn de las nueve a alg\u00fan pir\u00f3mano de Turqu\u00eda o a alg\u00fan infanticidio en El Porvenir. Pero las cosas no deb\u00edan de haber ido tan mal, pues me encontr\u00e9 a los Genaros en el ascensor y no parec\u00edan furiosos. Me contaron que esa tarde hab\u00edan firmado contrato con Lucho Gatica para que viniera una semana a Lima como exclusividad de Panamericana. En mi altillo, revis\u00e9 los boletines y eran pasables. Sin apurarme, fui a tomar el colectivo a Miraflores en la plaza San Mart\u00edn.\n\nLlegu\u00e9 a la casa de los abuelos a las once de la noche; ya estaban durmiendo. Me dejaban siempre la comida en el horno, pero esta vez, adem\u00e1s del plato de apanado con arroz y huevo frito \u2014mi invariable men\u00fa\u2014 hab\u00eda un mensaje escrito con letra temblona: \u00abLlam\u00f3 tu t\u00edo Lucho. Que dejaste plantada a Julita, que ten\u00edan que ir al cine. Que eres un salvaje, que la llames para disculparte: el Abuelo\u00bb.\n\nPens\u00e9 que olvidarse de los boletines y de una cita con una dama por el escriba boliviano era demasiado. Me acost\u00e9 inc\u00f3modo y malhumorado por mi involuntaria malacrianza. Estuve dando vueltas antes de pescar el sue\u00f1o, tratando de convencerme que era culpa de ella, por imponerme esas idas al cine, a esas horribles truculencias, y buscando alguna excusa para cuando la llamara al d\u00eda siguiente. No se me ocurri\u00f3 ninguna plausible y no me atrev\u00ed a decirle la verdad. Hice m\u00e1s bien un gesto heroico. Despu\u00e9s del bolet\u00edn de las ocho, fui a una florer\u00eda del centro y le envi\u00e9 un ramo de rosas que me cost\u00f3 cien soles con una tarjeta en la que, despu\u00e9s de mucho dudar, escrib\u00ed lo que me pareci\u00f3 un prodigio de laconismo y elegancia: \u00abRendidas excusas\u00bb.\n\nEn la tarde hice algunos bocetos, entre bolet\u00edn y bolet\u00edn, de mi cuento er\u00f3tico-picaresco sobre la tragedia del senador arequipe\u00f1o. Me propon\u00eda trabajar fuerte en \u00e9l esa noche, pero Javier vino a buscarme despu\u00e9s de El Panamericano y me llev\u00f3 a una sesi\u00f3n de espiritismo, en los Barrios Altos. El m\u00e9dium era un escribano, a quien hab\u00eda conocido en las oficinas del Banco de Reserva. Me hab\u00eda hablado mucho de \u00e9l, pues siempre le contaba sus percances con las almas, que acud\u00edan a comunicarse con \u00e9l no s\u00f3lo cuando las convocaba en sesiones oficiales, sino espont\u00e1neamente, en las circunstancias m\u00e1s inesperadas. Sol\u00edan gastarle bromas, como hacer sonar el tel\u00e9fono al amanecer: al descolgar el aparato escuchaba al otro lado de la l\u00ednea la inconfundible risa de su bisabuela, muerta hac\u00eda medio siglo y domiciliada desde entonces (se lo hab\u00eda dicho ella misma) en el purgatorio. Se le aparec\u00edan en los \u00f3mnibus, en los colectivos, caminando por la calle. Le hablaban al o\u00eddo y \u00e9l ten\u00eda que permanecer mudo e impasible (\u00abdesairarlas\u00bb parece que dec\u00eda) a fin de que la gente no lo creyera loco. Yo, fascinado, le hab\u00eda pedido a Javier que organizara alguna sesi\u00f3n con el escribano m\u00e9dium. \u00c9ste hab\u00eda aceptado, pero ven\u00eda dando largas varias semanas, con pretextos climatol\u00f3gicos. Era indispensable esperar ciertas fases de la luna, el cambio de mareas y aun factores m\u00e1s especializados pues, al parecer, las \u00e1nimas eran sensibles a la humedad, las constelaciones, los vientos. Por fin hab\u00eda llegado el d\u00eda.\n\nNos cost\u00f3 un triunfo dar con la casa del escribano m\u00e9dium, un departamentito s\u00f3rdido, apretado en el fondo de una quinta del jir\u00f3n Cangallo. El personaje, en la realidad, era mucho menos interesante que en los cuentos de Javier. Sesent\u00f3n, solter\u00f3n, calvito, oloroso a linimento, ten\u00eda una mirada bovina y una conversaci\u00f3n tan empecinadamente banal que nadie hubiera sospechado su promiscuidad con los esp\u00edritus. Nos recibi\u00f3 en una salita desvencijada y grasienta; nos convid\u00f3 unas galletas de agua con trocitos de queso fresco y una parca mulita de pisco. Hasta que dieron las doce nos estuvo contando, con un aire convencional, sus experiencias del m\u00e1s all\u00e1. Hab\u00edan comenzado al enviudar, veinte a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s. La muerte de su mujer lo hab\u00eda sumido en una tristeza inconsolable, hasta que un d\u00eda un amigo lo salv\u00f3, mostr\u00e1ndole el camino del espiritismo. Era lo m\u00e1s importante que le hab\u00eda pasado en la vida:\n\n\u2014No s\u00f3lo porque uno tiene la oportunidad de seguir viendo y oyendo a los seres queridos \u2014nos dec\u00eda, con el tono que se comenta una fiesta de bautizo\u2014, sino porque distrae mucho, las horas se van sin darse cuenta.\n\nEscuch\u00e1ndolo, se ten\u00eda la impresi\u00f3n de que hablar con los muertos era algo comparable, en esencia, a ver una pel\u00edcula o un partido de f\u00fatbol (y, sin duda, menos divertido). Su versi\u00f3n de la otra vida era terriblemente cotidiana, desmoralizadora. No hab\u00eda diferencia alguna de cualidad entre all\u00e1 y aqu\u00ed, a juzgar por las cosas que le contaban: los esp\u00edritus se enfermaban, se enamoraban, se casaban, se reproduc\u00edan, viajaban, y la \u00fanica diferencia era que nunca se mor\u00edan. Yo le lanzaba miradas homicidas a Javier, cuando dieron las doce. El escribano nos hizo sentar alrededor de la mesa (no redonda sino cuadrangular), apag\u00f3 la luz, nos orden\u00f3 unir las manos. Hubo unos segundos de silencio y yo, nervioso con la espera, tuve la ilusi\u00f3n de que la cosa iba a ponerse interesante. Pero comenzaron a presentarse los esp\u00edritus y el escribano, con la misma voz dom\u00e9stica, empez\u00f3 a preguntarles las cosas m\u00e1s aburridas del mundo: \u00ab\u00bfY c\u00f3mo est\u00e1s, pues, Zoilita? Encantado de o\u00edrte; aqu\u00ed me tienes, pues, con estos amigos, muy buenas personas, interesados en conectarse con el mundo tuyo, Zoilita. \u00bfC\u00f3mo, qu\u00e9 cosa? \u00bfQue los salude? C\u00f3mo no, Zoilita, de tu parte. Dice que los salude con todo cari\u00f1o y que si pueden recen por ella de vez en cuando para que salga m\u00e1s pronto del purgatorio\u00bb. Despu\u00e9s de Zoilita se presentaron una serie de parientes y amigos con los que el escribano mantuvo di\u00e1logos semejantes. Todos estaban en el purgatorio, todos nos enviaron saludos, todos ped\u00edan rezos. Javier se empe\u00f1\u00f3 en llamar a alguien que estuviera en el infierno, para que nos sacara de dudas, pero el m\u00e9dium, sin vacilar un segundo, nos explic\u00f3 que era imposible: los de all\u00ed s\u00f3lo pod\u00edan ser citados los tres primeros d\u00edas de mes impar y apenas se les o\u00eda la voz. Javier pidi\u00f3 entonces al ama que hab\u00eda criado a su madre y a \u00e9l y a sus hermanos. Do\u00f1a Gumercinda compareci\u00f3, mand\u00f3 saludos, dijo que recordaba a Javier con mucho cari\u00f1o y que ya estaba haciendo sus ataditos para salir del purgatorio e ir al encuentro del Se\u00f1or. Yo ped\u00ed al escribano que llamara a mi hermano Juan, y, sorprendentemente (porque nunca hab\u00eda tenido hermanos), vino y me hizo decir, por la benigna voz del m\u00e9dium, que no deb\u00eda preocuparme por \u00e9l pues estaba con Dios y que siempre rezaba por m\u00ed. Tranquilizado con esta noticia, me despreocup\u00e9 de la sesi\u00f3n y me dediqu\u00e9 a escribir mentalmente mi cuento sobre el senador. Se me ocurri\u00f3 un t\u00edtulo enigm\u00e1tico: La cara incompleta. Decid\u00ed, mientras Javier, incansable, exig\u00eda al escribano que convocara alg\u00fan \u00e1ngel, o, al menos, alg\u00fan personaje hist\u00f3rico como Manco C\u00e1pac, que el senador terminar\u00eda resolviendo su problema mediante una fantas\u00eda freudiana: pondr\u00eda a su esposa, en el momento del amor, un parche de pirata en el ojo.\n\nLa sesi\u00f3n termin\u00f3 cerca de las dos de la madrugada. Mientras camin\u00e1bamos por las calles de los Barrios Altos, en busca de un taxi que nos llevara hasta la plaza San Mart\u00edn para tomar el colectivo, yo enloquec\u00eda a Javier dici\u00e9ndole que por su culpa el m\u00e1s all\u00e1 hab\u00eda perdido para m\u00ed poes\u00eda y misterio, que por su culpa hab\u00eda tenido la evidencia de que todos los muertos se volv\u00edan imb\u00e9ciles, que por su culpa ya no podr\u00eda ser agn\u00f3stico y tendr\u00eda que vivir con la certidumbre de que, en la otra vida, que exist\u00eda, me esperaba una eternidad de cretinismo y aburrimiento. Encontramos un taxi y en castigo lo pag\u00f3 Javier.\n\nEn casa, junto al apanado, huevo y arroz, encontr\u00e9 otro mensaje: \u00abTe llam\u00f3 Julita. Que recibi\u00f3 tus rosas, que est\u00e1n muy lindas, que le gustaron mucho. Que no creas que por las rosas te librar\u00e1s de llevarla al cine cualquiera de estos d\u00edas: el Abuelo\u00bb.\n\nAl d\u00eda siguiente era cumplea\u00f1os del t\u00edo Lucho. Le compr\u00e9 una corbata de regalo y me dispon\u00eda a ir a su casa al mediod\u00eda, pero Genaro hijo se me present\u00f3 intempestivamente en el altillo y me oblig\u00f3 a ir a almorzar con \u00e9l en el Raimondi. Quer\u00eda que lo ayudara a redactar los avisos que publicar\u00eda ese domingo en los diarios, anunciando los radioteatros de Pedro Camacho, que arrancaban el lunes. \u00bfNo hubiera sido m\u00e1s l\u00f3gico que el propio artista interviniera en la redacci\u00f3n de esos avisos?\n\n\u2014La vaina es que se ha negado \u2014me explic\u00f3 Genaro hijo, fumando como una chimenea\u2014. Sus libretos no necesitan publicidad mercenaria, se imponen solos y no s\u00e9 qu\u00e9 otras tonter\u00edas. El tipo est\u00e1 resultando complicado, muchas man\u00edas. \u00bfSupiste lo de los argentinos, no? Nos ha obligado a rescindir contratos, a pagar indemnizaciones. Espero que sus programas justifiquen estos engreimientos.\n\nMientras redact\u00e1bamos los avisos, despach\u00e1bamos dos corvinas, beb\u00edamos cerveza helada y ve\u00edamos, de tanto en tanto, desfilar por las vigas del Raimondi esos grises ratoncitos que parecen puestos all\u00ed como prueba de antig\u00fcedad del local, Genaro hijo me cont\u00f3 otro conflicto que hab\u00eda tenido con Pedro Camacho. La raz\u00f3n: los protagonistas de los cuatro radioteatros con que debutaba en Lima. En los cuatro, el gal\u00e1n era un cincuent\u00f3n \u00abque conservaba maravillosamente la juventud\u00bb.\n\n\u2014Le hemos explicado que todos los surveys han demostrado que el p\u00fablico quiere galanes de entre treinta y treinta y cinco a\u00f1os, pero es una mula \u2014se aflig\u00eda Genaro hijo, echando humo por la boca y la nariz\u2014. \u00bfY si he metido la pata y el boliviano es un fracaso descomunal?\n\nRecord\u00e9 que, en un momento de nuestra conversaci\u00f3n de la v\u00edspera en su cubil de Radio Central, el artista hab\u00eda dogmatizado, con fuego, sobre los cincuenta a\u00f1os del hombre. La edad del apogeo cerebral y de la fuerza sensual, dec\u00eda, de la experiencia digerida. La edad en que se era m\u00e1s deseado por las mujeres y m\u00e1s temido por los hombres. Y hab\u00eda insistido, sospechosamente, en que la vejez era algo optativo. Deduje que el escriba boliviano ten\u00eda cincuenta a\u00f1os y que lo aterraba la vejez: un rayito de debilidad humana en ese esp\u00edritu marm\u00f3reo.\n\nCuando terminamos de redactar los avisos era tarde para dar un salto a Miraflores, de modo que telefone\u00e9 al t\u00edo Lucho para decirle que ir\u00eda a abrazarlo a la noche. Supuse que encontrar\u00eda una aglomeraci\u00f3n de familiares festej\u00e1ndolo, pero no hab\u00eda nadie, aparte de la t\u00eda Olga y la t\u00eda Julia. Los parientes hab\u00edan desfilado por la casa durante el d\u00eda. Estaban tomando whiskys y me sirvieron una copa. La t\u00eda Julia me agradeci\u00f3 otra vez las rosas \u2014las vi sobre el aparador de la sala y eran poqu\u00edsimas\u2014 y se puso a bromear, como siempre, pidi\u00e9ndome que confesara qu\u00e9 clase de programa me hab\u00eda salido la noche que la dej\u00e9 plantada: \u00bfalguna piba de la universidad, alguna huachafita de la radio? Llevaba un vestido azul, zapatos blancos, maquillaje y peinado de peluquer\u00eda; se re\u00eda con una risa fuerte y directa y ten\u00eda voz ronca y ojos insolentes. Descubr\u00ed, algo tard\u00edamente, que era una mujer atractiva. El t\u00edo Lucho, en un arrebato de entusiasmo, dijo que cincuenta a\u00f1os se cumpl\u00edan s\u00f3lo una vez en la vida y que nos fu\u00e9ramos al Grill Bol\u00edvar. Pens\u00e9 que, por segundo d\u00eda consecutivo, tendr\u00eda que dejar de lado la redacci\u00f3n de mi cuento sobre el senador eunuco y pervertido (\u00bfy si le pon\u00eda ese t\u00edtulo?). Pero no lo lament\u00e9, me sent\u00ed muy contento de verme embarcado en esa fiesta. La t\u00eda Olga, despu\u00e9s de examinarme, dictamin\u00f3 que mi facha no era la m\u00e1s adecuada para el Grill Bol\u00edvar e hizo que el t\u00edo Lucho me prestara una camisa limpia y una corbata llamativa que compensaran un poco lo viejo y arrugado del terno. La camisa me qued\u00f3 grande, y yo sent\u00eda angustia por mi cuello bailando en el aire (lo que dio lugar a que la t\u00eda Julia comenzara a llamarme Popeye).\n\nNunca hab\u00eda ido al Grill Bol\u00edvar y me pareci\u00f3 el lugar m\u00e1s refinado y elegante del mundo, y la comida la m\u00e1s exquisita que hab\u00eda probado jam\u00e1s. Una orquesta tocaba boleros, pasodobles, blues, y la estrella del show era una francesa, blanca como la leche, que recitaba acariciadoramente sus canciones mientras daba la impresi\u00f3n de masturbar el micro con las manos, y a la que el t\u00edo Lucho, de un buen humor que crec\u00eda con las copas, vitoreaba en una jerigonza que \u00e9l llamaba franc\u00e9s: \u00ab\u00a1Vravoooo! \u00a1Vravoooo mamuasel cher\u00ed!\u00bb. El primero en lanzarse a bailar fui yo, que arrastr\u00e9 a la t\u00eda Olga a la pista, ante mi propia sorpresa, pues no sab\u00eda bailar (estaba entonces firmemente convencido de que una vocaci\u00f3n literaria era incompatible con el baile y los deportes), pero, felizmente, hab\u00eda mucha gente, y, en la apretura y penumbra, nadie pudo advertirlo. La t\u00eda Julia, a su vez, hac\u00eda pasar un mal rato al t\u00edo Lucho oblig\u00e1ndolo a bailar separado de ella y haciendo figuras. Ella bailaba bien y las miradas de muchos se\u00f1ores la segu\u00edan.\n\nLa pieza siguiente saqu\u00e9 a la t\u00eda Julia y la previne que no sab\u00eda bailar, pero, como tocaban un lent\u00edsimo blues, desempe\u00f1\u00e9 mi funci\u00f3n con decoro. Bailamos un par de piezas y nos fuimos alejando insensiblemente de la mesa del t\u00edo Lucho y la t\u00eda Olga. En el instante en que, terminada la m\u00fasica, la t\u00eda Julia hac\u00eda un movimiento para apartarse de m\u00ed, la retuve y la bes\u00e9 en la mejilla, muy cerca de los labios. Me mir\u00f3 con asombro, como si presenciara un prodigio. Hab\u00eda cambio de orquesta y debimos regresar a la mesa. All\u00ed, la t\u00eda Julia se puso a hacer bromas al t\u00edo Lucho sobre los cincuenta a\u00f1os, edad a partir de la cual los hombres se volv\u00edan viejos verdes. A ratos me lanzaba una r\u00e1pida ojeada, como para verificar si yo estaba realmente ah\u00ed, y en sus ojos se pod\u00eda leer clar\u00edsimo que todav\u00eda no le cab\u00eda en la cabeza que la hubiera besado. La t\u00eda Olga estaba ya cansada y quer\u00eda que nos fu\u00e9ramos, pero yo insist\u00ed en bailar una pieza m\u00e1s. \u00abEl intelectual se corrompe\u00bb, constat\u00f3 el t\u00edo Lucho y arrastr\u00f3 a la t\u00eda Olga a bailar la pieza del estribo. Yo saqu\u00e9 a la t\u00eda Julia y, mientras bail\u00e1bamos, ella permanec\u00eda (por primera vez) muda. Cuando, entre la masa de parejas, el t\u00edo Lucho y la t\u00eda Olga quedaron distanciados, la estrech\u00e9 un poco contra m\u00ed y le junt\u00e9 la mejilla. La o\u00ed murmurar, confusa: \u00abOye, Marito...\u00bb, pero la interrump\u00ed dici\u00e9ndole al o\u00eddo: \u00abTe proh\u00edbo que me vuelvas a llamar Marito\u00bb. Ella separ\u00f3 un poco la cara para mirarme e intent\u00f3 sonre\u00edr, y entonces, en una acci\u00f3n casi mec\u00e1nica, me inclin\u00e9 y la bes\u00e9 en los labios. Fue un contacto muy r\u00e1pido pero no lo esperaba y la sorpresa hizo que esta vez dejara un momento de bailar. Ahora su estupefacci\u00f3n era total: abr\u00eda los ojos y estaba con la boca abierta. Cuando termin\u00f3 la pieza, el t\u00edo Lucho pag\u00f3 la cuenta y nos fuimos. En el trayecto a Miraflores \u2014\u00edbamos los dos en el asiento de atr\u00e1s\u2014 cog\u00ed la mano de la t\u00eda Julia, la apret\u00e9 con ternura y la mantuve entre las m\u00edas. No la retir\u00f3, pero se la notaba a\u00fan sorprendida y no abr\u00eda la boca. Al bajar, en casa de los abuelos, me pregunt\u00e9 cu\u00e1ntos a\u00f1os mayor que yo ser\u00eda.\n\n### IV\n\nEN LA NOCHE chalaca, h\u00fameda y oscura como boca de lobo, el sargento Lituma se subi\u00f3 las solapas del capote, se frot\u00f3 las manos y se dispuso a cumplir con su deber. Era un hombre en la flor de la edad, la cincuentena, al que la Guardia Civil entera respetaba; hab\u00eda servido en las comisar\u00edas m\u00e1s sacrificadas sin quejarse y su cuerpo conservaba algunas cicatrices de sus batallas contra el crimen. Las c\u00e1rceles del Per\u00fa herv\u00edan de malhechores a los que hab\u00eda calzado las esposas. Hab\u00eda sido citado como ejemplo en \u00f3rdenes del d\u00eda, alabado en discursos oficiales, y, por dos veces, condecorado: pero esas glorias no hab\u00edan alterado su modestia, tan grande como su valent\u00eda y su honradez. Hac\u00eda un a\u00f1o que serv\u00eda en la Cuarta Comisar\u00eda del Callao y llevaba ya tres meses encargado de la m\u00e1s dura obligaci\u00f3n que el destino puede deparar a un sargento en el puerto: la ronda nocturna.\n\nLas remotas campanas de la Iglesia de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Carmen de la Legua dieron la medianoche, y, siempre puntual, el sargento Lituma \u2014frente ancha, nariz aguile\u00f1a, mirada penetrante, rectitud y bondad en el esp\u00edritu\u2014 empez\u00f3 a caminar. A su espalda, una fogata en las tinieblas, quedaba la vieja casona de madera de la Cuarta Comisar\u00eda. Imagin\u00f3: el teniente Jaime Concha estar\u00eda leyendo el Pato Donald, los guardias Mocos Camacho y Manzanita Ar\u00e9valo estar\u00edan azucar\u00e1ndose un caf\u00e9 reci\u00e9n colado y el \u00fanico preso del d\u00eda \u2014un carterista sorprendido in fraganti en el \u00f3mnibus Chucuito-La Parada y tra\u00eddo a la comisar\u00eda, con abundantes contusiones, por media docena de furibundos pasajeros\u2014 dormir\u00eda hecho un garabato en el suelo del erg\u00e1stulo.\n\nInici\u00f3 su recorrido por la barriada de Puerto Nuevo, donde estaba de servicio el Chato Soldevilla, un tumbesino que cantaba tonderos con inspirada voz. Puerto Nuevo era el terror de los guardias y detectives del Callao porque en su laberinto de casuchas de tablones, latas, calaminas y adobes, s\u00f3lo una \u00ednfima parte de sus pobladores se ganaban el pan como portuarios o pescadores. La mayor\u00eda eran vagos, ladrones, borrachos, pichicateros, macr\u00f3s y maricas (para no mencionar a las innumerables prostitutas) que, con cualquier pretexto, se agarraban a chavetazos y, a veces, tiros. Esa barriada sin agua ni desag\u00fce, sin luz y sin pavimentar, se hab\u00eda te\u00f1ido no pocas veces con sangre de agentes de la ley. Pero esa noche estaba excepcionalmente pac\u00edfica. Mientras, tropezando con piedras invisibles, la cara fruncida por el vaho de excrementos y materias descompuestas que sub\u00eda a sus narices, recorr\u00eda los meandros del barrio en busca del Chato, el sargento Lituma pens\u00f3: \u00abEl fr\u00edo acost\u00f3 temprano a los noct\u00e1mbulos\u00bb. Porque era mediados de agosto, el coraz\u00f3n del invierno, y una neblina espesa que todo lo borraba y deformaba, y una gar\u00faa tenaz que aguaba el aire, hab\u00edan convertido esa noche en algo triste e inh\u00f3spito. \u00bfD\u00f3nde se hab\u00eda metido el Chato Soldevilla? Este tumbesino mariconazo, asustado del fr\u00edo o de los hampones, era capaz de haber ido a buscar calorcito y trago a las cantinas de la avenida Hu\u00e1scar. \u00abNo, no se atrever\u00eda \u2014pens\u00f3 el sargento Lituma\u2014. Sabe que yo hago la ronda y que si abandona su puesto, se amuela\u00bb.\n\nEncontr\u00f3 al Chato bajo un poste de luz, en la esquina que mira al Frigor\u00edfico Nacional. Se frotaba las manos con furia, su cara hab\u00eda desaparecido tras una chalina fantasmal que s\u00f3lo le dejaba los ojos libres. Al verlo, dio un respingo y se llev\u00f3 la mano a la cartuchera. Luego, reconoci\u00e9ndolo, choc\u00f3 los tacos.\n\n\u2014Me asust\u00f3, mi sargento \u2014dijo ri\u00e9ndose\u2014. As\u00ed, de lejitos, saliendo de la oscuridad, me figur\u00e9 un esp\u00edritu.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 esp\u00edritu ni qu\u00e9 ocho cuartos \u2014le dio la mano Lituma\u2014. Cre\u00edste que era un hamp\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Con este fr\u00edo no hay hampones sueltos, qu\u00e9 esperanza \u2014volvi\u00f3 a frotarse las manos el Chato\u2014. Los \u00fanicos locos a los que en esta noche se les ocurre andar a la intemperie somos usted y yo. Y \u00e9stos.\n\nSe\u00f1al\u00f3 el techo del Frigor\u00edfico y el sargento, esforzando los ojos, alcanz\u00f3 a ver media docena de gallinazos api\u00f1ados y con el pico entre las alas, formando una l\u00ednea recta en la cumbre de la calamina. \u00abQu\u00e9 hambre tendr\u00e1n \u2014pens\u00f3\u2014. Aunque se hielen, all\u00ed se quedan oliendo lo muerto\u00bb. El Chato Soldevilla le firm\u00f3 el parte a la rancia luz del farol, con un lapicito masticado que se le perd\u00eda en los dedos. No hab\u00eda novedad: ni accidentes, ni delitos, ni borracheras.\n\n\u2014Una noche tranquila, mi sargento \u2014le dijo, mientras lo acompa\u00f1aba unas cuadras, hacia la avenida Manco C\u00e1pac\u2014. Espero que siga as\u00ed, hasta que llegue mi relevo. Despu\u00e9s, que se caiga el mundo, qu\u00e9 diablos.\n\nSe ri\u00f3, como si hubiera dicho algo muy chistoso, y el sargento Lituma pens\u00f3: \u00abHay que ver la mentalidad que se gastan ciertos guardias\u00bb. Como si hubiera adivinado, el Chato Soldevilla a\u00f1adi\u00f3, serio:\n\n\u2014Porque yo no soy como usted, mi sargento. A m\u00ed esto no me gusta. Llevo el uniforme s\u00f3lo por la comida.\n\n\u2014Si dependiera de m\u00ed, no lo llevar\u00edas \u2014murmur\u00f3 el sargento\u2014. Yo s\u00f3lo dejar\u00eda en el cuerpo a los que creen en la vaina.\n\n\u2014Se quedar\u00eda bastante vac\u00eda la Guardia Civil \u2014repuso el Chato.\n\n\u2014M\u00e1s vale solos que mal acompa\u00f1ados \u2014se ri\u00f3 el sargento.\n\nEl Chato tambi\u00e9n se ri\u00f3. Caminaban a oscuras, por el descampado que rodea a la Factor\u00eda Guadalupe, donde los mataperros se volaban siempre a pedradas los focos de los postes. Se o\u00eda el rumor del mar a lo lejos, y, de cuando en cuando, el motor de alg\u00fan taxi que cruzaba la avenida Argentina.\n\n\u2014A usted le gustar\u00eda que todos fu\u00e9ramos h\u00e9roes \u2014dijo de pronto el Chato\u2014. Que nos sac\u00e1ramos el alma para defender a estas basuras \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 hacia el Callao, hacia Lima, hacia el mundo\u2014. \u00bfAcaso nos lo agradecen? \u00bfNo ha o\u00eddo lo que nos gritan en la calle? \u00bfAcaso alguien nos respeta? La gente nos desprecia, mi sargento.\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed nos despedimos \u2014dijo Lituma, al borde de la avenida Manco C\u00e1pac\u2014. No te salgas de tu \u00e1rea. Y no te hagas mala sangre. No ves la hora de dejar el cuerpo, pero el d\u00eda que te den de baja vas a sufrir como un perro. As\u00ed le pas\u00f3 a Pechito Antezana. Ven\u00eda a la comisar\u00eda a mirarnos y se le llenaban los ojos de l\u00e1grimas. \u00abHe perdido a mi familia\u00bb, dec\u00eda.\n\nOy\u00f3 que, a su espalda, el Chato gru\u00f1\u00eda: \u00abUna familia sin mujeres, qu\u00e9 clase de familia es\u00bb.\n\nTal vez el Chato ten\u00eda raz\u00f3n, pensaba el sargento Lituma, mientras avanzaba por la desierta avenida, en medio de la noche. Era verdad, la gente no quer\u00eda a los polic\u00edas, se acordaba de ellos cuando ten\u00eda miedo de algo. \u00bfY eso qu\u00e9? \u00c9l no se sacaba la mugre para que la gente lo respetara o lo quisiera. \u00abA m\u00ed la gente me importa un pito\u00bb, pens\u00f3. \u00bfY entonces por qu\u00e9 no tomaba la Guardia Civil como los compa\u00f1eros, sin matarse, tratando de pasarla lo mejor posible, aprovechando para descansar o para ganarse unos soles sucios si la superioridad no estaba cerca? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9, Lituma? Pens\u00f3: \u00abPorque a ti te gusta. Porque, como a otros les gusta el f\u00fatbol o las carreras, a ti te gusta tu trabajo\u00bb. Se le ocurri\u00f3 que la pr\u00f3xima vez que alg\u00fan loco del f\u00fatbol le preguntara \u00ab\u00bfEres hincha del Sport Boys o del Chalaco, Lituma?\u00bb, le responder\u00eda: \u00abSoy hincha de la Guardia Civil\u00bb. Se re\u00eda, en la neblina, en la gar\u00faa, en la noche, contento de su ocurrencia, y en eso oy\u00f3 el ruido. Dio un respingo, se llev\u00f3 la mano a la cartuchera, se par\u00f3. Lo hab\u00eda tomado tan de sorpresa que casi se hab\u00eda asustado. \u00abS\u00f3lo casi \u2014pens\u00f3\u2014, porque t\u00fa no has sentido miedo ni sentir\u00e1s, t\u00fa no sabes c\u00f3mo se come eso, Lituma\u00bb. Ten\u00eda a su izquierda el descampado y a la derecha la mole del primero de los dep\u00f3sitos del Terminal Mar\u00edtimo. De all\u00ed hab\u00eda venido: muy fuerte, un estruendo de cajones y latas que se derrumban arrastrando en su ca\u00edda a otros cajones y latas. Pero ahora todo estaba tranquilo de nuevo y s\u00f3lo o\u00eda el chasquido lejano del mar y el silbido del viento al golpear las calaminas y al enroscarse en las alambradas del puerto. \u00abUn gato que persegu\u00eda a una rata y que se trajo abajo un caj\u00f3n y \u00e9se a otro y fue el huayco\u00bb, pens\u00f3. Pens\u00f3 en el pobre gato, despanzurrado junto con la rata, bajo una monta\u00f1a de fardos y barriles. Ya estaba en el \u00e1rea del Choclo Rom\u00e1n. Pero claro que el Choclo no estaba por aqu\u00ed; Lituma sab\u00eda muy bien que estaba en el otro extremo de su \u00e1rea, en el Happy Land, o en el Blue Star, o en cualquiera de los barcitos y prost\u00edbulos de marineros que se codeaban al fondo de la avenida, en esa callecita que los chalacos lengualargas llamaban la calle del chancro. Ah\u00ed estar\u00eda, en uno de esos astillados mostradores, gorreando una cervecita. Y, mientras caminaba hacia esos antros, Lituma pens\u00f3 en la cara de susto que pondr\u00eda Rom\u00e1n si \u00e9l se le aparec\u00eda por detr\u00e1s, de repente: \u00abAs\u00ed que tomando bebidas espirituosas durante el servicio. Te amolaste, Choclo\u00bb.\n\nHab\u00eda avanzado unos doscientos metros y se par\u00f3 en seco. Volvi\u00f3 la cabeza: all\u00e1, en la sombra, una de sus paredes apenas iluminada por el resplandor de un farol milagrosamente indemne de las hondas de los mataperros, mudo ahora, estaba el dep\u00f3sito. \u00abNo es un gato \u2014pens\u00f3\u2014, no es una rata\u00bb. Era un ladr\u00f3n. Su pecho comenz\u00f3 a latir con fuerza y sinti\u00f3 que la frente y las manos se le mojaban. Era un ladr\u00f3n, un ladr\u00f3n. Permaneci\u00f3 inm\u00f3vil unos segundos, pero ya sab\u00eda que iba a regresar. Estaba seguro: hab\u00eda tenido otras veces esos p\u00e1lpitos. Desenfund\u00f3 su pistola y le sac\u00f3 el seguro, y empu\u00f1\u00f3 la linterna con la mano zurda. Regres\u00f3 a trancos, sintiendo que el coraz\u00f3n se le sal\u00eda por la boca. S\u00ed, segur\u00edsimo, era un ladr\u00f3n. A la altura del dep\u00f3sito se par\u00f3 de nuevo, jadeando. \u00bfY si no era uno sino unos? \u00bfNo ser\u00eda mejor buscar al Chato, al Choclo? Movi\u00f3 la cabeza: no necesitaba a nadie, se bastaba y sobraba. Si eran varios, peor para ellos y mejor para \u00e9l. Escuch\u00f3, pegando la cara a la madera: silencio total. S\u00f3lo o\u00eda, a lo lejos, el mar y alguno que otro carro. \u00abQu\u00e9 ladr\u00f3n ni qu\u00e9 ocho cuartos, Lituma \u2014pens\u00f3\u2014. Est\u00e1s so\u00f1ando. Era un gato, una rata\u00bb. Se le hab\u00eda quitado el fr\u00edo, sent\u00eda calor y cansancio. Contorne\u00f3 el dep\u00f3sito, buscando la puerta. Cuando la encontr\u00f3, a la luz de la linterna verific\u00f3 que la cerradura no hab\u00eda sido violentada. Ya se iba, dici\u00e9ndose \u00abqu\u00e9 tal chasco, Lituma, tu olfato no es el de antes\u00bb, cuando, en un movimiento maquinal de su mano, el disco amarillento de la linterna le retrat\u00f3 la abertura. Estaba a pocos metros de la puerta; la hab\u00edan hecho a lo bruto, rompiendo la madera a hachazos o a patadas. El boquete era lo bastante grande para un hombre a gatas.\n\nSinti\u00f3 su coraz\u00f3n agitad\u00edsimo, loco. Apag\u00f3 la linterna, comprob\u00f3 que su pistola estaba sin seguro, mir\u00f3 en torno: s\u00f3lo sombras y, a lo lejos, como luces de f\u00f3sforos, los faroles de la avenida Hu\u00e1scar. Llen\u00f3 de aire los pulmones y, con toda la fuerza de que era capaz, rugi\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Rod\u00e9eme este almac\u00e9n con sus hombres, cabo. Si alguno trata de escapar, fuego a discreci\u00f3n. \u00a1R\u00e1pido, muchachos!\n\nY, para que fuera m\u00e1s cre\u00edble, dio unas carreritas de un lado a otro, zapateando fuerte. Luego, peg\u00f3 la cara al tabique del dep\u00f3sito y grit\u00f3, a voz en cuello:\n\n\u2014Se amolaron, les sali\u00f3 mal. Est\u00e1n rodeados. Vayan saliendo por donde entraron, uno tras otro. \u00a1Treinta segundos para que lo hagan por las buenas!\n\nEscuch\u00f3 el eco de sus gritos perdi\u00e9ndose en la noche, y, luego, el mar y unos ladridos. Cont\u00f3 no treinta sino sesenta segundos. Pens\u00f3: \u00abEst\u00e1s hecho un payaso, Lituma\u00bb. Sinti\u00f3 un acceso de c\u00f3lera. Grit\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Abran los ojos, muchachos. \u00a1A la primera, me los queman, cabo!\n\nY, resueltamente, se puso a cuatro patas y gateando, \u00e1gil a pesar de sus a\u00f1os y del abrigado uniforme, atraves\u00f3 el boquete. Adentro, se incorpor\u00f3 de prisa, en puntas de pie corri\u00f3 hacia un lado y peg\u00f3 la espalda a la pared. No ve\u00eda nada y no quer\u00eda prender la linterna. No o\u00eda ning\u00fan ruido pero otra vez ten\u00eda una seguridad total. Hab\u00eda alguien ah\u00ed, agazapado en la oscuridad, igual que \u00e9l, escuchando y tratando de ver. Le pareci\u00f3 sentir una respiraci\u00f3n, un jadeo. Ten\u00eda el dedo en el gatillo y la pistola a la altura del pecho. Cont\u00f3 tres y encendi\u00f3. El grito lo tom\u00f3 tan desprevenido que, con el susto, la linterna se le escap\u00f3 de las manos y rod\u00f3 por el suelo, revelando bultos, fardos que parec\u00edan de algod\u00f3n, barriles, vigas, y (fugaz, intempestiva, inveros\u00edmil) la figura del negro calato y encogido, con las manos tratando de taparse la cara, y, sin embargo, mirando por entre los dedos, los ojazos espantados, fijos en la linterna, como si el peligro le pudiera venir s\u00f3lo de la luz.\n\n\u2014\u00a1Quieto o te quemo! \u00a1Quieto o est\u00e1s muerto, zambo! \u2014rugi\u00f3 Lituma, tan fuerte que le doli\u00f3 la garganta, mientras, agachado, manoteaba buscando la linterna. Y luego, con satisfacci\u00f3n salvaje\u2014: \u00a1Te amolaste, zambo! \u00a1Te sali\u00f3 mal, zambo!\n\nGritaba tanto que se sent\u00eda aturdido. Hab\u00eda recuperado la linterna y el halo de luz revolote\u00f3, en busca del negro. No hab\u00eda huido, ah\u00ed estaba, y Lituma abr\u00eda mucho los ojos, incr\u00e9dulo, dudando de lo que ve\u00eda. No hab\u00eda sido una imaginaci\u00f3n, un sue\u00f1o. Estaba calato, s\u00ed, tal como lo hab\u00edan parido: ni zapatos, ni calzoncillo, ni camiseta, ni nada. Y no parec\u00eda tener verg\u00fcenza ni darse cuenta siquiera que estaba calato, porque no se tapaba sus cochinadas, que le bailoteaban alegremente, a la luz de la linterna. Segu\u00eda encogido, la cara medio oculta tras los dedos, y no se mov\u00eda, hipnotizado por la redondela de luz.\n\n\u2014Las manos sobre la cabeza, zambo \u2014orden\u00f3 el sargento, sin avanzar hacia \u00e9l\u2014. Tranquilo si no quieres un plomazo. Vas preso por invadir la propiedad privada y por andar con los mellicitos al aire.\n\nY, al mismo tiempo \u2014los o\u00eddos alertas por si el menor ruido delataba a alg\u00fan c\u00f3mplice en las sombras del dep\u00f3sito\u2014, el sargento se dec\u00eda: \u00abNo es un ladr\u00f3n. Es un loco\u00bb. No s\u00f3lo porque estaba desnudo en pleno invierno, sino por el grito que hab\u00eda lanzado al ser descubierto. No era de hombre normal, pens\u00f3 el sargento. Hab\u00eda sido un ruido extra\u00f1\u00edsimo, algo entre el aullido, el rebuzno, la carcajada y el ladrido. Un ruido que no parec\u00eda \u00fanicamente de la garganta sino tambi\u00e9n de la barriga, el coraz\u00f3n, el alma.\n\n\u2014He dicho manos a la cabeza, mi\u00e9chica \u2014grit\u00f3 el sargento, dando un paso hacia el hombre. \u00c9ste no obedeci\u00f3, no se movi\u00f3. Era muy oscuro, tan flaco que en la penumbra Lituma distingu\u00eda las costillas hinchando el pellejo y esos canutos que eran sus piernas, pero ten\u00eda un vientre grandote, que se le rebalsaba sobre el pubis, y Lituma se acord\u00f3 inmediatamente de las esquel\u00e9ticas criaturas de las barriadas, con panzas infladas por los par\u00e1sitos. El zambo segu\u00eda tap\u00e1ndose la cara, quieto, y el sargento dio otros dos pasos hacia \u00e9l, midi\u00e9ndolo, seguro de que en cualquier momento se echar\u00eda a correr. \u00abLos locos no respetan los rev\u00f3lveres\u00bb, pens\u00f3, y dio dos pasos m\u00e1s. Estaba apenas a un par de metros del zambo y s\u00f3lo ahora alcanz\u00f3 a percibir las cicatrices que le veteaban los hombros, los brazos, la espalda. \u00abPa su macho, pa su diablo\u00bb, pens\u00f3 Lituma. \u00bfEran de enfermedad? \u00bfHeridas o quemaduras? Habl\u00f3 bajito para no espantarlo:\n\n\u2014Quieto y tranquilo, zambo. Las manos en la cabeza y caminando hacia el hueco por donde entraste. Si te portas bien, en la comisar\u00eda te dar\u00e9 un caf\u00e9. Debes estar muerto de fr\u00edo, as\u00ed calato, con este tiempo.\n\nIba a dar un paso m\u00e1s hacia el negro, cuando \u00e9ste, s\u00fabitamente, se quit\u00f3 las manos de la cara \u2014Lituma se qued\u00f3 estupefacto al descubrir, bajo la mata de pelo pasa apelmazado, esos ojos sobrecogidos, esas cicatrices horribles, esa enorme jeta de la que sobresal\u00eda un \u00fanico, largo y afilado diente\u2014, volvi\u00f3 a lanzar ese h\u00edbrido, incomprensible, inhumano alarido, mir\u00f3 a un lado y a otro, desasosegado, ind\u00f3cil, nervioso, como un animal que busca un camino para huir, y, por fin, est\u00fapidamente, eligi\u00f3 el que no deb\u00eda, el que bloqueaba el sargento con su cuerpo. Porque no se abalanz\u00f3 contra \u00e9l sino intent\u00f3 escapar a trav\u00e9s de \u00e9l. Corri\u00f3 y fue tan inesperado que Lituma no alcanz\u00f3 a atajarlo y lo sinti\u00f3 que se estrellaba contra \u00e9l. El sargento ten\u00eda sus nervios bien puestos: no se le fue el dedo, no se le escap\u00f3 un tiro. El zambo, al chocar, buf\u00f3 y entonces Lituma le dio un empuj\u00f3n y vio que se ven\u00eda al suelo como si fuera de trapo. Para que se estuviese tranquilo, lo pate\u00f3.\n\n\u2014P\u00e1rate \u2014le orden\u00f3\u2014. Adem\u00e1s de loco eres tonto. Y c\u00f3mo apestas.\n\nTen\u00eda un olor indefinible, a alquitr\u00e1n, acetona, pis y gato. Se hab\u00eda dado vuelta y, las espaldas contra el suelo, lo miraba con p\u00e1nico.\n\n\u2014Pero de d\u00f3nde has podido salir t\u00fa \u2014murmur\u00f3 Lituma. Acerc\u00f3 un poco la linterna y examin\u00f3 un rato, confuso, esa incre\u00edble cara cruzada y descruzada por incisiones rectil\u00edneas, peque\u00f1as nervaduras que recorr\u00edan sus mejillas, su nariz, su frente, su ment\u00f3n y se perd\u00edan por su cuello. C\u00f3mo hab\u00eda podido andar por las calles del Callao un tipo con una pinta as\u00ed, y con los mellizos al aire, sin que alguien diera parte.\n\n\u2014Lev\u00e1ntate de una vez o te doy tu sopapo \u2014dijo Lituma\u2014. Loco o no loco ya me cansaste.\n\nEl tipo no se movi\u00f3. Hab\u00eda comenzado a hacer unos ruidos con la boca, un murmullo indescifrable, un ronroneo, un bisbiseo, algo que parec\u00eda tener que ver m\u00e1s con p\u00e1jaros, insectos o fieras que con hombres. Y segu\u00eda mirando la linterna con un terror infinito.\n\n\u2014P\u00e1rate, no tengas miedo \u2014dijo el sargento y, estirando una mano, cogi\u00f3 al zambo del brazo. No se resisti\u00f3 pero tampoco hizo esfuerzo alguno para ponerse de pie. \u00abQu\u00e9 flaco eres\u00bb, pens\u00f3 Lituma, casi divertido con el maullido, gorgoteo, silabeo incesante del hombre: \u00abY qu\u00e9 miedo me tienes\u00bb. Lo oblig\u00f3 a levantarse y no pod\u00eda creer que pesara tan poco; apenas le dio un empujoncito en direcci\u00f3n a la abertura del tabique, lo sinti\u00f3 que trastabillaba y se ca\u00eda. Pero esta vez se levant\u00f3 solito, con gran esfuerzo, apoy\u00e1ndose en un barril de aceite.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEst\u00e1s enfermo? \u2014dijo el sargento\u2014. Casi no puedes caminar, zambo. Pero de d\u00f3nde maldita sea ha podido salir un fantoche como t\u00fa.\n\nLo arrastr\u00f3 hacia la abertura, lo hizo agacharse y lo oblig\u00f3 a ganar la calle, delante de \u00e9l. El zambo segu\u00eda emitiendo ruidos, sin pausa, como si llevara un fierro en la boca y tratara de escupirlo. \u00abS\u00ed \u2014pens\u00f3 el sargento\u2014, es un loco\u00bb. La gar\u00faa hab\u00eda cesado pero ahora un viento fuerte y silbante barr\u00eda las calles y ululaba a su alrededor, mientras Lituma, dando empujoncitos al zambo para apresurarlo, enfilaba hacia la comisar\u00eda. Bajo su grueso capote, sinti\u00f3 fr\u00edo.\n\n\u2014Debes estar helado, compadre \u2014dijo Lituma\u2014. Calato con este tiempo, a estas horas. Si no te da una pulmon\u00eda ser\u00e1 un milagro.\n\nAl negro le casta\u00f1eteaban los dientes y caminaba con los brazos cruzados sobre el pecho, frot\u00e1ndose los flancos con sus manazas largas y huesudas, como si el fr\u00edo lo atacara sobre todo en las costillas. Segu\u00eda roncando, rugiendo o graznando, pero ahora para s\u00ed mismo, y torc\u00eda d\u00f3cilmente donde le se\u00f1alaba el sargento. No encontraron en las calles ni autom\u00f3viles, ni perros, ni borrachos. Cuando llegaron a la comisar\u00eda \u2014las luces de sus ventanas, con su resplandor aceitoso, alegraron a Lituma como a un n\u00e1ufrago que ve la playa\u2014 el bronco campanario de la Iglesia de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Carmen de la Legua daba las dos.\n\nAl ver aparecer al sargento con el negro desnudo, al joven y apuesto teniente Jaime Concha no se le cay\u00f3 el Pato Donald de las manos \u2014era el cuarto que llevaba le\u00eddo en la noche, aparte de tres Supermanes y dos Mandrakes\u2014, pero se le abri\u00f3 tanto la boca que por poco se desmandibula. Los guardias Camacho y Ar\u00e9valo, que estaban jugando una partidita de damas chinas, tambi\u00e9n abrieron mucho los ojos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDe d\u00f3nde sacaste este espantap\u00e1jaros? \u2014dijo por fin el teniente.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs hombre, animal o cosa? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 Manzanita Ar\u00e9valo, poni\u00e9ndose de pie y olfateando al negro. \u00c9ste, desde que hab\u00eda pisado la comisar\u00eda, estaba mudo y mov\u00eda la cabeza en todas direcciones, con una mueca de terror, como si por primera vez en su vida viera luz el\u00e9ctrica, m\u00e1quinas de escribir, guardias civiles. Pero, al ver acercarse a Manzanita, lanz\u00f3 otra vez su espeluznante alarido \u2014Lituma vio que el teniente Concha casi se ven\u00eda al suelo con silla y todo de la impresi\u00f3n y que Mocos Camacho desbarataba las damas chinas\u2014 e intent\u00f3 regresar a la calle. El sargento lo contuvo con una mano y lo sacudi\u00f3 un poco: \u00abQuieto, zambo, no te me asustes\u00bb.\n\n\u2014Lo encontr\u00e9 en el almac\u00e9n nuevo del Terminal, mi teniente \u2014dijo\u2014. Se meti\u00f3 fracturando el tabique. \u00bfHago el parte por robo, por invasi\u00f3n de propiedad, por conducta inmoral o por las tres cosas?\n\nEl zambo se hab\u00eda quedado otra vez encogido, mientras el teniente, Camacho y Ar\u00e9valo lo escudri\u00f1aban de pies a cabeza.\n\n\u2014Esas cicatrices no son de viruela, mi teniente \u2014dijo Manzanita, se\u00f1alando las incisiones de la cara y el cuerpo\u2014. Se las hicieron a navaja, aunque parezca mentira.\n\n\u2014Es el hombre m\u00e1s flaco que he visto en mi vida \u2014dijo Mocos, mirando los huesos del calato\u2014. Y el m\u00e1s feo. Dios m\u00edo, qu\u00e9 crespos tiene. Y qu\u00e9 patas.\n\n\u2014S\u00e1canos de la curiosidad \u2014dijo el teniente\u2014. Cu\u00e9ntanos tu vida, negrito.\n\nEl sargento Lituma se hab\u00eda quitado el quep\u00ed y desabotonado el capote. Sentado en la m\u00e1quina de escribir, comenzaba a redactar el parte. Desde ah\u00ed, grit\u00f3:\n\n\u2014No sabe hablar, mi teniente. Hace unos ruidos que no se entienden.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEres de los que se hacen los locos? \u2014se interes\u00f3 el teniente\u2014. Estamos viejos para que nos metan el dedo a la boca. Cu\u00e9ntanos qui\u00e9n eres, de d\u00f3nde sales, qui\u00e9n era tu mam\u00e1.\n\n\u2014O te devolvemos el habla a soplamocos \u2014a\u00f1adi\u00f3 Manzanita\u2014. A cantar como un canario, zambito.\n\n\u2014S\u00f3lo que si esas rayas fueran de chaveta, tendr\u00edan que haberle dado mil chavetazos \u2014se admir\u00f3 Mocos, mirando una y otra vez las incisiones que cuadriculaban al negro\u2014. \u00bfPero c\u00f3mo es posible que un hombre est\u00e9 marcado as\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Se muere de fr\u00edo \u2014dijo Manzanita\u2014. Le chocan los dientes como maracas.\n\n\u2014Las muelas \u2014lo corrigi\u00f3 Mocos, examin\u00e1ndolo como una hormiga, muy de cerca\u2014. \u00bfNo ves que no tiene sino un diente, este colmillo de elefante? Pucha, qu\u00e9 tipo: parece una pesadilla.\n\n\u2014Creo que es un chiflado \u2014dijo Lituma, sin dejar de escribir\u2014. Andar as\u00ed, en este fr\u00edo, no es cosa de cuerdos, \u00bfno, mi teniente?\n\nY, en este instante, el desbarajuste lo hizo mirar: el zambo, de pronto, electrizado por algo, hab\u00eda dado un empuj\u00f3n al teniente y pasaba como una flecha entre Camacho y Ar\u00e9valo. Pero no hacia la calle sino hacia la mesa de las damas chinas; Lituma vio que se precipitaba sobre un s\u00e1ndwich a medio comer y que se lo embut\u00eda y tragaba en un solo, afanoso y bestial movimiento. Cuando Ar\u00e9valo y Camacho llegaron hasta \u00e9l y le aventaron un par de sopapos, el negro estaba englutiendo, con la misma avidez, las sobras del otro s\u00e1ndwich.\n\n\u2014No le peguen, muchachos \u2014dijo el sargento\u2014. M\u00e1s bien conv\u00eddenle un caf\u00e9, sean caritativos.\n\n\u2014\u00c9sta no es la Beneficencia \u2014dijo el teniente\u2014. No s\u00e9 qu\u00e9 cuernos me voy a hacer con este sujeto aqu\u00ed \u2014se qued\u00f3 mirando al zambo, que, luego de tragarse los s\u00e1ndwiches, hab\u00eda recibido los coscorrones de Mocos y Manzanita sin inmutarse y permanec\u00eda ahora tumbado en el suelo, tranquilo, jadeando suavemente. Termin\u00f3 por compadecerse y gru\u00f1\u00f3\u2014: Est\u00e1 bien. Denle un poco de caf\u00e9 y m\u00e9tanlo al calabozo.\n\nEl Mocos le alcanz\u00f3 media taza de caf\u00e9 del termo. El zambo bebi\u00f3 despacio, cerrando los ojos, y, cuando hubo terminado, lami\u00f3 el aluminio en busca de las \u00faltimas gotitas hasta dejarlo brillante. Se dej\u00f3 llevar al calabozo pac\u00edficamente.\n\nLituma reley\u00f3 el parte: intento de robo, invasi\u00f3n de propiedad, conducta inmoral. El teniente Jaime Concha se hab\u00eda vuelto a sentar en el escritorio y su mirada vagabundeaba:\n\n\u2014Ya s\u00e9, ya s\u00e9 a qui\u00e9n se parece \u2014sonri\u00f3 feliz, mostrando a Lituma el alto de revistas multicolores\u2014. A los negros de las historias de Tarz\u00e1n, a los del \u00c1frica.\n\nCamacho y Ar\u00e9valo hab\u00edan reanudado la partida de damas chinas y Lituma se calz\u00f3 el quep\u00ed y aboton\u00f3 el capote. Cuando sal\u00eda, sinti\u00f3 los chillidos del carterista, que se acababa de despertar y protestaba por su compa\u00f1ero de calabozo:\n\n\u2014\u00a1Socorro, s\u00e1lvenme! \u00a1Me va a violar!\n\n\u2014C\u00e1llate, o te vamos a violar nosotros \u2014lo amonestaba el teniente\u2014. D\u00e9jame leer mis chistes en paz.\n\nDesde la calle, Lituma alcanz\u00f3 a ver que el negro se hab\u00eda tendido en el suelo, indiferente a los gritos del carterista, un chino delgadito que no sal\u00eda del susto. \u00abDespertarse y encontrarse con semejante cuco\u00bb, se re\u00eda Lituma, rompiendo otra vez con su maciza figura la niebla, el viento, las sombras. Con las manos en el bolsillo, las solapas del capote levantadas, cabizbajo, sin darse prisa, continu\u00f3 su ronda. Estuvo primero en la calle del chancro, donde encontr\u00f3 a Choclo Rom\u00e1n acodado en el mostrador del Happy Land, festejando los chistes de Paloma del Llanto, el viejo marica de pelo pintado y dientes postizos que hac\u00eda de barman. Consign\u00f3 en el parte que el guardia Rom\u00e1n \u00abten\u00eda trazas de haber ingerido bebidas espirituosas en horas de servicio\u00bb, aunque sab\u00eda de sobra que el teniente Concha, hombre lleno de comprensi\u00f3n para las debilidades propias y ajenas, har\u00eda la vista gorda. Se alej\u00f3 luego del mar y remont\u00f3 la avenida S\u00e1enz Pe\u00f1a, m\u00e1s muerta a esa hora que un cementerio, y le cost\u00f3 un triunfo dar con Humberto Quispe, que ten\u00eda el \u00e1rea del Mercado. Los puestos estaban cerrados y hab\u00eda menos vagabundos que otras veces, durmiendo acurrucados sobre costales o peri\u00f3dicos, bajo las escaleras y los camiones. Despu\u00e9s de varias vueltas in\u00fatiles y muchos toques de silbato con la se\u00f1al de reconocimiento, encontr\u00f3 a Quispe en la esquina de Col\u00f3n y Cochrane, ayudando a un taxista al que un par de forajidos acababan de romperle el cr\u00e1neo para robarle. Lo llevaron a la Asistencia P\u00fablica, para que lo cosieran. Luego, se tomaron un caldito de cabezas en el primer puesto que abri\u00f3, el de la se\u00f1ora Gualberta, vendedora de pescado fresco. Un patrullero recogi\u00f3 a Lituma en S\u00e1enz Pe\u00f1a y le dio un avent\u00f3n hasta la Fortaleza del Real Felipe, al pie de cuyas murallas hac\u00eda guardia Manitas Rodr\u00edguez, el benjam\u00edn de la comisar\u00eda. Le sorprendi\u00f3 jugando a la rayuela, solito, en la oscuridad. Saltaba muy serio de caj\u00f3n a caj\u00f3n, en un pie, en dos, y al ver al sargento se cuadr\u00f3:\n\n\u2014El ejercicio ayuda a entrar en calor \u2014le dijo, se\u00f1alando el dibujo hecho con tiza en la vereda\u2014: \u00bfUsted no jugaba de chico a la rayuela, mi sargento?\n\n\u2014M\u00e1s bien al trompo y era buenazo haciendo volar cometas \u2014le respondi\u00f3 Lituma.\n\nManitas Rodr\u00edguez le refiri\u00f3 un incidente que, dec\u00eda, le hab\u00eda alegrado la guardia. Estaba recorriendo la calle Paz Sold\u00e1n, a eso de la medianoche, cuando hab\u00eda visto a un sujeto trepando por una ventana. Le hab\u00eda dado el alto rev\u00f3lver en mano pero el tipo se puso a llorar jurando que no era ratero sino esposo y que su se\u00f1ora le ped\u00eda que entrara as\u00ed, a oscuritas y por la ventana. \u00bfY por qu\u00e9 no por la puerta, como todo el mundo? \u00abPorque est\u00e1 medio chiflada \u2014lloriqueaba el hombre\u2014. F\u00edjese que verme entrar como ladr\u00f3n la pone m\u00e1s cari\u00f1osa. Otras veces hace que la asuste con un cuchillo y hasta que me disfrace de diablo. Y si no le doy gusto no me liga ni un beso, mi agente\u00bb.\n\n\u2014Te vio cara de mocoso y se burl\u00f3 de ti de lo lindo \u2014se sonre\u00eda Lituma.\n\n\u2014Es la pura y santa verdad \u2014insisti\u00f3 Manitas\u2014. Toqu\u00e9 la puerta, entramos y la se\u00f1ora, una zambita de rompe y raja, dijo que era cierto y que si no ten\u00edan derecho ella y su marido a jugar a los ladrones. Lo que se ve en este oficio, \u00bfno, mi sargento?\n\n\u2014As\u00ed es, muchacho \u2014asinti\u00f3 Lituma, pensando en el negro.\n\n\u2014Ahora que con una mujer as\u00ed uno no se aburrir\u00eda nunca, mi sargento \u2014se chupaba los labios Manitas.\n\nAcompa\u00f1\u00f3 a Lituma hasta la avenida Buenos Aires y se despidieron. Mientras avanzaba hasta la frontera con Bellavista \u2014la calle Vigil, la plaza de la Guardia Chalaca\u2014, largo trayecto donde habitualmente comenzaba a sentir fatiga y sue\u00f1o, el sargento recordaba al negro. \u00bfSe habr\u00eda escapado del manicomio? Pero el Larco Herrera estaba tan lejos que alg\u00fan guardia o patrullero lo habr\u00eda visto y arrestado. \u00bfY esas cicatrices? \u00bfSe las habr\u00edan hecho a cuchillo? Mi\u00e9chica, eso s\u00ed que doler\u00eda, como quemarse a fuego lento. Que a uno le vayan haciendo heridita tras heridita hasta embadurnarle la cara de rayas, carambolas. \u00bfY si hab\u00eda nacido as\u00ed? Todav\u00eda era noche cerrada pero ya se percib\u00edan s\u00edntomas del amanecer: autos, uno que otro cami\u00f3n, siluetas madrugadoras. El sargento se preguntaba: \u00ab\u00bfY t\u00fa que has visto tanto tipo raro por qu\u00e9 te preocupa el calato?\u00bb. Se encogi\u00f3 de hombros: simple curiosidad, una manera de ocupar la mente mientras duraba la ronda.\n\nNo tuvo dificultad en dar con Z\u00e1rate, un guardia que hab\u00eda servido con \u00e9l en Ayacucho. Se lo encontr\u00f3 con el parte firmado: s\u00f3lo un choque sin heridos, nada importante. Lituma le cont\u00f3 la historia del negro y a Z\u00e1rate lo \u00fanico que le hizo gracia fue el episodio de los s\u00e1ndwiches. Ten\u00eda la man\u00eda de la filatelia, y, mientras acompa\u00f1aba unas cuadras al sargento, empez\u00f3 a contarle que esa ma\u00f1ana hab\u00eda conseguido unas estampillas triangulares de Etiop\u00eda, con leones y v\u00edboras, en verde, rojo y azul, que eran rar\u00edsimas, y que las hab\u00eda cambiado por cinco argentinas que no val\u00edan nada.\n\n\u2014Pero que, sin duda, se creer\u00e1n que valen mucho \u2014lo interrumpi\u00f3 Lituma.\n\nLa man\u00eda de Z\u00e1rate, que otras veces toleraba con buen humor, ahora lo impacient\u00f3 y se alegr\u00f3 de que se despidieran. Un resplandor azuloso se insinuaba en el cielo y de la negrura surg\u00edan, espectrales, gris\u00e1ceos, aherrumbrados, populosos, los edificios del Callao. Casi al trote, el sargento iba contando las cuadras que faltaban para llegar a la comisar\u00eda. Pero esta vez, se confes\u00f3 a s\u00ed mismo, su premura no se deb\u00eda tanto al cansancio de la noche y la caminata como a las ganas de ver otra vez al negro. \u00abParece que creyeras que todo ha sido un sue\u00f1o y que el cutato no existe, Lituma\u00bb.\n\nPero exist\u00eda: ah\u00ed estaba, durmiendo retorcido como un nudo en el suelo del calabozo. El carterista hab\u00eda ca\u00eddo dormido en el otro extremo, y a\u00fan llevaba en la cara una expresi\u00f3n de susto. Tambi\u00e9n los dem\u00e1s dorm\u00edan: el teniente Concha de bruces contra un alto de chistes y Camacho y Ar\u00e9valo hombro contra hombro, en la banqueta de la entrada. Lituma estuvo un largo rato contemplando al negro: sus huesos salientes, su pelo ensortijado, su gran jeta, su diente hu\u00e9rfano, sus mil cicatrices, los estremecimientos que lo recorr\u00edan. Pensaba: \u00abPero de d\u00f3nde has salido, zambo\u00bb. Por fin, entreg\u00f3 el parte al teniente, que abri\u00f3 unos ojos hinchados y enrojecidos:\n\n\u2014Ya se termina esta vaina \u2014le dijo, con boca pastosa\u2014. Un d\u00eda menos de servicio, Lituma.\n\n\u00abY un d\u00eda menos de vida, tambi\u00e9n\u00bb, pens\u00f3 el sargento. Se despidi\u00f3 haciendo sonar los tacos muy fuerte. Eran las seis de la ma\u00f1ana y estaba libre. Como siempre, se fue al Mercado, donde do\u00f1a Gualberta, a tomar una sopa hirviendo, unas empanadas, unos frejoles con arroz y un dulce de leche, y, despu\u00e9s, al cuartito donde viv\u00eda, en la calle Col\u00f3n. Se demor\u00f3 en pescar el sue\u00f1o, y, cuando lo pesc\u00f3, empez\u00f3 inmediatamente a so\u00f1ar con el negro. Lo ve\u00eda cercado de leones y v\u00edboras rojas, verdes y azules, en el coraz\u00f3n de Abisinia, con chistera, botas y una varita de domador. Las fieras hac\u00edan gracias al comp\u00e1s de su varita y una muchedumbre apostada entre las lianas, los troncos y el ramaje alegrado de cantos de p\u00e1jaros y chillidos de monos, lo aplaud\u00eda a rabiar. Pero, en vez de hacer una reverencia al p\u00fablico, el negro se pon\u00eda de rodillas, alargaba las manos en adem\u00e1n suplicante, los ojos se le aguaban y su gran jeta se abr\u00eda y, angustioso, raudo, tumultuoso, comenzaba a brotar el trabalenguas, su absurda m\u00fasica.\n\nLituma se despert\u00f3 a eso de las tres de la tarde, de mal humor y muy cansado, pese a haber dormido siete horas. \u00abYa se lo habr\u00e1n llevado a Lima\u00bb, pens\u00f3. Mientras se lavaba la cara como gato y se vest\u00eda, iba imaginando la trayectoria del negro: lo habr\u00eda recogido el patrullero de las nueve, le habr\u00edan dado un trapo para que se cubriera, lo habr\u00edan entregado en la Prefectura, le habr\u00edan abierto un expediente, lo habr\u00edan mandado al calabozo de los sin juicio, y ah\u00ed estar\u00eda ahora, en esa cueva oscura, entre los vagabundos, rateros, agresores y escandalosos de las \u00faltimas veinticuatro horas, temblando de fr\u00edo y muerto de hambre, rasc\u00e1ndose los piojos.\n\nEra un d\u00eda gris y h\u00famedo; entre la neblina las gentes se mov\u00edan como peces en aguas sucias y Lituma, pasito a paso, pensando, se fue a tomar lonche donde la se\u00f1ora Gualberta: dos panes con queso fresco y un caf\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Te noto raro, Lituma \u2014le dijo la se\u00f1ora Gualberta, una viejecita que conoc\u00eda la vida\u2014: \u00bfProblemas de dinero o de amor?\n\n\u2014Estoy pensando en un cutato que encontr\u00e9 anoche \u2014dijo el sargento, probando el caf\u00e9 con la puntita de la lengua\u2014. Se hab\u00eda metido a un dep\u00f3sito del Terminal.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 tiene de raro eso? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 do\u00f1a Gualberta.\n\n\u2014Estaba calato, lleno de cicatrices, el pelo como una selva y no sabe hablar \u2014le explic\u00f3 Lituma\u2014. \u00bfDe d\u00f3nde puede venir un tipo as\u00ed?\n\n\u2014Del infierno \u2014se ri\u00f3 la viejecita, recibi\u00e9ndole el billete.\n\nLituma se fue a la plaza Grau a encontrarse con Pedralbes, un cabo de la Marina. Se hab\u00edan conocido a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s, cuando el sargento era s\u00f3lo guardia y Pedralbes marinero raso, y serv\u00edan ambos en Pisco. Luego, sus respectivos destinos se hab\u00edan separado cerca de diez a\u00f1os, pero, desde hac\u00eda dos, se hab\u00edan juntado de nuevo. Pasaban sus d\u00edas de salida juntos y Lituma se sent\u00eda donde los Pedralbes en casa. Se fueron a La Punta, al Club de Cabos y Marineros, a tomarse una cerveza y a jugar al sapo. Lo primero que hizo el sargento fue contarle la historia del negro. Pedralbes encontr\u00f3 inmediatamente una explicaci\u00f3n:\n\n\u2014Es un salvaje del \u00c1frica que se vino de polizonte en un barco. Hizo el viaje escondido y, al llegar al Callao, se descolg\u00f3 de nochecita al agua y se meti\u00f3 al Per\u00fa de contrabando.\n\nA Lituma le pareci\u00f3 que sal\u00eda el sol: todo se volvi\u00f3 de pronto clar\u00edsimo.\n\n\u2014Tienes raz\u00f3n, eso es \u2014dijo, chasqueando la lengua, aplaudiendo\u2014. Se vino del \u00c1frica. Claro, eso es. Y, aqu\u00ed en el Callao, lo desembarcaron por alguna raz\u00f3n. Para no pagarle, porque lo descubrieron en la bodega, para librarse de \u00e9l.\n\n\u2014No lo entregaron a las autoridades porque sab\u00edan que no lo iban a recibir \u2014iba completando la historia Pedralbes\u2014. Lo desembarcaron a la fuerza: arr\u00e9glatelas solo, salvaje.\n\n\u2014O sea que el cutato ni siquiera sabe d\u00f3nde est\u00e1 \u2014dijo Lituma\u2014. O sea que esos ruidos no son de loco sino de salvaje, o sea que esos ruidos son su idioma.\n\n\u2014Es como si te metieras en un avi\u00f3n y desembarcaras en Marte, hermano \u2014lo ayudaba Pedralbes.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 inteligentes somos \u2014dijo Lituma\u2014. Le descubrimos toda la vida al cutato.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 inteligente soy yo, dir\u00e1s \u2014protest\u00f3 Pedralbes\u2014. \u00bfY ahora qu\u00e9 har\u00e1n con el negro?\n\nLituma pens\u00f3: \u00abQui\u00e9n sabe\u00bb. Jugaron seis partiditas de sapo y gan\u00f3 cuatro el sargento, de modo que Pedralbes pag\u00f3 la cerveza. Fueron luego a la calle Chanchamayo, donde viv\u00eda Pedralbes, en una casita de ventanas con barrotes. Domitila, la mujer de Pedralbes, estaba terminando de dar de comer a las tres criaturas, y, apenas los vio aparecer, meti\u00f3 en la cama al menorcito y orden\u00f3 a los otros dos que no se asomaran ni a la puerta. Se arregl\u00f3 un poco el pelo, les dio el brazo a cada uno, y salieron. Entraron al Cine Porte\u00f1o, en S\u00e1enz Pe\u00f1a, a ver una italiana. A Lituma y Pedralbes no les gust\u00f3, pero ella dijo que incluso la repetir\u00eda. Caminaron hasta la calle Chanchamayo \u2014las criaturas se hab\u00edan quedado dormidas\u2014 y Domitila les sirvi\u00f3 de comer unos olluquitos con charqui recalentados. Cuando Lituma se despidi\u00f3, eran las diez y media. Lleg\u00f3 a la Cuarta Comisar\u00eda a la hora que comenzaba su servicio: las once en punto.\n\nEl teniente Jaime Concha no le dio el menor respiro; lo llam\u00f3 aparte y le solt\u00f3 las instrucciones de golpe, en un par de frases espartanas que dejaron a Lituma mareado y con las orejas zumb\u00e1ndole.\n\n\u2014La superioridad sabe lo que hace \u2014le levant\u00f3 la moral el teniente, d\u00e1ndole una palmadita\u2014. Y tiene sus razones que hay que entender. La superioridad no se equivoca nunca, \u00bfno es as\u00ed, Lituma?\n\n\u2014Claro que no \u2014balbuce\u00f3 el sargento.\n\nManzanita y el Mocos se hac\u00edan los ocupados. Con el rabillo del ojo, Lituma ve\u00eda, a uno, revisando las papeletas de tr\u00e1nsito como si fueran fotos de calatas, y, al otro, arreglando, desarreglando y volviendo a arreglar su escritorio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPuedo preguntar algo, mi teniente? \u2014dijo Lituma.\n\n\u2014Puedes \u2014dijo el teniente\u2014. Lo que no s\u00e9 es si yo podr\u00e9 contestarte.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 la superioridad me ha elegido a m\u00ed para este trabajito?\n\n\u2014Eso s\u00ed te lo puedo decir \u2014dijo el teniente\u2014. Por dos razones. Porque t\u00fa lo capturaste y es justo que termine la broma el que la empez\u00f3. Y segundo: porque eres el mejor guardia de esta comisar\u00eda y tal vez del Callao.\n\n\u2014Honor que me hacen \u2014murmur\u00f3 Lituma, sin alegrarse lo m\u00e1s m\u00ednimo.\n\n\u2014La superioridad sabe muy bien que se trata de un trabajo dif\u00edcil y por eso te lo conf\u00eda \u2014dijo el teniente\u2014. Deber\u00edas sentirte orgulloso de que te hayan elegido entre los centenares de guardias que hay en Lima.\n\n\u2014Vaya, ahora resulta que encima tendr\u00eda que dar las gracias \u2014movi\u00f3 la cabeza Lituma, estupefacto. Reflexion\u00f3 un momento, y, en voz muy baja, a\u00f1adi\u00f3\u2014: \u00bfTiene que ser ahora mismo?\n\n\u2014Sobre el pucho \u2014dijo el teniente, tratando de parecer jovial\u2014. No dejes para ma\u00f1ana lo que puedes hacer hoy.\n\nLituma pens\u00f3: \u00abAhora ya sabes por qu\u00e9 no se te iba de la tutuma la cara del negro\u00bb.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQuieres llevarte a uno de \u00e9stos, para que te eche una mano? \u2014oy\u00f3 la voz del teniente.\n\nLituma sinti\u00f3 que Camacho y Ar\u00e9valo quedaban petrificados. Un silencio polar se instal\u00f3 en la comisar\u00eda mientras el sargento observaba a los dos guardias, y, deliberadamente, para hacerlos pasar un mal rato, se demoraba en elegir. Manzanita se hab\u00eda quedado con el alto de papeletas bailoteando entre los dedos y el Mocos con la cara hundida en el escritorio.\n\n\u2014A \u00e9ste \u2014dijo Lituma, se\u00f1alando a Ar\u00e9valo. Sinti\u00f3 que Camacho respiraba hondo y vio brotar en los ojos de Manzanita todo el odio del mundo contra \u00e9l y comprendi\u00f3 que le estaba mentando la madre.\n\n\u2014Estoy agripado y le iba a pedir que me exonerara de salir esta noche, mi teniente \u2014tartamude\u00f3 Ar\u00e9valo, poniendo cara de imb\u00e9cil.\n\n\u2014D\u00e9jate de mariconer\u00edas y ench\u00fafate el capote \u2014se adelant\u00f3 Lituma, pasando junto a \u00e9l sin mirarlo\u2014. Nos vamos de una vez.\n\nFue hasta el calabozo y lo abri\u00f3. Por primera vez en el d\u00eda, observ\u00f3 al negro. Le hab\u00edan puesto un pantal\u00f3n andrajoso, que apenas le llegaba a las rodillas, y cubr\u00eda su pecho y su espalda un costal de cargador, con un agujero para la cabeza. Estaba descalzo y tranquilo; mir\u00f3 a Lituma a los ojos, sin alegr\u00eda ni miedo. Sentado en el suelo, masticaba algo; en vez de esposas, ten\u00eda en las mu\u00f1ecas una cuerda, lo suficientemente larga para que pudiese rascarse o comer. El sargento le hizo se\u00f1as de que se pusiera de pie, pero el negro no pareci\u00f3 entender. Lituma se le acerc\u00f3, lo cogi\u00f3 del brazo, y el hombre se par\u00f3 d\u00f3cilmente. Camin\u00f3 delante de \u00e9l, con la misma indiferencia con que lo hab\u00eda recibido. Manzanita Ar\u00e9valo estaba ya con el capote puesto y la chalina enroscada en el cuello. El teniente Concha no se volvi\u00f3 a mirarlos partir: ten\u00eda la cara enterrada en un Pato Donald (\u00abpero no se da cuenta que est\u00e1 al rev\u00e9s\u00bb, pens\u00f3 Lituma). Camacho, en cambio, les hizo una sonrisa de p\u00e9same.\n\nYa en la calle, el sargento se coloc\u00f3 a la orilla de la pista y dej\u00f3 la pared a Ar\u00e9valo. El negro caminaba entre los dos, a su mismo paso, largo y desinteresado de todo, masticando.\n\n\u2014Hace como dos horas que masca ese pedazo de pan \u2014dijo Ar\u00e9valo\u2014. Esta noche, cuando lo trajeron de vuelta de Lima, le dimos todos los panes duros de la despensa, esos que se han vuelto piedras. Y se los ha comido todos. Masticando como una moledora. Qu\u00e9 hambre terrible, \u00bfno?\n\n\u00abEl deber primero y los sentimientos despu\u00e9s\u00bb, estaba pensando Lituma. Se fij\u00f3 el itinerario: subir por la calle Carlos Concha hasta Contralmirante Mora y, luego, bajar la avenida hasta el cauce del R\u00edmac y seguir con el r\u00edo hasta el mar. Calcul\u00f3: tres cuartos de hora para ir y volver, una hora a lo m\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014Usted tiene la culpa, mi sargento \u2014gru\u00f1\u00eda Ar\u00e9valo\u2014. Qui\u00e9n lo mand\u00f3 capturarlo. Al darse cuenta que no era ladr\u00f3n, debi\u00f3 dejarlo irse. Vea en qu\u00e9 l\u00edo nos meti\u00f3. Y ahora d\u00edgame, \u00bfusted se cree eso que piensa la superioridad? \u00bfQue \u00e9ste se vino escondido en un barco?\n\n\u2014Eso es tambi\u00e9n lo que se le ocurri\u00f3 a Pedralbes \u2014dijo Lituma\u2014. Puede que s\u00ed. Porque, si no, c\u00f3mo mi\u00e9chica te explicas que un tipo con esta pinta, con estos pelos, con estas marcas y calato y que habla esa chamuchina se aparezca de buenas a primeras en el puerto del Callao. Debe ser lo que dicen.\n\nEn la calle oscura resonaban los dos pares de botas de los guardias; los pies descalzos del zambo no hac\u00edan ning\u00fan ruido.\n\n\u2014Si de m\u00ed fuera, yo lo hubiera dejado en la c\u00e1rcel \u2014volvi\u00f3 a hablar Ar\u00e9valo\u2014. Porque, mi sargento, un salvaje del \u00c1frica no tiene la culpa de ser un salvaje del \u00c1frica.\n\n\u2014Por eso mismo no puede quedarse en la c\u00e1rcel \u2014murmur\u00f3 Lituma\u2014. Ya lo o\u00edste al teniente: la c\u00e1rcel es para los ladrones, asesinos y forajidos. \u00bfA cuento de qu\u00e9 lo va a mantener el Estado en la c\u00e1rcel?\n\n\u2014Entonces, deb\u00edan mandarlo de vuelta a su pa\u00eds \u2014refunfu\u00f1\u00f3 Ar\u00e9valo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY c\u00f3mo mi\u00e9chica averiguas cu\u00e1l es su pa\u00eds? \u2014alz\u00f3 la voz Lituma\u2014. Ya lo has o\u00eddo al teniente. La superioridad trat\u00f3 de hablar con \u00e9l en todos los idiomas: el ingl\u00e9s, el franc\u00e9s, hasta el italiano. No habla idiomas: es salvaje.\n\n\u2014O sea que a usted le parece bien que por ser salvaje tengamos que pegarle un tiro \u2014volvi\u00f3 a gru\u00f1ir Manzanita Ar\u00e9valo.\n\n\u2014No estoy diciendo que me parezca bien \u2014murmur\u00f3 Lituma\u2014. Sino repitiendo lo que el teniente dijo que dice la superioridad. No seas idiota.\n\nEntraron a la avenida Contralmirante Mora cuando las campanas de Nuestra Se\u00f1ora del Carmen de la Legua daban las doce y el sonido le pareci\u00f3 a Lituma t\u00e9trico. Iba mirando adelante, empe\u00f1osamente, pero, a ratos, a pesar suyo, la cara se le volv\u00eda hacia la izquierda y echaba una ojeada al negro. Lo ve\u00eda, un segundo, cruzando el macilento cono de luz de alg\u00fan farol y siempre estaba igual: moviendo las mand\u00edbulas con seriedad y caminando al ritmo de ellos, sin el menor indicio de angustia. \u00abLo \u00fanico que parece importarle en el mundo es masticar\u00bb, pens\u00f3 Lituma. Y, un momento despu\u00e9s: \u00abEs un condenado a muerte que no sabe que lo es\u00bb. Y, casi inmediatamente: \u00abNo hay duda que es un salvaje\u00bb. En eso oy\u00f3 a Manzanita:\n\n\u2014Y, por \u00faltimo, por qu\u00e9 la superioridad no deja que se vaya por ah\u00ed y se las arregle como pueda \u2014rezongaba, malhumorado\u2014. Que sea otro vagabundo, de los muchos que hay en Lima. Uno m\u00e1s, uno menos, qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s da.\n\n\u2014Ya lo o\u00edste al teniente \u2014replic\u00f3 Lituma\u2014. La Guardia Civil no puede auspiciar el delito. Y si a \u00e9ste lo dejas suelto en plaza no tendr\u00eda m\u00e1s remedio que robar. O se morir\u00eda como un perro. En realidad, le estamos haciendo un favor. Un tiro es un segundo. Eso es preferible a irse muriendo de a poquitos, de hambre, de fr\u00edo, de soledad, de tristeza.\n\nPero Lituma sent\u00eda que su voz no era muy persuasiva y ten\u00eda la sensaci\u00f3n, al o\u00edrse, de estar oyendo a otra persona.\n\n\u2014Sea como sea, d\u00e9jeme decirle una cosa \u2014oy\u00f3 protestar a Manzanita\u2014. Esta vaina no me gusta y me hizo usted un flaco favor escogi\u00e9ndome.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY a m\u00ed crees que me gusta? \u2014murmur\u00f3 Lituma\u2014. \u00bfY no me hizo un flaco favor a m\u00ed la superioridad escogi\u00e9ndome?\n\nPasaron frente al Arsenal Naval, donde sonaba una sirena, y, al cruzar el descampado, a la altura del dique seco, un perro sali\u00f3 de las sombras a ladrarlos. Caminaron en silencio, oyendo el golpear de las botas contra la vereda, el rumor vecino del mar, sintiendo en las narices el aire h\u00famedo y salado.\n\n\u2014En este terreno vinieron a refugiarse unos gitanos el a\u00f1o pasado \u2014dijo Manzanita, de pronto, con la voz quebrada\u2014. Levantaron unas carpas y dieron una funci\u00f3n de circo. Le\u00edan la suerte y hac\u00edan magia. Pero el alcalde hizo que los corri\u00e9ramos porque no ten\u00edan licencia municipal.\n\nLituma no contest\u00f3. Sinti\u00f3 pena, de repente, no s\u00f3lo por el negro sino tambi\u00e9n por Manzanita y por los gitanos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY lo vamos a dejar tirado ah\u00ed en la playa, para que lo picoteen los alcatraces? \u2014casi solloz\u00f3 Manzanita.\n\n\u2014Vamos a dejarlo en el basural, para que lo encuentren los camiones municipales, se lo lleven a la morgue y lo regalen a la Facultad de Medicina para que los estudiantes lo autopsien \u2014se enoj\u00f3 Lituma\u2014. O\u00edste muy bien las instrucciones, Ar\u00e9valo, no me las hagas repet\u00edrtelas.\n\n\u2014Las o\u00ed, pero no me pasa la idea de que tenemos que matarlo, as\u00ed, en fr\u00edo \u2014dijo Manzanita unos minutos despu\u00e9s\u2014. Y a usted tampoco, aunque trate. Por su voz me doy cuenta que tampoco est\u00e1 de acuerdo con esta orden.\n\n\u2014Nuestra obligaci\u00f3n no es estar de acuerdo con la orden, sino ejecutarla \u2014dijo d\u00e9bilmente el sargento. Y, luego de una pausa, todav\u00eda m\u00e1s despacio\u2014: Ahora que tienes raz\u00f3n. Yo tampoco estoy de acuerdo. Obedezco porque hay que obedecer.\n\nEn ese momento terminaron el asfalto, la avenida, los faroles, y comenzaron a andar en tinieblas sobre la tierra blanda. Una hediondez espesa, casi s\u00f3lida, los envolvi\u00f3. Estaban en los basurales de las orillas del R\u00edmac, muy cerca del mar, en ese cuadril\u00e1tero entre la playa, el lecho del r\u00edo y la avenida, donde los camiones de la Baja Polic\u00eda ven\u00edan, a partir de las seis de la ma\u00f1ana, a depositar los desperdicios de Bellavista, La Perla y el Callao y donde, aproximadamente desde la misma hora, una muchedumbre de ni\u00f1os, hombres, viejos y mujeres comenzaba a escarbar las inmundicias en busca de objetos de valor, y a disputar a las aves marinas, a los gallinazos, a los perros vagabundos los restos comestibles perdidos entre las basuras. Estaban muy cerca de ese desierto, camino a Ventanilla, a Anc\u00f3n, donde se alinean las f\u00e1bricas de harina de pescado del Callao.\n\n\u2014\u00c9ste es el mejor sitio \u2014dijo Lituma\u2014. Los camiones de la basura pasan todos por aqu\u00ed.\n\nEl mar sonaba muy fuerte. Manzanita se detuvo y el negro se detuvo tambi\u00e9n. Los guardias hab\u00edan prendido sus linternas y examinaban, en la temblona luz, la cara cuarteada de rayas, masticando inmutable.\n\n\u2014Lo peor es que no tiene reflejos ni adivina las cosas \u2014murmur\u00f3 Lituma\u2014. Cualquiera se dar\u00eda cuenta y se asustar\u00eda, tratar\u00eda de escapar. Lo que me friega es su tranquilidad, la confianza que nos tiene.\n\n\u2014Se me ocurre una cosa, mi sargento \u2014a Ar\u00e9valo le chocaban los dientes como si estuviera hel\u00e1ndose\u2014. Dej\u00e9moslo que se escape. Diremos que lo matamos y, en fin, cualquier cuento para explicar la desaparici\u00f3n del cad\u00e1ver...\n\nLituma hab\u00eda sacado su pistola y estaba quit\u00e1ndole el seguro.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTe atreves a proponerme que desobedezca las \u00f3rdenes de los superiores y que encima les mienta? \u2014reson\u00f3, tr\u00e9mula, la voz del sargento. Su mano derecha apuntaba el ca\u00f1o del arma hacia la sien del negro.\n\nPero pasaron dos, tres, varios segundos y no disparaba. \u00bfLo har\u00eda? \u00bfObedecer\u00eda? \u00bfEstallar\u00eda el disparo? \u00bfRodar\u00eda sobre las basuras indescifrables el misterioso inmigrante? \u00bfO le ser\u00eda perdonada la vida y huir\u00eda, ciego, salvaje, por las playas de las afueras, mientras un sargento irreprochable quedaba all\u00ed, en medio de p\u00fatridos olores y del vaiv\u00e9n de las olas, confuso y adolorido por haber faltado a su deber? \u00bfC\u00f3mo terminar\u00eda esa tragedia chalaca?\n\n### V\n\nEL PASO de Lucho Gatica por Lima fue adjetivado por Pascual en nuestros boletines como \u00absoberbio acontecimiento art\u00edstico y gran hit de la radiotelefon\u00eda nacional\u00bb. A m\u00ed la broma me cost\u00f3 un cuento, una corbata y una camisa casi nuevas, y dejar plantada a la t\u00eda Julia por segunda vez. Antes de la llegada del cantante de boleros chileno, hab\u00eda visto en los peri\u00f3dicos una proliferaci\u00f3n de fotos y de art\u00edculos laudatorios (\u00abpublicidad no pagada, la que vale m\u00e1s\u00bb, dec\u00eda Genaro hijo), pero s\u00f3lo me di cuenta cabal de su fama cuando not\u00e9 las colas de mujeres, en la calle Bel\u00e9n, esperando pases para la audici\u00f3n. Como el auditorio era peque\u00f1o \u2014un centenar de butacas\u2014 s\u00f3lo unas pocas pudieron asistir a los programas. La noche del estreno la aglomeraci\u00f3n en las puertas de Panamericana fue tal que Pascual y yo tuvimos que subir al altillo por un edificio vecino que compart\u00eda la azotea con el nuestro. Hicimos el bolet\u00edn de las siete y no hubo manera de bajarlo al segundo piso:\n\n\u2014Hay un chuchonal de mujeres tapando la escalera, la puerta y el ascensor \u2014me dijo Pascual\u2014. Trat\u00e9 de pedir permiso pero me creyeron un zamp\u00f3n.\n\nLlam\u00e9 por tel\u00e9fono a Genaro hijo y chisporroteaba de felicidad:\n\n\u2014Todav\u00eda falta una hora para la audici\u00f3n de Lucho y la gente ya ha parado el tr\u00e1fico en Bel\u00e9n. Todo el Per\u00fa sintoniza en este momento Radio Panamericana.\n\nLe pregunt\u00e9 si en vista de lo que ocurr\u00eda sacrific\u00e1bamos los boletines de las siete y de las ocho, pero \u00e9l ten\u00eda recursos para todo e invent\u00f3 que dict\u00e1ramos las noticias por tel\u00e9fono a los locutores. As\u00ed lo hicimos y, en los intervalos, Pascual escuchaba, embelesado, la voz de Lucho Gatica en la radio, y yo rele\u00eda la cuarta versi\u00f3n de mi cuento sobre el senador eunuco, al que hab\u00eda acabado por poner un t\u00edtulo de novela de horror: La cara averiada. A las nueve en punto escuchamos el fin del programa, la voz de Mart\u00ednez Morosini despidiendo a Lucho Gatica y la ovaci\u00f3n del p\u00fablico que, esta vez, no era de disco sino real. Diez segundos m\u00e1s tarde son\u00f3 el tel\u00e9fono y o\u00ed la voz alarmada de Genaro hijo:\n\n\u2014Bajen como sea, esto se est\u00e1 poniendo color de hormiga.\n\nNos cost\u00f3 un triunfo perforar el muro de mujeres api\u00f1adas en la escalera, a las que conten\u00eda, en la puerta del auditorio, el corpulento portero Jesusito. Pascual gritaba: \u00ab\u00a1Ambulancia! \u00a1Ambulancia! \u00a1Buscamos a un herido!\u00bb. Las mujeres, la mayor\u00eda j\u00f3venes, nos miraban con indiferencia o sonre\u00edan, pero no se apartaban y hab\u00eda que empujarlas. Adentro, nos recibi\u00f3 un espect\u00e1culo desconcertante: el celebrado artista reclamaba protecci\u00f3n policial. Era bajito y estaba l\u00edvido y lleno de odio hacia sus admiradoras. El empresario progresista procuraba calmarlo, le dec\u00eda que llamar a la polic\u00eda causar\u00eda p\u00e9sima impresi\u00f3n, esa nube de muchachas era un homenaje a su talento. Pero la celebridad no se dejaba convencer:\n\n\u2014Yo las conozco a \u00e9sas \u2014dec\u00eda, entre aterrado y furibundo\u2014. Comienzan pidiendo un aut\u00f3grafo y acaban ara\u00f1ando, mordiendo.\n\nNosotros nos re\u00edamos, pero la realidad confirm\u00f3 sus predicciones. Genaro hijo decidi\u00f3 que esper\u00e1ramos media hora, creyendo que las admiradoras, aburridas, se ir\u00edan. A las diez y cuarto (yo ten\u00eda compromiso con la t\u00eda Julia para ir al cine) nos hab\u00edamos cansado de esperar que ellas se cansaran y acordamos salir. Genaro hijo, Pascual, Jesusito, Mart\u00ednez Morosini y yo formamos un c\u00edrculo, cogidos de los brazos, y pusimos en el centro a la celebridad, cuya palidez se acentu\u00f3 hasta la blancura apenas abrimos la puerta. Pudimos bajar las primeras gradas sin grandes da\u00f1os, dando codazos, rodillazos, cabezazos y pechazos contra el mar femenino, que por el momento se contentaba con aplaudir, suspirar y estirar las manos para tocar al \u00eddolo \u2014quien, n\u00edveo, sonre\u00eda, e iba murmurando entre dientes: \u00abCuidadito con soltar los brazos, compa\u00f1eros\u00bb\u2014, pero pronto tuvimos que hacer frente a una agresi\u00f3n en regla. Nos cog\u00edan de la ropa y jaloneaban, y dando aullidos alargaban las u\u00f1as para arrancar pedazos de la camisa y el terno del \u00eddolo. Cuando, luego de diez minutos de asfixia y empujones, llegamos al pasillo de la entrada, cre\u00ed que nos \u00edbamos a soltar y tuve una visi\u00f3n: el peque\u00f1o cantante de boleros nos era arrebatado y sus admiradoras lo desmenuzaban ante nuestros ojos. No sucedi\u00f3, pero cuando lo metimos al auto de Genaro pap\u00e1, quien esperaba al volante desde hac\u00eda hora y media, Lucho Gatica y su guardia de hierro est\u00e1bamos convertidos en los sobrevivientes de una cat\u00e1strofe. A m\u00ed me hab\u00edan arranchado la corbata y hecho jirones la camisa, a Jesusito le hab\u00edan roto el uniforme y robado la gorra y Genaro hijo ten\u00eda amoratada la frente de un carterazo. El astro estaba indemne, pero de su ropa s\u00f3lo conservaba \u00edntegros los zapatos y los calzoncillos. Al d\u00eda siguiente, mientras tom\u00e1bamos nuestro cafecito de las diez en el Bransa, le cont\u00e9 a Pedro Camacho las haza\u00f1as de las admiradoras. No le sorprendieron en absoluto:\n\n\u2014Mi joven amigo \u2014me dijo, filos\u00f3ficamente, mir\u00e1ndome desde muy lejos\u2014, tambi\u00e9n la m\u00fasica llega al alma de la multitud.\n\nMientras yo luchaba por defender la integridad f\u00edsica de Lucho Gatica, la se\u00f1ora Agradecida hab\u00eda hecho la limpieza del altillo y echado a la basura la cuarta versi\u00f3n de mi cuento sobre el senador. En vez de amargarme, me sent\u00ed liberado de un peso y deduje que hab\u00eda en esto una advertencia de los dioses. Cuando le comuniqu\u00e9 a Javier que no lo reescribir\u00eda m\u00e1s, \u00e9l, en vez de tratar de disuadirme, me felicit\u00f3 por mi decisi\u00f3n.\n\nLa t\u00eda Julia se divirti\u00f3 mucho con mi experiencia de guardaespaldas. Nos ve\u00edamos casi a diario, desde la noche de los besos furtivos en el Grill Bol\u00edvar. Al d\u00eda siguiente del cumplea\u00f1os del t\u00edo Lucho yo me hab\u00eda presentado intempestivamente en la casa de Armend\u00e1riz y, buena suerte, la t\u00eda Julia estaba sola.\n\n\u2014Se fueron a visitar a tu t\u00eda Hortensia \u2014me dijo, haci\u00e9ndome pasar a la sala\u2014. No fui, porque ya s\u00e9 que esa chismosa se pasa la vida invent\u00e1ndome historias.\n\nLa tom\u00e9 de la cintura, la atraje hacia m\u00ed e intent\u00e9 besarla. No me rechaz\u00f3 pero tampoco me bes\u00f3: sent\u00ed su boca fr\u00eda contra la m\u00eda. Al apartarnos, vi que me miraba sin sonre\u00edr. No sorprendida como la v\u00edspera, m\u00e1s bien con cierta curiosidad y algo de burla.\n\n\u2014Mira, Marito \u2014su voz era afectuosa, tranquila\u2014. He hecho todas las locuras del mundo en mi vida. Pero \u00e9sta no la voy a hacer \u2014lanz\u00f3 una carcajada\u2014: \u00bfYo, corruptora de menores? \u00a1Eso s\u00ed que no!\n\nNos sentamos y estuvimos conversando cerca de dos horas. Le cont\u00e9 toda mi vida, no la pasada sino la que tendr\u00eda en el futuro, cuando viviera en Par\u00eds y fuera escritor. Le dije que quer\u00eda escribir desde que hab\u00eda le\u00eddo por primera vez a Alejandro Dumas, y que, desde entonces, so\u00f1aba con viajar a Francia y vivir en una buhardilla, en el barrio de los artistas, entregado totalmente a la literatura, la cosa m\u00e1s formidable del mundo. Le cont\u00e9 que estudiaba Derecho para darle gusto a la familia, pero que la abogac\u00eda me parec\u00eda la m\u00e1s espesa y boba de las profesiones y que no la practicar\u00eda jam\u00e1s. Me di cuenta, en un momento, que estaba hablando de manera muy fogosa y le dije que por primera vez le confesaba esas cosas \u00edntimas no a un amigo sino a una mujer.\n\n\u2014Te parezco tu mam\u00e1 y por eso te provoca hacerme confidencias \u2014me psicoanaliz\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. As\u00ed que el hijo de Dorita result\u00f3 bohemio, vaya, vaya. Lo malo es que te vas a morir de hambre, hijito.\n\nMe cont\u00f3 que la noche anterior se hab\u00eda quedado desvelada, pensando en los besos furtivos del Grill Bol\u00edvar. Que el hijo de Dorita, el chiquito al que s\u00f3lo ayer ella hab\u00eda acompa\u00f1ado a su mam\u00e1 a llevar al Colegio La Salle, en Cochabamba, el mocosito al que ella todav\u00eda cre\u00eda de pantal\u00f3n corto, la guagua con quien se hac\u00eda escoltar al cine para no ir sola, de buenas a primeras la besara en la boca como si fuera un hombre hecho y derecho, no le cab\u00eda en la cabeza.\n\n\u2014Soy un hombre hecho y derecho \u2014le asegur\u00e9, cogi\u00e9ndole la mano, bes\u00e1ndosela\u2014. Tengo dieciocho a\u00f1os. Y ya hace cinco que perd\u00ed la virginidad.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 soy yo entonces, que tengo treinta y dos y que la perd\u00ed hace quince? \u2014se ri\u00f3 ella\u2014. \u00a1Una vieja decr\u00e9pita!\n\nTen\u00eda una risa ronca y fuerte, directa y alegre, que abr\u00eda de par en par su boca grande, de labios gruesos, y que le arrugaba los ojos. Me miraba con iron\u00eda y malicia, todav\u00eda no como a un hombre hecho y derecho, pero ya no como a un mocoso. Se levant\u00f3 para servirme un whisky:\n\n\u2014Despu\u00e9s de tus atrevimientos de anoche, ya no puedo convidarte Coca-Colas \u2014me dijo, haci\u00e9ndose la apenada\u2014. Tengo que atenderte como a uno de mis pretendientes.\n\nLe dije que la diferencia de edad tampoco era tan terrible.\n\n\u2014Tan terrible no \u2014me repuso\u2014. Pero, casi casi, lo justo para que pudieras ser mi hijo.\n\nMe cont\u00f3 la historia de su matrimonio. Los primeros a\u00f1os todo hab\u00eda ido muy bien. Su marido ten\u00eda una hacienda en el altiplano y ella se hab\u00eda acostumbrado tanto a la vida de campo que rara vez iba a La Paz. La casa hacienda era muy c\u00f3moda y a ella le encantaba la tranquilidad del lugar, la vida sana y simple: montar a caballo, hacer excursiones, asistir a las fiestas de los indios. Las nubes grises hab\u00edan comenzado porque no pod\u00eda concebir; su marido sufr\u00eda con la idea de no tener descendencia. Luego, \u00e9l hab\u00eda comenzado a beber y desde entonces el matrimonio se hab\u00eda deslizado por una pendiente de ri\u00f1as, separaciones y reconciliaciones, hasta la disputa final. Luego del divorcio hab\u00edan quedado buenos amigos.\n\n\u2014Si alguna vez me caso, yo nunca tendr\u00eda hijos \u2014le advert\u00ed\u2014. Los hijos y la literatura son incompatibles.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQuiere decir que puedo presentar mi solicitud y ponerme a la cola? \u2014me coquete\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia.\n\nTen\u00eda chispa y rapidez para las r\u00e9plicas, contaba cuentos colorados con gracia y era (como todas las mujeres que hab\u00eda conocido hasta entonces) terriblemente aliteraria. Daba la impresi\u00f3n de que en las largas horas vac\u00edas de la hacienda boliviana s\u00f3lo hab\u00eda le\u00eddo revistas argentinas, alguno que otro engendro de Delly, y apenas un par de novelas que consideraba memorables: El \u00e1rabe y El hijo del \u00e1rabe, de un tal H. M. Hull. Al despedirme esa noche le pregunt\u00e9 si pod\u00edamos ir al cine y me dijo que \u00abeso s\u00ed\u00bb. Hab\u00edamos ido a funci\u00f3n de noche, desde entonces, casi a diario, y, adem\u00e1s de soportar una buena cantidad de melodramas mexicanos y argentinos, nos hab\u00edamos dado una considerable cantidad de besos. El cine se fue convirtiendo en pretexto; eleg\u00edamos los m\u00e1s alejados de la casa de Armend\u00e1riz (el Montecarlo, el Colina, el Marsano) para estar juntos m\u00e1s tiempo. D\u00e1bamos largas caminatas despu\u00e9s de la funci\u00f3n, haciendo empanaditas (me hab\u00eda ense\u00f1ado que cogerse de las manos se dec\u00eda en Bolivia \u00abhacer empanaditas\u00bb), zigzagueando por las calles vac\u00edas de Miraflores (nos solt\u00e1bamos cada vez que aparec\u00eda un peat\u00f3n o un auto), conversando sobre todas las cosas, mientras que \u2014era esa estaci\u00f3n mediocre que en Lima llaman invierno\u2014 la gar\u00faa nos iba humedeciendo. La t\u00eda Julia sal\u00eda siempre, a almorzar o a tomar t\u00e9, con sus numerosos pretendientes, pero me reservaba las noches. \u00cdbamos al cine, en efecto, a sentarnos en las filas de atr\u00e1s de la platea, donde (sobre todo si la pel\u00edcula era muy mala) pod\u00edamos besarnos sin estorbar a otros espectadores y sin que alguien nos reconociera. Nuestra relaci\u00f3n se hab\u00eda estabilizado r\u00e1pidamente en lo amorfo, se situaba en alg\u00fan punto indefinible entre las categor\u00edas opuestas de enamorados y amantes. \u00c9ste era un tema recurrente de nuestras conversaciones. Ten\u00edamos de amantes la clandestinidad, el temor a ser descubiertos, la sensaci\u00f3n de riesgo, pero lo \u00e9ramos espiritual, no materialmente, pues no hac\u00edamos el amor (y, como se escandalizar\u00eda m\u00e1s tarde Javier, ni siquiera \u00abnos toc\u00e1bamos\u00bb). Ten\u00edamos de enamorados el respeto de ciertos ritos cl\u00e1sicos de la adolescente pareja miraflorina de ese tiempo (ir al cine, besarse durante la pel\u00edcula, caminar por la calle de la mano) y la conducta casta (en esa Edad de Piedra las chicas de Miraflores sol\u00edan llegar v\u00edrgenes al matrimonio y s\u00f3lo se dejaban tocar los senos y el sexo cuando el enamorado ascend\u00eda al estatuto formal de novio), pero \u00bfc\u00f3mo hubi\u00e9ramos podido serlo dada la diferencia de edad y el parentesco? En vista de lo ambiguo y extravagante de nuestro romance, jug\u00e1bamos a bautizarlo: \u00abNoviazgo ingl\u00e9s\u00bb, \u00abromance sueco\u00bb, \u00abdrama turco\u00bb.\n\n\u2014Los amores de un bebe y una anciana que, adem\u00e1s, es algo as\u00ed como su t\u00eda \u2014me dijo una noche la t\u00eda Julia, mientras cruz\u00e1bamos el parque Central\u2014. Cabalito para un radioteatro de Pedro Camacho.\n\nLe record\u00e9 que s\u00f3lo era mi t\u00eda pol\u00edtica y ella me cont\u00f3 que, en el radioteatro de las tres, un muchacho de San Isidro, buenmos\u00edsimo y gran corredor de tabla hawaiana, ten\u00eda relaciones nada menos que con su hermana, a la que, horror de horrores, hab\u00eda dejado embarazada.\n\n\u2014\u00bfDesde cu\u00e1ndo oyes radioteatros? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Me he contagiado de mi hermana \u2014me repuso\u2014. La verdad es que \u00e9sos de Radio Central son fant\u00e1sticos, unos dramones que parten el alma.\n\nY me confes\u00f3 que, a veces, a ella y a la t\u00eda Olga se les llenaban los ojos de l\u00e1grimas. Fue el primer indicio que tuve del impacto que causaba en los hogares lime\u00f1os la pluma de Pedro Camacho. Recog\u00ed otros, los d\u00edas siguientes, en las casas de la familia. Ca\u00eda donde la t\u00eda Laura y ella, apenas me ve\u00eda en el umbral de la sala, me ordenaba silencio con un dedo en los labios, mientras permanec\u00eda inclinada hacia el aparato de radio como para poder no s\u00f3lo o\u00edr sino tambi\u00e9n oler, tocar, la (tr\u00e9mula o r\u00edspida o ardiente o cristalina) voz del artista boliviano. Aparec\u00eda donde la t\u00eda Gaby y las encontraba a ella y a la t\u00eda Hortensia deshaciendo un ovillo con dedos absortos, mientras segu\u00edan un di\u00e1logo lleno de esdr\u00fajulas y gerundios de Luciano Pando y Josefina S\u00e1nchez. Y en mi propia casa, mis abuelos, que siempre hab\u00edan tenido \u00abafici\u00f3n a las novelitas\u00bb, como dec\u00eda la abuela Carmen, ahora hab\u00edan contra\u00eddo una aut\u00e9ntica pasi\u00f3n radioteatral. Me despertaba en la ma\u00f1ana oyendo los compases del indicativo de la radio \u2014se preparaban con una anticipaci\u00f3n enfermiza para el primer radioteatro, el de las diez\u2014, almorzaba oyendo el de las dos de la tarde, y a cualquier hora del d\u00eda que volviera, encontraba a los dos viejitos y a la cocinera, arrinconados en la salita de recibo, profundamente concentrados en la radio, que era grande y pesada como un aparador y que, para mal de males, siempre pon\u00edan a todo volumen.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 te gustan tanto los radioteatros? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9 un d\u00eda a la abuelita\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 tienen que no tengan los libros, por ejemplo?\n\n\u2014Es una cosa m\u00e1s viva, o\u00edr hablar a los personajes es m\u00e1s real \u2014me explic\u00f3, despu\u00e9s de reflexionar\u2014. Y, adem\u00e1s, a mis a\u00f1os, se portan mejor los o\u00eddos que la vista.\n\nIntent\u00e9 una averiguaci\u00f3n parecida en otras casas de parientes y los resultados fueron vagos. A las t\u00edas Gaby, Laura, Olga y Hortensia los radioteatros les gustaban porque eran entretenidos, tristes o fuertes, porque las distra\u00edan y hac\u00edan so\u00f1ar, vivir cosas imposibles en la vida real, porque ense\u00f1aban algunas verdades o porque una ten\u00eda siempre su poquito de esp\u00edritu rom\u00e1ntico. Cuando les pregunt\u00e9 por qu\u00e9 les gustaban m\u00e1s que los libros, protestaron: qu\u00e9 tonter\u00eda, c\u00f3mo se iba a comparar, los libros eran la cultura, los radioteatros simples adefesios para pasar el tiempo. Pero lo cierto es que viv\u00edan pegadas a la radio y que jam\u00e1s hab\u00eda visto a ninguna de ellas abrir un libro. En nuestras andanzas nocturnas, la t\u00eda Julia me resum\u00eda a veces algunos episodios que la hab\u00edan impresionado y yo le contaba mis conversaciones con el escriba, de modo que, insensiblemente, Pedro Camacho pas\u00f3 a ser un componente de nuestro romance.\n\nEl propio Genaro hijo me confirm\u00f3 el \u00e9xito de los nuevos radioteatros el d\u00eda en que por fin consegu\u00ed, despu\u00e9s de mil protestas, que me repusieran la m\u00e1quina de escribir. Se present\u00f3 en el altillo con una carpeta en la mano y la cara radiante:\n\n\u2014Supera los c\u00e1lculos m\u00e1s optimistas \u2014nos dijo\u2014. En dos semanas ha aumentado en veinte por ciento la sinton\u00eda de los radioteatros. \u00bfSaben lo que esto significa? \u00a1Aumentar en veinte por ciento la factura a los auspiciadores!\n\n\u2014\u00bfY que nos aumentar\u00e1n en veinte por ciento el sueldo, don Genaro? \u2014salt\u00f3 en su silla Pascual.\n\n\u2014Ustedes no trabajan en Radio Central sino en Panamericana \u2014nos record\u00f3 Genaro hijo\u2014. Nosotros somos una estaci\u00f3n de buen gusto y no pasamos radioteatros.\n\nLos diarios, en las p\u00e1ginas especializadas, pronto se hicieron eco de la audiencia conquistada por los nuevos radioteatros y empezaron a elogiar a Pedro Camacho. Fue Guido Monteverde quien lo consagr\u00f3, en su columna de \u00daltima Hora, llam\u00e1ndolo \u00abexperimentado libretista de imaginaci\u00f3n tropical y palabra rom\u00e1ntica, intr\u00e9pido director sinf\u00f3nico de radioteatros y vers\u00e1til actor \u00e9l mismo de acaramelada voz\u00bb. Pero el beneficiario de estos adjetivos no se daba por enterado de las olas de entusiasmo que iba levantando a su alrededor. Una de esas ma\u00f1anas en que yo lo recog\u00eda, de paso al Bransa, para tomar un caf\u00e9 juntos, encontr\u00e9 pegado en la ventana de su cub\u00edculo un cartel con esta inscripci\u00f3n escrita en letras toscas: \u00abNo se reciben periodistas ni se conceden aut\u00f3grafos. \u00a1El artista trabaja! \u00a1Respetadlo!\u00bb.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEso va en serio o en broma? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9, mientras yo saboreaba mi caf\u00e9 cortado y \u00e9l su compuesto cerebral de yerbaluisa y menta.\n\n\u2014Muy en serio \u2014me contest\u00f3\u2014. La poligraf\u00eda local ha comenzado a atosigarme, y si no les pongo un paral\u00e9, pronto habr\u00e1 colas de oyentes por ah\u00ed \u2014se\u00f1al\u00f3 como quien no quiere la cosa hacia la plaza San Mart\u00edn\u2014, pidiendo fotograf\u00edas y firmas. Mi tiempo vale oro y no puedo perderlo en necedades.\n\nNo hab\u00eda un \u00e1tomo de vanidad en lo que dec\u00eda, s\u00f3lo sincera inquietud. Vest\u00eda su terno negro habitual, su corbatita de lazo y fumaba unos cigarrillos pestilentes llamados Aviaci\u00f3n. Como siempre, estaba sumamente serio. Cre\u00ed halagarlo cont\u00e1ndole que todas mis t\u00edas hab\u00edan pasado a ser fan\u00e1ticas oyentes suyas y que Genaro hijo rebotaba de alegr\u00eda con los resultados de los surveys sobre la sinton\u00eda de sus radioteatros. Pero me hizo callar, aburrido, como si todas esas cosas fueran inevitables y \u00e9l las hubiera sabido desde siempre, y, m\u00e1s bien, me comunic\u00f3 que estaba indignado por la falta de sensibilidad de los mercaderes (expresi\u00f3n con la que, a partir de entonces, se referir\u00eda siempre a los Genaros).\n\n\u2014Algo est\u00e1 flaqueando en los radioteatros y mi obligaci\u00f3n es remediarlo y la de ellos ayudarme \u2014afirm\u00f3, frunciendo el ce\u00f1o\u2014. Pero est\u00e1 visto que el arte y la bolsa son enemigos mortales, como los chanchos y las margaritas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfFlaqueando? \u2014me asombr\u00e9\u2014. \u00a1Pero si son todo un \u00e9xito!\n\n\u2014Los mercaderes no quieren despedir a Pablito, pese a que yo lo he exigido \u2014me explic\u00f3\u2014. Por consideraciones sentimentales, que lleva no s\u00e9 cu\u00e1ntos a\u00f1os en Radio Central y tonter\u00edas as\u00ed. Como si el arte tuviera que ver algo con la caridad. \u00a1La incompetencia de ese enfermo es un verdadero sabotaje a mi trabajo!\n\nEl Gran Pablito era uno de esos personajes pintorescos e indefinibles que atrae o fabrica el ambiente de la radio. El diminutivo suger\u00eda que se trataba de un chiquillo, pero era un cholo cincuent\u00f3n, que arrastraba los pies y ten\u00eda unos ataques de asma que levantaban miasmas a su alrededor. Merodeaba ma\u00f1ana y tarde por Radio Central y Panamericana, haciendo de todo, desde echar una mano a los barrenderos e ir a comprar entradas al cine y a los toros a los Genaros, hasta repartir pases para las audiciones. Su trabajo m\u00e1s permanente eran los radioteatros, donde se encargaba de los efectos especiales.\n\n\u2014\u00c9stos creen que los efectos especiales son una mariconada que cualquier mendigo puede hacer \u2014despotricaba, aristocr\u00e1tico y helado, Pedro Camacho\u2014. En realidad tambi\u00e9n son arte, \u00bfy qu\u00e9 sabe de arte el braquic\u00e9falo medio moribundo de Pablito?\n\nMe asegur\u00f3 que, \u00abllegado el caso\u00bb, no vacilar\u00eda en suprimir con sus propias manos cualquier obst\u00e1culo a la \u00abperfecci\u00f3n de su trabajo\u00bb (y lo dijo de tal modo que le cre\u00ed). Compungido, a\u00f1adi\u00f3 que no ten\u00eda tiempo para formar un t\u00e9cnico en efectos especiales, ense\u00f1\u00e1ndole desde la a hasta la z, pero que, luego de una r\u00e1pida exploraci\u00f3n del dial nativo, hab\u00eda encontrado lo que buscaba. Baj\u00f3 la voz, ech\u00f3 un vistazo en torno y concluy\u00f3, mefistof\u00e9licamente:\n\n\u2014El elemento que nos conviene est\u00e1 en Radio Victoria.\n\nAnalizamos con Javier las posibilidades que ten\u00eda Pedro Camacho de materializar sus prop\u00f3sitos homicidas con el Gran Pablito y coincidimos en que la suerte de \u00e9ste depend\u00eda exclusivamente de los surveys: si la progresi\u00f3n de los radioteatros se manten\u00eda, ser\u00eda sacrificado sin misericordia. En efecto, no hab\u00eda pasado una semana cuando Genaro hijo se present\u00f3 en el altillo, sorprendi\u00e9ndome en plena redacci\u00f3n de un nuevo cuento \u2014debi\u00f3 notar mi confusi\u00f3n, la velocidad con que arranqu\u00e9 la p\u00e1gina de la m\u00e1quina de escribir y la entrever\u00e9 con los boletines, pero tuvo la delicadeza de no decir nada\u2014, y se dirigi\u00f3 conjuntamente a Pascual y a m\u00ed con un gesto de gran mecenas:\n\n\u2014Tanto quejarse ya consiguieron el redactor nuevo que quer\u00edan, par de flojos. El Gran Pablito trabajar\u00e1 con ustedes. \u00a1No se duerman sobre sus laureles!\n\nEl refuerzo que recibi\u00f3 el Servicio de Informaciones fue m\u00e1s moral que material, porque a la ma\u00f1ana siguiente, cuando, puntual\u00edsimo, el Gran Pablito se present\u00f3 a las siete en la oficina, y me pregunt\u00f3 qu\u00e9 deb\u00eda hacer y le encargu\u00e9 dar la vuelta a una rese\u00f1a parlamentaria, puso cara de espanto, tuvo un acceso de tos que lo dej\u00f3 amoratado, y tartamude\u00f3 que era imposible:\n\n\u2014Si yo no s\u00e9 leer ni escribir, se\u00f1or.\n\nApreci\u00e9 como fina muestra del esp\u00edritu risue\u00f1o de Genaro hijo el que nos hubiera elegido para nuevo redactor a un analfabeto. Pascual, a quien el saber que la redacci\u00f3n se bifurcar\u00eda entre \u00e9l y el Gran Pablito hab\u00eda puesto nervioso, recibi\u00f3 la noticia del analfabetismo con franca alegr\u00eda. En mi delante ri\u00f1\u00f3 a su flamante colega por su esp\u00edritu ap\u00e1tico, por no haber sido capaz de educarse, como hab\u00eda hecho \u00e9l, ya adulto, yendo a los cursos gratuitos de la nocturna. El Gran Pablito, muy asustado, asent\u00eda, repitiendo como un aut\u00f3mata \u00abes verdad, no hab\u00eda pensado en eso, as\u00ed es, tiene usted toda la raz\u00f3n\u00bb, y mir\u00e1ndome con cara de inminente despedido. Lo tranquilic\u00e9, dici\u00e9ndole que se encargar\u00eda de bajar los boletines a los locutores. En realidad, se convirti\u00f3 en un esclavo de Pascual, quien lo ten\u00eda todo el d\u00eda trotando del altillo a la calle y viceversa, para que le trajera cigarrillos, o unas papas rellenas que vend\u00eda un ambulante de la calle Carabaya y hasta yendo a ver si llov\u00eda. El Gran Pablito soportaba su servidumbre con excelente esp\u00edritu de sacrificio e incluso demostraba m\u00e1s respeto y amistad hacia su torturador que hacia m\u00ed. Cuando no estaba haciendo mandados de Pascual, se encog\u00eda en un rinc\u00f3n de la oficina, y, apoyando la cabeza en la pared, se dorm\u00eda instant\u00e1neamente. Roncaba con unos ronquidos sincr\u00f3nicos y sibilantes, de ventilador enmohecido.\n\nEra un esp\u00edritu generoso. No le guardaba el m\u00e1s m\u00ednimo rencor a Pedro Camacho por haberlo sustituido por un advenedizo de Radio Victoria. Se expresaba siempre en los t\u00e9rminos m\u00e1s elogiosos del escriba boliviano, por quien sent\u00eda la m\u00e1s genuina admiraci\u00f3n. Con frecuencia, me ped\u00eda permiso para ir a los ensayos de los radioteatros. Cada vez volv\u00eda m\u00e1s entusiasmado:\n\n\u2014Este tipo es un genio \u2014dec\u00eda, ahog\u00e1ndose\u2014. Se le ocurren cosas milagrosas.\n\nTra\u00eda siempre an\u00e9cdotas muy divertidas sobre las proezas art\u00edsticas de Pedro Camacho. Un d\u00eda nos jur\u00f3 que \u00e9ste hab\u00eda aconsejado a Luciano Pando que se masturbara antes de interpretar un di\u00e1logo de amor con el argumento de que eso debilitaba la voz y provocaba un jadeo muy rom\u00e1ntico. Luciano Pando se hab\u00eda resistido.\n\n\u2014Ahora se entiende por qu\u00e9 cada vez que hay una escena sentimental se mete al ba\u00f1ito del patio, don Mario \u2014hac\u00eda cruces y se besaba los dedos el Gran Pablito\u2014. Para corr\u00e9rsela, para qu\u00e9 va a ser. Por eso le sale la voz tan suavecita.\n\nDiscutimos largamente con Javier sobre si ser\u00eda cierto o una invenci\u00f3n del nuevo redactor y llegamos a la conclusi\u00f3n de que, en todo caso, hab\u00eda bases suficientes para no considerarlo absolutamente imposible.\n\n\u2014Sobre esas cosas deber\u00edas escribir un cuento y no sobre Doroteo Mart\u00ed \u2014me amonestaba Javier\u2014. Radio Central es una mina para la literatura.\n\nEl cuento que estaba empe\u00f1ado en escribir, en esos d\u00edas, se basaba en una an\u00e9cdota que me hab\u00eda contado la t\u00eda Julia, algo que ella misma hab\u00eda presenciado en el Teatro Saavedra de La Paz. Doroteo Mart\u00ed era un actor espa\u00f1ol que recorr\u00eda Am\u00e9rica haciendo llorar l\u00e1grimas de inflamada emoci\u00f3n a las multitudes con La Malquerida y Todo un hombre o calamidades m\u00e1s truculentas todav\u00eda. Hasta en Lima, donde el teatro era una curiosidad extinta desde el siglo pasado, la Compa\u00f1\u00eda de Doroteo Mart\u00ed hab\u00eda repletado el Municipal con una representaci\u00f3n que, seg\u00fan la leyenda, era el non plus ultra de su repertorio: La vida, pasi\u00f3n y muerte de Nuestro Se\u00f1or. El artista ten\u00eda un acerado sentido pr\u00e1ctico y las malas lenguas dec\u00edan que, alguna vez, el Cristo interrump\u00eda su sollozante noche de dolor en el Bosque de los Olivos para anunciar, con voz amable, al distinguido p\u00fablico asistente que el d\u00eda de ma\u00f1ana la compa\u00f1\u00eda ofrecer\u00eda una funci\u00f3n de gancho en la que cada caballero podr\u00eda llevar a su pareja gratis (y continuaba el Calvario). Fue precisamente una representaci\u00f3n de La vida, pasi\u00f3n y muerte lo que hab\u00eda visto la t\u00eda Julia en el Teatro Saavedra. Era el instante supremo, Jesucristo agonizaba en lo alto del G\u00f3lgota, cuando el p\u00fablico advirti\u00f3 que el madero en el que permanec\u00eda amarrado, entre nubes de incienso, Jesucristo-Mart\u00ed, comenzaba a cimbrearse. \u00bfEra un accidente o un efecto previsto? Prudentes, cambiando sigilosas miradas, la Virgen, los ap\u00f3stoles, los legionarios, el pueblo en general, comenzaban a retroceder, a apartarse de la cruz oscilante, en la que, todav\u00eda con la cabeza reclinada sobre el pecho, Doroteo-Jes\u00fas hab\u00eda empezado a murmurar, bajito, pero audible en las primeras filas de la platea: \u00abMe caigo, me caigo\u00bb. Paralizados sin duda por el horror al sacrilegio, nadie, entre los invisibles ocupantes de las bambalinas, acud\u00eda a sujetar la cruz, que ahora bailaba desafiando numerosas leyes f\u00edsicas en medio de un rumor de alarma que hab\u00eda reemplazado a los rezos. Segundos despu\u00e9s, los espectadores pace\u00f1os pudieron ver a Mart\u00ed de Galilea vini\u00e9ndose de bruces sobre el escenario de sus glorias, bajo el peso del sagrado madero, y escuchar el estruendo que remeci\u00f3 el teatro. La t\u00eda Julia me juraba que Cristo hab\u00eda alcanzado a rugir salvajemente, antes de hacerse una mazamorra contra las tablas: \u00abMe ca\u00ed, carajo\u00bb. Era sobre todo ese final el que yo quer\u00eda recrear; el cuento iba a terminar as\u00ed, de manera efectista, con el rugido y la palabrota de Jes\u00fas. Quer\u00eda que fuera un cuento c\u00f3mico y, para aprender las t\u00e9cnicas del humor, le\u00eda en los colectivos, Expresos y en la cama antes de caer dormido a todos los escritores risue\u00f1os que se pon\u00edan a mi alcance, desde Mark Twain y Bernard Shaw hasta Jardiel Poncela y Fern\u00e1ndez Fl\u00f3rez. Pero, como siempre, no me sal\u00eda y Pascual y el Gran Pablito iban contando las cuartillas que yo mandaba al canasto. Menos mal que, en lo que se refer\u00eda al papel, los Genaros eran manirrotos con el Servicio de Informaciones.\n\nPasaron dos o tres semanas antes de que conociera al hombre de Radio Victoria que hab\u00eda reemplazado al Gran Pablito. A diferencia de lo que ocurr\u00eda antes de su llegada, en que uno pod\u00eda asistir libremente a la grabaci\u00f3n de los radioteatros, Pedro Camacho hab\u00eda prohibido que nadie, fuera de actores y t\u00e9cnicos, entrara al estudio, y, para impedirlo, cerraba las puertas e instalaba ante ellas la desarmante mole de Jesusito. Ni el propio Genaro hijo hab\u00eda sido exonerado. Recuerdo la tarde en que, como siempre que ten\u00eda problemas y necesitaba un pa\u00f1o de l\u00e1grimas, se present\u00f3 en el altillo con las narices vibr\u00e1ndole de indignaci\u00f3n y me dio sus quejas:\n\n\u2014Trat\u00e9 de entrar al estudio y par\u00f3 el programa en seco y se neg\u00f3 a grabarlo hasta que me largara \u2014me dijo, con voz descompuesta\u2014. Me ha prometido que la pr\u00f3xima vez que interrumpa un ensayo me tirar\u00e1 el micro a la cabeza. \u00bfQu\u00e9 hago? \u00bfLo despido con cajas destempladas o me trago el sapo?\n\nLe dije lo que quer\u00eda que le dijera: que, en vista del \u00e9xito de los radioteatros (\u00aben aras de la radiotelefon\u00eda nacional, etc\u00e9tera\u00bb) se tragara el sapo y no volviera a meter las narices en los dominios del artista. As\u00ed lo hizo y yo qued\u00e9 enfermo de curiosidad por asistir a la grabaci\u00f3n de alguno de los programas del escriba.\n\nUna ma\u00f1ana, a la hora de nuestro consabido caf\u00e9, despu\u00e9s de un cauteloso rodeo me atrev\u00ed a sondear a Pedro Camacho. Le dije que ten\u00eda ganas de ver en acci\u00f3n al nuevo encargado de los efectos especiales, de comprobar si era tan bueno como \u00e9l me hab\u00eda dicho:\n\n\u2014No dije bueno sino mediano \u2014me corrigi\u00f3, inmediatamente\u2014. Pero lo estoy educando y podr\u00eda llegar a ser bueno.\n\nBebi\u00f3 un trago de su infusi\u00f3n y se qued\u00f3 observ\u00e1ndome con sus ojitos fr\u00edos y ceremoniosos, presa de dudas interiores. Por fin, resign\u00e1ndose, asinti\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Muy bien. Venga ma\u00f1ana, al de las tres. Pero esto no se podr\u00e1 repetir, lo siento mucho. No me gusta que los actores se distraigan, cualquier presencia los turba, se me escurren y adi\u00f3s trabajos con la catarsis. La grabaci\u00f3n de un episodio es una misa, mi amigo.\n\nEn realidad, era algo m\u00e1s solemne. Entre todas las misas que recordaba (hac\u00eda a\u00f1os que no iba a la iglesia) nunca vi una ceremonia tan sentida, un rito tan vivido, como esa grabaci\u00f3n del cap\u00edtulo d\u00e9cimo s\u00e9ptimo de Las venturas y desventuras de don Alberto de Quinteros, a la que fui admitido. El espect\u00e1culo no debi\u00f3 de durar m\u00e1s de treinta minutos \u2014diez de ensayo y veinte de grabaci\u00f3n\u2014pero me pareci\u00f3 que duraba horas. Me impresion\u00f3, de entrada, la atm\u00f3sfera de recogimiento religioso que reinaba en el cuartucho encristalado, de polvorienta alfombra verde, que respond\u00eda al nombre de Estudio de Grabaci\u00f3n N\u00famero Uno de Radio Central. S\u00f3lo el Gran Pablito y yo est\u00e1bamos all\u00ed de espectadores; los otros eran participantes activos. Pedro Camacho, al entrar, con una mirada castrense nos hab\u00eda hecho saber que deb\u00edamos permanecer como estatuas de sal. El libretista director parec\u00eda transformado: m\u00e1s alto, m\u00e1s fuerte, un general que instruye a tropas disciplinadas. \u00bfDisciplinadas? M\u00e1s bien embelesadas, hechizadas, fanatizadas. Me cost\u00f3 trabajo reconocer a la bigotuda y varicosa Josefina S\u00e1nchez, a quien hab\u00eda visto ya tantas veces grabar sus parlamentos masticando chicle, tejiendo, totalmente despreocupada y con aire de no saber lo que dec\u00eda, en esa personita tan seria que, cuando no revisaba, como quien reza, el libreto, s\u00f3lo ten\u00eda ojos para mirar, respetuosa y d\u00f3cil, al artista, con el temblor primerizo con que la ni\u00f1ita mira el altar el d\u00eda de su primera comuni\u00f3n. Y lo mismo ocurr\u00eda con Luciano Pando y con los otros tres actores (dos mujeres y un muchacho muy joven). No cambiaban palabra, no se miraban entre ellos: sus ojos iban, imantados, de los libretos a Pedro Camacho, y hasta el t\u00e9cnico de sonido, el huatatiro Ochoa, al otro lado del cristal, compart\u00eda el arrobo: muy serio, probaba los controles, apretando botones y encendiendo luces, y segu\u00eda con ce\u00f1o grave y atento lo que pasaba en el estudio.\n\nLos cinco actores estaban parados en c\u00edrculo en torno a Pedro Camacho, quien \u2014siempre uniformado de traje negro y corbata de lazo y la cabellera revoloteante\u2014 los aleccionaba sobre el cap\u00edtulo que iban a grabar. No eran instrucciones lo que les impart\u00eda, al menos en el sentido prosaico de indicaciones concretas sobre c\u00f3mo decir sus parlamentos \u2014con mesura o exageraci\u00f3n, despacio o r\u00e1pido\u2014, sino, seg\u00fan era costumbre en \u00e9l, pontificando, noble y ol\u00edmpico, sobre profundidades est\u00e9ticas y filos\u00f3ficas. Eran, por supuesto, las palabras \u00abarte\u00bb y \u00abart\u00edstico\u00bb las que m\u00e1s iban y ven\u00edan por ese discurso afiebrado, como un santo y se\u00f1a m\u00e1gico que todo lo abr\u00eda y explicaba. Pero m\u00e1s ins\u00f3lito que las palabras del escriba boliviano era el fervor con que las profer\u00eda, y, quiz\u00e1 a\u00fan m\u00e1s, el efecto que causaban. Hablaba gesticulando y empin\u00e1ndose, con la voz fan\u00e1tica del hombre que est\u00e1 en posesi\u00f3n de una verdad urgente y tiene que propagarla, compartirla, imponerla. Lo consegu\u00eda totalmente: los cinco actores lo escuchaban alelados, suspensos, abriendo mucho los ojos como para absorber mejor esas sentencias sobre su trabajo (\u00absu misi\u00f3n\u00bb, dec\u00eda el libretista director). Lament\u00e9 que la t\u00eda Julia no estuviera all\u00ed, porque no me creer\u00eda cuando le contara que hab\u00eda visto transfigurarse, embellecerse, espiritualizarse, durante una eterna media hora, a ese pu\u00f1ado de exponentes de la m\u00e1s miserable profesi\u00f3n de Lima, bajo la ret\u00f3rica efervescente de Pedro Camacho. El Gran Pablito y yo est\u00e1bamos sentados en el suelo en un rinc\u00f3n del estudio; frente a nosotros, rodeado de una parafernalia extra\u00f1a, se hallaba el tr\u00e1nsfuga de Radio Victoria, la nov\u00edsima adquisici\u00f3n. Tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda escuchado en actitud m\u00edstica la arenga del artista; apenas comenz\u00f3 la grabaci\u00f3n del cap\u00edtulo, \u00e9l se convirti\u00f3 para m\u00ed en el centro del espect\u00e1culo.\n\nEra un hombrecito fortach\u00f3n y cobrizo, de pelos tiesos, vestido casi como un mendigo: un overol ra\u00eddo, una camisa con parches, unos zapatones sin pasador. (M\u00e1s tarde supe que se lo conoc\u00eda por el misterioso apodo de Bat\u00e1n.) Sus instrumentos de trabajo eran: un tabl\u00f3n, una puerta, un lavador lleno de agua, un silbato, un pliego de papel platino, un ventilador y otras cosas de esa misma apariencia dom\u00e9stica. Bat\u00e1n constitu\u00eda \u00e9l solo un espect\u00e1culo de ventriloquia, de acrobacia, de multiplicaci\u00f3n de la personalidad, de imaginaci\u00f3n f\u00edsica. Apenas el director actor hac\u00eda la se\u00f1al indicada \u2014una vibraci\u00f3n magisterial del \u00edndice en el aire cargado de di\u00e1logos, de ayes y suspiros\u2014, Bat\u00e1n, caminando sobre el tabl\u00f3n a un ritmo sabiamente decreciente, hac\u00eda que los pasos de los personajes se acercaran o alejaran, y, a otra se\u00f1al, orientando el ventilador a distintas velocidades sobre el platino, hac\u00eda brotar el rumor de la lluvia o el rugido del viento, y, a otra, meti\u00e9ndose tres dedos en la boca y silbando, inundaba el estudio con los trinos que, en un amanecer de primavera, despertaban a la hero\u00edna en su casa de campo. Era especialmente notable cuando sonorizaba la calle. En un momento dado, dos personajes recorr\u00edan la plaza de Armas conversando. El huatatiro Ochoa enviaba, de cinta grabada, ruido de motores y bocinas, pero todos los dem\u00e1s efectos los produc\u00eda Bat\u00e1n, chasqueando la lengua, cloqueando, bisbiseando, susurrando (parec\u00eda hacer todas estas cosas a la vez) y bastaba cerrar los ojos para sentir, reconstituidas en el peque\u00f1o estudio de Radio Central, las voces, palabras sueltas, risas, interjecciones que uno va distra\u00eddamente oyendo por una calle concurrida. Pero, como si esto fuera poco, Bat\u00e1n, al mismo tiempo que produc\u00eda decenas de voces humanas, caminaba o brincaba sobre el tabl\u00f3n, manufacturando los pasos de los peatones sobre las veredas y los roces de sus cuerpos. Caminaba a la vez con pies y manos (a las que hab\u00eda enguantado con un par de zapatos), de cuclillas, los brazos colgantes como un simio, golpe\u00e1ndose los muslos con codos y antebrazos. Despu\u00e9s de haber sido (ac\u00fasticamente) la plaza de Armas a mediod\u00eda, resultaba, en cierto modo, una proeza insignificante musicalizar \u2014haciendo tintinear dos fierritos, rascando un vidrio, y, para imitar el desliz de sillas y personas sobre mullidas alfombras, restregando unas tablillas contra su fundillo\u2014 la mansi\u00f3n de una empingorotada dama lime\u00f1a que ofrece t\u00e9 \u2014en tazas de porcelana china\u2014 a un grupo de amigas, o, rugiendo, graznando, hozando, aullando, encarnar fon\u00e9ticamente (enriqueci\u00e9ndolo de muchos ejemplares) al Zool\u00f3gico de Barranco. Al terminar la grabaci\u00f3n, parec\u00eda haber corrido la marat\u00f3n ol\u00edmpica: jadeaba, ten\u00eda ojeras y sudaba como un caballo.\n\nPedro Camacho hab\u00eda contagiado a sus colaboradores su seriedad sepulcral. Era un cambio enorme, los radioteatros de la CMQ cubana se grababan muchas veces en una atm\u00f3sfera de jolgorio, y los actores, mientras interpretaban el libreto, se hac\u00edan morisquetas o gestos obscenos, burl\u00e1ndose de s\u00ed mismos y de lo que dec\u00edan. Ahora daba la impresi\u00f3n de que si alguien hubiera hecho una broma los otros se hubieran abalanzado sobre \u00e9l para castigarlo por sacr\u00edlego. Pens\u00e9 un momento que tal vez simulaban por servilismo hacia el jefe, para no ser purgados como los argentinos, que en el fondo no estaban tan seguros, como aqu\u00e9l, de ser los sacerdotes del arte, pero me equivocaba. De regreso a Panamericana, di unos pasos por la calle Bel\u00e9n junto a Josefina S\u00e1nchez, quien, entre radioteatro y radioteatro, se iba a preparar un tecito a su casa, y le pregunt\u00e9 si en todas las grabaciones pronunciaba el escriba boliviano esas arengas preliminares o si hab\u00eda sido algo excepcional. Me mir\u00f3 con un desprecio que hac\u00eda temblar su papada:\n\n\u2014Hoy habl\u00f3 poco y no estuvo inspirado. Hay veces que parte el alma ver c\u00f3mo esas ideas no se conservan para la posteridad.\n\nLe pregunt\u00e9 si ella, \u00abque ten\u00eda tanta experiencia\u00bb, pensaba realmente que Pedro Camacho era una persona de mucho talento. Tard\u00f3 unos segundos en encontrar las palabras adecuadas para formular su pensamiento:\n\n\u2014Ese hombre santifica la profesi\u00f3n del artista.\n\n### VI\n\nUNA RESPLANDECIENTE ma\u00f1ana de verano, atildado y puntual como era su costumbre, entr\u00f3 el doctor don Pedro Barreda y Zald\u00edvar a su despacho de juez instructor de la Primera Sala (en lo Penal) de la Corte Superior de Lima. Era un hombre que hab\u00eda llegado a la flor de la edad, la cincuentena, y en su persona \u2014frente ancha, nariz aguile\u00f1a, mirada penetrante, rectitud y bondad en el esp\u00edritu\u2014, la pulcritud \u00e9tica se transparentaba en una apostura que le merec\u00eda al instante el respeto de las gentes. Vest\u00eda con la modestia que corresponde a un magistrado de magro salario que es constitutivamente inapto para el cohecho, pero con una correcci\u00f3n tal que produc\u00eda una impresi\u00f3n de elegancia. El Palacio de Justicia comenzaba a desperezarse de su descanso nocherniego y su mole se iba inundando de una afanosa muchedumbre de abogados, tinterillos, conserjes, demandantes, notarios, albaceas, bachilleres y curiosos. En el coraz\u00f3n de esa colmena, el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar abri\u00f3 su malet\u00edn, sac\u00f3 dos expedientes, se sent\u00f3 en su escritorio y se dispuso a comenzar la jornada. Segundos despu\u00e9s se materializ\u00f3 en su despacho, raudo y silente como un aerolito en el espacio, el secretario, doctor Zelaya, hombrecillo con anteojos, de bigotito mosca que mov\u00eda r\u00edtmicamente al hablar.\n\n\u2014Muy buenos d\u00edas, mi se\u00f1or doctor \u2014salud\u00f3 al magistrado, haciendo una reverencia de bisagra.\n\n\u2014Lo mismo le deseo, Zelaya \u2014le sonri\u00f3 afablemente el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 nos depara la ma\u00f1ana?\n\n\u2014Estupro de menor con agravante de violencia mental \u2014deposit\u00f3 en el escritorio un expediente de buen cuerpo el secretario\u2014. El responsable, un vecino de La Victoria de catadura lombrosiana, niega los hechos. Los principales testigos est\u00e1n en el pasillo.\n\n\u2014Antes de escucharlos, necesito releer el parte policial y la demanda de la parte civil \u2014le record\u00f3 el magistrado.\n\n\u2014Esperar\u00e1n lo que haga falta \u2014repuso el secretario. Y sali\u00f3 del despacho.\n\nEl doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar ten\u00eda, bajo su s\u00f3lida coraza jur\u00eddica, alma de poeta. Una lectura de los helados documentos judiciales le bastaba para, separando la costra ret\u00f3rica de cl\u00e1usulas y latinajos, llegar con la imaginaci\u00f3n a los hechos. As\u00ed, leyendo el parte asentado en La Victoria, reconstituy\u00f3 con viveza de detalles la denuncia. Vio entrar el lunes pasado, a la comisar\u00eda del abigarrado y variopinto distrito, a la ni\u00f1a de trece a\u00f1os y alumna de la Unidad Escolar Mercedes Cabello de Carbonera llamada Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda. Ven\u00eda llorosa y con moretones en la cara, brazos y piernas, entre sus padres don Casimiro Huanca Padr\u00f3n y do\u00f1a Catalina Salaverr\u00eda Melgar. La menor hab\u00eda sido mancillada la v\u00edspera, en la casa de vecindad de la avenida Luna Pizarro N. 12, cuarto H, por el sujeto Gumercindo Tello, inquilino de la misma casa de vecindad (cuarto J). Sarita, venciendo su confusi\u00f3n y quebranto, hab\u00eda revelado a los custodios del orden que el estupro no era sino el saldo tr\u00e1gico de un largo y secreto asedio a que se hab\u00eda visto sometida por el violador. \u00c9ste, en efecto, hac\u00eda ya ocho meses \u2014es decir desde el d\u00eda en que hab\u00eda venido a instalarse, como extravagante p\u00e1jaro de mal ag\u00fcero, en la casa de vecindad N. 12\u2014, persegu\u00eda a Sarita Huanca, sin que los padres de \u00e9sta o los otros vecinos pudieran advertirlo, con piropos de mal gusto e insinuaciones intr\u00e9pidas (como decirle: \u00abMe gustar\u00eda exprimir los limones de tu huerta\u00bb o \u00abun d\u00eda de \u00e9stos te orde\u00f1ar\u00e9\u00bb). De las profec\u00edas, Gumercindo Tello hab\u00eda pasado a las obras, realizando varios intentos de manoseo y beso de la p\u00faber, en el patio de la casa de vecindad N. 12 o en calles adyacentes, cuando la ni\u00f1a ven\u00eda del colegio o cuando sal\u00eda a hacer mandados. Por natural pudor, la v\u00edctima no hab\u00eda prevenido a los padres sobre el acoso.\n\nLa noche del domingo, diez minutos despu\u00e9s que sus padres salieron en direcci\u00f3n al Cine Metropolitan, Sarita Huanca, que hac\u00eda las tareas del colegio, oy\u00f3 unos golpecillos en la puerta. Fue a abrir y se encontr\u00f3 con Gumercindo Tello. \u00ab\u00bfQu\u00e9 desea?\u00bb, le pregunt\u00f3 cort\u00e9smente. El violador, aparentando el aire m\u00e1s inofensivo del mundo, aleg\u00f3 que su primus se hab\u00eda quedado sin combustible: ya era tarde para ir a comprarlo y ven\u00eda a que le prestaran un conchito de kerosene para preparar su comida (promet\u00eda devolverlo ma\u00f1ana). Dadivosa e ingenua, la ni\u00f1a Huanca Salaverr\u00eda hizo entrar al individuo y le indic\u00f3 que la lata de kerosene estaba entre la hornilla y el balde que hac\u00eda las veces de retrete.\n\n(El doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar sonri\u00f3 ante ese desliz del custodio del orden que hab\u00eda asentado la denuncia y que, sin quererlo, delataba en los Huanca Salaverr\u00eda esa costumbre bonaerense de hacer sus necesidades en un balde en el mismo recinto donde se come y se duerme.)\n\nApenas hubo conseguido, mediante dicha estratagema, introducirse en el cuarto H, el acusado tranc\u00f3 la puerta. Se puso luego de rodillas y, juntando las manos, comenz\u00f3 a musitar palabras de amor a Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, quien s\u00f3lo en este momento sinti\u00f3 alarma por su suerte. En un lenguaje que la ni\u00f1a describ\u00eda como rom\u00e1ntico, Gumercindo Tello le aconsejaba que accediera a sus deseos. \u00bfCu\u00e1les eran \u00e9stos? Que se despojara de sus prendas de vestir y se dejara tocar, besar y arrebatar el himen. Sarita Huanca, sobreponi\u00e9ndose, rechaz\u00f3 con energ\u00eda las propuestas, increp\u00f3 a Gumercindo Tello y lo amenaz\u00f3 con llamar a los vecinos. Fue al o\u00edr esto que el acusado, renunciando a su actitud suplicante, extrajo de sus ropas un cuchillo y amenaz\u00f3 a la ni\u00f1a con darle de pu\u00f1aladas al menor grito. Poni\u00e9ndose de pie, avanz\u00f3 hacia Sarita diciendo: \u00abVamos, vamos, ya te est\u00e1s calateando, mi amor\u00bb, y, como ella, pese a todo, no le obedeciera, le regal\u00f3 una andanada de pu\u00f1etazos y patadas, hasta hacerla caer al suelo. All\u00ed, presa de un nerviosismo que, seg\u00fan la v\u00edctima, le hac\u00eda chocar los dientes, el violador le arranc\u00f3 las ropas a jalones, procedi\u00f3 tambi\u00e9n a desabotonar las suyas, y se derrumb\u00f3 sobre ella, hasta perpetrar, all\u00ed en el suelo, el acto carnal, el mismo que, debido a la resistencia que ofrec\u00eda la muchacha, estuvo yapado de nuevos golpes, de los cuales quedaban huellas en forma de hematomas y chichones. Satisfechas sus ansias, Gumercindo Tello abandon\u00f3 el cuarto H no sin antes recomendar a Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda que no dijera una palabra de lo sucedido si pretend\u00eda llegar a vieja (y agit\u00f3 el cuchillo para mostrar que hablaba en serio). Los padres, al volver del Metropolitan, encontraron a su hija ba\u00f1ada en llanto y con el cuerpo depredado. Luego de curar sus heridas, la exhortaron a decir qu\u00e9 hab\u00eda ocurrido, pero ella, por verg\u00fcenza, se negaba. Y as\u00ed pas\u00f3 la noche entera. A la ma\u00f1ana siguiente, sin embargo, algo repuesta del impacto emocional que le signific\u00f3 la p\u00e9rdida del himen, la ni\u00f1a cont\u00f3 todo a sus progenitores, quienes, de inmediato, se apersonaron a la comisar\u00eda de La Victoria para denunciar el suceso.\n\nEl doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar cerr\u00f3 un instante los ojos. Sent\u00eda (pese a su roce diario con el delito no se hab\u00eda encallecido) l\u00e1stima por lo ocurrido a la ni\u00f1a, pero se dijo a s\u00ed mismo que, a simple vista, se trataba de un delito sin misterio, protot\u00edpico, milim\u00e9tricamente encuadrado en el C\u00f3digo Penal, en las figuras de violaci\u00f3n y abuso de menor, con sus m\u00e1s caracterizados agravantes de premeditaci\u00f3n, violencias de hecho y de dicho, y crueldad mental.\n\nEl siguiente documento que reley\u00f3 era el parte de los custodios del orden que hab\u00edan efectuado la detenci\u00f3n de Gumercindo Tello.\n\nConforme intrucciones de su superior, capit\u00e1n G C Enrique Soto, los guardias Alberto Cusicanqui Ap\u00e9stegui y Huasi Tito Parinacocha se apersonaron con una orden de arresto a la casa de vecindad N. 12 de la avenida Luna Pizarro, pero el individuo no se encontraba en su hogar. Mediante los vecinos, se informaron que era de profesi\u00f3n mec\u00e1nico y trabajaba en el taller de reparaci\u00f3n de motores y soldadura aut\u00f3gena El Inti, sito al otro extremo del distrito, casi en las faldas del cerro El Pino. Los guardias procedieron a trasladarse de inmediato hasta all\u00ed. En el taller, se dieron con la sorpresa de que Gumercindo Tello acababa de partir, inform\u00e1ndoles adem\u00e1s el due\u00f1o del taller, se\u00f1or Carlos Pr\u00edncipe, que hab\u00eda pedido licencia con motivo de un bautizo. Cuando los guardias inquirieron, entre los operarios, en qu\u00e9 iglesia pod\u00eda encontrarse, \u00e9stos se miraron con malicia y cambiaron sonrisas. El se\u00f1or Pr\u00edncipe explic\u00f3 que Gumercindo Tello no era cat\u00f3lico sino Testigo de Jehov\u00e1, y que para esa religi\u00f3n el bautizo no se celebraba en iglesia y con cura sino al aire libre y a zambullidas.\n\nMaliciando que (como se ha dado ya el caso) la tal congregaci\u00f3n fuera una cofrad\u00eda de invertidos, Cusicanqui Ap\u00e9stegui y Tito Parinacocha exigieron que se los condujera al sitio donde se hallaba el acusado. Luego de un buen rato de vacilaciones y cambio de palabras, el propietario de El Inti en persona los gui\u00f3 al lugar donde, dijo, era posible que estuviera Tello, pues una vez, hac\u00eda ya tiempo, cuando trataba de catequizarlos a \u00e9l y a los compa\u00f1eros del taller, lo hab\u00eda invitado a presenciar all\u00ed una ceremonia (experiencia de la cual el susodicho no hab\u00eda quedado nada convencido).\n\nEl se\u00f1or Pr\u00edncipe llev\u00f3 en su autom\u00f3vil a los custodios del orden a los confines de la calle Maynas y el parque Martinetti, descampado donde los vecinos de los alrededores queman basuras y donde hay una entradita del r\u00edo R\u00edmac. En efecto, all\u00ed estaban los Testigos de Jehov\u00e1. Cusicanqui Ap\u00e9stegui y Tito Parinacocha descubrieron una docena de personas de distintas edades y sexos metidas hasta la cintura en las aguas fangosas, no en ropa de ba\u00f1o sino muy vestidas, algunos hombres con corbata y uno de ellos incluso con sombrero. Indiferentes a las bromas, pullas, tiros de c\u00e1scaras y otras criollas picard\u00edas de los vecinos que se hab\u00edan amontonado a la orilla para verlos, prosegu\u00edan muy serios una ceremonia que a los custodios del orden les pareci\u00f3, en el primer momento, poco menos que un intento colectivo de homicidio por inmersi\u00f3n. Esto es lo que vieron: a la vez que entonaban, en voz muy convencida, extra\u00f1os c\u00e1nticos, los Testigos ten\u00edan cogido de los brazos a un anciano de poncho y chullo, al que sepultaban en las inmundas aguas \u00bfcon el prop\u00f3sito de sacrificarlo a su Dios? Pero cuando los guardias, rev\u00f3lver en mano y embarr\u00e1ndose las polainas, les ordenaron interrumpir su criminal acto, el anciano fue el primero en enojarse, exigiendo a los guardias que se retiraran y llam\u00e1ndolos cosas raras (como \u00abromanos\u00bb y \u00abpapistas\u00bb). Los custodios del orden debieron resignarse a esperar que terminara el bautizo para detener a Gumercindo Tello, a quien hab\u00edan identificado gracias al se\u00f1or Pr\u00edncipe. La ceremonia dur\u00f3 unos minutos m\u00e1s, en el curso de los cuales continuaron los rezos y los remojones del bautizado hasta que \u00e9ste comenz\u00f3 a voltear los ojos, a tragar agua y atorarse, momento en que los Testigos optaron por sacarlo en peso hasta la orilla, donde principiaron a felicitarlo por la nueva vida que, dec\u00edan, comenzaba a partir de ese instante.\n\nFue en ese momento que los guardias capturaron a Gumercindo Tello. El mec\u00e1nico no ofreci\u00f3 la menor resistencia, ni pretendi\u00f3 huir, ni mostr\u00f3 sorpresa por el hecho de ser detenido, limit\u00e1ndose a decir a los otros al recibir las esposas: \u00abHermanos, nunca los olvidar\u00e9\u00bb. Los Testigos prorrumpieron de inmediato en nuevos c\u00e1nticos, mirando al cielo y poniendo los ojos en blanco, y as\u00ed los acompa\u00f1aron hasta el auto del se\u00f1or Pr\u00edncipe, quien traslad\u00f3 a los guardias y al detenido a la comisar\u00eda de La Victoria, donde se le despidi\u00f3 agradeci\u00e9ndole los servicios prestados.\n\nEn la comisar\u00eda, el capit\u00e1n G C Enrique Soto pregunt\u00f3 al acusado si quer\u00eda secar sus zapatos y pantalones en el patio, a lo cual Gumercindo Tello repuso que se hallaba acostumbrado a andar mojado por el gran incremento de conversiones a la verdadera fe que se registraba \u00faltimamente en Lima. De inmediato, el capit\u00e1n Soto procedi\u00f3 a interrogarlo, a lo cual el acusado se prest\u00f3 con \u00e1nimo cooperativo. Preguntado por sus generales de ley, repuso llamarse Gumercindo Tello y ser hijo de do\u00f1a Gumercinda Tello, natural de Moquegua y ya difunta, y de padre desconocido, y haber nacido \u00e9l mismo, tambi\u00e9n, probablemente en Moquegua hace unos veinticinco o veintiocho a\u00f1os. Respecto a esta duda explic\u00f3 que su madre lo hab\u00eda entregado, a poco de nacido, a un orfelinato de varones regentado en esa ciudad por la secta papista, en cuyas aberraciones, dijo, hab\u00eda sido educado y de las que felizmente se hab\u00eda liberado a los quince o dieciocho a\u00f1os. Indic\u00f3 que hasta esa edad hab\u00eda permanecido en el orfelinato, fecha en que \u00e9ste desapareci\u00f3 en un gran incendio, quem\u00e1ndose tambi\u00e9n todos los archivos, motivo por el cual \u00e9l se hab\u00eda quedado en el misterio sobre su exacta edad. Explic\u00f3 que el siniestro fue providencial en su vida, pues en esa ocasi\u00f3n conoci\u00f3 a una pareja de sabios que viajaban de Chile a Lima, por tierra, abriendo los ojos de los ciegos y destapando los o\u00eddos de los sordos sobre las verdades de la filosof\u00eda. Puntualiz\u00f3 que se hab\u00eda venido a Lima con esa pareja de sabios, cuyo nombre se excus\u00f3 de revelar porque dijo que era bastante saber que exist\u00edan para tener tambi\u00e9n que etiquetarlos, y que aqu\u00ed hab\u00eda vivido desde entonces repartiendo su tiempo entre la mec\u00e1nica (oficio que aprendi\u00f3 en el orfelinato) y la propagaci\u00f3n de la ciencia de la verdad. Dijo haber vivido en Bre\u00f1a, en Vitarte, en los Barrios Altos, y haberse instalado en La Victoria hac\u00eda ocho meses, por haber obtenido empleo en el taller de reparaci\u00f3n de motores y soldadura aut\u00f3gena El Inti, que quedaba demasiado lejos de su domicilio anterior.\n\nEl acusado admiti\u00f3 residir desde entonces en la casa de vecindad N. 12 de la avenida Luna Pizarro, en calidad de inquilino. Reconoci\u00f3 asimismo a la familia Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, a la que, dijo, hab\u00eda ofrecido varias veces pl\u00e1ticas iluminativas y buenas lecturas, sin haber tenido \u00e9xito por hallarse ellos, al igual que los otros inquilinos, muy intoxicados por las herej\u00edas romanas. Enfrentado al nombre de su presunta v\u00edctima, la ni\u00f1a Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, dijo recordarla e insinu\u00f3 que, por tratarse de una persona todav\u00eda en su tierna edad, no perd\u00eda las esperanzas de que enrumbara alg\u00fan d\u00eda por el buen camino. Puesto entonces en antecedentes de la acusaci\u00f3n, Gumercindo Tello manifest\u00f3 viva sorpresa, negando los cargos, para, un momento despu\u00e9s (\u00bfsimulando una perturbaci\u00f3n con miras a su futura defensa?) romper a re\u00edr muy contento diciendo que \u00e9sta era la prueba que le reservaba Dios para barometrar su fe y su esp\u00edritu de sacrificio. A\u00f1adiendo que ahora entend\u00eda por qu\u00e9 no hab\u00eda salido sorteado en el servicio militar, ocasi\u00f3n que \u00e9l esperaba con impaciencia para, predicando con el ejemplo, negarse a vestir el uniforme y a jurar fidelidad a la bandera, atributos de Sat\u00e1n. El capit\u00e1n G C Enrique Soto le pregunt\u00f3 si estaba hablando en contra del Per\u00fa, a lo cual respondi\u00f3 el acusado que de ning\u00fan modo y que s\u00f3lo se refer\u00eda a asuntos de la religi\u00f3n. Y procedi\u00f3 entonces, de manera fogosa, a explicar al capit\u00e1n Soto y a los guardias que Cristo no era Dios sino Su Testigo y que era falso, como ment\u00edan los papistas, que lo hubieran crucificado siendo as\u00ed que lo hab\u00edan clavado en un \u00e1rbol y que la Biblia lo probaba. A este respecto les aconsej\u00f3 leer Despierta, quincenario que, por el precio de dos soles, sacaba de dudas sobre \u00e9ste y otros temas de cultura y proporcionaba sano entretenimiento. El capit\u00e1n Soto lo hizo callar, advirti\u00e9ndole que en el recinto de la comisar\u00eda estaba prohibido hacer propaganda comercial. Y lo conmin\u00f3 a que dijera d\u00f3nde se hallaba y qu\u00e9 hac\u00eda la v\u00edspera, a las horas en que Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda aseguraba haber sido violada y golpeada por \u00e9l. Gumercindo Tello afirm\u00f3 que esa noche, como todas las noches, hab\u00eda permanecido en su cuarto, solo, entregado a la meditaci\u00f3n sobre el Tronco y sobre c\u00f3mo, contra lo que hac\u00eda creer cierta gente, no era verdad que todos los hombres fueran a resucitar el d\u00eda del Juicio Final, siendo as\u00ed que muchos nunca resucitar\u00edan, lo que probaba la mortalidad del alma. Llamado al orden una vez m\u00e1s, el acusado pidi\u00f3 excusas y dijo que no lo hac\u00eda adrede, pero que no pod\u00eda eximirse, a cada momento, de estar arrojando un poco de luz a los dem\u00e1s, ya que lo desesperaba ver en qu\u00e9 tinieblas viv\u00eda la gente. Y concret\u00f3 que no recordaba haber visto a Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda esa noche ni tampoco la v\u00edspera, y rog\u00f3 que en el parte se hiciera constar que, pese a haber sido calumniado, no guardaba rencor a esa muchacha y que incluso le estaba agradecido porque ten\u00eda sospechas de que a trav\u00e9s de ella Dios quer\u00eda probar la musculatura de su fe. Viendo que no ser\u00eda posible obtener de Gumercindo Tello otras precisiones sobre los cargos formulados, el capit\u00e1n G C Enrique Soto puso fin al interrogatorio y transfiri\u00f3 al acusado a la carceleta del Palacio de Justicia, a fin de que el juez instructor d\u00e9 al caso el desarrollo que corresponda.\n\nEl doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar cerr\u00f3 el expediente, y, en la ma\u00f1ana aquejada de ruidos judiciales, reflexion\u00f3. \u00bfLos Testigos de Jehov\u00e1? Los conoc\u00eda. No hac\u00eda muchos a\u00f1os, un hombre que se movilizaba por el mundo en bicicleta hab\u00eda venido a tocar la puerta de su casa y a ofrecerle el peri\u00f3dico Despierta, que \u00e9l, en un momento de debilidad, hab\u00eda adquirido. Desde entonces, con una puntualidad astral, el Testigo hab\u00eda rondado su hogar, a distintas horas del d\u00eda y de la noche, insistiendo en iluminarlo, abrum\u00e1ndolo con folletos, libros, revistas, de distinto espesor y tem\u00e1tica, hasta que, incapaz de alejar de su morada al Testigo por los civilizados m\u00e9todos de la persuasi\u00f3n, la s\u00faplica, la arenga, el magistrado hab\u00eda recurrido a la fuerza policial. De modo que era uno de estos impetuosos catequizadores, el violador. El doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar se dijo que el caso se pon\u00eda interesante.\n\nEra todav\u00eda media ma\u00f1ana y el magistrado, acariciando distra\u00eddamente el acerado y largo cortapapeles de empu\u00f1adura Tiahuanaco, que ten\u00eda en su escritorio como prenda del afecto de sus superiores, colegas y subordinados (se lo hab\u00edan regalado al cumplir sus bodas de plata de abogado), llam\u00f3 al secretario y le indic\u00f3 que hiciera pasar a los declarantes.\n\nEntraron primero los guardias Cusicanqui Ap\u00e9stegui y Tito Parinacocha, quienes, con habla respetuosa, confirmaron las circunstancias del arresto de Gumercindo Tello y dejaron constancia de que \u00e9ste, salvo negar los cargos, se hab\u00eda mostrado servicial, aunque un poco empalagoso con su man\u00eda religiosa. El doctor Zelaya, los anteojos columpi\u00e1ndose sobre su nariz, iba redactando el acta mientras los guardias hablaban.\n\nPasaron despu\u00e9s los padres de la menor, una pareja cuya avanzada edad sorprendi\u00f3 al magistrado: \u00bfc\u00f3mo hab\u00edan podido procrear hac\u00eda s\u00f3lo trece a\u00f1os ese par de vejestorios? Sin dientes, con los ojos medio recubiertos por lega\u00f1as, el padre, don Isa\u00edas Huanca, refrend\u00f3 r\u00e1pidamente el parte policial en lo que lo concern\u00eda y quiso saber despu\u00e9s, con mucha urgencia, si Sarita contraer\u00eda matrimonio con el se\u00f1or Tello. Apenas hecha su pregunta, la se\u00f1ora Salaverr\u00eda de Huanca, una mujer menuda y arrugada, avanz\u00f3 hacia el magistrado y le bes\u00f3 la mano, a la vez que, con voz implorante, le ped\u00eda que fuera bueno y obligara al se\u00f1or Tello a llevar a Sarita al altar. Cost\u00f3 trabajo al doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar explicar a los ancianos que, entre las altas funciones que le hab\u00edan sido confiadas, no figuraba la de casamentero. La pareja, por lo visto, parec\u00eda m\u00e1s interesada en desposar a la ni\u00f1a que en castigar el abuso, hecho que apenas mencionaban y s\u00f3lo cuando eran urgidos a ello, y perd\u00edan mucho tiempo en enumerar las virtudes de Sarita, como si la tuvieran en venta.\n\nSonriendo para sus adentros, el magistrado pens\u00f3 que estos humildes labradores \u2014no hab\u00eda duda que proced\u00edan del Ande y que hab\u00edan vivido en contacto con la gleba\u2014 lo hac\u00edan sentirse un padre acrimonioso que se niega a autorizar la boda de su hijo. Intent\u00f3 hacerlos recapacitar: \u00bfc\u00f3mo pod\u00edan desear para marido de su hija a un hombre capaz de cometer estupro contra una ni\u00f1a inerme? Pero ellos se arrebataban la palabra, insist\u00edan, Sarita ser\u00eda una esposa modelo, a sus cortos a\u00f1os sab\u00eda cocinar, coser y de todo, ellos eran ya viejos y no quer\u00edan dejarla huerfanita, el se\u00f1or Tello parec\u00eda serio y trabajador, aparte de haberse propasado con Sarita la otra noche nunca se lo hab\u00eda visto borracho, era muy respetuoso, sal\u00eda muy temprano al trabajo con su malet\u00edn de herramientas y su paquete de esos periodiquitos que vend\u00eda de casa en casa. \u00bfUn muchacho que luchaba as\u00ed por la vida no era acaso un buen partido para Sarita? Y ambos ancianos elevaban las manos hacia el magistrado: \u00abCompad\u00e9zcase y ay\u00fadenos, se\u00f1or juez\u00bb.\n\nPor la mente del doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar flot\u00f3, nubecilla negra pre\u00f1ada de lluvia, una hip\u00f3tesis: \u00bfy si todo fuera un ardid tramado por esta pareja para desposar a su v\u00e1staga? Pero el parte m\u00e9dico era terminante: la ni\u00f1a hab\u00eda sido violada. No sin dificultad, despidi\u00f3 a los testigos. Pas\u00f3 entonces la v\u00edctima.\n\nEl ingreso de Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda ilumin\u00f3 el adusto despacho del juez instructor. Hombre que todo lo hab\u00eda visto, ante el cual, como victimarios o v\u00edctimas, hab\u00edan desfilado todas las rarezas y psicolog\u00edas humanas, el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar se dijo, sin embargo, que se hallaba ante un esp\u00e9cimen aut\u00e9nticamente original. \u00bfSarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda era una ni\u00f1a? Sin duda, a juzgar por su edad cronol\u00f3gica, y por su cuerpecito en el que t\u00edmidamente se insinuaban las turgencias de la femineidad, y por las trenzas que recog\u00edan sus cabellos y por la falda y la blusa escolares que vest\u00eda. Pero, en cambio, en su manera de moverse, tan gatuna, y de pararse, apartando las piernas, quebrando la cadera, echando atr\u00e1s los hombros y colocando las manitas con desenvoltura invitadora en la cintura, y, sobre todo, en su manera de mirar; con esos ojos profanos y aterciopelados, y de morderse el labio inferior con unos dientecillos de rat\u00f3n, Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda parec\u00eda tener una experiencia dilatada, una sabidur\u00eda de siglos.\n\nEl doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar ten\u00eda un tacto extremado para interrogar a los menores. Sab\u00eda inspirarles confianza, dar rodeos para no herir sus sentimientos, y le era f\u00e1cil, con suavidad y paciencia, inducirlos a trajinar escabrosos asuntos. Pero su experiencia esta vez no le sirvi\u00f3. Apenas pregunt\u00f3, eufem\u00edsticamente, a la menor si era cierto que Gumercindo Tello la molestaba desde hac\u00eda tiempo con frases maleducadas, Sarita Huanca se lanz\u00f3 a hablar. S\u00ed, desde que vino a vivir a La Victoria, a todas horas, en todos los sitios. Iba a esperarla al paradero del \u00f3mnibus y la acompa\u00f1aba hasta la casa dici\u00e9ndole: \u00abMe gustar\u00eda chuparte la miel\u00bb, \u00abt\u00fa tienes dos naranjitos y yo un platanito\u00bb y \u00abpor ti me estoy chorreando de amor\u00bb. Pero no fueron estas alegor\u00edas, tan inconvenientes en boca de una ni\u00f1a, lo que calde\u00f3 las mejillas del magistrado y ator\u00f3 la mecanograf\u00eda del doctor Zelaya, sino las acciones con que Sarita comenz\u00f3 a ilustrar las acechanzas de que fuera objeto. El mec\u00e1nico siempre estaba tratando de tocarla, aqu\u00ed: y las dos manitas, elev\u00e1ndose, se ahuecaron sobre los tiernos pechos y dedicaron a calentarlos amorosamente. Y tambi\u00e9n aqu\u00ed: y las manitas ca\u00edan sobre las rodillas y las repasaban, y sub\u00edan, sub\u00edan, arrugando la falda, por los (hasta hac\u00eda poco imp\u00faberes) muslitos. Pesta\u00f1eando, tosiendo, cambiando una veloz mirada con el secretario, el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar explic\u00f3 paternalmente a la ni\u00f1a que no era necesario ser tan concreta, que pod\u00eda quedarse en las generalidades. Y tambi\u00e9n la pellizcaba aqu\u00ed, lo interrumpi\u00f3 Sarita, torn\u00e1ndose de medio lado y alargando hacia \u00e9l una grupa que, s\u00fabitamente, pareci\u00f3 crecer, inflarse como un globo de espuma. El magistrado tuvo el presentimiento vertiginoso de que su oficina pod\u00eda convertirse en cualquier momento en un templo de strip-tease.\n\nHaciendo un esfuerzo para dominar el nerviosismo, el magistrado, con voz calma, incit\u00f3 a la menor a olvidar los proleg\u00f3menos y a concentrarse en el hecho mismo de la violaci\u00f3n. Le explic\u00f3 que, aunque deb\u00eda relatar con objetividad lo sucedido, no era imprescindible que se demorara en los detalles, y la exoner\u00f3 de aquellos que \u2014y el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar carraspe\u00f3, con una pizca de embarazo\u2014 hirieran su pudor. El magistrado quer\u00eda, de un lado, acortar la entrevista, y, de otro, adecentarla, y pensaba que, al referir la agresi\u00f3n er\u00f3tica, la ni\u00f1a, l\u00f3gicamente conturbada, ser\u00eda expeditiva y sin\u00f3ptica, cauta y superficial.\n\nPero Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, al o\u00edr la sugesti\u00f3n del juez, como un gallito de pelea al olisquear la sangre, se enardeci\u00f3, excedi\u00f3, verti\u00f3 \u00edntegra en un soliloquio salaz y en una representaci\u00f3n m\u00edmico-seminal que cort\u00f3 la respiraci\u00f3n del doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar y sumi\u00f3 al doctor Zelaya en un desasosiego corporal francamente indecoroso (\u00bfy tal vez masturbatorio?). El mec\u00e1nico hab\u00eda tocado la puerta as\u00ed, y, al ella abrir, la hab\u00eda mirado as\u00ed y hablado as\u00ed, y luego se hab\u00eda arrodillado as\u00ed, toc\u00e1ndose el coraz\u00f3n as\u00ed, y se le hab\u00eda declarado as\u00ed, jur\u00e1ndole que la amaba as\u00ed. Aturdidos, hipnotizados, el juez y el secretario ve\u00edan a la ni\u00f1a mujer aletear como un ave, empinarse como una danzarina, agacharse y alzarse, sonre\u00edr y enojarse, modificar la voz y duplicarla, imitarse a s\u00ed misma y a Gumercindo Tello, y, por fin, caer de hinojos y declarar (se, le) su amor. El doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar estir\u00f3 una mano, balbuce\u00f3 que bastaba, pero ya la v\u00edctima locuaz iba explicando que el mec\u00e1nico la hab\u00eda amenazado con un cuchillo as\u00ed, y se le hab\u00eda abalanzado as\u00ed, haci\u00e9ndola resbalar as\u00ed y tir\u00e1ndose sobre ella as\u00ed y cogi\u00e9ndole la falda as\u00ed, y en ese momento el juez \u2014p\u00e1lido, noble, mayest\u00e1tico, iracundo profeta b\u00edblico\u2014 se incorpor\u00f3 en el asiento y rugi\u00f3: \u00ab\u00a1Basta! \u00a1Basta! \u00a1Suficiente!\u00bb. Era la primera vez en su vida que levantaba la voz.\n\nDesde el suelo, donde se hab\u00eda tendido al llegar al punto neur\u00e1lgico de su gr\u00e1fica deposici\u00f3n, Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda miraba asustada al \u00edndice que parec\u00eda fulminarla.\n\n\u2014No necesito saber m\u00e1s \u2014repiti\u00f3, m\u00e1s suavemente, el magistrado\u2014. Ponte de pie, al\u00edsate la falda, vuelve donde tus padres.\n\nLa v\u00edctima se incorpor\u00f3, asintiendo, con una carita descargada de todo histrionismo e impudor, ni\u00f1a de nuevo, visiblemente compungida. Haciendo venias humildes fue retrocediendo hasta la puerta y sali\u00f3. El juez se volvi\u00f3 entonces al secretario y, con tono medido, nada ir\u00f3nico, le sugiri\u00f3 que dejara de teclear pues \u00bfno se daba cuenta acaso que el papel se hab\u00eda deslizado al suelo y que estaba escribiendo sobre el rodillo vac\u00edo? Granate, el doctor Zelaya tartamude\u00f3 que lo ocurrido lo hab\u00eda perturbado. El doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar le sonri\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Nos ha sido dado presenciar un espect\u00e1culo fuera de lo com\u00fan \u2014filosof\u00f3 el magistrado\u2014. Esa ni\u00f1a tiene el demonio en la sangre y, lo peor, es que probablemente no lo sabe.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs eso lo que los norteamericanos llaman una Lolita, doctor? \u2014intent\u00f3 acrecentar sus conocimientos el secretario.\n\n\u2014Sin duda, una Lolita t\u00edpica \u2014sentenci\u00f3 el juez. Y, poniendo al mal tiempo buena cara, lobo de mar irredimible que aun de los ciclones saca lecciones optimistas, a\u00f1adi\u00f3\u2014: Por lo menos, alegr\u00e9monos de saber que, en este campo, el coloso del norte no tiene la exclusiva. Esta aborigen puede pararle el macho a cualquier Lolita gringa.\n\n\u2014Se comprende que haya sacado de sus casillas al asalariado y que \u00e9ste la violara \u2014divag\u00f3 el secretario\u2014. Despu\u00e9s de verla y o\u00edrla uno jurar\u00eda que fue ella quien lo desvirg\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Alto ah\u00ed, le proh\u00edbo esa clase de presunciones \u2014lo reconvino el juez y el secretario palideci\u00f3\u2014. Nada de adivinanzas suspicaces. Que comparezca Gumercindo Tello.\n\nDiez minutos despu\u00e9s, cuando lo vio entrar al despacho, escoltado por dos guardias, el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar comprendi\u00f3 inmediatamente que la catalogaci\u00f3n del secretario era abusiva. No se trataba de un lombrosiano sino de algo, en cierto sentido, much\u00edsimo m\u00e1s grave: de un creyente. Con un escalofr\u00edo mnemot\u00e9cnico que le eriz\u00f3 los vellos del pescuezo, el juez, al ver la cara de Gumercindo Tello, record\u00f3 la inmutable mirada del hombre de la bicicleta y la revista Despierta con el que hab\u00eda tenido pesadillas, esa mirada tranquilamente testaruda del que sabe, del que no tiene dudas, del que ha resuelto los problemas. Era un muchacho que, sin duda, no hab\u00eda cumplido a\u00fan los treinta a\u00f1os, y cuyo f\u00edsico enteco, puro hueso y pellejo, pregonaba a los vientos el desprecio que le merec\u00edan la comida y la materia, con los cabellos cortados casi al rape, moreno y m\u00e1s bien bajo. Vest\u00eda un gris neblina, no dandy ni mendigo, sino medio pelo, seco ya pero muy arrugado por culpa de las bautismales zambullidas, una camisa blanca y unos botines con herrajes. Bast\u00f3 un vistazo al juez \u2014hombre de olfato antropol\u00f3gico\u2014 para saber que sus se\u00f1as an\u00edmicas eran: discreci\u00f3n, sobriedad, ideas fijas, imperturbabilidad y vocaci\u00f3n de esp\u00edritu. Con mucha crianza, apenas cruz\u00f3 el umbral, dese\u00f3 al juez y al secretario unos cordiales buenos d\u00edas.\n\nEl doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar orden\u00f3 a los guardias que le quitaran las esposas y salieran. Era una costumbre que hab\u00eda nacido con su carrera judicial: aun a los m\u00e1s crapulosos criminales los hab\u00eda interrogado a solas, sin coacci\u00f3n, paternalmente, y en esos t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate, \u00e9stos sol\u00edan abrirle su coraz\u00f3n como penitente a confesor. Nunca hab\u00eda tenido que lamentar esta arriesgada pr\u00e1ctica. Gumercindo Tello se frot\u00f3 las mu\u00f1ecas y agradeci\u00f3 la prueba de confianza. El juez le se\u00f1al\u00f3 un asiento y el mec\u00e1nico se sent\u00f3, al borde mismo, en actitud erecta, como un hombre al que la noci\u00f3n misma de comodidad incomodaba. El juez compuso mentalmente la divisa que, sin duda, reg\u00eda la vida del Testigo: levantarse de la cama con sue\u00f1o, de la mesa con hambre y (si alguna vez iba) salirse del cine antes del final. Intent\u00f3 imaginarlo banderillado, incendiado por la infantil vampiresa de La Victoria, pero en el acto cancel\u00f3 esa operaci\u00f3n imaginaria como lesiva a los derechos de la defensa. Gumercindo Tello se hab\u00eda puesto a hablar:\n\n\u2014Es verdad que no prestamos servidumbre a gobiernos, partidos, ej\u00e9rcitos y dem\u00e1s instituciones visibles, que son todas hijastras de Sat\u00e1n \u2014dec\u00eda con dulzura\u2014, que no juramos fidelidad a ning\u00fan trapo con colorines, ni vestimos uniformes, porque no nos engatusan los oropeles ni los disfraces, y que no aceptamos los injertos de piel o de sangre, porque lo que Dios hizo la ciencia no lo deshar\u00e1. Pero nada de eso quiere decir que no cumplamos nuestras obligaciones. Se\u00f1or juez, estoy a sus \u00f3rdenes para lo que se le ofrezca y sepa que ni aun con motivos le faltar\u00eda el respeto.\n\nHablaba de manera pausada, como para facilitar la tarea del secretario, que iba acompa\u00f1ando con m\u00fasica mecanogr\u00e1fica su perorata. El juez le agradeci\u00f3 sus amables prop\u00f3sitos, le hizo saber que respetaba todas las ideas y creencias, muy en especial las religiosas, y se permiti\u00f3 recordarle que no estaba detenido por las que profesaba sino bajo acusaci\u00f3n de haber golpeado y violentado a una menor.\n\nUna sonrisa abstracta cruz\u00f3 el rostro del muchacho de Moquegua.\n\n\u2014Testigo es el que testimonia, el que testifica, el que atestigua \u2014revel\u00f3 su versaci\u00f3n en el saber sem\u00e1ntico, mirando fijamente al juez\u2014, el que sabiendo que Dios existe lo hace saber, el que conociendo la verdad la hace conocer. Yo soy Testigo y ustedes dos tambi\u00e9n podr\u00edan serlo con un poco de voluntad.\n\n\u2014Gracias, para otra ocasi\u00f3n \u2014lo interrumpi\u00f3 el juez, levantando el grueso expediente y pas\u00e1ndoselo por los ojos como si fuera un manjar\u2014. El tiempo apremia y esto es lo que importa. Vamos al grano. Y, para principiar, un consejo: lo recomendable, lo que le conviene, es la verdad, la limpia verdad.\n\nEl acusado, conmovido por alguna rememoraci\u00f3n secreta, suspir\u00f3 hondo.\n\n\u2014La verdad, la verdad \u2014murmur\u00f3 con tristeza\u2014. \u00bfCu\u00e1l, se\u00f1or juez? \u00bfNo se tratar\u00e1, m\u00e1s bien, de esas calumnias, de esos contrabandos, de esas supercher\u00edas vaticanas que, aprovechando la ingenuidad del vulgo, nos quieren hacer pasar por la verdad? Modestia aparte, yo creo que conozco la verdad, pero, y se lo pregunto sin ofensa, \u00bfla conoce usted?\n\n\u2014Me propongo conocerla \u2014dijo el juez, astutamente, palmoteando el cartapacio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLa verdad en torno a la fantas\u00eda de la cruz, a la broma de Pedro y la piedra, a las mitras, tal vez a la tomadura de pelo papal de la inmortalidad del alma? \u2014se preguntaba sarc\u00e1sticamente Gumercindo Tello.\n\n\u2014La verdad en torno al delito cometido por usted al abusar de la menor Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda \u2014contraatac\u00f3 el magistrado\u2014. La verdad en torno a ese atropello a una inocente de trece a\u00f1os. La verdad en torno a los golpes que le propin\u00f3, a las amenazas con que la aterroriz\u00f3, al estupro con que la humill\u00f3 y tal vez pre\u00f1\u00f3.\n\nLa voz del magistrado se hab\u00eda ido elevando, acusatoria y ol\u00edmpica. Gumercindo Tello lo miraba muy serio, r\u00edgido como la silla que ocupaba, sin indicios de confusi\u00f3n ni arrepentimiento. Por fin, mene\u00f3 la cabeza con suavidad de res:\n\n\u2014Estoy preparado para cualquier prueba a que quiera someterme Jehov\u00e1 \u2014asegur\u00f3.\n\n\u2014No se trata de Dios sino de usted \u2014lo regres\u00f3 a la tierra el magistrado\u2014. De sus apetitos, de su lujuria, de su libido.\n\n\u2014Se trata siempre de Dios, se\u00f1or juez \u2014se empecin\u00f3 Gumercindo Tello\u2014. Nunca de usted, ni de m\u00ed, ni de nadie. De \u00c9l, s\u00f3lo de \u00c9l.\n\n\u2014Sea usted responsable \u2014lo exhort\u00f3 el juez\u2014. At\u00e9ngase a los hechos. Admita su falta y la Justicia tal vez lo considere. Proceda como el hombre religioso que trata de hacerme creer que es.\n\n\u2014Me arrepiento de todas mis culpas, que son infinitas \u2014dijo, l\u00fagubremente, Gumercindo Tello\u2014. S\u00e9 muy bien que soy un pecador, se\u00f1or juez.\n\n\u2014Bien, los hechos concretos \u2014lo apremi\u00f3 el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar\u2014. Puntual\u00edceme, sin regodeos morbosos ni jeremiadas, c\u00f3mo fue que la viol\u00f3.\n\nPero el Testigo ya hab\u00eda prorrumpido en sollozos, cubri\u00e9ndose la cara con las manos. El magistrado no se inmut\u00f3. Estaba habituado a las bruscas alternancias ciclot\u00edmicas de los acusados y sab\u00eda aprovecharlas para la averiguaci\u00f3n de los hechos. Viendo a Gumercindo Tello as\u00ed, cabizbajo, su cuerpo agitado, sus manos h\u00famedas de l\u00e1grimas, el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar se dijo, sobrio orgullo de profesional que comprueba la eficacia de su t\u00e9cnica, que el acusado hab\u00eda llegado a ese clim\u00e1tico estado emotivo en el que, inapto ya para disimular, proferir\u00eda ansiosa, espont\u00e1nea, caudalosamente la verdad.\n\n\u2014Datos, datos \u2014insisti\u00f3\u2014. Hechos, lugares, posiciones, palabras dichas, actos actuados. \u00a1Vamos, valor!\n\n\u2014Es que no s\u00e9 mentir, se\u00f1or juez \u2014balbuce\u00f3 Gumercindo Tello, entre hipos\u2014. Estoy dispuesto a sufrir lo que sea, insulto, c\u00e1rcel, deshonor. \u00a1Pero no puedo mentir! \u00a1Nunca aprend\u00ed, no soy capaz!\n\n\u2014Bien, bien, esa incapacidad lo honra \u2014exclam\u00f3, con gesto alentador, el juez\u2014. Demu\u00e9stremela. Vamos, \u00bfc\u00f3mo fue que la viol\u00f3?\n\n\u2014Ah\u00ed est\u00e1 el problema \u2014se desesper\u00f3, tragando babas, el Testigo\u2014. \u00a1Es que yo no la viol\u00e9!\n\n\u2014Voy a decirle algo, se\u00f1or Tello \u2014silabe\u00f3, suavidad de serpiente que es todav\u00eda m\u00e1s despectiva, el magistrado\u2014: \u00a1Es usted un falso Testigo de Jehov\u00e1! \u00a1Un impostor!\n\n\u2014No la he tocado, jam\u00e1s le habl\u00e9 a solas, ayer ni siquiera la vi \u2014dec\u00eda, corderillo que bala, Gumercindo Tello.\n\n\u2014Un c\u00ednico, un farsante, un prevaricador espiritual \u2014sentenciaba, t\u00e9mpano de hielo, el juez\u2014. Si la justicia y la moral no le importan, respete al menos a ese Dios que tanto nombra. Piense en que ahora mismo lo ve, en lo asqueado que debe estar al o\u00edrlo mentir.\n\n\u2014Ni con la mirada ni con el pensamiento he ofendido a esa ni\u00f1a \u2014repiti\u00f3, con acento desgarrador, Gumercindo Tello.\n\n\u2014La ha amenazado, golpeado y violado \u2014se destempl\u00f3 la voz del magistrado\u2014. \u00a1Con su sucia lujuria, se\u00f1or Tello!\n\n\u2014\u00bfCon-mi-su-cia-lu-ju-ria? \u2014repiti\u00f3, hombre que acaba de recibir un martillazo, el Testigo.\n\n\u2014Con su sucia lujuria, s\u00ed se\u00f1or \u2014refrend\u00f3 el magistrado, y, luego de una pausa creativa\u2014: \u00a1Con su pene pecador!\n\n\u2014\u00bfCon-mi-pe-ne-pe-ca-dor? \u2014tartamude\u00f3, voz desfalleciente y expresi\u00f3n de pasmo, el acusado\u2014. \u00bfMi-pe-ne-pe-ca-dor-ha-di-cho-us-ted?\n\nEstramb\u00f3ticos y estr\u00e1bicos, saltamontes at\u00f3nitos, sus ojos pasearon del secretario al juez, del suelo al techo, de la silla al escritorio y all\u00ed permanecieron, recorriendo papeles, expedientes, secantes. Hasta que se iluminaron sobre el cortapapeles Tiahuanaco que descollaba entre todos los objetos con art\u00edstico centelleo prehisp\u00e1nico. Entonces, movimiento tan r\u00e1pido que no dio tiempo al juez ni al secretario a intentar un gesto para impedirlo, Gumercindo Tello estir\u00f3 la mano y se apoder\u00f3 del pu\u00f1al. No hizo ning\u00fan adem\u00e1n amenazador, todo lo contrario, estrech\u00f3, madre que abriga a su peque\u00f1o, el plateado cuchillo contra su pecho, y dirigi\u00f3 una tranquilizadora, bondadosa, triste mirada a los dos hombres petrificados de sorpresa.\n\n\u2014Me ofenden creyendo que podr\u00eda lastimarlos \u2014dijo con voz de penitente.\n\n\u2014No podr\u00e1 huir jam\u00e1s, insensato \u2014le advirti\u00f3, reponi\u00e9ndose, el magistrado\u2014. El Palacio de Justicia est\u00e1 lleno de guardias, lo matar\u00e1n.\n\n\u2014\u00bfHuir yo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 con iron\u00eda el mec\u00e1nico\u2014. Qu\u00e9 poco me conoce, se\u00f1or juez.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo ve que se est\u00e1 delatando? \u2014insisti\u00f3 el magistrado\u2014. Devu\u00e9lvame el cortapapeles.\n\n\u2014Lo he cogido prestado para probar mi inocencia \u2014explic\u00f3 serenamente Gumercindo Tello.\n\nEl juez y el secretario se miraron. El acusado se hab\u00eda puesto de pie. Ten\u00eda una expresi\u00f3n nazarena, en su mano derecha el cuchillo desped\u00eda un brillo premonitorio y terrible. Su mano izquierda se desliz\u00f3 sin prisa hacia la ranura del pantal\u00f3n que ocultaba el cierre rel\u00e1mpago y, mientras, iba diciendo con voz adolorida:\n\n\u2014Yo soy puro, se\u00f1or juez, yo no he conocido mujer. A m\u00ed, eso que otros usan para pecar, s\u00f3lo me sirve para hacer pip\u00ed...\n\n\u2014Alto ah\u00ed \u2014lo interrumpi\u00f3, con una sospecha atroz, el doctor don Barreda y Zald\u00edvar\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 va usted a hacer?\n\n\u2014Cortarlo y botarlo a la basura para probarle lo poco que me importa \u2014replic\u00f3 el acusado, mostrando con el ment\u00f3n el cesto de papeles.\n\nHablaba sin soberbia, con tranquila determinaci\u00f3n. El juez y el secretario, boquiabiertos, no atinaban a gritar. Gumercindo Tello ten\u00eda ya en la mano izquierda el cuerpo del delito y elevaba el cuchillo para, verdugo que blande el hacha y mide la trayectoria hacia el cuello del condenado, dejarlo caer y consumar la inconcebible prueba.\n\n\u00bfLo har\u00eda? \u00bfSe privar\u00eda as\u00ed, de un tajo, de su integridad? \u00bfSacrificar\u00eda su cuerpo, su juventud, su honor, en pos de una demostraci\u00f3n \u00e9tico-abstracta? \u00bfConvertir\u00eda Gumercindo Tello el m\u00e1s respetable despacho judicial de Lima en ara de sacrificios? \u00bfC\u00f3mo terminar\u00eda ese drama forense?\n\n### VII\n\nLOS AMORES con la t\u00eda Julia continuaban viento en popa, pero las cosas se iban complicando porque resultaba dif\u00edcil mantener la clandestinidad. De com\u00fan acuerdo, para no provocar sospechas en la familia, hab\u00eda reducido dr\u00e1sticamente mis visitas a casa del t\u00edo Lucho. S\u00f3lo segu\u00eda yendo con puntualidad al almuerzo de los jueves. Para el cine de las noches invent\u00e1bamos diversas tretas. La t\u00eda Julia sal\u00eda temprano, llamaba a la t\u00eda Olga para decirle que comer\u00eda con una amiga y me esperaba en alg\u00fan lugar acordado. Pero esta operaci\u00f3n ten\u00eda el inconveniente de que la t\u00eda Julia deb\u00eda pasarse horas en las calles, hasta que yo saliera del trabajo, y de que la mayor parte de las veces ayunaba. Otros d\u00edas yo iba a buscarla en un taxi, sin bajarme; ella estaba alerta y apenas ve\u00eda detenerse el autom\u00f3vil sal\u00eda corriendo. Pero era una estratagema riesgosa: si me descubr\u00edan, inmediatamente sabr\u00edan que hab\u00eda algo entre ella y yo; y, de todos modos, ese misterioso invitador, emboscado en el fondo de un taxi, terminar\u00eda por despertar curiosidad, malicia, muchas preguntas...\n\nHab\u00edamos optado, por eso, en vernos menos de noche y m\u00e1s de d\u00eda, aprovechando los huecos de la radio. La t\u00eda Julia tomaba un colectivo al centro y a eso de las once de la ma\u00f1ana, o de las cinco de la tarde, me esperaba en una cafeter\u00eda de Caman\u00e1, o en el Cream Rica del jir\u00f3n de la Uni\u00f3n. Yo dejaba revisados un par de boletines y pod\u00edamos pasar dos horas juntos. Hab\u00edamos descartado el Bransa de la Colmena porque all\u00ed acud\u00eda toda la gente de Panamericana y de Radio Central. De vez en cuando (m\u00e1s exactamente, los d\u00edas de pago) la invitaba a almorzar y entonces est\u00e1bamos hasta tres horas juntos. Pero mi magro salario no permit\u00eda esos excesos. Hab\u00eda conseguido, luego de un elaborado discurso, una ma\u00f1ana en que lo encontr\u00e9 euf\u00f3rico por los \u00e9xitos de Pedro Camacho, que Genaro hijo me aumentara el sueldo, con lo que llegu\u00e9 a redondear cinco mil soles. Daba dos mil a mis abuelos para ayudarlos en la casa. Los tres mil restantes me alcanzaban antes de sobra para mis vicios: el cigarrillo, el cine y los libros. Pero, desde mis amores con la t\u00eda Julia, se volatizaban velozmente y andaba siempre apurado, recurriendo con frecuencia a pr\u00e9stamos e, incluso, a la Caja Nacional de Pignoraci\u00f3n, en la plaza de Armas. Como, por otra parte, ten\u00eda firmes prejuicios hisp\u00e1nicos respecto a las relaciones entre hombres y mujeres y no permit\u00eda que la t\u00eda Julia pagara ninguna cuenta, mi situaci\u00f3n econ\u00f3mica llegaba a ser dram\u00e1tica. Para aliviarla, comenc\u00e9 a hacer algo que Javier severamente llam\u00f3 \u00abprostituir mi pluma\u00bb. Es decir, a escribir rese\u00f1as de libros y reportajes en suplementos culturales y revistas de Lima. Los publicaba con seud\u00f3nimo, para avergonzarme menos de lo malos que eran. Pero los doscientos o trescientos soles m\u00e1s al mes constitu\u00edan un t\u00f3nico para mi presupuesto.\n\nEsas citas en los cafetines del centro de Lima eran poco pecaminosas, largas conversaciones muy rom\u00e1nticas, haciendo empanaditas, mir\u00e1ndonos a los ojos, y, si la topograf\u00eda del local lo permit\u00eda, roz\u00e1ndonos las rodillas. S\u00f3lo nos bes\u00e1bamos cuando nadie pod\u00eda vernos, lo que ocurr\u00eda rara vez, porque a esas horas los caf\u00e9s estaban siempre repletos de oficinistas lisurientos. Habl\u00e1bamos de nosotros, por supuesto, de los peligros que corr\u00edamos de ser sorprendidos por alg\u00fan miembro de la familia, de la manera de conjurar esos peligros, nos cont\u00e1bamos con lujo de detalles todo lo que hab\u00edamos hecho desde la \u00faltima vez (es decir, algunas horas atr\u00e1s o el d\u00eda anterior), pero, en cambio, jam\u00e1s hac\u00edamos ning\u00fan plan para el futuro. El porvenir era un asunto t\u00e1citamente abolido en nuestros di\u00e1logos, sin duda porque, tanto ella como yo, est\u00e1bamos convencidos que nuestra relaci\u00f3n no tendr\u00eda ninguno. Sin embargo, pienso que eso que hab\u00eda comenzado como un juego, se fue volviendo serio en los castos encuentros de los caf\u00e9s humosos del centro de Lima. Fue ah\u00ed donde, sin darnos cuenta, nos fuimos enamorando.\n\nHabl\u00e1bamos tambi\u00e9n mucho de literatura; o, mejor dicho, la t\u00eda Julia escuchaba y yo le hablaba de la buhardilla de Par\u00eds (ingrediente inseparable de mi vocaci\u00f3n) y de todas las novelas, los dramas, los ensayos que escribir\u00eda cuando fuera escritor. La tarde que nos descubri\u00f3 Javier, en el Cream Rica del jir\u00f3n de la Uni\u00f3n, yo estaba ley\u00e9ndole a la t\u00eda Julia mi cuento sobre Doroteo Mart\u00ed. Se titulaba, medievalescamente, La humillaci\u00f3n de la cruz y ten\u00eda cinco p\u00e1ginas. Era el primer cuento que le le\u00eda, y lo hice muy despacio, para disimular mi inquietud por su veredicto. La experiencia fue catastr\u00f3fica para la susceptibilidad del futuro escritor. A medida que progresaba en la lectura, la t\u00eda Julia me iba interrumpiendo:\n\n\u2014Pero si no fue as\u00ed, pero si lo has puesto todo patas arriba \u2014me dec\u00eda, sorprendida y hasta enojada\u2014, pero si no fue eso lo que dijo, pero si...\n\nYo, angustiad\u00edsimo, hac\u00eda un alto para informarle que lo que escuchaba no era la relaci\u00f3n fiel de la an\u00e9cdota que me hab\u00eda contado, sino un cuento, un cuento, y que todas las cosas a\u00f1adidas o suprimidas eran recursos para conseguir ciertos efectos:\n\n\u2014Efectos c\u00f3micos \u2014subray\u00e9, a ver si entend\u00eda y, aunque fuera por conmiseraci\u00f3n, sonre\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Pero, al contrario \u2014protest\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia, impert\u00e9rrita y feroz\u2014, con las cosas que has cambiado le quitaste toda la gracia. Qui\u00e9n se va a creer que pasa tanto rato desde que la cruz comienza a moverse hasta que se cae. \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1 el chiste ahora?\n\nYo, aunque hab\u00eda ya decidido, en mi humillada intimidad, enviar el cuento sobre Doroteo Mart\u00ed al canasto de la basura, estaba enfrascado en una defensa ardorosa, adolorida, de los derechos de la imaginaci\u00f3n literaria a transgredir la realidad, cuando sent\u00ed que me tocaban el hombro.\n\n\u2014Si interrumpo, me lo dicen y me voy porque odio tocar viol\u00edn \u2014dijo Javier, jalando una silla, sent\u00e1ndose y pidiendo un caf\u00e9 al mozo. Sonri\u00f3 a la t\u00eda Julia\u2014: Encantado, yo soy Javier, el mejor amigo de este prosista. Qu\u00e9 bien guardada te la ten\u00edas, compadre.\n\n\u2014Es Julita, la hermana de mi t\u00eda Olga \u2014le expliqu\u00e9.\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo? \u00bfLa famosa boliviana? \u2014se le fueron apagando los br\u00edos a Javier. Nos hab\u00eda encontrado de la mano, no nos hab\u00edamos soltado, y ahora miraba fijo, sin la seguridad mundana de antes, nuestros dedos entrelazados\u2014. Vaya, vaya, Varguitas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfYo soy la famosa boliviana? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. \u00bfFamosa por qu\u00e9?\n\n\u2014Por antip\u00e1tica, por esos chistes tan pasados, cuando llegaste \u2014la puse al d\u00eda\u2014. Javier s\u00f3lo conoce la primera parte de la historia.\n\n\u2014La mejor me la hab\u00edas ocultado, mal narrador y peor amigo \u2014dijo Javier, recuperando la soltura y se\u00f1alando las empanaditas\u2014. Qu\u00e9 me cuentan, qu\u00e9 me cuentan.\n\nEstuvo realmente simp\u00e1tico, hablando hasta por los codos y haciendo toda clase de bromas, y la t\u00eda Julia qued\u00f3 encantada con \u00e9l. Me alegr\u00e9 de que nos hubiera descubierto; no hab\u00eda planeado contarle mis amores, porque era reacio a confidencias sentimentales (y m\u00e1s todav\u00eda en este caso, tan enredado) pero ya que el azar lo hab\u00eda hecho part\u00edcipe del secreto, me dio gusto poder comentar con \u00e9l las peripecias de esta aventura. Esa ma\u00f1ana se despidi\u00f3 besando a la t\u00eda Julia en la mejilla y haciendo una reverencia:\n\n\u2014Soy un celestino de primera, cuenten conmigo para cualquier cosa.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no dijiste tambi\u00e9n que nos tender\u00edas la cama? \u2014lo re\u00f1\u00ed esa tarde, apenas se present\u00f3 en mi gallinero de Radio Panamericana, \u00e1vido de detalles.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs algo as\u00ed como tu t\u00eda, no? \u2014dijo, palmote\u00e1ndome\u2014. Est\u00e1 bien, me has impresionado. Una amante vieja, rica y divorciada: \u00a1veinte puntos!\n\n\u2014No es mi t\u00eda, sino la hermana de la mujer de mi t\u00edo \u2014le expliqu\u00e9 lo que ya sab\u00eda, mientras daba vuelta a una noticia de La Prensa sobre la guerra de Corea\u2014. No es mi amante, no es vieja y no tiene medio. S\u00f3lo lo de divorciada es verdad.\n\n\u2014Vieja quer\u00eda decir mayor que t\u00fa, y lo de rica no era cr\u00edtica sino felicitaci\u00f3n, yo soy partidario de los braguetazos \u2014se ri\u00f3 Javier\u2014. \u00bfAs\u00ed que no es tu amante? \u00bfQu\u00e9, entonces? \u00bfTu enamorada?\n\n\u2014Una cosa entre las dos \u2014le dije, sabiendo que lo irritar\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Ah, quieres hacerte el misterioso, pues te vas a la mierda ipso facto \u2014me advirti\u00f3\u2014. Y, adem\u00e1s, eres un miserable: yo te cuento todos mis amores con la flaca Nancy y lo del braguetazo t\u00fa me lo hab\u00edas ocultado.\n\nLe cont\u00e9 la historia desde el principio, las complicaciones que ten\u00edamos para vernos y entendi\u00f3 por qu\u00e9 en las \u00faltimas semanas le hab\u00eda pedido dos o tres veces plata prestada. Se interes\u00f3, me comi\u00f3 a preguntas y acab\u00f3 jur\u00e1ndome que se convertir\u00eda en mi hada madrina. Pero, al despedirse, se puso grave:\n\n\u2014Supongo que esto es un juego \u2014me sermone\u00f3, mir\u00e1ndome a los ojos como un padre sol\u00edcito\u2014. No se olvide que, a pesar de todo, usted y yo somos todav\u00eda dos mocosos.\n\n\u2014Si quedo encinta, te juro que me har\u00e9 abortar \u2014lo tranquilic\u00e9.\n\nUna vez que se fue, y mientras Pascual entreten\u00eda al Gran Pablito con un choque serial, en Alemania, en el que una veintena de autom\u00f3viles se hab\u00edan incrustado uno en el otro por culpa de un distra\u00eddo turista belga que estacion\u00f3 su auto en plena carretera para auxiliar a un perrito, me qued\u00e9 pensando. \u00bfEra cierto que esta historia no iba en serio? S\u00ed, cierto. Se trataba de una experiencia distinta, algo m\u00e1s madura y atrevida que todas las que hab\u00eda vivido, pero, para que el recuerdo fuera bueno, no deber\u00eda durar mucho. Estaba en estas reflexiones cuando entr\u00f3 Genaro hijo a invitarme a almorzar. Me llev\u00f3 a Magdalena, a un jard\u00edn criollo, me impuso un arroz con pato y unos picarones con miel, y a la hora del caf\u00e9 me pas\u00f3 la factura:\n\n\u2014Eres su \u00fanico amigo, h\u00e1blale, nos est\u00e1 metiendo en un l\u00edo de los diablos. Yo no puedo, a m\u00ed me dice inculto, ignaro, ayer a mi padre lo llam\u00f3 mes\u00f3crata. Quiero evitarme m\u00e1s l\u00edos con \u00e9l. Tendr\u00eda que botarlo y eso ser\u00eda una cat\u00e1strofe para la empresa.\n\nEl problema era una carta del embajador argentino dirigida a Radio Central, en lenguaje mef\u00edtico, protestando por las alusiones \u00abcalumniosas, perversas y psic\u00f3ticas\u00bb contra la patria de Sarmiento y San Mart\u00edn que aparec\u00edan por doquier en las radionovelas (que el diplom\u00e1tico llamaba \u00abhistorias dram\u00e1ticas serializadas\u00bb). El embajador ofrec\u00eda algunos ejemplos que, aseguraba, no hab\u00edan sido buscados ex profeso sino recogidos al azar por el personal de la legaci\u00f3n \u00abafecto a ese g\u00e9nero de emisiones\u00bb. En una se suger\u00eda, nada menos, que la proverbial hombr\u00eda de los porte\u00f1os era un mito, pues casi todos practicaban la homosexualidad (y, de preferencia, la pasiva); en otra, que en las familias bonaerenses, tan gregarias, se sacrificaba por hambre a las bocas in\u00fatiles \u2014ancianos y enfermos\u2014 para aligerar el presupuesto; en otra, que lo de las vacas era para la exportaci\u00f3n porque all\u00e1, en casita, el manjar verdaderamente codiciado era el caballo; en otra, que la extendida pr\u00e1ctica del f\u00fatbol, por culpa sobre todo del cabezazo a la pelota, hab\u00eda lesionado los genes nacionales, lo que explicaba la abundancia proliferante, en las orillas del r\u00edo de color leonado, de oligofr\u00e9nicos, acromeg\u00e1licos, y otras subvariedades de cretinos; que en los hogares de Buenos Aires \u2014\u00absemejante cosm\u00f3polis\u00bb, puntualizaba la carta\u2014 era corriente hacer las necesidades biol\u00f3gicas, en el mismo recinto donde se com\u00eda y dorm\u00eda, en un simple balde...\n\n\u2014T\u00fa te r\u00edes y nosotros tambi\u00e9n nos re\u00edamos \u2014dijo Genaro hijo, comi\u00e9ndose las u\u00f1as\u2014, pero hoy se nos present\u00f3 un abogado y nos quit\u00f3 la risa. Si la embajada protesta ante el gobierno nos pueden cancelar los radioteatros, multar, clausurar la radio. Ru\u00e9gale, amen\u00e1zalo, que se olvide de los argentinos.\n\nLe promet\u00ed hacer lo posible, pero sin muchas esperanzas porque el escriba era un hombre de convicciones inflexibles. Yo hab\u00eda llegado a sentirme amigo de \u00e9l; adem\u00e1s de la curiosidad entomol\u00f3gica que me inspiraba, le ten\u00eda aprecio. Pero \u00bfera rec\u00edproco? Pedro Camacho no parec\u00eda capaz de perder su tiempo, su energ\u00eda, en la amistad ni en nada que lo distrajera de su arte, es decir su trabajo o vicio, esa urgencia que barr\u00eda hombres, cosas, apetitos. Aunque es verdad que a m\u00ed me toleraba m\u00e1s que a otros. Tom\u00e1bamos caf\u00e9 (\u00e9l menta y yerbaluisa) y yo iba a su cub\u00edculo y le serv\u00eda de pausa entre dos p\u00e1ginas. Lo escuchaba con suma atenci\u00f3n y tal vez eso lo halagaba; quiz\u00e1 me ten\u00eda por un disc\u00edpulo, o, simplemente, era para \u00e9l lo que el perrito faldero de la solterona y el crucigrama del jubilado: alguien, algo con que llenar los vac\u00edos.\n\nTres cosas me fascinaban en Pedro Camacho: lo que dec\u00eda, la austeridad de su vida enteramente consagrada a una obsesi\u00f3n, y su capacidad de trabajo. Esto \u00faltimo, sobre todo. En la biograf\u00eda de Emil Ludwig hab\u00eda le\u00eddo la resistencia de Napole\u00f3n, c\u00f3mo sus secretarios se derrumbaban y \u00e9l segu\u00eda dictando, y sol\u00eda imaginarme al emperador de los franceses con la cara nariguda del escribidor y a \u00e9ste, durante alg\u00fan tiempo, Javier y yo lo llamamos el Napole\u00f3n del Altiplano (nombre que altern\u00e1bamos con el de Balzac criollo). Por curiosidad, llegu\u00e9 a establecer su horario de trabajo y, pese a que lo verifiqu\u00e9 muchas veces, siempre me pareci\u00f3 imposible.\n\nEmpez\u00f3 con cuatro radioteatros al d\u00eda, pero, en vista del \u00e9xito, fueron aumentando hasta diez, que se radiaban de lunes a s\u00e1bado, con una duraci\u00f3n de media hora cada cap\u00edtulo (en realidad, veintitr\u00e9s minutos, pues la publicidad acaparaba siete). Como los dirig\u00eda e interpretaba todos, deb\u00eda permanecer en el estudio unas siete horas diarias, calculando que el ensayo y grabaci\u00f3n de cada programa durasen cuarenta minutos (entre diez y quince para su arenga y las repeticiones). Escrib\u00eda los radioteatros a medida que se iban radiando; comprob\u00e9 que cada cap\u00edtulo le tomaba apenas el doble de tiempo que su interpretaci\u00f3n, una hora. Lo cual significaba, de todos modos, unas diez horas en la m\u00e1quina de escribir. Esto disminu\u00eda algo gracias a los domingos, su d\u00eda libre, que \u00e9l, por supuesto, pasaba en su cub\u00edculo, adelantando el trabajo de la semana. Su horario era, pues, entre quince y diecis\u00e9is horas de lunes a s\u00e1bado y de ocho a diez los domingos. Todas ellas pr\u00e1cticamente productivas, de rendimento art\u00edstico sonante.\n\nLlegaba a Radio Central a las ocho de la ma\u00f1ana y part\u00eda cerca de medianoche; sus \u00fanicas salidas a la calle las hac\u00eda conmigo, al Bransa, para tomar las infusiones cerebrales. Almorzaba en su cub\u00edculo, un s\u00e1ndwich y un refresco que le iban a comprar devotamente Jesusito, el Gran Pablito o alguno de sus colaboradores. Jam\u00e1s aceptaba una invitaci\u00f3n, jam\u00e1s le o\u00ed decir que hab\u00eda estado en un cine, un teatro, un partido de f\u00fatbol o en una fiesta. Jam\u00e1s lo vi leer un libro, una revista o un peri\u00f3dico, fuera del mamotreto de citas y de esos planos que eran sus instrumentos de trabajo. Aunque miento: un d\u00eda le descubr\u00ed un bolet\u00edn de socios del Club Nacional.\n\n\u2014Corromp\u00ed al portero con unos cobres \u2014me explic\u00f3, cuando le pregunt\u00e9 por el libraco\u2014. \u00bfDe d\u00f3nde podr\u00eda sacar los nombres de mis arist\u00f3cratas? Para los otros, me bastan las orejas: los plebeyos los recojo del arroyo.\n\nLa fabricaci\u00f3n del radioteatro, la hora que le tomaba producir, sin atorarse, cada libreto, me dejaba siempre incr\u00e9dulo. Muchas veces lo vi redactar esos cap\u00edtulos. A diferencia de lo que ocurr\u00eda con las grabaciones, cuyo secreto defend\u00eda celosamente, no le importaba que lo vieran escribir. Mientras estaba tecleando su (mi) Remington, entraban a interrumpirlo sus actores, Bat\u00e1n o el t\u00e9cnico de sonido. Alzaba la vista, absolv\u00eda las preguntas, daba una indicaci\u00f3n churrigueresca, desped\u00eda al visitante con su sonrisita epid\u00e9rmica, lo m\u00e1s opuesto a la risa que he conocido, y continuaba escribiendo. Yo sol\u00eda meterme al cub\u00edculo con el pretexto de estudiar, de que en mi gallinero hab\u00eda mucho ruido y gente (estudiaba los cursos de Derecho para ex\u00e1menes y olvidaba todo despu\u00e9s de rendirlos: que jam\u00e1s me suspendieran no hablaba bien de m\u00ed sino mal de la universidad). Pedro Camacho no pon\u00eda objeci\u00f3n y hasta parec\u00eda que no le desagradaba esa presencia humana que lo sent\u00eda crear.\n\nMe sentaba en el alf\u00e9izar de la ventana y hund\u00eda la nariz en alg\u00fan c\u00f3digo. En realidad, lo espiaba. Escrib\u00eda con dos dedos, muy r\u00e1pido. Lo ve\u00eda y no lo cre\u00eda: jam\u00e1s se paraba a buscar alguna palabra o contemplar una idea, nunca aparec\u00eda en esos ojitos fan\u00e1ticos y saltones la sombra de una duda. Daba la impresi\u00f3n de estar pasando a limpio un texto que sab\u00eda de memoria, mecanografiando algo que le dictaban. \u00bfC\u00f3mo era posible que, a esa velocidad con que ca\u00edan sus deditos sobre las teclas, estuviera nueve, diez horas al d\u00eda, inventando las situaciones, las an\u00e9cdotas, los di\u00e1logos, de varias historias distintas? Y, sin embargo, era posible: los libretos sal\u00edan de esa cabecita tenaz y de esas manos infatigables, uno tras otro, a la medida adecuada, como sartas de salchichas de una m\u00e1quina. Una vez terminado el cap\u00edtulo, no lo correg\u00eda ni siquiera le\u00eda; lo entregaba a la secretaria para que sacara copias y proced\u00eda, sin soluci\u00f3n de continuidad, a fabricar el siguiente. Una vez le dije que verlo trabajar me recordaba la teor\u00eda de los surrealistas franceses sobre la escritura autom\u00e1tica, aquella que mana directamente del subconsciente, esquivando las censuras de la raz\u00f3n. Obtuve una respuesta nacionalista:\n\n\u2014Los cerebros de nuestra Am\u00e9rica mestiza pueden parir mejores cosas que los franchutes. Nada de complejos, mi amigo.\n\n\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no utilizaba, como base para sus historias lime\u00f1as, las que hab\u00eda escrito en Bolivia? Se lo pregunt\u00e9 y me repuso con esas generalidades de las que era imposible extraer nada concreto. Las historias, para llegar al p\u00fablico, deb\u00edan ser frescas, como las frutas y los vegetales, pues el arte no toleraba las conservas y menos los alimentos que el tiempo hab\u00eda podrido. De otra parte, necesitaban ser \u00abhistorias comprovincianas de los oyentes\u00bb. \u00bfC\u00f3mo, siendo \u00e9stos lime\u00f1os, se pod\u00edan interesar en episodios ocurridos en La Paz? Pero daba estas razones porque en \u00e9l la necesidad de teorizar, de convertir todo en verdad impersonal, axioma eterno, era tan compulsiva como la de escribir. Sin duda, la raz\u00f3n por la cual no utilizaba sus viejos radioteatros era m\u00e1s simple: porque no ten\u00eda el menor inter\u00e9s en ahorrarse trabajo. Vivir era, para \u00e9l, escribir. No le importaba en absoluto que sus obras durasen. Una vez radiados, se olvidaba de los libretos. Me asegur\u00f3 que no conservaba copia de ninguno de sus radioteatros. \u00c9stos hab\u00edan sido compuestos con el t\u00e1cito convencimiento de que deb\u00edan volatilizarse al ser digeridos por el p\u00fablico. Una vez le pregunt\u00e9 si nunca hab\u00eda pensado publicar:\n\n\u2014Mis escritos se conservan en un lugar m\u00e1s indeleble que los libros \u2014me instruy\u00f3, en el acto\u2014: La memoria de los radioescuchas.\n\nHabl\u00e9 con \u00e9l sobre la protesta argentina el mismo d\u00eda del almuerzo con Genaro hijo. A eso de las seis ca\u00ed por su cub\u00edculo y lo invit\u00e9 al Bransa. Temeroso de su reacci\u00f3n, le solt\u00e9 la noticia a pocos: hab\u00eda gente muy susceptible, incapaz de tolerar iron\u00edas, y, de otro lado, en el Per\u00fa, la legislaci\u00f3n en materia de libelo era sever\u00edsima, una radio pod\u00eda ser clausurada por una insignificancia. La embajada argentina, dando pruebas de poco mundo, se hab\u00eda sentido herida por algunas alusiones y amenazaba con una queja oficial ante la canciller\u00eda...\n\n\u2014En Bolivia lleg\u00f3 a haber amenaza de rompimiento de relaciones \u2014me interrumpi\u00f3\u2014. Un pasqu\u00edn incluso rumore\u00f3 algo sobre concentraci\u00f3n de tropas en las fronteras.\n\nLo dec\u00eda resignado, como pensando: la obligaci\u00f3n del sol es echar rayos, qu\u00e9 remedio si eso provoca alg\u00fan incendio.\n\n\u2014Los Genaros le piden que, en lo posible, evite hablar mal de los argentinos en los radioteatros \u2014le confes\u00e9 y encontr\u00e9 un argumento que, supuse, le har\u00eda mella\u2014: Total, mejor ni se ocupe de ellos, \u00bfacaso valen la pena?\n\n\u2014La valen, porque ellos me inspiran \u2014me explic\u00f3, dando por cancelado el asunto.\n\nDe regreso a la radio me hizo saber, con una inflexi\u00f3n traviesa en la voz, que el esc\u00e1ndalo de La Paz \u00ables sac\u00f3 roncha\u00bb y que fue motivado por una obra de teatro sobre \u00ablas costumbres bestiales de los gauchos\u00bb. En Panamericana, le dije a Genaro hijo que no deb\u00eda hacerse ilusiones respecto a mi eficacia como mediador.\n\nDos o tres d\u00edas despu\u00e9s, conoc\u00ed la pensi\u00f3n de Pedro Camacho. La t\u00eda Julia hab\u00eda venido a encontrarse conmigo a la hora del \u00faltimo bolet\u00edn, porque quer\u00eda ver una pel\u00edcula que daban en el Metro, con una de las grandes parejas rom\u00e1nticas: Greer Garson y Walter Pidgeon. Cerca de medianoche, est\u00e1bamos cruzando la plaza San Mart\u00edn, para tomar el colectivo, cuando vi a Pedro Camacho saliendo de Radio Central. Apenas se lo se\u00f1al\u00e9, la t\u00eda Julia quiso que se lo presentara. Nos acercamos y \u00e9l, al decirle que se trataba de una compatriota suya, se mostr\u00f3 muy amable.\n\n\u2014Soy una gran admiradora suya \u2014le dijo la t\u00eda Julia, y para caerle m\u00e1s en gracia le minti\u00f3\u2014: Desde Bolivia, no me pierdo sus radioteatros.\n\nFuimos caminando con \u00e9l, casi sin darnos cuenta, hacia el jir\u00f3n Quilca, y en el trayecto Pedro Camacho y la t\u00eda Julia mantuvieron una conversaci\u00f3n patri\u00f3tica de la que qued\u00e9 excluido, en la que desfilaron las minas de Potos\u00ed y la cerveza Taqui\u00f1a, esa sopa de choclo que llaman lagua, el mote con queso fresco, el clima de Cochabamba, la belleza de las cruce\u00f1as y otros orgullos bolivianos. El escriba parec\u00eda muy satisfecho hablando maravillas de su tierra. Al llegar al port\u00f3n de una casa con balcones y celos\u00edas se detuvo. Pero no nos despidi\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Suban \u2014nos propuso\u2014. Aunque mi cena es sencilla, podemos compartirla.\n\nLa Pensi\u00f3n La Tapada era una de esas viejas casas de dos pisos del centro de Lima, construidas el siglo pasado, que alguna vez fueron amplias, confortables y acaso suntuosas, y que luego, a medida que la gente acomodada iba desertando el centro hacia los balnearios y la vieja Lima iba perdiendo clase, se han ido deshaciendo y atestando, subdividi\u00e9ndose hasta ser verdaderas colmenas, gracias a tabiques que duplican o cuadruplican las habitaciones y a nuevos reductos erigidos de cualquier manera en los zaguanes, las azoteas e, incluso, los balcones y las escaleras. La Pensi\u00f3n La Tapada daba la impresi\u00f3n de estar a punto de descalabrarse; las gradas en que subimos al cuarto de Pedro Camacho se mec\u00edan bajo nuestro peso, y se levantaban unas nubecillas que hac\u00edan estornudar a la t\u00eda Julia. Una costra de polvo lo recubr\u00eda todo, paredes y suelos, y era evidente que la casa no hab\u00eda sido barrida ni trapeada jam\u00e1s. El cuarto de Pedro Camacho parec\u00eda una celda. Era muy peque\u00f1o y estaba casi vac\u00edo. Hab\u00eda un catre sin espaldar, cubierto con una colcha descolorida y una almohada sin funda, una mesita con hule y una silla de paja, una maleta y un cordel tendido entre dos paredes donde se columpiaban unos calzoncillos y unas medias. Que el escriba se lavara \u00e9l mismo la ropa no me sorprendi\u00f3, pero s\u00ed que se hiciera la comida. Hab\u00eda un primus en el alf\u00e9izar de la ventana, una botella de kerosene, unos platos y cubiertos de lata, unos vasos. Ofreci\u00f3 la silla a la t\u00eda Julia y a m\u00ed la cama con un gesto magn\u00edfico:\n\n\u2014Asiento. La morada es pobre pero el coraz\u00f3n es grande.\n\nPrepar\u00f3 la cena en dos minutos. Ten\u00eda los ingredientes en una bolsa de pl\u00e1stico, ore\u00e1ndose en la ventana. El men\u00fa consisti\u00f3 en unas salchichas hervidas con huevo frito, pan con mantequilla y queso, y un yogur con miel. Lo vimos prepararlo diestramente, como alguien acostumbrado a hacerlo a diario, y tuve la certidumbre que \u00e9sa deb\u00eda ser siempre su dieta.\n\nMientras com\u00edamos, estuvo conversador y galante, y condescendi\u00f3 a tratar temas como la receta de la crema volteada (que le pidi\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia) y el sapolio m\u00e1s econ\u00f3mico para la ropa blanca. No termin\u00f3 su plato; al apartarlo, se\u00f1alando las sobras, se permiti\u00f3 una broma:\n\n\u2014Para el artista la comida es vicio, mis amigos.\n\nAl ver su buen humor, me atrev\u00ed a hacerle preguntas sobre su trabajo. Le dije que envidiaba su resistencia, que, pese a su horario de galeote, nunca pareciera cansado.\n\n\u2014Tengo mis estrategias para que la jornada resulte variopinta \u2014nos confes\u00f3.\n\nBajando la voz, como para que no fueran a descubrir su secreto fantasmales competidores, nos dijo que nunca escrib\u00eda m\u00e1s de sesenta minutos una misma historia y que pasar de un tema a otro era refrescante, pues cada hora ten\u00eda la sensaci\u00f3n de estar principiando a trabajar.\n\n\u2014En la variaci\u00f3n se encuentra el gusto, se\u00f1ores \u2014repet\u00eda, con ojos excitados y muecas de gnomo mal\u00e9fico.\n\nPara eso era importante que las historias estuvieran ordenadas no por afinidad sino por contraste: el cambio total de clima, lugar, asunto y personajes reforzaba la sensaci\u00f3n renovadora. De otro lado, los matecitos de yerbaluisa y menta eran \u00fatiles, desatoraban los conductos cerebrales y la imaginaci\u00f3n lo agradec\u00eda. Y eso de, cada cierto tiempo, dejar la m\u00e1quina para ir al estudio, ese pasar de escribir a dirigir e interpretar era tambi\u00e9n descanso, una transici\u00f3n que entonaba. Pero, adem\u00e1s, \u00e9l, en el curso de los a\u00f1os, hab\u00eda descubierto algo, algo que a los ignaros y a los insensibles les pod\u00eda parecer tal vez una chiquillada. Aunque \u00bfimportaba lo que pensara la ralea? Lo vimos vacilar, callarse, y su carita caricatural se entristeci\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed, desgraciadamente, no puedo ponerlo en pr\u00e1ctica \u2014dijo con melancol\u00eda\u2014. S\u00f3lo los domingos, que estoy solo. Los d\u00edas de semana hay demasiados curiosos y no lo entender\u00edan.\n\n\u00bfDe cu\u00e1ndo ac\u00e1 esos escr\u00fapulos, en \u00e9l, que miraba ol\u00edmpicamente a los mortales? Vi a la t\u00eda Julia tan anhelante como yo:\n\n\u2014No puede usted dejarnos con la miel en los labios \u2014le rog\u00f3\u2014. \u00bfCu\u00e1l es ese secreto, se\u00f1or Camacho?\n\nSe nos qued\u00f3 observando, en silencio, como el ilusionista que contempla, satisfecho, la atenci\u00f3n que ha conseguido despertar. Luego, con lentitud sacerdotal, se levant\u00f3 (estaba sentado en la ventana, junto al primus), fue hasta la maleta, la abri\u00f3, y empez\u00f3 a sacar de sus entra\u00f1as, como el prestidigitador saca palomas o banderas del sombrero de copa, una inesperada colecci\u00f3n de objetos: una peluca de magistrado ingl\u00e9s, bigotes postizos de distintos tama\u00f1os, un casco de bombero, una insignia de militar, caretas de mujer gorda, de anciano, de ni\u00f1o est\u00fapido, la varita del polic\u00eda de tr\u00e1nsito, la gorra y la pipa del lobo de mar, el mandil blanco del m\u00e9dico, narices falsas, orejas postizas, barbas de algod\u00f3n... Como una figurita el\u00e9ctrica, mostraba los artefactados y, \u00bfpara que los apreci\u00e1ramos mejor, por una necesidad \u00edntima?, se los iba enfundando, acomodando, quitando, con una agilidad que delataba una persistente costumbre, un asiduo manejo. De este modo, ante la t\u00eda Julia y yo, que lo mir\u00e1bamos embobados, Pedro Camacho, mediante cambios de atuendo, se transformaba en un m\u00e9dico, en un marino, en un juez, en una anciana, en un mendigo, en una beata, en un cardenal... Al mismo tiempo que operaba estas mudanzas, iba hablando, lleno de ardor:\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no voy a tener derecho, para consubstanciarme con personajes de mi propiedad, a parecerme a ellos? \u00bfQui\u00e9n me proh\u00edbe tener, mientras los escribo, sus narices, sus pelos y sus levitas? \u2014dec\u00eda, trocando un capelo por una cachimba, la cachimba por un guardapolvo y el guardapolvo por una muleta\u2014. \u00bfA qui\u00e9n le importa que aceite la imaginaci\u00f3n con unos trapos? \u00bfQu\u00e9 cosa es el realismo, se\u00f1ores, el tan mentado realismo qu\u00e9 cosa es? \u00bfQu\u00e9 mejor manera de hacer arte realista que identific\u00e1ndose materialmente con la realidad? \u00bfY no resulta as\u00ed la jornada m\u00e1s llevadera, m\u00e1s amena, m\u00e1s movida?\n\nPero, claro \u2014y su voz pas\u00f3 a ser primero furiosa, luego desconsolada\u2014, la incomprensi\u00f3n y la estulticia de la gente todo lo malinterpretaban. Si lo ve\u00edan en Radio Central escribiendo disfrazado, brotar\u00edan las murmuraciones, correr\u00eda la voz de que era travestido, su oficina se convertir\u00eda en un im\u00e1n para la morbosidad del vulgo. Termin\u00f3 de guardar las caretas y dem\u00e1s objetos, cerr\u00f3 la maleta y volvi\u00f3 a la ventana. Ahora estaba triste. Murmur\u00f3 que en Bolivia, donde siempre trabajaba en su propio atelier, nunca hab\u00eda tenido problema \u00abcon los trapos\u00bb. Aqu\u00ed, en cambio, s\u00f3lo los domingos pod\u00eda escribir de acuerdo a su costumbre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEsos disfraces se los consigue en funci\u00f3n de los personajes o inventa los personajes a partir de disfraces que ya tiene? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9, por decir algo, todav\u00eda sin salir del asombro.\n\nMe mir\u00f3 como a un reci\u00e9n nacido:\n\n\u2014Se nota que es usted muy joven \u2014me reprendi\u00f3 con suavidad\u2014. \u00bfNo sabe acaso que lo primero es siempre el verbo?\n\nCuando, despu\u00e9s de agradecerle efusivamente la invitaci\u00f3n, volvimos a la calle, le dije a la t\u00eda Julia que Pedro Camacho nos hab\u00eda dado una prueba de confianza excepcional haci\u00e9ndonos part\u00edcipes de su secreto, y que me hab\u00eda conmovido. Ella estaba contenta: nunca se hab\u00eda imaginado que los intelectuales pudieran ser tipos tan entretenidos.\n\n\u2014Bueno, no todos son as\u00ed \u2014me burl\u00e9\u2014. Pedro Camacho es un intelectual entre comillas. \u00bfTe fijaste que no hay un solo libro en su cuarto? Me ha explicado que no lee para que no le influyan el estilo.\n\nRegres\u00e1bamos, por las calles taciturnas del centro, cogidos de la mano, hacia el paradero de los colectivos y yo le dec\u00eda que alg\u00fan domingo vendr\u00eda a Radio Central s\u00f3lo para ver al escriba transubstanciado mediante antifaces con sus creaturas.\n\n\u2014Vive como un pordiosero, no hay derecho \u2014protestaba la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Siendo sus radioteatros tan famosos, cre\u00ed que ganar\u00eda montones de plata.\n\nLe preocupaba que en la Pensi\u00f3n La Tapada no se viera ni una ba\u00f1era ni una ducha, apenas un excusado y un lavador enmohecidos en el primer rellano de la escalera. \u00bfCre\u00eda yo que Pedro Camacho no se ba\u00f1aba nunca? Le dije que al escriba esas banalidades le importaban un pito. Me confes\u00f3 que al ver la suciedad de la pensi\u00f3n le hab\u00eda dado asco, que hab\u00eda hecho un esfuerzo sobrehumano para pasar la salchicha y el huevo. Ya en el colectivo, una vieja carcocha que iba parando en cada esquina de la avenida Arequipa, mientras yo la besaba despacito en la oreja, en el cuello, la o\u00ed decir alarmada:\n\n\u2014O sea que los escritores son unos muertos de hambre. Quiere decir que toda la vida vivir\u00e1s fregado, Varguitas.\n\nDesde que se lo hab\u00eda o\u00eddo a Javier, ella tambi\u00e9n me llamaba Varguitas.\n\n### VIII\n\nDON FEDERICO T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui consult\u00f3 su reloj, comprob\u00f3 que eran las doce, dijo a la media docena de empleados de Antirroedores S. A. que pod\u00edan partir a almorzar, y no les record\u00f3 que estuvieran de vuelta a las tres en punto, ni un minuto m\u00e1s tarde, porque todos ellos sab\u00edan de sobra que, en esa empresa, la impuntualidad era sacr\u00edlega: se pagaba con multa e incluso despido. Una vez partidos, don Federico, seg\u00fan su costumbre, cerr\u00f3 \u00e9l mismo la oficina con doble llave, enfund\u00f3 su sombrero gris pericote, y se dirigi\u00f3, por las atestadas aceras del jir\u00f3n Huancavelica, hacia la playa de estacionamiento donde guardaba su autom\u00f3vil (un sed\u00e1n marca Dodge).\n\nEra un hombre que inspiraba temor e ideas l\u00fagubres, alguien a quien bastaba cruzar en la calle para advertir que era distinto a sus conciudadanos. Estaba en la flor de la edad, la cincuentena, y sus se\u00f1as particulares \u2014frente ancha, nariz aguile\u00f1a, mirada penetrante, rectitud en el esp\u00edritu\u2014 pod\u00edan haber hecho de \u00e9l un donju\u00e1n si se hubiera interesado en las mujeres. Pero don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui hab\u00eda consagrado su existencia a una cruzada y no permit\u00eda que nada ni nadie \u2014a no ser las indispensables horas de sue\u00f1o, alimentaci\u00f3n y trato de la familia\u2014 lo distrajera de ella. Esa guerra la libraba hac\u00eda cuarenta a\u00f1os y ten\u00eda como meta el exterminio de todos los roedores del territorio nacional.\n\nLa raz\u00f3n de esta quimera la ignoraban sus conocidos e incluso su esposa y sus cuatro hijos. Don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui la ocultaba pero no la olvidaba: d\u00eda y noche ella volv\u00eda a su memoria, pesadilla persistente de la que extra\u00eda nuevas fuerzas, odio fresco para perseverar en ese combate que algunos consideraban estramb\u00f3tico, otros repelente y, los m\u00e1s, comercial. Ahora mismo, mientras entraba a la playa de estacionamiento, verificaba de un vistazo de c\u00f3ndor que el Dodge hab\u00eda sido lavado, lo pon\u00eda en marcha y esperaba dos minutos (tomados por reloj) que se calentara el motor, sus pensamientos, una vez m\u00e1s, mariposas revoloteando hacia llamas donde arder\u00e1n sus alas, remontaban el tiempo, el espacio, hacia la poblaci\u00f3n selv\u00e1tica de su ni\u00f1ez y hacia el espanto que fragu\u00f3 su destino.\n\nHab\u00eda sucedido en la primera d\u00e9cada del siglo, cuando Tingo Mar\u00eda era apenas una cruz en el mapa, un claro de caba\u00f1as rodeado por la jungla abrupta. Hasta all\u00ed ven\u00edan, a veces, despu\u00e9s de infinitas penalidades, aventureros que abandonaban la molicie de la capital con la ilusi\u00f3n de conquistar la selva. As\u00ed lleg\u00f3 a la regi\u00f3n el ingeniero Hildebrando T\u00e9llez, con una esposa joven (por cuyas venas, como su nombre Mayte y su apellido Unz\u00e1tegui voceaban, corr\u00eda la azulina sangre vasca) y un hijo peque\u00f1o: Federico. Alentaba el ingeniero proyectos grandiosos: talar \u00e1rboles, exportar maderas preciosas para la vivienda y el mueble de los pudientes, cultivar la pi\u00f1a, la palta, la sand\u00eda, la guan\u00e1bana y la l\u00facuma para los paladares ex\u00f3ticos del mundo, y, con el tiempo, un servicio de vaporcitos por los r\u00edos amaz\u00f3nicos. Pero los dioses y los hombres hicieron ceniza de esos fuegos. Las cat\u00e1strofes naturales \u2014lluvias, plagas, desbordes\u2014 y las limitaciones humanas \u2014falta de mano de obra, pereza y estulticia de la existente, alcohol, escaso cr\u00e9dito\u2014 liquidaron uno tras otro los ideales del pionero, quien, a los dos a\u00f1os de su llegada a Tingo Mar\u00eda, deb\u00eda ganarse el sustento, modestamente, con una chacrita de camotes, aguas arriba del r\u00edo Pendencia. Fue all\u00ed, en una caba\u00f1a de troncos y palmas, donde una noche c\u00e1lida las ratas se comieron viva, en su cuna sin mosquitero, a la reci\u00e9n nacida Mar\u00eda T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui.\n\nLo ocurrido ocurri\u00f3 de manera simple y atroz. El padre y la madre eran padrinos de un bautizo y pasaban la noche, en los festejos consabidos, en la otra margen del r\u00edo. Hab\u00eda quedado a cargo de la chacra el capataz, quien, con los dos peones restantes, ten\u00eda una enramada lejos de la caba\u00f1a del patr\u00f3n. En \u00e9sta dorm\u00edan Federico y su hermana. Pero el ni\u00f1o acostumbraba, en \u00e9pocas de calor, sacar su camastro a orillas del Pendencia, donde dorm\u00eda arrullado por el agua. Es lo que hab\u00eda hecho esa noche (se lo reprochar\u00eda mientras tuviera vida). Se ba\u00f1\u00f3 a la luz de la luna, se acost\u00f3 y durmi\u00f3. Entre sue\u00f1os, le pareci\u00f3 que o\u00eda un llanto de ni\u00f1a. No fue suficientemente fuerte o largo para despertarlo. Al amanecer, sinti\u00f3 unos acerados dientecillos en el pie. Abri\u00f3 los ojos y crey\u00f3 morir, o, m\u00e1s bien, haber muerto y estar en el infierno: decenas de ratas lo rodeaban, tropezando, empuj\u00e1ndose, contone\u00e1ndose y, sobre todo, masticando lo que se pon\u00eda a su alcance. Brinc\u00f3 del camastro, cogi\u00f3 un palo, a gritos consigui\u00f3 alertar al capataz y a los peones. Entre todos, con antorchas, garrotes, patadas, alejaron a la colonia de invasoras. Pero cuando entraron a la caba\u00f1a (plato fuerte del fest\u00edn de las hambrientas) de la ni\u00f1a quedaba s\u00f3lo un montoncito de huesos.\n\nHab\u00edan pasado los dos minutos y don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui parti\u00f3. Avanz\u00f3, en una serpiente de autom\u00f3viles, por la avenida Tacna, para tomar Wilson y Arequipa, hacia el distrito del Barranco, donde lo esperaba el almuerzo. Al frenar en los sem\u00e1foros, cerraba los ojos y sent\u00eda, como siempre que recordaba aquel amanecer de trementina, una sensaci\u00f3n \u00e1cida y efervescente. Porque, como dice la sabidur\u00eda, \u00abbien vengas mal si vienes solo\u00bb. Su madre, la joven de estirpe vasca, por efecto de la tragedia contrajo un hipo cr\u00f3nico, que le causaba arcadas, le imped\u00eda comer y despertaba la hilaridad de la gente. No volvi\u00f3 a pronunciar palabra: s\u00f3lo gorgoritos y ronqueras. Andaba as\u00ed, con los ojos espantados, hipando, consumi\u00e9ndose, hasta que unos meses despu\u00e9s muri\u00f3, de extenuaci\u00f3n. El padre se desciviliz\u00f3, perdi\u00f3 la ambici\u00f3n, las energ\u00edas, la costumbre de asearse. Cuando, por desidia, le remataron la chacrita, se gan\u00f3 un tiempo la vida como balsero, pasando humanos, productos y animales de una banda a otra del Huallaga. Pero un d\u00eda las aguas de la creciente deshicieron la balsa contra los \u00e1rboles y \u00e9l no tuvo \u00e1nimos para fabricar otra. Se intern\u00f3 en las laderas sical\u00edpticas de esa monta\u00f1a de ubres maternales y caderas \u00e1vidas que llaman La Bella Durmiente, se construy\u00f3 un refugio de hojas y tallos, se dej\u00f3 crecer los pelos y las barbas y all\u00ed se qued\u00f3 a\u00f1os, comiendo hierbas y fumando unas hojas que produc\u00edan mareos. Cuando Federico, adolescente, abandon\u00f3 la selva, el ex ingeniero era llamado El Brujo en Tingo Mar\u00eda y viv\u00eda cerca de la cueva de las Pavas, amancebado con tres ind\u00edgenas huanuque\u00f1as, en las que hab\u00eda procreado algunas criaturas montubias, de vientres esf\u00e9ricos.\n\nS\u00f3lo Federico supo hacer frente a la cat\u00e1strofe con creatividad. Esa misma ma\u00f1ana, despu\u00e9s de haber sido azotado por dejar sola a su hermana en la caba\u00f1a, el ni\u00f1o (hecho hombre en unas horas), arrodill\u00e1ndose junto al mont\u00edculo que era la tumba de Mar\u00eda, jur\u00f3 que, hasta el \u00faltimo instante, se consagrar\u00eda a la aniquilaci\u00f3n de la especie asesina. Para dar fuerza a su juramento, reg\u00f3 sangre de azotes sobre la tierra que cubr\u00eda a la ni\u00f1a.\n\nCuarenta a\u00f1os m\u00e1s tarde, constancia de los probos que remueve monta\u00f1as, don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui pod\u00eda decirse, mientras su sed\u00e1n rodaba por las avenidas hacia el frugal almuerzo cotidiano, que hab\u00eda mostrado ser hombre de palabra. Porque en todo ese tiempo era probable que, por sus obras e inspiraci\u00f3n, hubieran perecido m\u00e1s roedores que peruanos nacido. Trabajo dif\u00edcil, abnegado, sin premio, que hizo de \u00e9l un ser estricto y sin amigos, de costumbres aparte. Al principio, de ni\u00f1o, lo m\u00e1s arduo fue vencer el asco a los parduzcos. Su t\u00e9cnica inicial hab\u00eda sido primitiva: la trampa. Compr\u00f3 con sus propinas, en la colchoner\u00eda y bodega El Profundo Sue\u00f1o de la avenida Raimondi, una que le sirvi\u00f3 de modelo para fabricar muchas otras. Cortaba las maderas, los alambres, los retorc\u00eda y, dos veces al d\u00eda, las sembraba dentro de los linderos de la chacra. A veces, algunos animalitos atrapados estaban a\u00fan vivos. Emocionado, los ultimaba a fuego lento, o hac\u00eda sufrir punz\u00e1ndolos, mutil\u00e1ndolos, revent\u00e1ndoles los ojos.\n\nPero, aunque ni\u00f1o, su inteligencia le hizo comprender que si se abandonaba a esas inclinaciones se frustrar\u00eda: su obligaci\u00f3n era cuantitativa, no cualitativa. No se trataba de inferir el m\u00e1ximo sufrimiento por unidad de enemigo sino de destruir el mayor n\u00famero de unidades en el m\u00ednimo tiempo. Con lucidez y voluntad notables para sus a\u00f1os, extirp\u00f3 de s\u00ed todo sentimentalismo, y procedi\u00f3 en adelante, en su tarea genocida, con criterio glacial, estad\u00edstico, cient\u00edfico. Rob\u00e1ndole horas al colegio de los hermanos canadienses, y al sue\u00f1o (mas no al recreo, porque desde la tragedia no jug\u00f3 m\u00e1s), perfeccion\u00f3 las trampas, a\u00f1adi\u00e9ndoles una cuchilla que cercenaba el cuerpo de la v\u00edctima de modo que no fueran jam\u00e1s a quedar vivas (no para ahorrarles dolor sino para no perder tiempo en rematarlas). Construy\u00f3 luego trampas multifamiliares, de base ancha, en las que un trinche con arabescos pod\u00eda apachurrar simult\u00e1neamente al padre, la madre y cuatro cr\u00edas. Este quehacer fue pronto conocido en la comarca, e, insensiblemente, pas\u00f3 de venganza, penitencia personal, a ser un servicio a la comunidad, m\u00ednimamente (pero mal que mal) retribuido. Al ni\u00f1o lo llamaban de chacras vecinas y alejadas, apenas hab\u00eda indicios de invasi\u00f3n, y \u00e9l, diligencia de hormiga que todo lo puede, las limpiaba en pocos d\u00edas. Tambi\u00e9n de Tingo Mar\u00eda empezaron a solicitar sus servicios, caba\u00f1as, casas, oficinas, y el ni\u00f1o tuvo su momento de gloria cuando el capit\u00e1n de la Guardia Civil le encomend\u00f3 despejar la comisar\u00eda, que hab\u00eda sido ocupada. Todo el dinero que recib\u00eda se lo gastaba fabricando nuevas trampas para extender lo que los ingenuos cre\u00edan su perversi\u00f3n o su negocio. Cuando el ex ingeniero se intern\u00f3 en la sexualoide mara\u00f1a de La Bella Durmiente, Federico, que hab\u00eda abandonado el colegio, empezaba a complementar el arma blanca de la trampa con otra, m\u00e1s sutil: los venenos.\n\nEl trabajo le permiti\u00f3 ganarse la vida a una edad en que otros ni\u00f1os hacen bailar trompos. Pero tambi\u00e9n lo convirti\u00f3 en un apestado. Lo llamaban para que les matase a los veloces, pero jam\u00e1s lo sentaban a sus mesas ni le dec\u00edan palabras afectuosas. Si esto lo hizo sufrir, no permiti\u00f3 que se notara, y, m\u00e1s bien, se hubiera dicho que la repugnancia de sus conciudadanos lo halagaba. Era un adolescente hura\u00f1o, lac\u00f3nico, al que nadie pudo ufanarse de haber hecho ni visto re\u00edr, y cuya \u00fanica pasi\u00f3n parec\u00eda ser la de matar a los inmundos. Cobraba moderadamente por los trabajos, pero tambi\u00e9n hac\u00eda campa\u00f1as ad hon\u00f3rem, en casas de gente pobre, a las que se presentaba con su costal de trampas y sus pomos de venenos, apenas se enteraba de que el enemigo hab\u00eda sentado all\u00ed sus reales. A la muerte de los plomizos, t\u00e9cnica que el joven refinaba sin descanso, se sum\u00f3 el problema de la eliminaci\u00f3n de los cad\u00e1veres. Era lo que m\u00e1s disgustaba a las familias, amas de casa o sirvientas. Federico ensanch\u00f3 su empresa, entrenando al idiota del pueblo, un jorobado de ojos estr\u00e1bicos que viv\u00eda donde las Siervas de San Jos\u00e9, para que, a cambio del sustento, recogiera en un crudo los restos de los supliciados y fuera a quemarlos detr\u00e1s del Coliseo Abad o a ofrecerlos como fest\u00edn a los perros, gatos, chanchos y buitres de Tingo Mar\u00eda.\n\n\u00a1Cu\u00e1nto hab\u00eda pasado desde entonces! En el sem\u00e1foro de Javier Prado, don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui se dijo que, indudablemente, hab\u00eda progresado desde que, adolescente, de sol a sol recorr\u00eda las calles fangosas de Tingo Mar\u00eda, seguido por el idiota, librando artesanalmente la guerra contra los homicidas de Mar\u00eda. Era entonces un joven que s\u00f3lo ten\u00eda la ropa que llevaba puesta y apenas un ayudante. Treinta y cinco a\u00f1os m\u00e1s tarde, capitaneaba un complejo t\u00e9cnico-comercial, que extend\u00eda sus brazos por todas las ciudades del Per\u00fa, al que pertenec\u00edan quince camionetas y setenta y ocho expertos en fumigaci\u00f3n de escondites, mezcla de venenos y siembra de trampas. \u00c9stos operaban en el frente de batalla \u2014las calles, casas y campos del pa\u00eds\u2014 dedicados al cateo, cerco y exterminio, y recib\u00edan \u00f3rdenes, asesoramiento y apoyo log\u00edstico del estado mayor que \u00e9l presid\u00eda (los seis tecn\u00f3cratas que acababan de partir a almorzar). Pero, adem\u00e1s de esa constelaci\u00f3n, interven\u00edan en la cruzada dos laboratorios, con los cuales don Federico ten\u00eda firmado contratos (que eran pr\u00e1cticamente subvenciones) a fin de que, de manera continua, experimentaran nuevos venenos, ya que el enemigo ten\u00eda una prodigiosa capacidad de inmunizaci\u00f3n: luego de dos o tres campa\u00f1as, los t\u00f3xicos resultaban obsoletos, manjares para aqu\u00e9llos a quienes ten\u00edan la obligaci\u00f3n de matar. Adem\u00e1s, don Federico \u2014que, en este instante, al aparecer la luz verde, pon\u00eda primera y prosegu\u00eda viaje hacia los barrios del mar\u2014 hab\u00eda instituido una beca por la que Antirroedores S. A. enviaba cada a\u00f1o, a un qu\u00edmico reci\u00e9n graduado, a la Universidad de Baton Rouge, a especializarse en raticidas.\n\nHab\u00eda sido precisamente ese asunto \u2014la ciencia al servicio de su religi\u00f3n\u2014 lo que impuls\u00f3, veinte a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s, a don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui a casarse. Humano al fin y al cabo, un d\u00eda hab\u00eda comenzado a germinar en su cerebro la idea de una apretada falange de varones, de su misma sangre y esp\u00edritu, a quienes desde la teta inculcar\u00eda la furia contra los asquerosos, y quienes, excepcionalmente educados, continuar\u00edan, acaso allende las fronteras patrias, su misi\u00f3n. La imagen de seis, siete T\u00e9llez doctorados, en encumbradas academias, que repetir\u00edan y eternizar\u00edan su juramento lo llev\u00f3, a \u00e9l, que era la inapetencia marital encarnada, a recurrir a una agencia de matrimonios, la que, mediante una retribuci\u00f3n algo excesiva, le suministr\u00f3 una esposa de veinticinco a\u00f1os, tal vez no de hermosura radiante \u2014le faltaban dientes y, como a esas damitas de la regi\u00f3n que irriga el llamado (hiperb\u00f3licamente) R\u00edo de la Plata, le sobraban rollos de carnes en la cintura y en las pantorrillas\u2014, pero con las tres cualidades que hab\u00eda exigido: salud irreprochable, himen intacto y capacidad reproductora.\n\nDo\u00f1a Zoila Saravia Dur\u00e1n era una huanuque\u00f1a cuya familia, reveses de la vida que se entretiene jugando al subibaja, hab\u00eda sido degradada de la aristocracia provinciana al subproletariado capitalino. Se educ\u00f3 en la escuela gratuita que las madres salesianas manten\u00edan \u2014\u00bfrazones de conciencia o de publicidad?\u2014 junto a la escuela pagante, y hab\u00eda crecido, como todas sus compa\u00f1eras, con un argentino complejo que, en su caso, se traduc\u00eda en docilidad, mutismo y apetito. Se hab\u00eda pasado la vida trabajando como celadora donde las madres salesianas y el estatuto vago, indeterminado de su funci\u00f3n \u2014\u00bfsirvienta, obrera, empleada?\u2014 agrav\u00f3 esa inseguridad servil que la hac\u00eda asentir y mover ganaderamente la cabeza ante todo. Al quedar hu\u00e9rfana, a los veinticuatro a\u00f1os, se atrevi\u00f3 a visitar, despu\u00e9s de ardientes dudas, la agencia matrimonial que la puso en contacto con el que ser\u00eda su amo. La inexperiencia er\u00f3tica de los c\u00f3nyuges determin\u00f3 que la consumaci\u00f3n del matrimonio fuera lent\u00edsima, una serial en la que, entre amagos y fiascos por precocidad, falta de punter\u00eda y extrav\u00edo, los cap\u00edtulos se suced\u00edan, crec\u00eda el suspenso, y el terco himen continuaba sin perforar. Parad\u00f3jicamente, trat\u00e1ndose de una pareja de virtuosos, do\u00f1a Zoila perdi\u00f3 primero la virginidad (no por vicio sino por est\u00fapido azar y falta de entrenamiento de los novios), heterodoxa, vale decir sodom\u00edticamente.\n\nAparte de esta abominaci\u00f3n casual, la vida de la pareja hab\u00eda sido muy correcta. Do\u00f1a Zoila era una esposa diligente, ahorrativa y empe\u00f1osamente dispuesta a acatar los principios (que algunos llamar\u00edan excentricidades) de su marido. Jam\u00e1s hab\u00eda objetado, por ejemplo, la prohibici\u00f3n impuesta por don Federico de usar agua caliente (porque, seg\u00fan \u00e9l, enervaba la voluntad y causaba resfr\u00edos) aunque aun ahora, despu\u00e9s de veinte a\u00f1os, segu\u00eda poni\u00e9ndose morada al entrar a la ducha. Nunca hab\u00eda contrariado la cl\u00e1usula del (no escrito pero sabido de memoria) c\u00f3digo familiar estableciendo que nadie durmiera en el hogar m\u00e1s de cinco horas, para no prohijar molicie, aunque cada amanecer, cuando, a las cinco, sonaba el despertador, sus bostezos de cocodrilo estremec\u00edan los cristales. Con resignaci\u00f3n hab\u00eda aceptado que de las distracciones familiares quedaran excluidos, por inmorales para el esp\u00edritu, el cine, el baile, el teatro, la radio, y, por onerosos para el presupuesto, los restaurantes, los viajes y cualquier fantas\u00eda en el atuendo corporal y en la decoraci\u00f3n inmueble. S\u00f3lo en lo que se refer\u00eda a su pecado, la gula, hab\u00eda sido incapaz de obedecer al se\u00f1or de la casa. Muchas veces hab\u00edan aparecido en el men\u00fa la carne, el pescado y los postres cremosos. Era el \u00fanico rengl\u00f3n de la vida en el que don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui no hab\u00eda podido imponer su voluntad: un r\u00edgido vegetarianismo.\n\nPero do\u00f1a Zoila no hab\u00eda tratado jam\u00e1s de practicar su vicio aviesamente, a espaldas de su marido, quien, en estos instantes, entraba en su sed\u00e1n al pizpireto barrio de Miraflores, dici\u00e9ndose que esa sinceridad, si no expiaba, por lo menos venializaba el pecado de su esposa. Cuando sus urgencias eran m\u00e1s fuertes que su esp\u00edritu de obediencia, devoraba su bistec encebollado, o corvina a lo macho, o pastel de manzana con crema chantilly, a ojos y vista de \u00e9l, granate de verg\u00fcenza y resignada de antemano al castigo correspondiente. Nunca hab\u00eda protestado contra las sanciones. Si don Federico (por un churrasco o una barra de chocolate) le suspend\u00eda la facultad de hablar tres d\u00edas, ella misma se amordazaba para no delinquir ni en sue\u00f1os, y si la pena era veinte nalgadas, se apuraba a desabrocharse la faja y preparar el \u00e1rnica.\n\nNo, don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui, mientras echaba una distra\u00edda mirada al gris (color que odiaba) oc\u00e9ano Pac\u00edfico, por encima del malec\u00f3n de Miraflores, que su sed\u00e1n acababa de hollar, se dijo que, despu\u00e9s de todo, do\u00f1a Zoila no lo hab\u00eda defraudado. El gran fracaso de su vida eran los hijos. Qu\u00e9 diferencia entre la aguerrida vanguardia de pr\u00edncipes del exterminio con que hab\u00eda so\u00f1ado y esos cuatro herederos que le hab\u00edan infligido Dios y la golosa.\n\nPor lo pronto, s\u00f3lo hab\u00edan nacido dos varones. Rudo, imprevisto golpe. Nunca se le pas\u00f3 por la cabeza que do\u00f1a Zoila pudiera parir hembras. La primera constituy\u00f3 una decepci\u00f3n, algo que pod\u00eda atribuirse a la casualidad. Pero como el cuarto embarazo desemboc\u00f3 tambi\u00e9n en un ser sin falo ni test\u00edculos visibles, don Federico, aterrado ante la perspectiva de seguir produciendo seres incompletos, cort\u00f3 dr\u00e1sticamente toda veleidad de descendencia (para lo cual reemplaz\u00f3 la cama de matrimonio por dos cujas individuales). No odiaba a las mujeres; simplemente, como no era un erot\u00f3mano ni un voraz \u00bfde qu\u00e9 pod\u00edan servirle personas cuyas mejores aptitudes eran la fornicaci\u00f3n y la cocina? Reproducirse no hab\u00eda tenido otra raz\u00f3n, para \u00e9l, que perpetuar su cruzada. Esta esperanza se hizo humo con la venida de Teresa y Laura, pues don Federico no era de esos modernistas que predican que la mujer, adem\u00e1s de cl\u00edtoris, tiene tambi\u00e9n sesos y puede trabajar de igual a igual con el var\u00f3n. De otro lado, lo angustiaba la posibilidad de que su nombre rodara por el barro. \u00bfNo repet\u00edan las estad\u00edsticas hasta la n\u00e1usea que el noventa y cinco por ciento de las mujeres han sido, son o ser\u00e1n meretrices? Para lograr que sus hijas lograran domiciliarse en el cinco por ciento de virtuosas, don Federico les hab\u00eda organizado la vida mediante un sistema puntilloso: nunca escotes, invierno y verano medias oscuras y blusas y chompas de manga larga, jam\u00e1s pintarse las u\u00f1as, los labios, los ojos ni las mejillas o peinarse con cerquillo, trenzas, cola de caballo y todo ese gremio de anzuelos para pescar al macho; no practicar deportes ni diversiones que implicaran cercan\u00eda de hombre, como ir a la playa o asistir a fiestas de cumplea\u00f1os. Las contravenciones eran castigadas siempre corporalmente.\n\nPero no s\u00f3lo la intromisi\u00f3n de hembras entre sus descendientes hab\u00eda sido desalentadora. Los varones \u2014Ricardo y Federico hijo\u2014 no hab\u00edan heredado las virtudes del padre. Eran blandos, perezosos, amantes de actividades est\u00e9riles (como el chicle y el f\u00fatbol) y no hab\u00edan manifestado el menor entusiasmo al explicarles don Federico el futuro que les reservaba. En las vacaciones, cuando, para irlos entrenando, los hac\u00eda trabajar con los combatientes de la primera l\u00ednea, se mostraban remisos, acud\u00edan con notoria repugnancia al campo de batalla. Y una vez los sorprendi\u00f3 murmurando obscenidades contra la obra de su vida, confesando que se avergonzaban de su padre. Los hab\u00eda rapado como a convictos, por supuesto, pero eso no lo hab\u00eda librado del sentimiento de traici\u00f3n que le caus\u00f3 esa charla conspiratoria. Don Federico, ahora, no se hac\u00eda ilusiones. Sab\u00eda que, una vez muerto o invalidado por los a\u00f1os, Ricardo y Federico hijo se apartar\u00edan de la senda que les hab\u00eda trazado, cambiar\u00edan de profesi\u00f3n (eligiendo alguna otra por atractivos cremat\u00edsticos) y que su obra quedar\u00eda \u2014como cierta sinfon\u00eda c\u00e9lebre\u2014 inconclusa.\n\nFue en este preciso segundo en que don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui, para su desgracia ps\u00edquica y f\u00edsica, vio la revista que un canillita met\u00eda por la ventana del sed\u00e1n, la car\u00e1tula de colores que brillaban pecadoramente en el sol de la ma\u00f1ana. En su cara cuaj\u00f3 una mueca de disgusto al advertir que luc\u00eda, como portada, la foto de una playa, con un par de ba\u00f1istas en esos simulacros de trajes de ba\u00f1o que se atrev\u00edan a usar ciertas hetairas, cuando, con una especie de desgarramiento angustioso del nervio \u00f3ptico y abriendo la boca como un lobo que a\u00falla a la luna, don Federico reconoci\u00f3 a las dos ba\u00f1istas semidesnudas y obscenamente risue\u00f1as. Sinti\u00f3 un horror que pod\u00eda competir con el que hab\u00eda sentido, en esa madrugada amaz\u00f3nica, a orillas del Pendencia, al divisar, sobre una cuna ennegrecida de caquitas de rat\u00f3n, el desorganizado esqueleto de su hermana. El sem\u00e1foro estaba en verde, los autom\u00f3viles de atr\u00e1s lo bocineaban.\n\nCon dedos torpes, sac\u00f3 su cartera, pag\u00f3 el producto licencioso, arranc\u00f3, y, sintiendo que iba a chocar \u2014el volante se le escapaba de las manos, el auto daba bandazos\u2014, fren\u00f3 y se peg\u00f3 a la vereda.\n\nAll\u00ed, temblando de ofuscaci\u00f3n, observ\u00f3 muchos minutos la terrible evidencia. No hab\u00eda duda posible: eran sus hijas. Fotografiadas por sorpresa, sin duda, por un fot\u00f3grafo zafio, escondido entre los ba\u00f1istas, las muchachas no miraban a la c\u00e1mara, parec\u00edan conversar, tumbadas sobre unas arenas voluptuosas que pod\u00edan ser las de Agua Dulce o La Herradura. Don Federico fue recuperando la respiraci\u00f3n; dentro de su anonadamiento, alcanz\u00f3 a pensar en la incre\u00edble serie de casualidades. Que un ambulante apresara en imagen a Laura y Teresa, que una revista innoble las expusiera al podrido mundo, que \u00e9l las descubriera... Y toda la espantosa verdad ven\u00eda a resplandecer as\u00ed, por estrategia del azar, ante sus ojos. De modo que sus hijas le obedec\u00edan s\u00f3lo cuando estaba presente; de modo que, apenas volv\u00eda la espalda, coludidas, sin duda, con sus hermanos y con, ay \u2014don Federico sinti\u00f3 un dardo en el coraz\u00f3n\u2014, su propia esposa, hac\u00edan escarnio de los mandamientos y bajaban a la playa, se desnudaban y exhib\u00edan. Las l\u00e1grimas le mojaron la cara. Examin\u00f3 las ropas de ba\u00f1o: dos piezas tan reducidas cuya funci\u00f3n no era esconder nada sino exclusivamente catapultar la imaginaci\u00f3n hacia extremos viciosos. Ah\u00ed estaban, al alcance de cualquiera: piernas, brazos, vientres, hombros, cuellos de Laura y Teresa. Sent\u00eda un rid\u00edculo inexpresable recordando que \u00e9l jam\u00e1s hab\u00eda visto esas extremidades y miembros que ahora se prodigaban ante el universo.\n\nSe sec\u00f3 los ojos y volvi\u00f3 a encender el motor. Se hab\u00eda serenado superficialmente, pero, en sus entra\u00f1as, crepitaba una hoguera. Mientras, muy despacio, el sed\u00e1n prosegu\u00eda hacia su casita de la avenida Pedro de Osma, se iba diciendo que, as\u00ed como iban a la playa desnudas era natural que, en su ausencia, fueran tambi\u00e9n a fiestas, usaran pantalones, frecuentaran hombres, que se vendieran, \u00bfrecib\u00edan tal vez a sus galanes en su propio hogar?, \u00bfser\u00eda do\u00f1a Zoila la encargada de fijar las tarifas y cobrarlas? Ricardo y Federico hijo tendr\u00edan probablemente a su cargo la inmunda tarea de reclutar a los clientes. Ahog\u00e1ndose, don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui vio armarse este estremecedor reparto: tus hijas, las rameras; tus hijos, los cafiches, y tu esposa, la alcahueta.\n\nEl cotidiano trato con la violencia \u2014despu\u00e9s de todo, hab\u00eda dado muerte a miles de millares de seres vivos\u2014 hab\u00eda hecho de don Federico un hombre al que no se pod\u00eda provocar sin riesgo grave. Una vez, un ingeniero agr\u00f3nomo con pretensiones de dietista hab\u00eda osado decir en su delante que, dada la falta de ganader\u00eda en el Per\u00fa, era necesario intensificar la cr\u00eda del cuy con miras a la alimentaci\u00f3n nacional. Educadamente, don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui record\u00f3 al atrevido que el cuy era primo hermano de la rata. \u00c9ste, reincidiendo, cit\u00f3 estad\u00edsticas, habl\u00f3 de virtudes nutritivas y carne gustosa al paladar. Don Federico procedi\u00f3 entonces a abofetearlo y, cuando el dietista rod\u00f3 por los suelos sob\u00e1ndose la cara, lo llam\u00f3 lo que era: desfachatado y publicista de homicidas. Ahora, al bajar del autom\u00f3vil, cerrarlo, avanzar sin premura, cejijunto, muy p\u00e1lido, hacia la puerta de su casa, el hombre de Tingo Mar\u00eda sent\u00eda ascender por su interior, como el d\u00eda que escarment\u00f3 al dietista, una lava volc\u00e1nica. Llevaba en su mano derecha, como barra candente, la revista infernal, y sent\u00eda una fuerte comez\u00f3n en los ojos.\n\nEstaba tan turbado que no consegu\u00eda imaginar un castigo capaz de parangonarse con la falta. Sent\u00eda la mente brumosa, la ira disolv\u00eda las ideas, y eso aumentaba su amargura, pues don Federico era un hombre en quien la raz\u00f3n decid\u00eda siempre la conducta, y que despreciaba a esa raza de primarios que actuaban, como las bestias, por instinto y p\u00e1lpito antes que por convicci\u00f3n. Pero esta vez, mientras sacaba la llave y, con dificultad, porque la rabia le entorpec\u00eda los dedos, abr\u00eda y empujaba la puerta de su casa, comprendi\u00f3 que no pod\u00eda actuar serena, calculadamente, sino bajo el dictado de la c\u00f3lera, siguiendo la inspiraci\u00f3n del instante. Luego de cerrar la puerta, respir\u00f3 hondo, tratando de calmarse. Le daba verg\u00fcenza que esos ingratos fueran a advertir la magnitud de su humillaci\u00f3n.\n\nSu casa ten\u00eda, abajo, un peque\u00f1o vest\u00edbulo, una salita, el comedor y la cocina, y los dormitorios en la planta alta. Don Federico divis\u00f3 a su mujer desde el quicio de la sala. Estaba junto al aparador, masticando con arrobo alguna repugnante golosina \u2014caramelo, chocolate, pens\u00f3 don Federico, fruna, toffee\u2014 cuyos restos conservaba en los dedos. Al verlo, le sonri\u00f3 con ojos intimidados, se\u00f1alando lo que com\u00eda con un gesto de resignaci\u00f3n dulzona.\n\nDon Federico avanz\u00f3 sin apresurarse, desplegando la revista con las dos manos, para que su esposa pudiera contemplar la car\u00e1tula en toda su indignidad. La puso bajo sus ojos, sin decir palabra, y goz\u00f3 vi\u00e9ndola palidecer violentamente, desorbitarse y abrir la boca de la que comenz\u00f3 a correr un hilillo de saliva contaminado de galleta. El hombre de Tingo Mar\u00eda levant\u00f3 la mano derecha y abofete\u00f3 a la tr\u00e9mula mujer con toda su fuerza. Ella dio un quejido, tropez\u00f3 y cay\u00f3 de rodillas; segu\u00eda mirando la car\u00e1tula con una expresi\u00f3n de beater\u00eda, de iluminaci\u00f3n m\u00edstica. Alto, erecto, justiciero, don Federico la contemplaba acusadoramente. Luego, llam\u00f3 con sequedad a las culpables:\n\n\u2014\u00a1Laura! \u00a1Teresa!\n\nUn rumor le hizo volver la cabeza. Ah\u00ed estaban, al pie de la escalera. No las hab\u00eda sentido bajar. Teresa, la mayor, llevaba un guardapolvo, como si hubiera estado haciendo la limpieza, y Laura vest\u00eda el uniforme de colegio. Las muchachas miraban, confusas, a la madre arrodillada, al padre que avanzaba, lento, hier\u00e1tico, sumo sacerdote yendo al encuentro de la piedra de los sacrificios donde esperan el cuchillo y la vestal, y, por fin, a la revista, que don Federico, llegado junto a ellas, les pon\u00eda judicialmente ante los ojos. La reacci\u00f3n de sus hijas no fue la que esperaba. En vez de tornarse l\u00edvidas, caer de hinojos balbuceando explicaciones, las precoces, ruboriz\u00e1ndose, cambiaron una veloz mirada que s\u00f3lo pod\u00eda ser de complicidad, y don Federico, en el fondo de su desolaci\u00f3n e ira, se dijo que todav\u00eda no hab\u00eda bebido toda la hiel de esa ma\u00f1ana; Laura y Teresa sab\u00edan que hab\u00edan sido fotografiadas, que la fotograf\u00eda se iba a publicar, e, incluso \u2014\u00bfqu\u00e9 otra cosa pod\u00eda decir esa chispa en las pupilas?\u2014, el hecho las alegraba. La revelaci\u00f3n de que en su hogar, que \u00e9l cre\u00eda pr\u00edstino, hubiera incubado, no s\u00f3lo el vicio municipal del nudismo playero, sino el exhibicionismo (y, por qu\u00e9 no, la ninfoman\u00eda) le afloj\u00f3 los m\u00fasculos, le dio un gusto a cal en la boca y lo llev\u00f3 a considerar si la vida se justificaba. Tambi\u00e9n \u2014todo ello no tom\u00f3 m\u00e1s de un segundo\u2014 a preguntarse si la \u00fanica penitencia leg\u00edtima para semejante horror no era la muerte. La idea de convertirse en filicida lo atormentaba menos que saber que miles de humanos hab\u00edan merodeado (\u00bfs\u00f3lo con los ojos?) por las intimidades f\u00edsicas de sus varonas.\n\nPas\u00f3 entonces a la acci\u00f3n. Dej\u00f3 caer la revista para tener m\u00e1s libertad, cogi\u00f3 con la mano izquierda a Laura de la casaquilla del uniforme, la atrajo unos cent\u00edmetros para ponerla m\u00e1s a tiro de impacto, levant\u00f3 la mano derecha lo bastante alto para que la potencia del golpe fuera m\u00e1xima, y la descarg\u00f3 con todo su rencor. Se llev\u00f3, entonces \u2014oh d\u00eda extraordinario\u2014 la segunda sorpresa descomunal, quiz\u00e1 m\u00e1s cegadora que la de la sical\u00edptica car\u00e1tula. En vez de la suave mejilla de Laurita, su mano encontr\u00f3 el vac\u00edo y, rid\u00edcula, frustrada, sufri\u00f3 un estir\u00f3n. No fue todo: lo grave vino despu\u00e9s. Porque la chiquilla no se content\u00f3 con esquivar la bofetada \u2014algo que, en su inmensa desaz\u00f3n, don Federico record\u00f3 no hab\u00eda hecho jam\u00e1s ning\u00fan miembro de su familia\u2014, sino que, luego de retroceder, la carita de catorce a\u00f1os descompuesta en una mueca de odio se lanz\u00f3 contra \u00e9l \u2014\u00e9l, \u00e9l\u2014, y comenz\u00f3 a golpearlo con sus pu\u00f1os, a rasgu\u00f1arlo, a empujarlo y a patearlo.\n\nTuvo la sensaci\u00f3n de que su misma sangre, de puro estupefacta, dejaba de correr. Era como si, de pronto, los astros escaparan de sus \u00f3rbitas, se precipitaran unos contra otros, chocaran, se rompieran, rodaran hist\u00e9ricos por los espacios. No atinaba a reaccionar, retroced\u00eda, los ojos desmedidamente abiertos, acosado por la chiquilla que, envalenton\u00e1ndose, exasper\u00e1ndose, adem\u00e1s de golpear ahora tambi\u00e9n gritaba: \u00abMaldito, abusivo, te odio, mu\u00e9rete, ac\u00e1bate de una vez\u00bb. Crey\u00f3 enloquecer cuando \u2014y todo ocurr\u00eda tan r\u00e1pido que, apenas tomaba conciencia de la situaci\u00f3n, \u00e9sta cambiaba\u2014 advirti\u00f3 que Teresa corr\u00eda hacia \u00e9l, pero, en vez de sujetar a su hermana, la ayudaba. Ahora tambi\u00e9n su hija mayor lo agred\u00eda, rugiendo los m\u00e1s abominables insultos \u2014\u00abtaca\u00f1o, est\u00fapido, mani\u00e1tico, asqueroso, tirano, loco, ratonero\u00bb\u2014 y entre ambas furias adolescentes lo iban arrinconando contra la pared. Hab\u00eda comenzado a defenderse, saliendo al fin de su paralizante asombro, y trataba de cubrirse la cara, cuando sinti\u00f3 un aguij\u00f3n en la espalda. Se volvi\u00f3: do\u00f1a Zoila se hab\u00eda incorporado y lo mord\u00eda.\n\nA\u00fan pudo maravillarse al notar que su esposa, m\u00e1s todav\u00eda que sus hijas, hab\u00eda sufrido una transfiguraci\u00f3n.\n\n\u00bfEra do\u00f1a Zoila, la mujer que jam\u00e1s hab\u00eda musitado una queja, alzado la voz, tenido un malhumor, el mismo ser de ojos ind\u00f3mitos y manos bravas que descargaba contra \u00e9l pu\u00f1etes, coscorrones, lo escup\u00eda, le rasgaba la camisa y vociferaba enloquecida: \u00abMat\u00e9moslo, vengu\u00e9monos, que se trague sus man\u00edas, s\u00e1quenle los ojos\u00bb? Las tres aullaban y don Federico pens\u00f3 que el griter\u00edo le hab\u00eda reventado los t\u00edmpanos. Se defend\u00eda con todas sus fuerzas, procuraba devolver los golpes, pero no lo consegu\u00eda, porque ellas, \u00bfponiendo en pr\u00e1ctica una t\u00e9cnica vilmente ensayada?, se turnaban de dos en dos para cogerle los brazos mientras la tercera lo destrozaba. Sent\u00eda ardores, hinchazones, punzadas, ve\u00eda estrellas, y, de pronto, unas manchitas en las manos de las agresoras le revelaron que sangraba.\n\nNo se hizo ilusiones cuando vio asomar en el hueco de la escalera a Ricardo y a Federico hijo. Convertido al escepticismo en pocos segundos, supo que ven\u00edan a sumarse al cargamont\u00f3n, a asestarle el puntillazo. Aterrado, sin dignidad ni honor, s\u00f3lo pens\u00f3 en alcanzar la puerta de calle, en huir. Pero no era f\u00e1cil. Pudo dar dos o tres saltos antes de que una zancadilla lo hiciera rodar aparatosamente por el suelo. All\u00ed, encogido para proteger su hombr\u00eda, vio c\u00f3mo sus herederos la emprend\u00edan a feroces puntapi\u00e9s contra su humanidad mientras su esposa e hijas se armaban de escobas, plumeros, de la barra de la chimenea para seguir aporre\u00e1ndolo. Antes de decirse que no comprend\u00eda nada, salvo que el mundo se hab\u00eda vuelto absurdo, alcanz\u00f3 a o\u00edr que tambi\u00e9n sus hijos, al comp\u00e1s de las patadas, le dec\u00edan mani\u00e1tico, taca\u00f1o, inmundo y ratonero. Mientras se hac\u00eda la tiniebla en \u00e9l, gris, peque\u00f1o, intruso, s\u00fabito, de un invisible huequecillo en una esquina del comedor, brot\u00f3 un pericote de caninos blancos y contempl\u00f3 al ca\u00eddo con una luz de burla en los vivaces ojos...\n\n\u00bfHab\u00eda muerto don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui, el indesmayable verdugo de los roedores del Per\u00fa? \u00bfHab\u00eda sido consumado un parricidio, un epitalamicidio? \u00bfO s\u00f3lo estaba aturdido ese esposo y padre que yac\u00eda, en medio de un desorden sin igual, bajo la mesa del comedor, mientras sus familiares, sus pertenencias r\u00e1pidamente enmaletadas, abandonaban exultantes el hogar? \u00bfC\u00f3mo terminar\u00eda esta desventura barranquina?\n\n### IX\n\nEL FRACASO del cuento sobre Doroteo Mart\u00ed me tuvo desalentado unos d\u00edas. Pero la ma\u00f1ana que o\u00ed a Pascual referirle al Gran Pablito su descubrimiento del aeropuerto, sent\u00ed que mi vocaci\u00f3n resucitaba y comenc\u00e9 a planear una nueva historia. Pascual hab\u00eda sorprendido a unos muchachitos vagabundos practicando un deporte riesgoso y excitante. Se tend\u00edan, al oscurecer, en el extremo de la pista de despegue del aeropuerto de Limatambo y Pascual juraba que, cada vez que un avi\u00f3n part\u00eda, por la presi\u00f3n del aire desplazado, los muchachitos tendidos se elevaban unos cent\u00edmetros y levitaban, como en un espect\u00e1culo de magia, hasta que unos segundos despu\u00e9s, desaparecido el efecto, regresaban al suelo de golpe. Yo hab\u00eda visto en esos d\u00edas una pel\u00edcula mexicana (s\u00f3lo a\u00f1os despu\u00e9s sabr\u00eda que era de Bu\u00f1uel y qui\u00e9n era Bu\u00f1uel) que me entusiasm\u00f3: Los olvidados. Decid\u00ed hacer un cuento con el mismo esp\u00edritu: un relato de ni\u00f1os hombres, j\u00f3venes lobeznos endurecidos por las \u00e1speras condiciones de la vida en los suburbios. Javier se mostr\u00f3 esc\u00e9ptico y me asegur\u00f3 que la an\u00e9cdota era falsa, que la presi\u00f3n del aire provocada por los aviones no levantaba a un reci\u00e9n nacido. Discutimos, yo acab\u00e9 dici\u00e9ndole que en mi cuento los personajes levitar\u00edan y que, sin embargo, ser\u00eda un cuento realista (\u00abno, fant\u00e1stico\u00bb, gritaba \u00e9l) y por \u00faltimo quedamos en ir, una noche, con Pascual a los descampados de la C\u00f3rpac para verificar qu\u00e9 hab\u00eda de verdad y de mentira en esos juegos peligrosos (era el t\u00edtulo que hab\u00eda elegido para el cuento).\n\nNo hab\u00eda visto a la t\u00eda Julia ese d\u00eda pero esperaba verla el siguiente, jueves, donde el t\u00edo Lucho. Sin embargo, al llegar a la casa de Armend\u00e1riz ese mediod\u00eda, para el almuerzo acostumbrado, me encontr\u00e9 con que no estaba. La t\u00eda Olga me cont\u00f3 que la hab\u00eda invitado a almorzar un buen partido: el doctor Guillermo Osores. Era un m\u00e9dico vagamente relacionado con la familia, un cincuent\u00f3n muy presentable, con algo de fortuna, enviudado no hac\u00eda mucho.\n\n\u2014Un buen partido \u2014repiti\u00f3 la t\u00eda Olga, gui\u00f1\u00e1ndome el ojo\u2014. Serio, rico, buen mozo, y con s\u00f3lo dos hijos que ya son mayorcitos. \u00bfNo es el marido que necesita mi hermana?\n\n\u2014Las \u00faltimas semanas estaba perdiendo el tiempo de mala manera \u2014coment\u00f3 el t\u00edo Lucho, tambi\u00e9n muy satisfecho\u2014. No quer\u00eda salir con nadie, hac\u00eda vida de solterona. Pero el endocrin\u00f3logo le ha ca\u00eddo en gracia.\n\nSent\u00ed unos celos que me quitaron el apetito, un malhumor salmuera. Me parec\u00eda que, por mi turbaci\u00f3n, mis t\u00edos iban a adivinar lo que me pasaba. No necesit\u00e9 tratar de sonsacarles m\u00e1s detalles sobre la t\u00eda Julia y el doctor Osores porque no hablaban de otra cosa. Lo hab\u00eda conocido hac\u00eda unos diez d\u00edas, en un coctel de la embajada boliviana, y, al saber d\u00f3nde estaba alojada, el doctor Osores hab\u00eda venido a visitarla. Le hab\u00eda mandado flores, llamado por tel\u00e9fono, invitado a tomar t\u00e9 al Bol\u00edvar y ahora a almorzar al Club de la Uni\u00f3n. El endocrin\u00f3logo le hab\u00eda bromeado al t\u00edo Lucho: \u00abTu cu\u00f1ada es de primera, Luis, \u00bfno ser\u00e1 la candidata que ando buscando para matrisuicidarme por segunda vez?\u00bb.\n\nYo trataba de demostrar desinter\u00e9s, pero lo hac\u00eda p\u00e9simo y el t\u00edo Lucho, en un momento en que estuvimos solos, me pregunt\u00f3 qu\u00e9 me pasaba: \u00bfno hab\u00eda metido la nariz donde no deb\u00eda y me hab\u00edan pegado una purgaci\u00f3n? Por suerte la t\u00eda Olga comenz\u00f3 a hablar de los radioteatros y eso me dio un respiro. Mientras ella dec\u00eda que, a veces, a Pedro Camacho se le pasaba la mano y que a todas sus amigas la historia del pastor que se her\u00eda con un cortapapeles delante del juez para probar que no viol\u00f3 a una chica les parec\u00eda demasiado, yo silenciosamente iba de la rabia a la decepci\u00f3n y de la decepci\u00f3n a la rabia. \u00bf Por qu\u00e9 no me hab\u00eda dicho la t\u00eda Julia ni una palabra sobre el m\u00e9dico? En esos diez \u00faltimos d\u00edas nos hab\u00edamos visto varias veces y jam\u00e1s lo hab\u00eda mencionado. \u00bfSer\u00eda cierto, como dec\u00eda la t\u00eda Olga, que por fin se hab\u00eda interesado en alguien?\n\nEn el colectivo, mientras regresaba a Radio Panamericana, salt\u00e9 de la humillaci\u00f3n a la soberbia. Nuestros amor\u00edos hab\u00edan durado mucho, en cualquier momento iban a sorprendernos y eso provocar\u00eda burlas y esc\u00e1ndalo en la familia. Por lo dem\u00e1s, \u00bfqu\u00e9 hac\u00eda perdiendo el tiempo con una se\u00f1ora que, como ella misma dec\u00eda, casi casi pod\u00eda ser mi madre? Como experiencia, ya bastaba. La aparici\u00f3n de Osores era providencial, me exim\u00eda de tener que sacarme de encima a la boliviana. Sent\u00eda desasosiego, impulsos inusitados como querer emborracharme o pegarle a alguien, y en la radio tuve un encontr\u00f3n con Pascual, que, fiel a su naturaleza, hab\u00eda dedicado la mitad del bolet\u00edn de las tres a un incendio en Hamburgo que carboniz\u00f3 a una docena de inmigrantes turcos. Le dije que en el futuro quedaba prohibido incluir alguna noticia con muertos sin mi visto bueno y trat\u00e9 sin amistad a un compa\u00f1ero de San Marcos que me llam\u00f3 para recordarme que la facultad todav\u00eda exist\u00eda y advertirme que al d\u00eda siguiente me esperaba un examen de derecho procesal. Apenas hab\u00eda cortado, son\u00f3 el tel\u00e9fono otra vez. Era la t\u00eda Julia:\n\n\u2014Te dej\u00e9 plantado por un endocrin\u00f3logo, Varguitas, supongo que me extra\u00f1aste \u2014me dijo, fresca como una lechuga\u2014. \u00bfNo te has enojado?\n\n\u2014\u00bfEnojado por qu\u00e9? \u2014le contest\u00e9\u2014. \u00bfNo eres libre de hacer lo que quieras?\n\n\u2014Ah, entonces te has enojado \u2014la o\u00ed decir, ya m\u00e1s seria\u2014. No seas sonso. \u00bfCu\u00e1ndo nos vemos, para que te explique?\n\n\u2014Hoy no puedo \u2014le repuse secamente\u2014. Ya te llamar\u00e9.\n\nColgu\u00e9, m\u00e1s furioso conmigo que con ella y sinti\u00e9ndome rid\u00edculo. Pascual y el Gran Pablito me miraban divertidos, y el amante de las cat\u00e1strofes se veng\u00f3 delicadamente de mi reprimenda:\n\n\u2014Vaya, qu\u00e9 castigador hab\u00eda sido este don Mario con las mujeres.\n\n\u2014Hace bien en tratarlas as\u00ed \u2014me apoy\u00f3 el Gran Pablito\u2014. Nada les gusta tanto como que las metan en cintura.\n\nMand\u00e9 a mis dos redactores a la mierda, hice el bolet\u00edn de las cuatro, y me fui a ver a Pedro Camacho. Estaba grabando un libreto y lo esper\u00e9 en su cub\u00edculo, curioseando sus papeles, sin entender lo que le\u00eda porque no hac\u00eda otra cosa que preguntarme si esa conversaci\u00f3n telef\u00f3nica con la t\u00eda Julia equival\u00eda a una ruptura. En cuesti\u00f3n de segundos pasaba a odiarla a muerte y a extra\u00f1arla con toda mi alma.\n\n\u2014Acomp\u00e1\u00f1eme a comprar venenos \u2014me dijo t\u00e9tricamente Pedro Camacho, desde la puerta, agitando su melena de le\u00f3n\u2014. Nos quedar\u00e1 tiempo para el bebedizo.\n\nMientras recorr\u00edamos las transversales del jir\u00f3n de la Uni\u00f3n buscando un veneno, el artista me cont\u00f3 que los ratones de la Pensi\u00f3n La Tapada hab\u00edan llegado a extremos intolerables.\n\n\u2014Si se contentaran con correr bajo mi cama, no me importar\u00eda, no son ni\u00f1os, a los animales no les tengo fobia \u2014me explic\u00f3, mientras olfateaba con su nariz protuberante unos polvos amarillos que, seg\u00fan el bodeguero, pod\u00edan matar a una vaca\u2014. Pero estos bigotudos se comen mi sustento, cada noche mordisquean las provisiones que dejo tomando el fresco en la ventana. No hay m\u00e1s, debo exterminarlos.\n\nRegate\u00f3 el precio, con argumentos que dejaban al bodeguero alelado, pag\u00f3, hizo que le envolvieran las bolsitas de veneno y fuimos a sentarnos a un caf\u00e9 de la Colmena. Pidi\u00f3 su compuesto vegetal y yo un caf\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Tengo una pena de amor, amigo Camacho \u2014le confes\u00e9 a boca de jarro, sorprendi\u00e9ndome de m\u00ed mismo por la f\u00f3rmula radioteatral; pero sent\u00ed que, habl\u00e1ndole as\u00ed, me distanciaba de mi propia historia y al mismo tiempo consegu\u00eda desahogarme\u2014. La mujer que quiero me enga\u00f1a con otro hombre.\n\nMe escrut\u00f3 profundamente, con sus ojitos saltones m\u00e1s fr\u00edos y deshumorados que nunca. Su traje negro hab\u00eda sido lavado, planchado y usado tanto que era brillante como una hoja de cebolla.\n\n\u2014El duelo, en estos pa\u00edses aplebeyados, se paga con c\u00e1rcel \u2014sentenci\u00f3, muy grave, haciendo unos movimientos convulsivos con las manos\u2014. En cuanto al suicidio, ya nadie aprecia el gesto. Uno se mata y en vez de remordimientos, escalofr\u00edos, admiraci\u00f3n, provoca burlas. Lo mejor son las recetas pr\u00e1cticas, mi amigo.\n\nMe alegr\u00e9 de haberle hecho confidencias. Sab\u00eda que, como para Pedro Camacho no exist\u00eda nadie fuera de \u00e9l mismo, mi problema ya ni lo recordaba, hab\u00eda sido un mero dispositivo para poner en acci\u00f3n su sistema teorizante. O\u00edrlo me consolar\u00eda m\u00e1s (y con menos consecuencias) que una borrachera. Pedro Camacho, luego de un amago de sonrisa, me pormenorizaba su receta:\n\n\u2014Una carta dura, hiriente, lapidaria a la ad\u00faltera \u2014me dec\u00eda, adjetivando con seguridad\u2014, una carta que la haga sentirse una lagartija sin entra\u00f1as, una hiena inmunda. Prob\u00e1ndole que uno no es tonto, que conoce su traici\u00f3n, una carta que rezume desprecio, que le d\u00e9 conciencia de ad\u00faltera \u2014call\u00f3, medit\u00f3 un instante y, cambiando ligeramente de tono, me dio la mayor prueba de amistad que pod\u00eda esperarse de \u00e9l\u2014: Si quiere, yo se la escribo.\n\nLe agradec\u00ed efusivamente, pero le dije que, conociendo sus horarios de galeote, jam\u00e1s podr\u00eda aceptar sobrecargarlo de trabajo con mis asuntos privados. (Despu\u00e9s lament\u00e9 esos escr\u00fapulos, que me privaron de un texto ol\u00f3grafo del escribidor.)\n\n\u2014En cuanto al seductor \u2014prosigui\u00f3 inmediatamente Pedro Camacho, con un brillo malvado en los ojos\u2014, lo mejor es el an\u00f3nimo, con todas las calumnias necesarias. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 habr\u00eda de quedarse aletargada la v\u00edctima mientras le crecen cuernos? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 permitir\u00eda que los ad\u00falteros se solacen fornicando? Hay que estropearles el amor, golpearlos donde les duela, envenenarlos de dudas. Que brote la desconfianza, que comiencen a mirarse con malos ojos, a odiarse. \u00bfAcaso no es dulce la venganza?\n\nLe insinu\u00e9 que, tal vez, valerse de an\u00f3nimos no fuera cosa de caballeros, pero \u00e9l me tranquiliz\u00f3 r\u00e1pidamente: uno deb\u00eda portarse con los caballeros como caballero y con los canallas como canalla. \u00c9se era el \u00abhonor bien entendido\u00bb: lo dem\u00e1s era ser idiota.\n\n\u2014Con la carta a ella y los an\u00f3nimos a \u00e9l quedan castigados los amantes \u2014le dije\u2014. Pero \u00bfy mi problema? \u00bfQui\u00e9n me va a quitar el despecho, la frustraci\u00f3n, la pena?\n\n\u2014Para todo eso no hay como la leche de magnesia \u2014me repuso, dej\u00e1ndome sin \u00e1nimos siquiera de re\u00edrme\u2014. Ya s\u00e9, le parecer\u00e1 un materialismo exagerado. Pero, h\u00e1game caso, tengo experiencia de la vida. La mayor parte de las veces, las llamadas penas de coraz\u00f3n, etc\u00e9tera, son malas digestiones, frejoles tercos que no se deshacen, pescado pasado de tiempo, estre\u00f1imiento. Un buen purgante fulmina la locura de amor.\n\nEsta vez no hab\u00eda duda, era un humorista sutil, se burlaba de m\u00ed y de sus oyentes, no cre\u00eda palabra de lo que dec\u00eda, practicaba el aristocr\u00e1tico deporte de probarse a s\u00ed mismo que los humanos \u00e9ramos unos irremisibles imb\u00e9ciles.\n\n\u2014\u00bfHa tenido usted muchos amores, una vida sentimental muy rica? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Muy rica, s\u00ed \u2014asinti\u00f3, mir\u00e1ndome a los ojos por sobre la taza de menta y yerbaluisa que se hab\u00eda llevado a la boca\u2014. Pero yo no he amado nunca a una mujer de carne y hueso.\n\nHizo una pausa efectista, como midiendo el tama\u00f1o de mi inocencia o estupidez.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCree usted que ser\u00eda posible hacer lo que hago si las mujeres se tragaran mi energ\u00eda? \u2014me amonest\u00f3, con asco en la voz\u2014. \u00bfCree que se pueden producir hijos e historias al mismo tiempo? \u00bfQue uno puede inventar, imaginar, si se vive bajo la amenaza de la s\u00edfilis? La mujer y el arte son excluyentes, mi amigo. En cada vagina est\u00e1 enterrado un artista. Reproducirse, \u00bfqu\u00e9 gracia tiene? \u00bfNo lo hacen los perros, las ara\u00f1as, los gatos? Hay que ser originales, mi amigo.\n\nSin soluci\u00f3n de continuidad se puso de pie de un salto, advirti\u00e9ndome que ten\u00eda el tiempo justo para el radioteatro de las cinco. Sent\u00ed desilusi\u00f3n, me hubiera pasado la tarde escuch\u00e1ndolo, ten\u00eda la impresi\u00f3n de, sin quererlo, haber tocado un punto neur\u00e1lgico de su personalidad.\n\nEn mi oficina de Panamericana, estaba esper\u00e1ndome la t\u00eda Julia. Sentada en mi escritorio como una reina, recib\u00eda los homenajes de Pascual y del Gran Pablito, que, sol\u00edcitos, movedizos, le mostraban los boletines y le explicaban c\u00f3mo funcionaba el servicio. Se la ve\u00eda risue\u00f1a y tranquila; al entrar yo, se puso seria y palideci\u00f3 ligeramente.\n\n\u2014Vaya, qu\u00e9 sorpresa \u2014dije, por decir algo.\n\nPero la t\u00eda Julia no estaba para eufemismos.\n\n\u2014He venido a decirte que a m\u00ed nadie me cuelga el tel\u00e9fono \u2014me dijo, con voz resuelta\u2014. Y mucho menos un mocoso como t\u00fa. \u00bfQuieres decirme qu\u00e9 mosca te ha picado?\n\nPascual y el Gran Pablito quedaron est\u00e1ticos y mov\u00edan las cabezas de ella a m\u00ed y viceversa, interesad\u00edsimos en ese comienzo de drama. Cuando les ped\u00ed que se fueran un momento, pusieron unas caras enfurecidas, pero no se atrevieron a rebelarse. Partieron lanzando a la t\u00eda Julia unas miradas llenas de malos pensamientos.\n\n\u2014Te colgu\u00e9 el tel\u00e9fono pero en realidad ten\u00eda ganas de apretarte el pescuezo \u2014le dije, cuando nos quedamos solos.\n\n\u2014No te conoc\u00eda esos arranques \u2014dijo ella, mir\u00e1ndome a los ojos\u2014. \u00bfSe puede saber qu\u00e9 te pasa?\n\n\u2014Sabes muy bien lo que me pasa, as\u00ed que no te hagas la tonta \u2014dije yo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEst\u00e1s celoso porque sal\u00ed a almorzar con el doctor Osores? \u2014me pregunt\u00f3, con un tonito burl\u00f3n\u2014. C\u00f3mo se nota que eres un mocoso, Marito.\n\n\u2014Te he prohibido que me llames Marito \u2014le record\u00e9. Sent\u00eda que la irritaci\u00f3n me iba dominando, que me temblaba la voz y ya no sab\u00eda lo que le dec\u00eda\u2014. Y ahora te proh\u00edbo que me llames mocoso.\n\nMe sent\u00e9 en la esquina del escritorio y, como haciendo contrapunto, la t\u00eda Julia se puso de pie y dio unos pasos hacia la ventana. Con los brazos cruzados sobre el pecho, se qued\u00f3 mirando la ma\u00f1ana gris, h\u00fameda, discretamente fantasmal. Pero no la ve\u00eda, buscaba las palabras para decirme algo. Vest\u00eda un traje azul y unos zapatos blancos y, repentinamente, tuve ganas de besarla.\n\n\u2014Vamos a poner las cosas en su sitio \u2014me dijo al fin, d\u00e1ndome siempre la espalda\u2014. T\u00fa no puedes prohibirme nada, ni siquiera en broma, por la sencilla raz\u00f3n de que no eres nada m\u00edo. No eres mi marido, no eres mi novio, no eres mi amante. Este jueguecito de cogernos de la mano, de besarnos en el cine, no es serio, y, sobre todo, no te da derechos sobre m\u00ed. Tienes que meterte eso en la cabeza, hijito.\n\n\u2014La verdad es que est\u00e1s hablando como si fueras mi mam\u00e1 \u2014le dije yo.\n\n\u2014Es que podr\u00eda ser tu mam\u00e1 \u2014dijo la t\u00eda Julia, y se le entristeci\u00f3 la cara. Fue como si se le hubiera pasado la furia y, en su lugar, quedara s\u00f3lo una vieja contrariedad, una profunda desaz\u00f3n. Se volvi\u00f3, dio unos pasos hacia el escritorio, se par\u00f3 muy cerca de m\u00ed. Me miraba apenada\u2014: T\u00fa me haces sentir vieja, sin serlo, Varguitas. Y eso no me gusta. Lo nuestro no tiene raz\u00f3n de ser y mucho menos futuro.\n\nLa cog\u00ed de la cintura y ella se dej\u00f3 ir contra m\u00ed, pero, mientras la besaba, con mucha ternura, en la mejilla, en el cuello, en la oreja \u2014su piel tibia lat\u00eda bajo mis labios y sentir la secreta vida de sus venas me produc\u00eda una alegr\u00eda enorme\u2014, sigui\u00f3 hablando con el mismo tono de voz:\n\n\u2014He estado pensando mucho y la cosa ya no me gusta, Varguitas. \u00bfNo te das cuenta que es absurdo? Tengo treinta y dos a\u00f1os, soy divorciada, \u00bfquieres decirme qu\u00e9 hago con un mocoso de dieciocho? \u00c9sas son perversiones de las cincuentonas, yo todav\u00eda no estoy para \u00e9sas.\n\nMe sent\u00eda tan conmovido y enamorado mientras le besaba el cuello, las manos, le mord\u00eda despacito la oreja, le pasaba los labios por la nariz, los ojos o enredaba mis dedos en sus cabellos, que a ratos se me perd\u00eda lo que iba dici\u00e9ndome. Tambi\u00e9n su voz sufr\u00eda altibajos, a veces se debilitaba hasta ser un susurro.\n\n\u2014Al principio era gracioso, por lo de los escondites \u2014dec\u00eda, dej\u00e1ndose besar, pero sin hacer ning\u00fan gesto rec\u00edproco\u2014, y, sobre todo, porque me hac\u00eda sentirme otra vez jovencita.\n\n\u2014En qu\u00e9 quedamos \u2014murmur\u00e9, en su o\u00eddo\u2014. \u00bfTe hago sentir una cincuentona viciosa o una jovencita?\n\n\u2014Eso de estar con un mocoso muerto de hambre, de s\u00f3lo cogerse la mano, de s\u00f3lo ir al cine, de s\u00f3lo besarse con tanta delicadeza, me hac\u00eda volver a mis quince a\u00f1os \u2014segu\u00eda diciendo la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Claro que es bonito enamorarse con un muchachito t\u00edmido, que te respeta, que no te manosea, que no se atreve a acostarse contigo, que te trata como a una ni\u00f1ita de primera comuni\u00f3n. Pero es un juego peligroso, Varguitas, se basa en una mentira...\n\n\u2014A prop\u00f3sito, estoy escribiendo un cuento que se va a llamar Los juegos peligrosos \u2014le susurr\u00e9\u2014. Sobre unos palomillas que levitan en el aeropuerto, gracias a los aviones que despegan.\n\nSent\u00ed que se re\u00eda. Un momento despu\u00e9s me ech\u00f3 los brazos al cuello y me junt\u00f3 la cara.\n\n\u2014Bueno, se me pas\u00f3 la c\u00f3lera \u2014dijo\u2014. Porque vine decidida a sacarte los ojos. Ay de ti que me vuelvas a colgar el tel\u00e9fono.\n\n\u2014Ay de ti que vuelvas a salir con el endocrin\u00f3logo \u2014le dije, busc\u00e1ndole la boca\u2014. Prom\u00e9teme que nunca m\u00e1s saldr\u00e1s con \u00e9l.\n\nSe apart\u00f3 y me mir\u00f3 con un brillo pendenciero en los ojos.\n\n\u2014No te olvides que he venido a Lima a buscarme un marido \u2014brome\u00f3 a medias\u2014. Y creo que esta vez he encontrado lo que me conviene. Buen mozo, culto, con buena situaci\u00f3n y con canas en las sienes.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEst\u00e1s segura que esa maravilla se va a casar contigo? \u2014le dije, sintiendo otra vez furia y celos.\n\nCogi\u00e9ndose las caderas, en una pose provocativa, me repuso:\n\n\u2014Yo puedo hacer que se case conmigo.\n\nPero al ver mi cara, se ri\u00f3, me volvi\u00f3 a echar los brazos al cuello, y as\u00ed est\u00e1bamos, bes\u00e1ndonos con amor-pasi\u00f3n, cuando o\u00edmos la voz de Javier:\n\n\u2014Los van a meter presos por escandalosos y pornogr\u00e1ficos \u2014estaba feliz y, abraz\u00e1ndonos a los dos, nos anunci\u00f3\u2014: La flaca Nancy me ha aceptado una invitaci\u00f3n a los toros y hay que celebrarlo.\n\n\u2014Acabamos de tener nuestra primera gran pelea y nos pescaste en plena reconciliaci\u00f3n \u2014le cont\u00e9.\n\n\u2014C\u00f3mo se nota que no me conoces \u2014me previno la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. En las grandes peleas yo rompo platos, ara\u00f1o, mato.\n\n\u2014Lo bueno de pelearse son las amistadas \u2014dijo Javier, que era un experto en la materia\u2014. Pero, maldita sea, yo vengo hecho unas pascuas con lo de la flaca Nancy y ustedes como si lloviera, qu\u00e9 clase de amigos son. Vamos a festejar el acontecimiento con un lonche.\n\nMe esperaron mientras redactaba un par de boletines y bajamos a un cafecito de la calle Bel\u00e9n, que le encantaba a Javier, porque, pese a ser estrecho y mugriento, all\u00ed preparaban los mejores chicharrones de Lima. Encontr\u00e9 a Pascual y al Gran Pablito, en la puerta de Panamericana, piropeando a las transe\u00fantes, y los regres\u00e9 a la redacci\u00f3n. Pese a ser de d\u00eda y estar en pleno centro, al alcance de los ojos incontables de parientes y amigos de la familia, la t\u00eda Julia y yo \u00edbamos de la mano, y yo la besaba todo el tiempo. Ella ten\u00eda unas chapas de serrana y se la ve\u00eda contenta.\n\n\u2014Basta de pornograf\u00eda, ego\u00edstas, piensen en m\u00ed \u2014protestaba Javier\u2014. Hablemos un poco de la flaca Nancy.\n\nLa flaca Nancy era una prima m\u00eda, bonita y muy coqueta, de la que Javier estaba enamorado desde que ten\u00eda uso de raz\u00f3n y a la que persegu\u00eda con una constancia de sabueso. Ella nunca hab\u00eda llegado a hacerle caso del todo, pero siempre se las arreglaba para hacerle creer que tal vez, que pronto, que la pr\u00f3xima. Ese prerromance duraba desde que est\u00e1bamos en el colegio y yo, como confidente, amigo \u00edntimo y celestino de Javier, hab\u00eda seguido todos sus pormenores. Eran incontables los plantones que la flaca Nancy le hab\u00eda dado, infinitas las matin\u00e9s de domingo que lo hab\u00eda dejado esper\u00e1ndola a las puertas del Leuro mientras ella se iba al Colina o al Metro, infinitas las veces que se le hab\u00eda aparecido con otro gal\u00e1n en la fiesta del s\u00e1bado. La primera borrachera de mi vida la tuve acompa\u00f1ando a Javier, a ahogar sus penas con capitanes y cerveza, en un barcito de Surquillo, el d\u00eda que se enter\u00f3 que la flaca Nancy le hab\u00eda dicho s\u00ed al estudiante de Agronom\u00eda Eduardo Tiravanti (muy popular en Miraflores porque sab\u00eda meterse prendido el cigarrillo a la boca y luego sacarlo y seguir fumando como si tal cosa). Javier lloriqueaba y yo, adem\u00e1s de ser su pa\u00f1o de l\u00e1grimas, ten\u00eda la misi\u00f3n de ir a acostarlo a su pensi\u00f3n cuando hubiera llegado a un estado comatoso (\u00abMe voy a mamar hasta las cachas\u00bb, me hab\u00eda prevenido, imitando a Jorge Negrete). Pero fui yo el que sucumbi\u00f3, con ruidosos v\u00f3mitos y un ataque de diablos azules en el curso del cual \u2014era la versi\u00f3n canallesca de Javier\u2014 me hab\u00eda encaramado al mostrador y arengado a los borrachitos, noct\u00e1mbulos y rufianes que constitu\u00edan la clientela de El Triunfo:\n\n\u2014B\u00e1jense los pantalones que est\u00e1n ante un poeta.\n\nSiempre me reprochaba que, en vez de cuidarlo y consolarlo en esa noche triste, lo hubiera obligado a arrastrarme por las calles de Miraflores hasta la quinta de Ochar\u00e1n, en un estado tal de descomposici\u00f3n que entreg\u00f3 mis restos a mi asustada abuela con este comentario desatinado:\n\n\u2014Se\u00f1ora Carmencita, creo que el Varguitas se nos muere.\n\nDesde entonces, la flaca Nancy hab\u00eda aceptado y despedido a media docena de miraflorinos, y Javier hab\u00eda tenido tambi\u00e9n enamoradas, pero ellas no cancelaban sino robustec\u00edan su gran amor por mi prima, a la que segu\u00eda llamando, visitando, invitando, declar\u00e1ndose, indiferente ante las negativas, malacrianzas, desaires y plantones. Javier era uno de esos hombres que pueden anteponer la pasi\u00f3n a la vanidad y le importaban realmente un comino las burlas de todos los amigos de Miraflores, entre quienes su persecuci\u00f3n de mi prima era un surtidor de chistes. (En el barrio un muchacho juraba que lo hab\u00eda visto acercarse a la flaca Nancy, un domingo, a la salida de misa de once, con la siguiente propuesta: \u00abHola Nancita, linda ma\u00f1ana, \u00bfnos tomamos algo?, \u00bfuna Coca-Cola, un champancito?\u00bb.) La flaca Nancy sal\u00eda algunas veces con \u00e9l, generalmente entre dos enamorados, al cine o a una fiesta, y Javier conceb\u00eda entonces grandes esperanzas y entraba en estado de euforia. As\u00ed estaba ahora, hablando hasta por los codos, mientras nos tom\u00e1bamos unos caf\u00e9s con leche y unos s\u00e1ndwiches de chicharr\u00f3n, en ese caf\u00e9 de la calle Bel\u00e9n que se llamaba El Palmero. La t\u00eda Julia y yo nos toc\u00e1bamos las rodillas bajo la mesa, ten\u00edamos entrelazados los dedos, nos mir\u00e1bamos a los ojos, y, mientras, como una m\u00fasica de fondo, o\u00edamos a Javier hablando de la flaca Nancy.\n\n\u2014La invitaci\u00f3n la ha dejado impresionada \u2014nos cont\u00f3\u2014. Porque, \u00bfquieres decirme qu\u00e9 pelagatos de Miraflores invita a una chica a los toros?\n\n\u2014\u00bfC\u00f3mo has hecho? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9\u2014. \u00bfTe sacaste la loter\u00eda?\n\n\u2014He vendido la radio de la pensi\u00f3n \u2014nos dijo, sin el menor remordimiento\u2014. Creen que ha sido la cocinera y la han despedido por ladrona.\n\nNos explic\u00f3 que ten\u00eda preparado un plan infalible. En media corrida, sorprender\u00eda a la flaca Nancy con un regalo persuasivo: una mantilla espa\u00f1ola. Javier era un gran admirador de la Madre Patria y de todo lo que se relacionaba con ella: los toros, la m\u00fasica flamenca, Sarita Montiel. So\u00f1aba con ir a Espa\u00f1a (como yo con ir a Francia) y lo de la mantilla se le hab\u00eda ocurrido al ver un aviso del peri\u00f3dico. Le hab\u00eda costado su sueldo de un mes en el Banco de Reserva pero estaba seguro que la inversi\u00f3n tendr\u00eda frutos. Nos explic\u00f3 c\u00f3mo iban a ocurrir las cosas. Llevar\u00eda la mantilla a los toros discretamente envuelta y esperar\u00eda un momento de gran emoci\u00f3n para abrir el paquete, desplegar la prenda y colocarla sobre los hombros delicados de mi prima. \u00bfQu\u00e9 pens\u00e1bamos? \u00bfCu\u00e1l ser\u00eda la reacci\u00f3n de la flaquita? Yo le aconsej\u00e9 que redondeara las cosas, regal\u00e1ndole tambi\u00e9n una peineta sevillana y unas casta\u00f1uelas y que le cantara un fandango, pero la t\u00eda Julia lo apoy\u00f3 con entusiasmo y le dijo que todo lo que hab\u00eda planeado era lindo y que la Nancy, si ten\u00eda coraz\u00f3n, se emocionar\u00eda hasta los huesos. Ella, si un muchacho le hac\u00eda esas demostraciones, quedar\u00eda conquistada.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo ves lo que te digo siempre? \u2014me dijo, igual que si estuviera ri\u00f1\u00e9ndome\u2014. Javier s\u00ed que es un rom\u00e1ntico, enamora como se deber\u00eda enamorar.\n\nJavier, encantado, nos propuso que sali\u00e9ramos los cuatro juntos, cualquier d\u00eda de la pr\u00f3xima semana, al cine, a tomar t\u00e9, a bailar.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 dir\u00eda la flaca Nancy si nos ve de pareja? \u2014le puse los pies en la tierra.\n\nPero \u00e9l nos ech\u00f3 un baldazo de agua fr\u00eda:\n\n\u2014No seas tonto, sabe todo y le parece muy bien, se lo cont\u00e9 el otro d\u00eda \u2014y al ver nuestra sorpresa, a\u00f1adi\u00f3, con cara de travieso\u2014: Pero si con tu prima yo no tengo secretos, si ella, haga lo que haga, terminar\u00e1 cas\u00e1ndose conmigo.\n\nMe qued\u00e9 preocupado al saber que Javier le hab\u00eda contado nuestro romance. \u00c9ramos muy unidos y estaba seguro que no ir\u00eda a delatarnos, pero se le pod\u00eda escapar algo, y la noticia correr\u00eda como un incendio por el bosque familiar. La t\u00eda Julia se hab\u00eda quedado muda, pero ahora disimulaba dando br\u00edos a Javier en su proyecto taurino-sentimental. Nos despedimos en la puerta del Edificio Panamericano y quedamos con la t\u00eda Julia en que nos ver\u00edamos esa noche, con el pretexto del cine. Al besarla, le dije al o\u00eddo: \u00abGracias al endocrin\u00f3logo, me he dado cuenta que estoy enamorado de ti\u00bb. Ella asinti\u00f3: \u00abAs\u00ed estoy viendo, Varguitas\u00bb.\n\nMe la qued\u00e9 viendo alejarse, con Javier, hacia el paradero de los colectivos, y s\u00f3lo entonces advert\u00ed la gente aglomerada a las puertas de Radio Central. Eran sobre todo mujeres j\u00f3venes, aunque hab\u00eda tambi\u00e9n algunos hombres. Estaban en filas de a dos, pero, a medida que llegaba m\u00e1s gente, la formaci\u00f3n se descompon\u00eda, entre codazos y empujones. Me acerqu\u00e9 a curiosear porque supuse que la raz\u00f3n ten\u00eda que ser Pedro Camacho. En efecto, eran coleccionistas de aut\u00f3grafos. Por la ventana del cub\u00edculo, vi al escriba, escoltado por Jesusito y por Genaro pap\u00e1, rasgu\u00f1ando una firma con arabescos en cuadernos, libretas, hojitas sueltas, peri\u00f3dicos, y despidiendo a sus admiradores con un gesto ol\u00edmpico. Ellos lo miraban con embelesamiento y se le acercaban en actitud t\u00edmida, balbuceando palabras de aprecio.\n\n\u2014Nos da dolores de cabeza, pero, no hay duda, es el rey de la radiotelefon\u00eda nacional \u2014me dijo Genaro hijo, poni\u00e9ndome una mano en el hombro y se\u00f1alando el gent\u00edo\u2014: \u00bfQu\u00e9 te parece esto?\n\nLe pregunt\u00e9 desde cu\u00e1ndo funcionaba lo de los aut\u00f3grafos.\n\n\u2014Desde hace una semana, media hora al d\u00eda, de seis a seis y media, hombre poco observador \u2014me dijo el empresario progresista\u2014. \u00bfNo lees los avisos que publicamos, no oyes la radio en la que trabajas? Yo era esc\u00e9ptico, pero mira c\u00f3mo me equivoqu\u00e9. Cre\u00ed que s\u00f3lo habr\u00eda gente para dos d\u00edas y ahora veo que esto puede funcionar un mes.\n\nMe invit\u00f3 a tomar un trago al bar del Bol\u00edvar. Yo ped\u00ed una Coca-Cola, pero \u00e9l insisti\u00f3 en que lo acompa\u00f1ara con un whisky.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTe das cuenta lo que significan estas colas? \u2014me explic\u00f3\u2014. Son una demostraci\u00f3n p\u00fablica de que los radioteatros de Pedro calan en el pueblo.\n\nLe dije que no me cab\u00eda duda y \u00e9l me hizo poner colorado recomend\u00e1ndome que, como yo ten\u00eda aficiones literarias, siguiera el ejemplo del boliviano, aprendiera sus recursos para conquistar a las muchedumbres. \u00abNo debes encerrarte en tu torre de marfil\u00bb, me aconsej\u00f3. Hab\u00eda mandado imprimir cinco mil fotos de Pedro Camacho y, a partir del lunes, los cazadores de aut\u00f3grafos las recibir\u00edan como obsequio. Le pregunt\u00e9 si el escriba hab\u00eda amortiguado sus descargas contra los argentinos.\n\n\u2014Ya no importa, ahora puede hablar pestes contra quienquiera \u2014me dijo, con aire misterioso\u2014. \u00bfNo sabes la gran noticia? El General no se pierde los radioteatros de Pedro.\n\nMe dio precisiones, para convencerme. El General, como las cuestiones de gobierno no le daban tiempo para o\u00edrlos durante el d\u00eda, se los hac\u00eda grabar y los escuchaba cada noche, uno tras otro, antes de dormir. La Presidenta en persona se lo hab\u00eda contado a muchas se\u00f1oras de Lima.\n\n\u2014Parece que el General es un hombre sensible, a pesar de lo que dicen \u2014concluy\u00f3 Genaro hijo\u2014. De modo que si la cumbre est\u00e1 con nosotros, qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s da que Pedro se d\u00e9 gusto contra los ches. \u00bfNo se lo merecen?\n\nLa conversaci\u00f3n con Genaro hijo, la reconciliaci\u00f3n con la t\u00eda Julia, algo, me hab\u00eda estimulado mucho y regres\u00e9 al altillo a escribir con \u00edmpetu mi cuento de los levitadores, mientras Pascual despachaba los boletines. Ya ten\u00eda el final: en uno de esos juegos, un palomilla levitaba m\u00e1s alto que los otros, ca\u00eda con fuerza, se romp\u00eda la nuca y mor\u00eda. La \u00faltima frase mostrar\u00eda las caras sorprendidas, asustadas de sus compa\u00f1eros, contempl\u00e1ndolo, bajo un tronar de aviones. Ser\u00eda un relato espartano, preciso como un cron\u00f3metro, al estilo de Hemingway.\n\nUnos d\u00edas despu\u00e9s, fui a visitar a mi prima Nancy, para saber c\u00f3mo hab\u00eda tomado la historia de la t\u00eda Julia. La encontr\u00e9 todav\u00eda bajo los efectos de la Operaci\u00f3n Mantilla:\n\n\u2014\u00bfTe das cuenta el papel\u00f3n que pas\u00e9 por ese idiota? \u2014dec\u00eda, mientras correteaba por toda la casa, buscando a Lasky\u2014. De repente, en plena plaza de Acho, abri\u00f3 un paquete, sac\u00f3 una capa de torero y me la puso encima. Todo el mundo se qued\u00f3 mir\u00e1ndome, hasta el toro se mor\u00eda de risa. Me hizo tenerla puesta toda la corrida. Y quer\u00eda que saliera a la calle con esa cosa, fig\u00farate. \u00a1Nunca he pasado tanta verg\u00fcenza en mi vida!\n\nEncontramos a Lasky bajo la cama del mayordomo \u2014adem\u00e1s de ser pelado y feo, era un perro que siempre quer\u00eda morderme\u2014, lo llevamos a su jaula y la flaca Nancy me arrastr\u00f3 a su dormitorio a ver el cuerpo del delito. Era una prenda modernista y hac\u00eda pensar en jardines ex\u00f3ticos, en carpas de gitanas, en burdeles de lujo: tornasolada, anidaban en sus pliegues todos los matices del rojo, desde el bermell\u00f3n sangre hasta el ros\u00e1ceo arrebol, ten\u00eda nudosos y largos flecos negros y sus pedrer\u00edas y oropeles brillaban tanto que produc\u00edan mareos. Mi prima hac\u00eda pases taurinos o se envolv\u00eda en ella, ri\u00e9ndose a carcajadas. Le dije que no le permit\u00eda burlarse de mi amigo y le pregunt\u00e9 si por fin le iba a hacer caso.\n\n\u2014Lo estoy pensando \u2014me repuso, igual que siempre\u2014. Pero como amigo me encanta.\n\nLe dije que era una coqueta sin coraz\u00f3n, que Javier hab\u00eda llegado al robo para hacerle ese regalo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY t\u00fa? \u2014me dijo, doblando y guardando la mantilla en el ropero\u2014. \u00bfEs cierto que est\u00e1s con la Julita? \u00bfNo te da verg\u00fcenza? \u00bfCon la hermana de la t\u00eda Olga?\n\nLe dije que era cierto, que no me daba verg\u00fcenza y sent\u00ed que me ard\u00eda la cara. Ella tambi\u00e9n se confundi\u00f3 un poco, pero su curiosidad miraflorina fue m\u00e1s fuerte y dispar\u00f3 hacia el blanco:\n\n\u2014Si te casas con ella, dentro de veinte a\u00f1os ser\u00e1s todav\u00eda joven y ella una abuelita \u2014me tom\u00f3 del brazo y me despe\u00f1\u00f3 por las escaleras hacia la sala\u2014. Ven, vamos a o\u00edr m\u00fasica y all\u00e1 me cuentas tu enamoramiento de pe a pa.\n\nSeleccion\u00f3 un alto de discos \u2014Nat King Cole, Harry Belafonte, Frank Sinatra, Xavier Cugat\u2014, mientras me confesaba que, desde que Javier le cont\u00f3, se le pon\u00edan los pelos de punta pensando en lo que pasar\u00eda si se enteraba la familia. \u00bfAcaso nuestros parientes no eran tan metetes que el d\u00eda que ella sal\u00eda con un muchacho distinto diez t\u00edos, ocho t\u00edas y cinco primas llamaban a su mam\u00e1 a cont\u00e1rselo? \u00a1Yo enamorado con la t\u00eda Julia! \u00a1Qu\u00e9 tal esc\u00e1ndalo, Marito! Y me record\u00f3 que la familia se hac\u00eda ilusiones, que yo era la esperanza de la tribu. Era verdad: mi cancerosa parentela esperaba de m\u00ed que fuera alg\u00fan d\u00eda millonario, o, en el peor de los casos, Presidente de la Rep\u00fablica. (Nunca comprend\u00ed por qu\u00e9 se hab\u00eda formado una opini\u00f3n tan alta de m\u00ed. En todo caso, no por mis notas de colegio, que nunca fueron brillantes. Tal vez porque, desde chico, les escrib\u00eda poemas a todas mis t\u00edas o porque fui, al parecer, un ni\u00f1o revejido que opinaba de todo.) Le hice jurar a la flaca Nancy que ser\u00eda una tumba. Ella se mor\u00eda por saber detalles del romance:\n\n\u2014\u00bfLa Julita s\u00f3lo te gusta o est\u00e1s templado de ella?\n\nAlguna vez le hab\u00eda hecho confidencias sentimentales y ahora, puesto que ya sab\u00eda, se las hice tambi\u00e9n. La historia hab\u00eda comenzado como un juego, pero, de repente, exactamente el d\u00eda en que sent\u00ed celos por un endocrin\u00f3logo, me di cuenta que me hab\u00eda enamorado. Sin embargo, mientras m\u00e1s vueltas le daba, m\u00e1s me convenc\u00eda que el romance era un rompecabezas. No s\u00f3lo por la diferencia de edad. Me faltaban tres a\u00f1os para terminar abogac\u00eda y sospechaba que nunca ejercer\u00eda esa profesi\u00f3n, porque lo \u00fanico que me gustaba era escribir. Pero los escritores se mor\u00edan de hambre. Por ahora, s\u00f3lo ganaba para comprar cigarros, unos cuantos libros e ir al cine. \u00bfMe iba a esperar la t\u00eda Julia hasta que fuera un hombre solvente, si alguna vez llegaba a serlo? Mi prima Nancy era tan buena que, en vez de contradecirme, me daba la raz\u00f3n:\n\n\u2014Claro, sin contar que para entonces a lo mejor la Julita ya no te gusta y la dejas \u2014me dec\u00eda, con realismo\u2014. Y la pobre habr\u00e1 perdido su tiempo miserablemente. Pero, dime, \u00bfella est\u00e1 enamorada de ti o s\u00f3lo juega?\n\nLe dije que la t\u00eda Julia no era una veleta fr\u00edvola como ella (lo que realmente le encant\u00f3). Pero la misma pregunta me la hab\u00eda hecho yo varias veces. Se la hice tambi\u00e9n a la t\u00eda Julia, unos d\u00edas despu\u00e9s. Hab\u00edamos ido a sentarnos frente al mar, en un bello parquecito de nombre impronunciable (Domodossola o algo as\u00ed) y all\u00ed, abrazados, bes\u00e1ndonos sin tregua, tuvimos nuestra primera conversaci\u00f3n sobre el futuro.\n\n\u2014Me lo s\u00e9 con lujo de detalles, lo he visto en una bola de cristal \u2014me dijo la t\u00eda Julia, sin la menor amargura\u2014. En el mejor de los casos, lo nuestro durar\u00eda tres, tal vez unos cuatro a\u00f1os, es decir hasta que encuentres a la mocosita que ser\u00e1 la mam\u00e1 de tus hijos. Entonces me botar\u00e1s y tendr\u00e9 que seducir a otro caballero. Y aparece la palabra fin.\n\nLe dije, mientras le besaba las manos, que le hac\u00eda mal o\u00edr radioteatros.\n\n\u2014C\u00f3mo se nota que no los oyes nunca \u2014me rectific\u00f3\u2014. En los radioteatros de Pedro Camacho rara vez hay amores o cosas parecidas. Ahora, por ejemplo, Olga y yo estamos entretenid\u00edsimas con el de las tres. La tragedia de un muchacho que no puede dormir porque, apenas cierra los ojos, vuelve a apachurrar a una pobre ni\u00f1ita.\n\nLe dije, volviendo al tema, que yo era m\u00e1s optimista. Con fogosidad, para convencerme a m\u00ed mismo al tiempo que a ella, le asegur\u00e9 que, fueran cuales fueran las diferencias, el amor duraba poco basado en lo puramente f\u00edsico. Con la desaparici\u00f3n de la novedad, con la rutina, la atracci\u00f3n sexual disminu\u00eda y al final mor\u00eda (sobre todo en el hombre), y la pareja entonces s\u00f3lo pod\u00eda sobrevivir si hab\u00eda entre ellos otros imanes: espirituales, intelectuales, morales. Para esa clase de amor la edad no importaba.\n\n\u2014Suena bonito y me convendr\u00eda que fuera verdad \u2014dijo la t\u00eda Julia, frotando contra mi mejilla una nariz que siempre estaba fr\u00eda\u2014. Pero es mentira de principio a fin. \u00bfLo f\u00edsico algo secundario? Es lo m\u00e1s importante para que dos personas se aguanten, Varguitas.\n\n\u00bfHab\u00eda vuelto a salir con el endocrin\u00f3logo?\n\n\u2014Me ha llamado varias veces \u2014me dijo, fomentando mi expectaci\u00f3n. Luego, bes\u00e1ndome, despej\u00f3 la inc\u00f3gnita\u2014: Le he dicho que no voy a salir m\u00e1s con \u00e9l.\n\nEn el colmo de la felicidad, yo le habl\u00e9 mucho rato de mi cuento sobre los levitadores: ten\u00eda diez p\u00e1ginas, estaba saliendo bien y tratar\u00eda de publicarlo en el Suplemento de El Comercio con una dedicatoria cr\u00edptica: \u00abAl femenino de Julio\u00bb.\n\n### X\n\nLA TRAGEDIA de Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, joven propagandista m\u00e9dico al que todo auguraba un futuro promisor, comenz\u00f3 una soleada ma\u00f1ana de verano, en las afueras de una localidad hist\u00f3rica: Pisco. Acababa de terminar el recorrido que, desde que asumi\u00f3 esa profesi\u00f3n itinerante, hac\u00eda diez a\u00f1os, lo llevaba por los pueblos y ciudades del Per\u00fa, visitando consultorios y farmacias para regalar muestras y prospectos de los Laboratorios Bayer, y se dispon\u00eda a regresar a Lima. La visita a los facultativos y qu\u00edmicos del lugar le hab\u00eda tomado unas tres horas. Y aunque en el Grupo A\u00e9reo N. 9, de San Andr\u00e9s, ten\u00eda un compa\u00f1ero de colegio, que era ahora capit\u00e1n, en cuya casa sol\u00eda quedarse a almorzar cuando ven\u00eda a Pisco, decidi\u00f3 regresar a la capital de una vez. Estaba casado, con una muchacha de piel blanca y apellido franc\u00e9s, y su sangre joven y su coraz\u00f3n enamorado lo urg\u00edan a retornar cuanto antes a los brazos de su c\u00f3nyuge.\n\nEra un poco m\u00e1s de mediod\u00eda. Su flamante Volkswagen, adquirido a plazos al mismo tiempo que el v\u00ednculo matrimonial \u2014tres meses atr\u00e1s\u2014, lo esperaba, parqueado bajo un frondoso eucalipto de la plaza. Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn guard\u00f3 la valija con muestras y prospectos, se quit\u00f3 la corbata y el saco (que, seg\u00fan las normas helv\u00e9ticas del laboratorio, deb\u00edan llevar siempre los propagandistas para dar una impresi\u00f3n de seriedad), confirm\u00f3 su decisi\u00f3n de no visitar a su amigo aviador, y, en vez de un almuerzo en regla, acord\u00f3 tomar s\u00f3lo un refrigerio para evitar que una s\u00f3lida digesti\u00f3n le hiciera m\u00e1s so\u00f1olientas las tres horas de desierto.\n\nCruz\u00f3 la plaza hacia la Helader\u00eda Piave, orden\u00f3 al italiano una Coca-Cola y un helado de melocot\u00f3n, y, mientras consum\u00eda el espartano almuerzo, no pens\u00f3 en el pasado de ese puerto sure\u00f1o, el multicolor desembarco del dudoso h\u00e9roe San Mart\u00edn y su Ej\u00e9rcito Libertador, sino, ego\u00edsmo y sensualidad de los hombres candentes, en su tibia mujercita \u2014en realidad, casi una ni\u00f1a\u2014, n\u00edvea, de ojos azules y rizos dorados, y en c\u00f3mo, en la oscuridad rom\u00e1ntica de las noches, sab\u00eda llevarlo a unos extremos de fiebre neroniana cant\u00e1ndole al o\u00eddo, con quejidos de gatita l\u00e1nguida, en la lengua er\u00f3tica por excelencia (un franc\u00e9s tanto m\u00e1s excitante cuanto m\u00e1s incomprensible), una canci\u00f3n titulada Las hojas muertas. Advirtiendo que esas reminiscencias maritales comenzaban a inquietarlo, cambi\u00f3 de pensamientos, pag\u00f3 y sali\u00f3.\n\nEn un grifo pr\u00f3ximo llen\u00f3 el tanque de gasolina, el radiador de agua, y parti\u00f3. Pese a que a esa hora, de m\u00e1ximo sol, las calles de Pisco estaban vac\u00edas, conduc\u00eda despacio y con cuidado, pensando, no en la integridad de los peatones, sino en su amarillo Volkswagen, que, despu\u00e9s de la blonda francesita, era la ni\u00f1a de sus ojos. Iba pensando en su vida. Ten\u00eda veintiocho a\u00f1os. Al terminar el colegio, hab\u00eda decidido ponerse a trabajar, pues era demasiado impaciente para la transici\u00f3n universitaria. Hab\u00eda entrado a los laboratorios aprobando un examen. En estos diez a\u00f1os hab\u00eda progresado en sueldo y posici\u00f3n, y su trabajo no era aburrido. Prefer\u00eda actuar en la calle que vegetar tras un escritorio. S\u00f3lo que, ahora, no era cuesti\u00f3n de pasarse la vida en viajes, dejando a la delicada flor de Francia en Lima, ciudad que, es bien sabido, est\u00e1 llena de tiburones que viven al acecho de las sirenas. Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn hab\u00eda hablado con sus jefes. Lo apreciaban y lo hab\u00edan animado: continuar\u00eda viajando s\u00f3lo unos meses y a comienzos del pr\u00f3ximo a\u00f1o le dar\u00edan una colocaci\u00f3n en provincias. Y el doctor Schwalb, suizo lac\u00f3nico, hab\u00eda precisado: \u00abUna colocaci\u00f3n que ser\u00e1 una promoci\u00f3n\u00bb. Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn no pod\u00eda dejar de pensar que tal vez le ofrecer\u00edan la gerencia de la filial de Trujillo, Arequipa o Chiclayo. \u00bfQu\u00e9 m\u00e1s pod\u00eda pedir?\n\nEstaba saliendo de la ciudad, entrando a la carretera. Hab\u00eda hecho y deshecho tantas veces esa ruta \u2014en \u00f3mnibus, en colectivo, conducido o conduciendo\u2014 que la conoc\u00eda de memoria. La asfaltada cinta negra se perd\u00eda a lo lejos, entre m\u00e9danos y colinas peladas, sin brillos de azogue que revelaran veh\u00edculos. Ten\u00eda delante un cami\u00f3n viejo y tembleque, e iba ya a pasarlo cuando divis\u00f3 el puente y la encrucijada donde la ruta del sur hace una horquilla y despide a esa carretera que sube a la sierra, en direcci\u00f3n a las met\u00e1licas monta\u00f1as de Castrovirreina. Decidi\u00f3 entonces, prudencia de hombre que ama su m\u00e1quina y teme la ley, esperar hasta despu\u00e9s del desv\u00edo. El cami\u00f3n no iba a m\u00e1s de cincuenta kil\u00f3metros por hora y Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, resignado, disminuy\u00f3 la velocidad y se mantuvo a diez metros de \u00e9l. Ve\u00eda, acerc\u00e1ndose, el puente, la encrucijada, endebles construcciones \u2014quioscos de bebidas, expendios de cigarrillos, la caseta de tr\u00e1nsito\u2014 y siluetas de personas cuyas caras no distingu\u00eda \u2014estaban a contraluz\u2014 yendo y viniendo junto a las caba\u00f1as.\n\nLa ni\u00f1a apareci\u00f3 de improviso, en el instante en que acababa de cruzar el puente y pareci\u00f3 surgir de debajo del cami\u00f3n. En el recuerdo de Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn quedar\u00eda grabada siempre esa figurilla que, s\u00fabitamente, se interpon\u00eda entre \u00e9l y la pista, la carita asustada y las manos en alto, y ven\u00eda a incrustarse como una pedrada contra la proa del Volkswagen. Fue tan intempestivo que no atin\u00f3 a frenar ni a desviar el auto hasta despu\u00e9s de la cat\u00e1strofe (del comienzo de la cat\u00e1strofe). Consternado, y con la extra\u00f1a sensaci\u00f3n de que se trataba de algo ajeno, sinti\u00f3 el sordo impacto del cuerpo contra el parachoque, y lo vio elevarse, trazar una par\u00e1bola y caer ocho o diez metros m\u00e1s all\u00e1.\n\nAhora s\u00ed fren\u00f3, tan en seco que el volante le golpe\u00f3 el pecho, y, con un aturdimiento blancuzco y un zumbido insistente, baj\u00f3 velozmente del Volkswagen y corriendo, tropezando, pensando \u00absoy argentino, mato ni\u00f1os\u00bb, lleg\u00f3 hasta la criatura y la alz\u00f3 en brazos. Tendr\u00eda cinco o seis a\u00f1os, iba descalza y mal vestida, con la cara, las manos y las rodillas encostradas de mugre. No sangraba por ninguna parte visible, pero ten\u00eda los ojos cerrados, y no parec\u00eda respirar. Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, cimbre\u00e1ndose como borracho, daba vueltas sobre el sitio, miraba a derecha y a izquierda y gritaba a los arenales, al viento, a las lejanas olas: \u00abUna ambulancia, un m\u00e9dico\u00bb. Como en sue\u00f1os, alcanz\u00f3 a percibir que, por el desv\u00edo de la sierra, bajaba un cami\u00f3n y tal vez not\u00f3 que su velocidad era excesiva para un veh\u00edculo que se aproxima a un cruce de caminos. Pero, si lleg\u00f3 a advertirlo, inmediatamente su atenci\u00f3n se distrajo al descubrir que llegaba a su lado, corriendo, un guardia desprendido de las caba\u00f1as. Acezante, sudoroso, funcional, el custodio del orden, mirando a la ni\u00f1a le pregunt\u00f3: \u00ab\u00bfEst\u00e1 so\u00f1ada o ya muerta?\u00bb.\n\nLucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn se preguntar\u00eda el resto de los a\u00f1os que le quedaban de vida cu\u00e1l hab\u00eda sido en ese momento la respuesta justa. \u00bfEstaba malherida o hab\u00eda expirado la criatura? No alcanz\u00f3 a responder al acezante guardia civil porque \u00e9ste, apenas hizo la pregunta, puso tal cara de horror que Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn alcanz\u00f3 a volver la cabeza justo a tiempo para comprender que el cami\u00f3n que bajaba de la sierra se les ven\u00eda enloquecidamente encima, bocineando. Cerr\u00f3 los ojos, un estruendo le arrebat\u00f3 la ni\u00f1a de los brazos y lo sumi\u00f3 en una oscuridad con estrellitas. Sigui\u00f3 oyendo un ruido atroz, gritos, ayes, mientras permanec\u00eda en un estupor de naturaleza casi m\u00edstica.\n\nMucho despu\u00e9s sabr\u00eda que hab\u00eda sido arrollado, no porque existiese una justicia inmanente, encargada de realizar el equitativo refr\u00e1n \u00abojo por ojo, diente por diente\u00bb, sino porque al cami\u00f3n de las minas se le hab\u00edan vaciado los frenos. Y sabr\u00eda tambi\u00e9n que el guardia civil hab\u00eda muerto instant\u00e1neamente desnucado y que la pobre ni\u00f1a \u2014verdadera hija de S\u00f3focles\u2014, en este segundo accidente (por si el primero no lo hab\u00eda conseguido), no s\u00f3lo hab\u00eda quedado muerta sino espectacularmente alisada al pasarle encima, carnaval de alegr\u00eda para los satanes, la doble rueda trasera del cami\u00f3n.\n\nPero, al cabo de los a\u00f1os, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn se dir\u00eda que de todas las instructivas experiencias de esa ma\u00f1ana, la m\u00e1s indeleble hab\u00eda sido, no el primero ni el segundo accidente, sino lo que vino despu\u00e9s. Porque, curiosamente, pese a la violencia del impacto (que lo tendr\u00eda muchas semanas en el Hospital del Empleado, reconstruyendo su esqueleto, averiado de innumerables fracturas, luxaciones, cortes y desgarrones), el propagandista m\u00e9dico no perdi\u00f3 el sentido o s\u00f3lo lo perdi\u00f3 unos segundos. Cuando abri\u00f3 los ojos supo que todo acababa de ocurrir, porque, de las caba\u00f1as que ten\u00eda al frente, ven\u00edan corriendo, siempre a contraluz, diez, doce, tal vez quince pantalones, faldas. No pod\u00eda moverse, pero no sent\u00eda dolor, s\u00f3lo una aliviada serenidad. Pens\u00f3 que ya no ten\u00eda que pensar; pens\u00f3 en la ambulancia, en m\u00e9dicos, en enfermeras sol\u00edcitas. Ah\u00ed estaban, ya hab\u00edan llegado, trat\u00f3 de sonre\u00edr a las caras que se inclinaban hacia \u00e9l. Pero entonces, por unas cosquillas, agujazos y punzadas, comprendi\u00f3 que los reci\u00e9n venidos no estaban auxili\u00e1ndolo: le arrancaban el reloj, le met\u00edan los dedos a los bolsillos, a manotones le sacaban la cartera, de un jal\u00f3n se apoderaban de la medalla del Se\u00f1or de Limpias que llevaba al cuello desde su primera comuni\u00f3n. Ahora s\u00ed, lleno de admiraci\u00f3n por los hombres, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn se hundi\u00f3 en la noche.\n\nEsa noche, para todos los efectos pr\u00e1cticos, dur\u00f3 un a\u00f1o. Al principio, las consecuencias de la cat\u00e1strofe hab\u00edan parecido s\u00f3lo f\u00edsicas. Cuando Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn recobr\u00f3 el sentido estaba en Lima, en un cuartito del hospital, fajado de pies a cabeza, y a los flancos de su cama, \u00e1ngeles de la guarda que devuelven la paz al agitado, mir\u00e1ndolo con inquietud se hallaban la blonda connacional de Juliette Gr\u00e9co y el doctor Schwalb de los Laboratorios Bayer. En medio de la ebriedad que le produc\u00eda el olor a cloroformo, sinti\u00f3 alegr\u00eda y por sus mejillas corrieron l\u00e1grimas al sentir los labios de su esposa sobre las gasas que le cubr\u00edan la frente.\n\nLa sutura de huesos, retorno de m\u00fasculos y tendones a su lugar correspondiente y el cierre y cicatrizaci\u00f3n de heridas, es decir la compostura de la mitad animal de su persona tom\u00f3 algunas semanas, que fueron relativamente llevaderas, gracias a la excelencia de los facultativos, la diligencia de las enfermeras, la devoci\u00f3n magdal\u00e9nica de su esposa y la solidaridad de los laboratorios, que se mostraron impecables desde el punto de vista del sentimiento y la cartera. En el Hospital del Empleado, en plena convalecencia, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn se enter\u00f3 de una noticia halagadora: la francesita hab\u00eda concebido y dentro de siete meses ser\u00eda madre de un hijo suyo.\n\nFue despu\u00e9s que abandon\u00f3 el hospital y se reintegr\u00f3 a su casita de San Miguel y a su trabajo, que se revelaron las secretas, complicadas heridas que los accidentes hab\u00edan causado a su esp\u00edritu. El insomnio era el m\u00e1s benigno de los males que se abatieron sobre \u00e9l. Se pasaba las noches en vela, ambulando por la casita a oscuras, fumando sin cesar, en estado de viva agitaci\u00f3n y pronunciando entrecortados discursos en los que a su esposa le maravillaba escuchar una palabra recurrente: \u00abHerodes\u00bb. Cuando el desvelo fue qu\u00edmicamente derrotado con somn\u00edferos, result\u00f3 peor: el sue\u00f1o de Abril Marroqu\u00edn era visitado por pesadillas en las que se ve\u00eda despedazando a su hija a\u00fan no nacida. Sus desafinados aullidos comenzaron aterrorizando a su esposa y terminaron haci\u00e9ndola abortar un feto de sexo probablemente femenino. \u00abLos sue\u00f1os se han cumplido, he asesinado a mi propia hija, me ir\u00e9 a vivir a Buenos Aires\u00bb, repet\u00eda d\u00eda y noche, l\u00fagubremente, el on\u00edrico filicida.\n\nPero tampoco esto fue lo peor. A las noches desveladas o pesadillescas, segu\u00edan unos d\u00edas atroces. Desde el accidente, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn concibi\u00f3 una fobia visceral contra todo lo que tuviera ruedas, veh\u00edculos a los que no pod\u00eda subir ni como chofer ni como pasajero, sin sentir v\u00e9rtigo, v\u00f3mitos, sudar la gota gorda y ponerse a gritar. Todos los intentos de vencer este tab\u00fa fueron in\u00fatiles, de modo que tuvo que resignarse a vivir, en pleno siglo XX, como en el Incario (sociedad sin ruedas). Si las distancias que ten\u00eda que cubrir hubieran consistido solamente en los cinco kil\u00f3metros entre su hogar y los Laboratorios Bayer, el asunto no hubiera sido tan grave; para un esp\u00edritu maltratado esas dos horas de caminata matutina y las dos de caminata vespertina hubieran cumplido tal vez una funci\u00f3n sedante. Pero, trat\u00e1ndose de un propagandista m\u00e9dico cuyo centro de operaciones era el dilatado territorio del Per\u00fa, la fobia antirrodante resultaba tr\u00e1gica. No habiendo la menor posibilidad de resucitar la atl\u00e9tica \u00e9poca de los chasquis, el futuro profesional de Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn se hall\u00f3 seriamente amenazado. El laboratorio accedi\u00f3 a darle un trabajo sedentario, en la oficina de Lima, y, aunque no le bajaron el sueldo, desde el punto de vista moral y psicol\u00f3gico, el cambio (ahora ten\u00eda a su cargo el inventario de las muestras) constituy\u00f3 una degradaci\u00f3n. Para colmo de males, la francesita, que, digna \u00e9mula de la Doncella de Orleans, hab\u00eda soportado valerosamente los desperfectos nerviosos de su c\u00f3nyuge, sucumbi\u00f3 tambi\u00e9n, sobre todo despu\u00e9s de la evacuaci\u00f3n de la feto Abril, a la histeria. Una separaci\u00f3n hasta que mejoraran los tiempos fue acordada y la muchacha, palidez que recuerda el alba y las noches ant\u00e1rticas, viaj\u00f3 a Francia a buscar consuelo en el castillo de sus padres.\n\nAs\u00ed andaba Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, al a\u00f1o del accidente: abandonado de su mujercita y del sue\u00f1o y la tranquilidad, odioso de las ruedas, condenado a caminar (stricto sensu) por la vida, sin otro amigo que la angustia. (El amarillo Volkswagen se cubri\u00f3 de hiedra y telara\u00f1as, antes de ser vendido para pagar el pasaje a Francia de la blonda.) Compa\u00f1eros y conocidos rumoreaban ya que no le quedaba sino el mediocre rumbo del manicomio o la retumbante soluci\u00f3n del suicidio, cuando el joven se enter\u00f3 \u2014man\u00e1 que cae del cielo, lluvia sobre sediento arenal\u2014 de la existencia de alguien que no era sacerdote ni brujo y sin embargo curaba almas: la doctora Luc\u00eda Ac\u00e9mila.\n\nMujer superior y sin complejos, llegada a lo que la ciencia ha dado en considerar la edad ideal \u2014la cincuentena\u2014, la doctora Ac\u00e9mila \u2014frente ancha, nariz aguile\u00f1a, mirada penetrante, rectitud y bondad en el esp\u00edritu\u2014 era la negaci\u00f3n viviente de su apellido (del que se sent\u00eda orgullosa y que arrojaba como una haza\u00f1a, en tarjetas impresas, o en los r\u00f3tulos de su consultorio, a la visi\u00f3n de los mortales), alguien en quien la inteligencia era un atributo f\u00edsico, algo que sus pacientes (ella prefer\u00eda llamarlos amigos) pod\u00edan ver, o\u00edr, oler. Hab\u00eda obtenido diplomas sobresalientes y copiosos en los grandes centros del saber \u2014la teut\u00f3nica Berl\u00edn, la flem\u00e1tica Londres, la pecaminosa Par\u00eds\u2014, pero la principal universidad en la que hab\u00eda aprendido lo mucho que sab\u00eda sobre la miseria humana y sus remedios hab\u00eda sido (naturalmente) la vida. Como todo ser elevado por sobre la median\u00eda, era discutida, criticada y verbalmente escarnecida por sus colegas, esos psiquiatras y psic\u00f3logos incapaces (a diferencia de ella) de producir milagros. A la doctora Ac\u00e9mila la dejaba indiferente que la llamaran hechicera, satanista, corruptora de corrompidos, alienada y otras vilezas. Le bastaba, para saber que era ella quien ten\u00eda raz\u00f3n, con la gratitud de sus amigos, esa legi\u00f3n de esquizofr\u00e9nicos, parricidas, paranoicos, incendiarios, man\u00edaco-depresivos, onanistas, catat\u00f3nicos, criminosos, m\u00edsticos y tartamudos que, una vez pasados por sus manos, sometidos a su tratamiento (ella hubiera preferido: a sus consejos) hab\u00edan retornado a la vida padres amant\u00edsimos, hijos obedientes, esposas virtuosas, profesionales honestos, conversadores fluidos y ciudadanos patol\u00f3gicamente respetuosos de la ley.\n\nFue el doctor Schwalb quien aconsej\u00f3 a Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn que visitara a la doctora y \u00e9l mismo quien, prontitud helv\u00e9tica que ha dado relojes puntual\u00edsimos, arregl\u00f3 una cita. M\u00e1s resignado que confiado, el insomne se present\u00f3 a la hora indicada a la mansi\u00f3n de muros rosas, abrazada por un jard\u00edn con floripondios, en el residencial barrio de San Felipe, donde estaba el consultorio (templo, confesionario, laboratorio del esp\u00edritu) de Luc\u00eda Ac\u00e9mila. Una pulcra enfermera le tom\u00f3 algunos datos y lo hizo pasar al despacho de la doctora, una habitaci\u00f3n alta, de estantes atiborrados de libros con empaste de cuero, un escritorio de caoba, mullidas alfombras y un div\u00e1n de terciopelo verde menta.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00edtese los prejuicios que traiga y tambi\u00e9n el saco y la corbata \u2014lo apostrof\u00f3, naturalidad desarmante de los sabios, la doctora Luc\u00eda Ac\u00e9mila, se\u00f1al\u00e1ndole el div\u00e1n\u2014. Y t\u00fambese ah\u00ed, boca arriba o boca abajo, no por bater\u00eda freudiana, sino porque me interesa que est\u00e9 c\u00f3modo. Y, ahora, no me cuente sus sue\u00f1os ni me confiese que est\u00e1 enamorado de su madre, sino, m\u00e1s bien, d\u00edgame con la mayor exactitud c\u00f3mo marcha ese est\u00f3mago.\n\nT\u00edmidamente, el propagandista m\u00e9dico, ya extendido sobre el muelle div\u00e1n, se atrevi\u00f3 a musitar, imaginando una confusi\u00f3n de personas, que no lo tra\u00eda a este consultorio el vientre sino el esp\u00edritu.\n\n\u2014Son indiferenciables \u2014lo desasn\u00f3 la facultativo\u2014. Un est\u00f3mago que evacua puntual y totalmente es gemelo de una mente clara y de un alma bien pensada. Por el contrario, un est\u00f3mago cargado, remol\u00f3n, avaricioso, engendra malos pensamientos, avinagra el car\u00e1cter, fomenta complejos y apetitos sexuales chuecos, y crea vocaci\u00f3n de delito, una necesidad de castigar en los otros el tormento excrementicio.\n\nAs\u00ed instruido, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn confes\u00f3 que sufr\u00eda a veces de dispepsias, constipaci\u00f3n e, incluso, que sus \u00f3bolos, adem\u00e1s de irregulares, eran tambi\u00e9n vers\u00e1tiles en coloraci\u00f3n, volumen y, sin duda \u2014no recordaba haberlos palpado en las \u00faltimas semanas\u2014, consistencia y temperatura. La doctora asinti\u00f3 bondadosamente, murmurando: \u00abLo sab\u00eda\u00bb. Y dictamin\u00f3 que el joven deber\u00eda consumir cada ma\u00f1ana, hasta nueva orden y en ayunas, media docena de ciruelas secas.\n\n\u2014Resuelta esta cuesti\u00f3n previa, pasemos a las otras \u2014a\u00f1adi\u00f3 la fil\u00f3sofo\u2014. Puede contarme qu\u00e9 le pasa. Pero sepa de antemano que no lo castrar\u00e9 de su problema. Le ense\u00f1ar\u00e9 a amarlo, a sentirse tan orgulloso de \u00e9l como Cervantes de su brazo ido o Beethoven de su sordera. Hable.\n\nLucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, con una facilidad de palabra educada en diez a\u00f1os de di\u00e1logos profesionales con galenos y apoticarios, resumi\u00f3 su historia con sinceridad, desde el infausto accidente de Pisco hasta sus pesadillas de la v\u00edspera y las apocal\u00edpticas consecuencias que el drama hab\u00eda tenido en su familia. Apiadado de s\u00ed mismo, en los cap\u00edtulos finales rompi\u00f3 a llorar y remat\u00f3 su informe con una exclamaci\u00f3n que a cualquier otra persona que no fuera Luc\u00eda Ac\u00e9mila le hubiera partido el alma: \u00ab\u00a1Doctora, ay\u00fademe!\u00bb.\n\n\u2014Su historia, en vez de apenarme, me aburre, de lo trivial y tonta que es \u2014lo confort\u00f3 cari\u00f1osamente la ingeniero de almas\u2014. L\u00edmpiese los mocos y conv\u00e9nzase de que, en la geograf\u00eda del esp\u00edritu, su mal es equivalente a lo que, en la del cuerpo, ser\u00eda un u\u00f1ero. Ahora esc\u00facheme.\n\nCon unos modales de mujer que frecuenta salones de alta sociedad, le explic\u00f3 que lo que perd\u00eda a los hombres era el temor a la verdad y el esp\u00edritu de contradicci\u00f3n. Respecto a lo primero, hizo luz en el cerebro del desvelado explic\u00e1ndole que el azar, el llamado accidente no exist\u00edan, eran subterfugios inventados por los hombres para disimular lo malvados que eran.\n\n\u2014En resumen, usted quiso matar a la ni\u00f1a y la mat\u00f3 \u2014grafic\u00f3 su pensamiento la doctora\u2014. Y luego, acobardado de su acto, temeroso de la polic\u00eda o el infierno, quiso ser atropellado por el cami\u00f3n, para recibir una pena o como coartada por el asesinato.\n\n\u2014Pero, pero \u2014balbuce\u00f3, ojos que al desorbitarse y frente que al sudar delatan supina desesperaci\u00f3n, el propagandista m\u00e9dico\u2014. \u00bfY el guardia civil? \u00bfTambi\u00e9n lo mat\u00e9 yo?\n\n\u2014\u00bfQui\u00e9n no ha matado alguna vez un guardia civil? \u2014reflexion\u00f3 la cient\u00edfico\u2014. Tal vez usted, tal vez el camionero, tal vez fue un suicidio. Pero \u00e9sta no es una funci\u00f3n de gancho, donde entran dos con una entrada. Ocup\u00e9monos de usted.\n\nLe explic\u00f3 que, al contradecir sus genuinos impulsos, los hombres resent\u00edan a su esp\u00edritu y \u00e9ste se vengaba procreando pesadillas, fobias, complejos, angustia, depresi\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014No se puede pelear consigo mismo, porque en ese combate s\u00f3lo hay un perdedor \u2014pontific\u00f3 la ap\u00f3stol\u2014. No se averg\u00fcence de lo que es, consu\u00e9lese pensando que todos los hombres son hienas y que ser bueno significa, simplemente, saber disimular. M\u00edrese al espejo y d\u00edgase: soy un infanticida y un cobarde de la velocidad. Basta de eufemismos: no me hable de accidentes ni del s\u00edndrome de la rueda.\n\nY, pasando a los ejemplos, le cont\u00f3 que a los escu\u00e1lidos onanistas que ven\u00edan a rogarle de rodillas que los curara les regalaba revistas pornogr\u00e1ficas y a los pacientes drogadictos, escorias que reptan por los suelos y se mesan los pelos hablando de la fatalidad, les ofrec\u00eda pitos de marihuana y pu\u00f1ados de coca.\n\n\u2014\u00bfVa a recetarme que siga matando ni\u00f1os? \u2014rugi\u00f3, cordero que se metamorfosea en tigre, el propagandista m\u00e9dico.\n\n\u2014Si es su gusto, \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 no? \u2014le repuso fr\u00edamente la psic\u00f3logo. Y le previno\u2014: Nada de levantarme la voz. No soy de esos mercaderes que creen que el cliente siempre tiene raz\u00f3n.\n\nLucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn volvi\u00f3 a zozobrar en llanto. Indiferente, la doctora Luc\u00eda Ac\u00e9mila caligrafi\u00f3 durante diez minutos varias hojas con el t\u00edtulo general de: Ejercicios para aprender a vivir con sinceridad. Se las entreg\u00f3 y le dio cita para ocho semanas despu\u00e9s. Al despedirlo, con un apret\u00f3n de manos, le record\u00f3 que no olvidara el r\u00e9gimen matutino de ciruelas secas.\n\nComo la mayor\u00eda de los pacientes de la doctora Ac\u00e9mila, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn sali\u00f3 del consultorio sinti\u00e9ndose v\u00edctima de una emboscada ps\u00edquica, seguro de haber ca\u00eddo en las redes de una extravagante desquiciada, que agravar\u00eda sus males si comet\u00eda el desatino de seguir sus recetas. Estaba decidido a desaguar los Ejercicios por el excusado sin mirarlos. Pero esa misma noche, debilitante insomnio que incita a los excesos, los ley\u00f3. Le parecieron patol\u00f3gicamente absurdos y se ri\u00f3 tanto que le vino hipo (lo conjur\u00f3 bebiendo un vaso de agua al rev\u00e9s, como le hab\u00eda ense\u00f1ado su madre); luego, sinti\u00f3 una urticante curiosidad. Como distracci\u00f3n, para llenar las horas vac\u00edas de sue\u00f1o, sin creer en su virtud terap\u00e9utica, decidi\u00f3 practicarlos.\n\nNo le cost\u00f3 trabajo encontrar en la secci\u00f3n juguetes de Sears el auto, el cami\u00f3n n\u00famero uno y el cami\u00f3n n\u00famero dos que le hac\u00edan falta, as\u00ed como los mu\u00f1equitos encargados de representar a la ni\u00f1a, al guardia, a los ladrones y a \u00e9l mismo. Conforme a las instrucciones, pint\u00f3 los veh\u00edculos con los colores originales que recordaba, as\u00ed como las ropas de los mu\u00f1equitos. (Ten\u00eda aptitud para la pintura, de modo que el uniforme del guardia y las ropas humildes y las costras de la ni\u00f1a le salieron muy bien.) Para mimar los arenales pisque\u00f1os, emple\u00f3 un pliego de papel de envolver, al que, extremando el prurito de fidelidad, pint\u00f3 en un extremo el oc\u00e9ano Pac\u00edfico: una franja azul con orla de espuma. El primer d\u00eda, le tom\u00f3 cerca de una hora, arrodillado en el suelo del living comedor de su casa, reproducir la historia, y, cuando termin\u00f3, es decir cuando los ladrones se precipitaban sobre el propagandista m\u00e9dico para despojarlo, qued\u00f3 casi tan aterrado y adolorido como el d\u00eda del suceso. De espaldas en el suelo, sudaba fr\u00edo y sollozaba. Pero los d\u00edas siguientes fue disminuyendo la impresi\u00f3n nerviosa, y la operaci\u00f3n asumi\u00f3 virtualidades deportivas, un ejercicio que lo devolv\u00eda a la ni\u00f1ez y entreten\u00eda esas horas que no hubiera sabido ocupar, ahora que estaba sin esposa, \u00e9l que nunca se hab\u00eda ufanado de ser rat\u00f3n de biblioteca o mel\u00f3mano. Era como armar un mecano, un rompecabezas o hacer crucigramas. A veces, en el almac\u00e9n de los Laboratorios Bayer, mientras distribu\u00eda muestras a los propagandistas, se sorprend\u00eda escarbando en la memoria, en pos de alg\u00fan detalle, gesto, motivo de lo ocurrido que le permitiera introducir alguna variante, alargar las representaciones de esa noche. La se\u00f1ora que ven\u00eda a hacer la limpieza, al ver el suelo del living comedor ocupado por mu\u00f1equitos de madera y autitos de pl\u00e1stico, le pregunt\u00f3 si pensaba adoptar un ni\u00f1o, advirti\u00e9ndole que en ese caso le cobrar\u00eda m\u00e1s. Conforme a la progresi\u00f3n se\u00f1alada por los Ejercicios, efectuaba ya para entonces, cada noche, diecis\u00e9is representaciones a escala liliputiense del \u00bfaccidente?\n\nLa parte de los Ejercicios para aprender a vivir con sinceridad concerniente a los ni\u00f1os le pareci\u00f3 m\u00e1s descabellada que el palitroque, pero, \u00bfinercia que arrastra al vicio o curiosidad que hace avanzar la ciencia?, tambi\u00e9n la obedeci\u00f3. Estaba subdividida en dos partes: \u00abEjercicios te\u00f3ricos\u00bb y \u00abEjercicios pr\u00e1cticos\u00bb, y la doctora Ac\u00e9mila se\u00f1alaba que era imprescindible que aqu\u00e9llos antecedieran a \u00e9stos, pues \u00bfno era el hombre un ser racional en el que las ideas preced\u00edan a los actos? La parte te\u00f3rica daba amplio cr\u00e9dito al esp\u00edritu observador y especulativo del propagandista m\u00e9dico. Se limitaba a prescribir: \u00abReflexione diariamente sobre las calamidades que causan los ni\u00f1os a la humanidad\u00bb. Hab\u00eda que hacerlo a cualquier hora y sitio, de manera sistem\u00e1tica.\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 mal hac\u00edan a la humanidad los inocentes p\u00e1rvulos? \u00bfNo eran la gracia, la pureza, la alegr\u00eda, la vida?, se pregunt\u00f3 Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, la ma\u00f1ana del primer ejercicio te\u00f3rico, mientras caminaba los cinco kil\u00f3metros de ida a la oficina. Pero, m\u00e1s por darle gusto al papel que por convicci\u00f3n, admiti\u00f3 que pod\u00edan ser ruidosos. En efecto, lloraban mucho, a cualquier hora y por cualquier motivo, y, como carec\u00edan de uso de raz\u00f3n, no ten\u00edan en cuenta el perjuicio que esa propensi\u00f3n causaba ni pod\u00edan ser persuadidos de las virtudes del silencio. Record\u00f3 entonces el caso de ese obrero que, luego de extenuantes jornadas en el socav\u00f3n, volv\u00eda al hogar y no pod\u00eda dormir por el llanto fren\u00e9tico del reci\u00e9n nacido al que finalmente hab\u00eda \u00bfasesinado? \u00bfCu\u00e1ntos millones de casos parecidos se registrar\u00edan en el globo? \u00bfCu\u00e1ntos obreros, campesinos, comerciantes y empleados, que \u2014alto costo de la vida, bajos salarios, escasez de viviendas\u2014 viv\u00edan en departamentos estrechos y compart\u00edan sus cuartos con la prole, estaban impedidos de disfrutar de un merecido sue\u00f1o por los alaridos de un ni\u00f1o incapaz de decir si sus berridos significaban diarrea o ganas de m\u00e1s teta?\n\nBuscando, buscando, esa tarde, en los cinco kil\u00f3metros de vuelta, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn encontr\u00f3 que se les pod\u00eda achacar tambi\u00e9n muchos destrozos. A diferencia de cualquier animal, tardaban demasiado en valerse por s\u00ed mismos, \u00a1y cu\u00e1ntos estragos resultaban de esa tara! Todo lo romp\u00edan, car\u00e1tula art\u00edstica o florero de cristal de roca, tra\u00edan abajo las cortinas que quem\u00e1ndose los ojos hab\u00eda cosido la due\u00f1a de casa, y sin el menor embarazo aposentaban sus manos embarradas de caca en el almidonado mantel o la mantilla de encaje comprada con privaci\u00f3n y amor. Sin contar que sol\u00edan meter sus dedos en los enchufes y provocar cortocircuitos o electrocutarse est\u00fapidamente con lo que eso significaba para la familia: cajoncito blanco, nicho, velorio, aviso en El Comercio, ropas de luto, duelo.\n\nAdquiri\u00f3 la costumbre de entregarse a esta gimnasia durante sus idas y venidas entre el laboratorio y San Miguel. Para no repetirse, hac\u00eda al comenzar una r\u00e1pida s\u00edntesis de los cargos acumulados en la reflexi\u00f3n anterior y pasaba a desarrollar uno nuevo. Los temas se imbricaban unos en otros con facilidad y nunca se qued\u00f3 sin argumentos.\n\nEl delito econ\u00f3mico, por ejemplo, le dio materia para treinta kil\u00f3metros. Porque \u00bfno era desolador c\u00f3mo ellos arruinaban el presupuesto familiar? Gravaban los ingresos paternos en relaci\u00f3n inversa a su tama\u00f1o, no s\u00f3lo por su glotoner\u00eda pertinaz y la delicadeza de su est\u00f3mago, que exig\u00eda alimentos especiales, sino por las infinitas instituciones que ellos hab\u00edan generado, comadronas, cunas maternales, puericultorios, jardines de infancia, ni\u00f1eras, circos, parvularios, matinales, jugueter\u00edas, juzgados de menores, reformatorios, sin mencionar las especialidades en ni\u00f1os que, arborescentes par\u00e1sitos que asfixian a las plantas madres, le hab\u00edan nacido a la medicina, la psicolog\u00eda, la odontolog\u00eda y otras ciencias, ej\u00e9rcito en suma de gentes que deb\u00edan ser vestidas, alimentadas y jubiladas por los pobres padres.\n\nLucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn se encontr\u00f3 un d\u00eda a punto de llorar, pensando en esas madres j\u00f3venes, celosas cumplidoras de la moral y el qu\u00e9 dir\u00e1n, que se entierran en vida para cuidar a sus cr\u00edas, y renuncian a fiestas, cines, viajes, con lo que terminan siendo abandonadas por esposos, que, de tanto salir solos, terminan fat\u00eddicamente por pecar. \u00bfY c\u00f3mo pagaban las cr\u00edas esos desvelos y padecimientos? Creciendo, formando hogar aparte, abandonando a sus madres en la orfandad de la vejez.\n\nPor este camino, insensiblemente, lleg\u00f3 a desbaratar el mito de su inocencia y bondad. \u00bfAcaso, con la consabida coartada de que carec\u00edan de uso de raz\u00f3n, no cercenaban las alas a las mariposas, met\u00edan a los pollitos vivos en el horno, dejaban patas arriba a las tortugas hasta que mor\u00edan y les reventaban los ojos a las ardillas? \u00bfLa honda para matar pajaritos era arma de adultos? \u00bfY no se mostraban implacables con los ni\u00f1os m\u00e1s d\u00e9biles? Por otra parte, \u00bfc\u00f3mo se pod\u00eda llamar inteligentes a seres que, a una edad en que cualquier gatito ya se procura el sustento, todav\u00eda se bambolean torpemente, se dan de bruces contra las paredes y se hacen chichones?\n\nLucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn ten\u00eda un sentido est\u00e9tico aguzado y esto le dio madeja para muchas caminatas. \u00c9l hubiera querido que todas las mujeres se conservaran lozanas y duras hasta la menopausia y le apen\u00f3 inventariar los estragos que causaban a las madres los partos: las cinturas de avispa que cab\u00edan en una mano estallaban en grasa y tambi\u00e9n senos y nalgas y esos est\u00f3magos tersos, l\u00e1minas de carnoso metal que los labios no abollan, se ablandaban, hinchaban, descolgaban, rayaban, y algunas se\u00f1oras, a consecuencia de los pujos y calambres de los partos dif\u00edciles, quedaban chuecas como patos. Con alivio, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, rememorando el cuerpo estatuario de la francesita que llevaba su nombre, se alegr\u00f3 de que hubiera parido, no un ser rollizo y devastador de su belleza, sino, apenas, un detritus de hombre. Otro d\u00eda, se percat\u00f3, mientras se desalteraba \u2014las ciruelas secas hab\u00edan convertido a su est\u00f3mago en un tren ingl\u00e9s\u2014 que ya no lo estremec\u00eda pensar en Herodes. Y una ma\u00f1ana se descubri\u00f3 dando un coscorr\u00f3n a un ni\u00f1o mendigo.\n\nSupo entonces que, sin propon\u00e9rselo, hab\u00eda pasado, naturalidad con que viajan los astros de la noche al d\u00eda, a los \u00abEjercicios pr\u00e1cticos\u00bb. La doctora Ac\u00e9mila hab\u00eda subtitulado \u00abAcci\u00f3n directa\u00bb estas instrucciones y a Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn le parec\u00eda estar oyendo su cient\u00edfica voz mientras las rele\u00eda. \u00c9stas s\u00ed, a diferencia de las te\u00f3ricas, eran precisas. Se trataba, una vez adquirida conciencia clara de las calamidades que ellos tra\u00edan, de tomar, a nivel individual, peque\u00f1as represalias. Era preciso hacerlo de manera discreta, teniendo en cuenta las demagogias del g\u00e9nero \u00abinfancia desvalida\u00bb, \u00abal ni\u00f1o ni con una rosa\u00bb y \u00ablos azotes causan complejos\u00bb.\n\nLo cierto es que al principio le cost\u00f3 trabajo, y, cuando cruzaba a uno de ellos en la calle, \u00e9ste y \u00e9l mismo no sab\u00edan si aquella mano en la infantil cabecita era un castigo o una caricia tosca. Pero, seguridad que da la pr\u00e1ctica, poco a poco fue superando la timidez y las ancestrales inhibiciones, envalenton\u00e1ndose, mejorando sus marcas, tomando iniciativas, y, al cabo de unas semanas, conforme al pron\u00f3stico de los Ejercicios, not\u00f3 que aquellos coscorrones que repart\u00eda en las esquinas, aquellos pellizcos que provocaban moretones, aquellos pisotones que hac\u00edan berrear a los recipiendarios, ya no eran un quehacer que se impon\u00eda por razones de moral y teor\u00eda, sino una suerte de placer. Le gustaba ver llorar a esos vendedores que se acercaban a ofrecerle la suerte y, sorpresivamente, recib\u00edan un bofet\u00f3n, y se excitaba como en los toros cuando el lazarillo de una ciega que lo hab\u00eda abordado, platillo de lat\u00f3n que tintinea en la ma\u00f1ana, ca\u00eda al suelo sob\u00e1ndose la canilla que acababa de alojar su puntapi\u00e9. Los \u00abEjercicios pr\u00e1cticos\u00bb eran riesgosos, pero, al propagandista m\u00e9dico que se reconoci\u00f3 un coraz\u00f3n temerario, esto, en vez de disuadirlo lo estimul\u00f3. Ni siquiera el d\u00eda en que revent\u00f3 una pelota y fue perseguido con palos y piedras por una jaur\u00eda de pigmeos, cej\u00f3 en su empe\u00f1o.\n\nAs\u00ed, en las semanas que dur\u00f3 el tratamiento, cometi\u00f3 muchas de aquellas acciones que, pereza mental que idiotiza a las gentes, se suelen llamar maldades. Decapit\u00f3 las mu\u00f1ecas con que, en los parques, las ni\u00f1eras las entreten\u00edan, arrebat\u00f3 chupetes, toffees, caramelos que estaban a punto de llevarse a la boca y los pisote\u00f3 o ech\u00f3 a los perros, fue a merodear por circos, matinales y teatros de t\u00edteres y, hasta que se le entumecieron los dedos, jal\u00f3 trenzas y orejas, pellizc\u00f3 bracitos, piernas, patitos, y, por supuesto, us\u00f3 de la secular estratagema de sacarles la lengua y hacerles muecas, y, hasta la afon\u00eda y la ronquera les habl\u00f3 del Cuco, del Lobo Feroz, del Polic\u00eda, del Esqueleto, de la Bruja, del Vampiro, y dem\u00e1s personajes creados por la imaginaci\u00f3n adulta para asustarlos.\n\nPero, bola de nieve que al rodar monte abajo se vuelve aluvi\u00f3n, un d\u00eda Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn se asust\u00f3 tanto que se precipit\u00f3, en un taxi para llegar m\u00e1s pronto, al consultorio de la doctora Ac\u00e9mila. Apenas entr\u00f3 en el severo despacho, sudando hielo, la voz temblorosa, exclam\u00f3:\n\n\u2014Iba a empujar a una ni\u00f1a bajo las ruedas del tranv\u00eda a San Miguel. Me contuve en el \u00faltimo instante, porque vi un polic\u00eda \u2014y, sollozando como uno de ellos, grit\u00f3\u2014: \u00a1He estado a punto de volverme un criminal, doctora!\n\n\u2014Criminal ya lo ha sido, joven desmemoriado \u2014le record\u00f3 la psic\u00f3logo, pronunciando cada s\u00edlaba. Y, despu\u00e9s de observarlo de arriba abajo, complacida, sentenci\u00f3\u2014: Est\u00e1 usted curado.\n\nLucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn record\u00f3 entonces \u2014fogonazo de luz en las tinieblas, lluvia de estrellas sobre el mar\u2014 que hab\u00eda venido en \u00a1un taxi! Iba a caer de rodillas pero la sabia lo contuvo:\n\n\u2014Nadie me lame las manos, salvo mi gran dan\u00e9s. \u00a1Basta de efusiones! Puede retirarse, pues nuevos amigos esperan. Recibir\u00e1 la factura en su oportunidad.\n\n\u00abEs verdad, estoy curado\u00bb, se repet\u00eda feliz el propagandista m\u00e9dico: la \u00faltima semana hab\u00eda dormido siete horas diarias y, en vez de pesadillas, hab\u00eda tenido gratos sue\u00f1os en los que, en playas ex\u00f3ticas, se dejaba tostar por un sol futbol\u00edstico, viendo el pausado caminar de las tortugas entre palmeras lanceoladas y las p\u00edcaras fornicaciones de los delfines en las ondas azules. Esta vez, deliberaci\u00f3n y alevos\u00eda del hombre fogueado, tom\u00f3 otro taxi hacia los laboratorios y, durante el trayecto, llor\u00f3 al comprobar que el \u00fanico efecto que le produc\u00eda rodar sobre la vida era, no ya el terror sepulcral, la angustia c\u00f3smica, sino apenas un ligero mareo. Corri\u00f3 a besar las manos amaz\u00f3nicas de don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui, llam\u00e1ndolo \u00abmi consejero salvador, mi nuevo padre\u00bb, gesto y palabras que su jefe acept\u00f3 con la deferencia que todo amo que se respete debe a sus esclavos, se\u00f1al\u00e1ndole de todos modos, calvinista de coraz\u00f3n sin puertas para el sentimiento, que, curado o no de complejos homicidas, deb\u00eda llegar puntual a Antirroedores S. A. so pena de multa.\n\nFue as\u00ed como Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn sali\u00f3 del t\u00fanel que, desde el polvoroso accidente de Pisco, era su vida. Todo, a partir de entonces, comenz\u00f3 a enderezarse. La dulce hija de Francia, absuelta de sus penas gracias a mimos familiares y entonada con dietas normandas de agujereado queso y viscosos caracoles, volvi\u00f3 a la tierra de los incas con las mejillas rozagantes y el coraz\u00f3n lleno de amor. El reencuentro del matrimonio fue una prolongada luna de miel, besos enajenantes, compulsivos abrazos y otros derroches emotivos que pusieron a los enamorados esposos a las orillas mismas de la anemia. El propagandista m\u00e9dico, serpiente de vigor redoblado con el cambio de piel, recuper\u00f3 pronto el lugar de preeminencia que ten\u00eda en los laboratorios. A pedido de \u00e9l mismo, que quer\u00eda demostrarse que era el de antes, el doctor Schwalb volvi\u00f3 a confiarle la responsabilidad de, por aire, tierra, r\u00edo, mar, recorrer pueblos y ciudades del Per\u00fa publicitando, entre m\u00e9dicos y farmac\u00e9uticos, los productos Bayer. Gracias a las virtudes ahorrativas de la esposa, pronto la pareja pudo cancelar todas las deudas contra\u00eddas durante la crisis y adquirir, a plazos, un nuevo Volkswagen que, por supuesto, fue tambi\u00e9n amarillo.\n\nNada, en apariencia (\u00bfpero acaso no recomienda la sabidur\u00eda popular \u00abno fiarse de las apariencias\u00bb?), afeaba el marco en el que se desenvolv\u00eda la vida de los Abril Marroqu\u00edn. El propagandista rara vez se acordaba del accidente y, cuando ello ocurr\u00eda, en vez de pesar sent\u00eda orgullo, lo que, mes\u00f3crata respetuoso de las formas sociales, se conten\u00eda de hacer p\u00fablico. Pero, en la intimidad del hogar, nido de t\u00f3rtolas, chimenea que arde al comp\u00e1s de violines de Vivaldi, algo hab\u00eda sobrevivido \u2014luz que perdura en los espacios cuando el astro que la emiti\u00f3 ha caducado, u\u00f1as y pelos que le crecen al muerto\u2014, de la terapia de la profesora Ac\u00e9mila. Es decir, de un lado, una afici\u00f3n, exagerada para la edad de Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, a jugar con palitroques, mecanos, trencitos, soldaditos. El departamento se fue llenando de juguetes que desconcertaban a vecinos y sirvientas, y las primeras sombras de la armon\u00eda conyugal surgieron porque la francesita comenz\u00f3 un d\u00eda a quejarse de que su esposo pasara los domingos y feriados haciendo navegar barquitos de papel en la ba\u00f1era o volando cometas en el techo. Pero, m\u00e1s grave que esta afici\u00f3n, y a todas luces enemiga de ella, era la fobia contra la ni\u00f1ez que hab\u00eda perseverado en el esp\u00edritu de Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn desde la \u00e9poca de los \u00abEjercicios pr\u00e1cticos\u00bb. No le era posible cruzar a uno de ellos en calle, parque o plaza p\u00fablica, sin infligirle lo que el vulgo llamar\u00eda una crueldad, y en las conversaciones con su esposa sol\u00eda bautizarlos con expresiones despectivas como \u00abdestetados\u00bb y \u00ablimb\u00f3manos\u00bb. Esta hostilidad se convirti\u00f3 en angustia el d\u00eda en que la blonda qued\u00f3 nuevamente embarazada. La pareja, talones que el pavor torna h\u00e9lices, vol\u00f3 a solicitar moral y ciencia a la doctora Ac\u00e9mila. \u00c9sta los escuch\u00f3 sin asustarse:\n\n\u2014Padece usted de infantilismo y es, al mismo tiempo, un reincidente infanticida potencial \u2014estableci\u00f3 con arte telegr\u00e1fico\u2014. Dos tonter\u00edas que no merecen atenci\u00f3n, que yo curo con la facilidad que escupo. No tema: estar\u00e1 sano antes que al feto le broten ojos.\n\n\u00bfLo curar\u00eda? \u00bfLibrar\u00eda a Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn de esos fantasmas? \u00bfSer\u00eda el tratamiento contra la infantofobia y el herodismo tan aventurero como el que lo emancip\u00f3 del complejo de rueda y la obsesi\u00f3n de crimen? \u00bfC\u00f3mo terminar\u00eda el psicodrama de San Miguel?\n\n### XI\n\nSE ACERCABAN los ex\u00e1menes de medio a\u00f1o en la facultad y yo, que desde los amores con la t\u00eda Julia asist\u00eda menos a clases y escrib\u00eda m\u00e1s cuentos (p\u00edrricos), estaba mal preparado para este trance. Mi salvaci\u00f3n era un compa\u00f1ero de estudios, un camanejo llamado Guillermo Velando. Viv\u00eda en una pensi\u00f3n del centro, por la plaza Dos de Mayo, y era un estudiante modelo, que no perd\u00eda una clase, apuntaba hasta la respiraci\u00f3n de los profesores y aprend\u00eda de memoria, como yo versos, los art\u00edculos de los c\u00f3digos. Siempre estaba hablando de su pueblo, donde ten\u00eda una novia, y s\u00f3lo esperaba recibirse de abogado para dejar Lima, ciudad que odiaba, e instalarse en Caman\u00e1, donde batallar\u00eda por el progreso de su tierra. Me prestaba sus apuntes, me soplaba en los ex\u00e1menes y, cuando \u00e9stos se ven\u00edan encima, yo iba a su pensi\u00f3n, a que me diera alguna s\u00edntesis milagrosa sobre lo que hab\u00edan hecho en clases.\n\nDe all\u00ed ven\u00eda ese domingo, despu\u00e9s de pasar tres horas en el cuarto de Guillermo, con la cabeza revoloteante de f\u00f3rmulas forenses, asustado de la cantidad de latinajos que hab\u00eda que memorizar, cuando, llegando a la plaza San Mart\u00edn, vi a lo lejos, en la plomiza fachada de Radio Central, la ventanita abierta del cub\u00edculo de Pedro Camacho. Por supuesto, decid\u00ed ir a darle los buenos d\u00edas. Mientras m\u00e1s lo frecuentaba \u2014aunque nuestra relaci\u00f3n siguiera sujeta a brev\u00edsimas charlas en torno a una mesa de caf\u00e9\u2014 el hechizo que ejerc\u00edan sobre m\u00ed su personalidad, su f\u00edsico, su ret\u00f3rica, era mayor. Mientras cruzaba la plaza hacia su oficina iba pensando, una vez m\u00e1s, en esa voluntad de hierro que daba al asc\u00e9tico hombrecillo su capacidad de trabajo, esa aptitud para producir, ma\u00f1ana y tarde, tarde y noche, tormentosas historias. A cualquier hora del d\u00eda que me acordaba de \u00e9l, pensaba: \u00abEst\u00e1 escribiendo\u00bb y lo ve\u00eda, como lo hab\u00eda visto tantas veces, golpeando con dos deditos r\u00e1pidos las teclas de la Remington y mirando el rodillo con sus ojos alucinados, y sent\u00eda una curiosa mezcla de piedad y envidia.\n\nLa ventana del cub\u00edculo estaba entreabierta \u2014se pod\u00eda o\u00edr el ruido acompasado de la m\u00e1quina\u2014 y yo la empuj\u00e9, al tiempo que lo saludaba: \u00abBuenos d\u00edas, se\u00f1or trabajador\u00bb. Pero tuve la impresi\u00f3n de haberme equivocado de lugar o de persona, y s\u00f3lo despu\u00e9s de varios segundos reconoc\u00ed, bajo el disfraz compuesto de guardapolvo blanco, gorrita de m\u00e9dico y grandes barbas negras rab\u00ednicas, al escriba boliviano. Segu\u00eda escribiendo inmutable, sin mirarme, ligeramente curvado sobre el escritorio. Al cabo de un momento, como haciendo una pausa entre dos pensamientos, pero sin volver la cabeza hacia m\u00ed, le o\u00ed decir con su voz de timbre perfecto y acariciador:\n\n\u2014El ginec\u00f3logo Alberto de Quinteros est\u00e1 haciendo parir trillizos a una sobrina, y uno de los renacuajos se ha atravesado. \u00bfPuede esperarme cinco minutos? Hago una ces\u00e1rea a la muchacha y nos tomamos una yerbaluisa con menta.\n\nEsper\u00e9, fumando un cigarrillo, sentado en el alf\u00e9izar de la ventana, que acabara de traer al mundo a los trillizos atravesados, operaci\u00f3n que, en efecto, no le tom\u00f3 m\u00e1s de unos minutos. Luego, mientras se quitaba el disfraz, lo doblaba escrupulosamente y, junto con las postizas barbas patriarcales, lo guardaba en una bolsa de pl\u00e1stico, le dije:\n\n\u2014Para un parto de trillizos, con ces\u00e1rea y todo, s\u00f3lo necesita cinco minutos, qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s quiere. Yo me he demorado tres semanas para un cuento de tres muchachos que levitan aprovechando la presi\u00f3n de los aviones.\n\nLe cont\u00e9, mientras \u00edbamos al Bransa, que, despu\u00e9s de muchos relatos fracasados, el de los levitadores me hab\u00eda parecido decoroso, y que lo hab\u00eda llevado al Suplemento Dominical de El Comercio, temblando de miedo. El director lo ley\u00f3 delante de m\u00ed y me dio una respuesta misteriosa: \u00abD\u00e9jelo, ya se ver\u00e1 qu\u00e9 hacemos con \u00e9l\u00bb. Desde entonces, hab\u00edan pasado dos domingos en que yo, afanoso, me precipitaba a comprar el diario y hasta ahora nada. Pero Pedro Camacho no perd\u00eda tiempo con problemas ajenos:\n\n\u2014Sacrifiquemos el refrigerio y caminemos \u2014me dijo, cogi\u00e9ndome del brazo, cuando ya iba a sentarme, y regres\u00e1ndome hacia la Colmena\u2014. Tengo en las pantorrillas un cosquilleo que anuncia calambre. Es la vida sedentaria. Me hace falta ejercicio.\n\nS\u00f3lo porque sab\u00eda lo que me iba a responder le suger\u00ed que hiciera lo que Victor Hugo y Hemingway: escribir de pie. Pero esta vez me equivoqu\u00e9:\n\n\u2014En la Pensi\u00f3n La Tapada suceden cosas interesantes \u2014me dijo, sin siquiera responderme, mientras me hac\u00eda dar vueltas, casi al trote, en torno al monumento a San Mart\u00edn\u2014. Hay un joven que llora en las noches de luna.\n\nYo rara vez ven\u00eda al centro los domingos y estaba sorprendido de ver lo distinta que era la gente de semana de la que ve\u00eda ahora. En vez de oficinistas de clase media, la plaza estaba colmada de sirvientas en su d\u00eda de salida, serranitos de mejillas chaposas y zapatones, ni\u00f1as descalzas con trenzas y, entre la abigarrada muchedumbre, se ve\u00edan fot\u00f3grafos ambulantes y vivanderas. Obligu\u00e9 al escriba a detenerse frente a la dama con t\u00fanica que, en la parte central del monumento, representa a la patria, y, para ver si lo hac\u00eda re\u00edr, le cont\u00e9 por qu\u00e9 llevaba ese extravagante auqu\u00e9nido aposentado en su cabeza: al vaciar el bronce, aqu\u00ed en Lima, los artesanos confundieron la indicaci\u00f3n del escultor \u00abllama votiva\u00bb con el llama animal. Ni sonri\u00f3, naturalmente. Volvi\u00f3 a cogerme del brazo y, mientras me hac\u00eda caminar, dando encontronazos a los paseantes, reanud\u00f3 su mon\u00f3logo, indiferente a todo lo que lo rodeaba, empezando por m\u00ed:\n\n\u2014No se le ha visto la cara, pero cabe suponer que es alg\u00fan monstruo, \u00bfhijo bastardo de la due\u00f1a de la pensi\u00f3n?, aquejado de taras, jorobas, enanismo, bicefalia, a quien do\u00f1a Atanasia oculta de d\u00eda para no asustarnos y s\u00f3lo de noche deja salir a orearse.\n\nHablaba sin la menor emoci\u00f3n, como una grabadora, y yo, por tirarle la lengua, le repliqu\u00e9 que su hip\u00f3tesis me parec\u00eda exagerada: \u00bfno pod\u00eda tratarse de un muchacho que lloraba penas de amor?\n\n\u2014Si fuera un enamorado, tendr\u00eda una guitarra, un viol\u00edn, o cantar\u00eda \u2014me dijo, mir\u00e1ndome con un desprecio mitigado por la compasi\u00f3n\u2014. \u00c9ste s\u00f3lo llora.\n\nHice esfuerzos para que me explicara todo desde el principio, pero \u00e9l estaba m\u00e1s difuso y reconcentrado que de costumbre. S\u00f3lo saqu\u00e9 en claro que alguien, desde hac\u00eda muchas noches, lloraba en un rinc\u00f3n de la pensi\u00f3n y que los inquilinos de La Tapada se quejaban. La due\u00f1a, do\u00f1a Atanasia, dec\u00eda no saber nada y, seg\u00fan el escriba, empleaba \u00abla coartada de los esp\u00edritus\u00bb.\n\n\u2014Es posible tambi\u00e9n que llore un crimen \u2014especul\u00f3 Pedro Camacho, con un tono de contador que hace sumas en alta voz, dirigi\u00e9ndome, siempre del brazo, hacia Radio Central, despu\u00e9s de una decena de vueltas al monumento\u2014. \u00bfUn crimen familiar? \u00bfUn parricida que se jala los pelos y se ara\u00f1a la carne de arrepentimiento? \u00bfUn hijo del de las ratas?\n\nNo estaba excitado en lo m\u00e1s m\u00ednimo, pero lo not\u00e9 m\u00e1s distante que otras veces, m\u00e1s incapaz que nunca de escuchar, de conversar, de recordar que ten\u00eda alguien al lado. Estaba seguro de que no me ve\u00eda. Trat\u00e9 de alargar su mon\u00f3logo, pues era como estar viendo su fantas\u00eda en plena acci\u00f3n, pero \u00e9l, con la misma brusquedad con que hab\u00eda comenzado a hablar del invisible llor\u00f3n, enmudeci\u00f3. Lo vi instalarse de nuevo en su cub\u00edculo, quitarse el saco negro y la corbatita de lazo, sujetarse la cabellera con una redecilla y enfundarse una peluca de mujer con mo\u00f1o que sac\u00f3 de otra bolsa de pl\u00e1stico. No pude aguantarme y lanc\u00e9 una carcajada:\n\n\u2014\u00bfA qui\u00e9n tengo el gusto de tener al frente? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9, todav\u00eda ri\u00e9ndome.\n\n\u2014Debo dar unos consejos a un laboratorista franc\u00f3filo, que ha matado a su hijo \u2014me explic\u00f3, con un retint\u00edn burl\u00f3n, poni\u00e9ndose en la cara, en vez de las b\u00edblicas barbas de antes, unos aretes de colores y un lunar coquet\u00f3n\u2014. Adi\u00f3s, amigo.\n\nApenas di media vuelta para irme, sent\u00ed \u2014renaciente, parejo, seguro de s\u00ed mismo, compulsivo, eterno\u2014 el teclear de la Remington. En el colectivo a Miraflores, iba pensando en la vida de Pedro Camacho. \u00bfQu\u00e9 medio social, qu\u00e9 encadenamiento de personas, relaciones, problemas, casualidades, hechos, hab\u00edan producido esa vocaci\u00f3n literaria (\u00bfliteraria?, \u00bfpero qu\u00e9, entonces?) que hab\u00eda logrado realizarse, cristalizar en una obra y obtener una audiencia? \u00bfC\u00f3mo se pod\u00eda ser, de un lado, una parodia de escritor y, al mismo tiempo, el \u00fanico que, por tiempo consagrado a su oficio y obra realizada, merec\u00eda ese nombre en el Per\u00fa? \u00bfAcaso eran escritores esos pol\u00edticos, esos abogados, esos pedagogos, que detentaban el t\u00edtulo de poetas, novelistas, dramaturgos, porque, en breves par\u00e9ntesis de vidas consagradas en sus cuatro quintas partes a actividades ajenas a la literatura, hab\u00edan producido una plaquette de versos o una estre\u00f1ida colecci\u00f3n de cuentos? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 esos personajes que se serv\u00edan de la literatura como adorno o pretexto iban a ser m\u00e1s escritores que Pedro Camacho, quien s\u00f3lo viv\u00eda para escribir? \u00bfPorque ellos hab\u00edan le\u00eddo (o, al menos, sab\u00edan que deber\u00edan haber le\u00eddo) a Proust, a Faulkner, a Joyce, y Pedro Camacho era poco m\u00e1s que un analfabeto? Cuando pensaba en estas cosas sent\u00eda tristeza y angustia. Cada vez me resultaba m\u00e1s evidente que lo \u00fanico que quer\u00eda ser en la vida era escritor y cada vez, tambi\u00e9n, me convenc\u00eda m\u00e1s que la \u00fanica manera de serlo era entreg\u00e1ndose a la literatura en cuerpo y alma. No quer\u00eda de ning\u00fan modo ser un escritor a medias y a poquitos, sino uno de verdad, como \u00bfqui\u00e9n? Lo m\u00e1s cercano a ese escritor a tiempo completo, obsesionado y apasionado con su vocaci\u00f3n, que conoc\u00eda, era el radionovelista boliviano: por eso me fascinaba tanto.\n\nEn casa de los abuelos me estaba esperando Javier, rebosante de felicidad, con un programa dominical para resucitar muertos. Hab\u00eda recibido la mensualidad que le giraban sus padres desde Piura, con una buena propina por las Fiestas Patrias, y decidido que nos gast\u00e1ramos esos soles extras los cuatro juntos.\n\n\u2014En homenaje a ti, he hecho un programa intelectual y cosmopolita \u2014me dijo, d\u00e1ndome unas palmadas estimulantes\u2014. Compa\u00f1\u00eda argentina de Francisco Petrone, comida alemana en el Rinc\u00f3n Toni y fin de fiesta francesa en el Negro-Negro, bailando boleros en la oscuridad.\n\nAs\u00ed como, en mi corta vida, Pedro Camacho era lo m\u00e1s pr\u00f3ximo a un escritor que hab\u00eda visto, Javier era, entre mis conocidos, lo m\u00e1s parecido a un pr\u00edncipe renacentista por su generosidad y exuberancia. Era, adem\u00e1s, de una gran eficiencia: ya la t\u00eda Julia y Nancy estaban informadas de lo que nos esperaba esa noche y ya ten\u00eda \u00e9l en el bolsillo las entradas para el teatro. El programa no pod\u00eda ser m\u00e1s seductor y disip\u00f3 de golpe todas mis l\u00fagubres reflexiones sobre la vocaci\u00f3n y el destino pordiosero de la literatura en el Per\u00fa. Javier tambi\u00e9n estaba muy contento: desde hac\u00eda un mes sal\u00eda con Nancy y esa asiduidad tomaba caracteres de romance formal. Haberle confesado a mi prima mis amores con la t\u00eda Julia le hab\u00eda sido util\u00edsimo porque, con el pretexto de servirnos de celestinos y facilitarnos las salidas, se las arreglaba para ver a Nancy varias veces por semana. Mi prima y la t\u00eda Julia eran ahora inseparables: iban juntas de compras, al cine e intercambiaban secretos. Mi prima se hab\u00eda vuelto una entusiasta hada madrina de nuestro romance y una tarde me levant\u00f3 la moral con esta reflexi\u00f3n: \u00abLa Julita tiene una manera de ser que borra todas las diferencias de edad, primo\u00bb.\n\nEl magno programa de ese domingo (en el que, creo, se decidi\u00f3 estelarmente buena parte de mi futuro) comenz\u00f3 bajo los mejores auspicios. Hab\u00eda pocas ocasiones, en la Lima de los a\u00f1os cincuenta, de ver teatro de calidad, y la compa\u00f1\u00eda argentina de Francisco Petrone trajo una serie de obras modernas, que no se hab\u00edan dado en el Per\u00fa. Nancy recogi\u00f3 a la t\u00eda Julia donde la t\u00eda Olga y ambas se vinieron al centro en taxi. Javier y yo las esper\u00e1bamos en la puerta del Teatro Segura. Javier, que en esas cosas sol\u00eda excederse, hab\u00eda comprado un palco, que result\u00f3 el \u00fanico ocupado, de modo que fuimos un centro de observaci\u00f3n casi tan visible como el escenario. Con mi mala conciencia, supuse que varios parientes y conocidos nos ver\u00edan y maliciar\u00edan. Pero apenas comenz\u00f3 la funci\u00f3n, se esfumaron esos temores. Representaban La muerte de un viajante, de Arthur Miller, y era la primera pieza que yo ve\u00eda de car\u00e1cter no tradicional, irrespetuosa de las convenciones de tiempo y espacio. Mi entusiasmo y excitaci\u00f3n fueron tales que, en el entreacto, comenc\u00e9 a hablar hasta por los codos, haciendo un elogio fogoso de la obra, comentando sus personajes, su t\u00e9cnica, sus ideas, y, luego, mientras com\u00edamos embutidos y tom\u00e1bamos cerveza negra en el Rinc\u00f3n Toni de la Colmena, segu\u00ed haci\u00e9ndolo de una manera tan absorbente que Javier, despu\u00e9s, me amonest\u00f3: \u00abParec\u00edas una lora a la que le hubieran dado yobimbina\u00bb. Mi prima Nancy, a quien mis veleidades literarias siempre le hab\u00edan parecido una extravagancia semejante a la que ten\u00eda el t\u00edo Eduardo \u2014un viejecito hermano del abuelo, juez jubilado que se dedicaba al infrecuente pasatiempo de coleccionar ara\u00f1as\u2014, despu\u00e9s de o\u00edrme perorar tanto sobre la obra que acab\u00e1bamos de ver, sospech\u00f3 que mis inclinaciones pod\u00edan tener mal fin: \u00abTe est\u00e1s volviendo locumbeta, flaco\u00bb.\n\nEl Negro-Negro hab\u00eda sido escogido por Javier para rematar la noche porque era un lugar con cierta aureola de bohemia intelectual \u2014los jueves se daban peque\u00f1os espect\u00e1culos: piezas en un acto, mon\u00f3logos, recitales, y sol\u00edan concurrir all\u00ed pintores, m\u00fasicos y escritores\u2014, pero tambi\u00e9n porque era la bo\u00eete m\u00e1s oscura de Lima, un s\u00f3tano en los portales de la plaza San Mart\u00edn que no ten\u00eda m\u00e1s de veinte mesas, con una decoraci\u00f3n que cre\u00edamos existencialista. Era un sitio que, las pocas veces que hab\u00eda ido, me daba la ilusi\u00f3n de estar en una cave de Saint Germain des Pr\u00e8s. Nos sentaron en una mesita a la orilla de la pista de baile y Javier, m\u00e1s rumboso que nunca, pidi\u00f3 cuatro whiskys. \u00c9l y Nancy se pararon de inmediato a bailar y yo, en el reducto estrecho y atestado, segu\u00ed habl\u00e1ndole a Julia de teatro y de Arthur Miller. Est\u00e1bamos muy juntos, con las manos entrelazadas, ella me escuchaba con abnegaci\u00f3n y yo le dec\u00eda que esa noche hab\u00eda descubierto el teatro: pod\u00eda ser algo tan complejo y profundo como la novela, e, incluso, por ser algo vivo, en cuya materializaci\u00f3n interven\u00edan seres de carne y hueso, y otras artes, la pintura, la m\u00fasica, era tal vez superior.\n\n\u2014De repente, cambio de g\u00e9nero y, en lugar de cuentos, me pongo a escribir dramas \u2014le dije, excitad\u00edsimo\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 me aconsejas?\n\n\u2014En lo que a m\u00ed respecta, no hay inconveniente \u2014me contest\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia, poni\u00e9ndose de pie\u2014. Pero ahora, Varguitas, s\u00e1came a bailar y dime cositas al o\u00eddo. Entre pieza y pieza, si quieres, te doy permiso para que me hables de literatura.\n\nSegu\u00ed sus instrucciones al pie de la letra. Bailamos muy apretados, bes\u00e1ndonos, yo le dec\u00eda que estaba enamorado de ella, ella que estaba enamorada de m\u00ed, y \u00e9sa fue la primera vez que, ayudado por el ambiente \u00edntimo, incitante, turbador, y por los whiskys de Javier, no disimul\u00e9 el deseo que me provocaba; mientras bail\u00e1bamos mis labios se hund\u00edan con morosidad en su cuello, mi lengua entraba a su boca y sorb\u00eda su saliva, la estrechaba con fuerza para sentir sus pechos, su vientre y sus muslos, y, luego, en la mesa, al amparo de las sombras, le acarici\u00e9 las piernas y los senos. As\u00ed est\u00e1bamos, aturdidos y gozosos, cuando la prima Nancy, en una pausa entre dos boleros, nos hel\u00f3 la sangre:\n\n\u2014Dios m\u00edo, f\u00edjense qui\u00e9n est\u00e1 ah\u00ed: el t\u00edo Jorge.\n\nEra un peligro que hubi\u00e9ramos debido tener en cuenta. El t\u00edo Jorge, el m\u00e1s joven de los t\u00edos, congeniaba audazmente, en una vida superagitada, toda clase de negocios y aventuras empresariales, con una intensa vida nocherniega, de faldas, fiestas y copas. De \u00e9l se contaba un malentendido tragic\u00f3mico, que tuvo como escenario otra bo\u00eete: El Embassy. Acababa de comenzar el show, la muchacha que cantaba no pod\u00eda hacerlo porque, desde una de las mesas, un borrach\u00edn la interrump\u00eda con malacrianzas. Ante la bo\u00eete atestada, el t\u00edo Jorge se hab\u00eda puesto de pie, rugiendo como un Quijote: \u00abSilencio, miserable, yo te voy a ense\u00f1ar a respetar a una dama\u00bb, y, avanzando hacia el majadero en actitud pugil\u00edstica, s\u00f3lo para descubrir, un segundo despu\u00e9s, que estaba haciendo el rid\u00edculo, pues la interrupci\u00f3n de la cantante por el seudocliente era parte del show. Ah\u00ed estaba, en efecto, s\u00f3lo a dos mesas de nosotros, muy elegante, la cara apenas revelada por los f\u00f3sforos de los fumadores y las linternas de los mozos. A su lado reconoc\u00ed a su mujer, la t\u00eda Gaby, y, pese a estar apenas a un par de metros de nosotros, ambos se empe\u00f1aban en no mirar a nuestro lado. Era clar\u00edsimo: me hab\u00edan visto besando a la t\u00eda Julia, se hab\u00edan dado cuenta de todo, optaban por una ceguera diplom\u00e1tica. Javier pidi\u00f3 la cuenta, salimos del Negro-Negro casi inmediatamente, los t\u00edos Jorge y Gaby se abstuvieron de mirarnos incluso cuando pasamos roz\u00e1ndolos. En el taxi a Miraflores \u2014los cuatro \u00edbamos mudos y con las caras largas\u2014 la flaca Nancy resumi\u00f3 lo que todos pens\u00e1bamos: \u00abAdi\u00f3s trabajos, se arm\u00f3 el gran esc\u00e1ndalo\u00bb.\n\nPero, como en una buena pel\u00edcula de suspenso, en los d\u00edas siguientes no pas\u00f3 nada. Ning\u00fan indicio permit\u00eda advertir que la tribu familiar hab\u00eda sido alertada por los t\u00edos Jorge y Gaby. El t\u00edo Lucho y la t\u00eda Olga no dijeron una palabra a la t\u00eda Julia que le permitiera suponer que sab\u00edan, y ese jueves, cuando, valientemente, me present\u00e9 en su casa a almorzar, estuvieron conmigo tan naturales y afectuosos como de costumbre. La prima Nancy tampoco fue objeto de ninguna pregunta capciosa por parte de la t\u00eda Laura y el t\u00edo Juan. En mi casa, los abuelos parec\u00edan en la luna y me segu\u00edan preguntando, con el aire m\u00e1s angelical del mundo, si acompa\u00f1aba siempre al cine a la Julita, \u00abque era tan cinemera\u00bb. Fueron unos d\u00edas desasosegados, en que, extremando las precauciones, la t\u00eda Julia y yo decidimos no vernos ni siquiera a ocultas por lo menos una semana. Pero, en cambio, habl\u00e1bamos por tel\u00e9fono. La t\u00eda Julia sal\u00eda a telefonearme desde la bodega de la esquina, por lo menos tres veces al d\u00eda, y nos comunic\u00e1bamos nuestras respectivas observaciones sobre la temida reacci\u00f3n de la familia y hac\u00edamos toda clase de hip\u00f3tesis. \u00bfSer\u00eda posible que el t\u00edo Jorge hubiera decidido guardar el secreto? Yo sab\u00eda que eso era impensable dentro de las costumbres familiares. \u00bfY entonces? Javier adelantaba la tesis de que la t\u00eda Gaby y el t\u00edo Jorge hubieran tenido encima tantos whiskys que no se dieran bien cuenta de las cosas, que en su memoria s\u00f3lo quedara una remota sospecha, y que no hab\u00edan querido desatar un esc\u00e1ndalo por algo no absolutamente comprobado. Un poco por curiosidad, otro por masoquismo, hice esa semana un recorrido por los hogares del clan, para saber a qu\u00e9 atenerme. No not\u00e9 nada anormal, salvo una omisi\u00f3n curiosa, que me suscit\u00f3 una pirotecnia de especulaciones. La t\u00eda Hortensia, que me invit\u00f3 un t\u00e9 con biscotelas, en dos horas de conversaci\u00f3n no mencion\u00f3 ni una sola vez a la t\u00eda Julia. \u00abSaben todo y est\u00e1n planeando algo\u00bb, le aseguraba yo a Javier, y \u00e9l, harto de que no le hablara de otra cosa, respond\u00eda: \u00abEn el fondo, est\u00e1s muerto de ganas de que haya ese esc\u00e1ndalo para tener de qu\u00e9 escribir\u00bb.\n\nEn esa semana, fecunda en acontecimientos, me vi inesperadamente convertido en protagonista de una ri\u00f1a callejera y en algo as\u00ed como guardaespaldas de Pedro Camacho. Sal\u00eda yo de la Universidad de San Marcos, luego de averiguar los resultados de un examen de derecho procesal, lleno de remordimientos por haber sacado nota m\u00e1s alta que mi amigo Velando, quien era el que sab\u00eda, cuando, al cruzar el parque Universitario, me top\u00e9 con Genaro pap\u00e1, el patriarca de la falange propietaria de las radios Panamericana y Central. Fuimos juntos hasta la calle Bel\u00e9n, conversando. Era un caballero siempre vestido de oscuro y siempre serio, al que el escriba boliviano se refer\u00eda a veces llam\u00e1ndolo, era f\u00e1cil suponer por qu\u00e9, El negrero.\n\n\u2014Su amigo, el genio, est\u00e1 siempre d\u00e1ndome dolores de cabeza \u2014me dijo\u2014. Me tiene hasta la coronilla. Si no fuera tan productivo ya lo hubiera puesto de patitas en la calle.\n\n\u2014\u00bfOtra protesta de la embajada argentina? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9.\n\n\u2014No s\u00e9 qu\u00e9 enredos anda armando \u2014se quej\u00f3\u2014. Se ha puesto a tomarle el pelo a la gente, a pasar personajes de un radioteatro a otro y a cambiarles los nombres, para confundir a los oyentes. Ya mi mujer me lo hab\u00eda advertido y ahora llaman por tel\u00e9fono, hasta han llegado dos cartas. Que el cura de Mendocita se llama como el Testigo de Jehov\u00e1 y \u00e9ste como el cura. Yo ando muy ocupado para o\u00edr radioteatros. \u00bfUsted los oye alguna vez?\n\nEst\u00e1bamos bajando por la Colmena hacia la plaza San Mart\u00edn, entre \u00f3mnibus que sal\u00edan a provincias y cafetines de chinos, y yo record\u00e9 que, hac\u00eda unos d\u00edas, hablando de Pedro Camacho, la t\u00eda Julia me hab\u00eda hecho re\u00edr y confirmado mis sospechas de que el escribidor era un humorista que disimulaba:\n\n\u2014Pas\u00f3 algo rar\u00edsimo: la chica tuvo al peladingo, se muri\u00f3 en el parto y lo enterraron con todas las de ley. \u00bfC\u00f3mo te explicas que en el cap\u00edtulo de esta tarde aparezcan bautiz\u00e1ndolo en la catedral?\n\nLe dije a Genaro pap\u00e1 que yo tampoco ten\u00eda tiempo para o\u00edrlos, que a lo mejor esos trueques y enredos eran una t\u00e9cnica original suya de contar historias.\n\n\u2014No le pagamos para que sea original sino para que nos entretenga a la gente \u2014me dijo Genaro pap\u00e1, que no era, a todas luces, un empresario progresista sino uno tradicionalista\u2014. Con estas bromas va a perder audiencia y los auspiciadores nos quitar\u00e1n avisos. Usted, que es amigo suyo, d\u00edgale que se deje de modernismos o que se puede quedar sin trabajo.\n\nLe suger\u00ed que se lo dijera \u00e9l mismo, que era el patr\u00f3n: la amenaza tendr\u00eda m\u00e1s peso. Pero Genaro pap\u00e1 movi\u00f3 la cabeza, con un gesto compungido que hab\u00eda heredado Genaro hijo:\n\n\u2014No admite siquiera que yo le dirija la palabra. El \u00e9xito lo ha engre\u00eddo mucho y, vez que trato de hablarle, me falta el respeto.\n\nHab\u00eda ido a participarle, con la mayor educaci\u00f3n, que se recib\u00edan llamadas, a mostrarle las cartitas de protesta. Pedro Camacho, sin responderle una palabra, cogi\u00f3 las dos cartas, las hizo pedazos sin abrirlas y las ech\u00f3 a la papelera. Luego, se puso a escribir a m\u00e1quina, como si no hubiera nadie presente, y Genaro pap\u00e1 lo oy\u00f3 murmurar cuando, al borde de la apoplej\u00eda, se iba de esa cueva hostil: \u00abZapatero a tus zapatos\u00bb.\n\n\u2014Yo no puedo exponerme a otra groser\u00eda as\u00ed, tendr\u00eda que botarlo y eso tampoco ser\u00eda realista \u2014concluy\u00f3, con un adem\u00e1n de fastidio\u2014. Pero usted no tiene nada que perder, a usted no lo va a insultar, usted tambi\u00e9n es medio artista \u00bfno? \u00c9chenos una mano, h\u00e1galo por la empresa, h\u00e1blele.\n\nLe ofrec\u00ed que lo har\u00eda y, en efecto, despu\u00e9s del Panamericano de las doce, fui, para desgracia m\u00eda, a invitar a Pedro Camacho una taza de yerbaluisa con menta. Est\u00e1bamos saliendo de Radio Central cuando dos tipos grandotes nos cerraron el paso. Los reconoc\u00ed en el acto: eran los churrasqueros, dos hermanos bigotudos de La Parrillada Argentina, un restaurante situado en la misma calle, frente al colegio de las monjitas de Bel\u00e9n, donde ellos mismos, con mandiles blancos y altos gorros de cocineros, preparaban las sangrientas carnes y los chinchulines. Rodearon al escriba boliviano con aire matonesco y el m\u00e1s gordo y viejo de los dos lo increp\u00f3:\n\n\u2014\u00bfAs\u00ed que somos matani\u00f1os, no, Camacho de porquer\u00eda? \u00bfTe has cre\u00eddo, atorrante, que en este pa\u00eds no hay nadie que pueda ense\u00f1arte a guardar respetos?\n\nSe iba excitando mientras hablaba, enrojec\u00eda y se le atropellaba la voz. El hermano menor asent\u00eda y, en una pausa iracunda del churrasquero mayor, tambi\u00e9n meti\u00f3 su cuchara:\n\n\u2014\u00bfY los piojos? \u00bfConque la golosina de las porte\u00f1as son los bichos que les sacan del pelo a sus hijos, grand\u00edsimo hijo de puta? \u00bfMe voy a quedar con los brazos cruzados mientras puteas a mi madre?\n\nEl escriba boliviano no hab\u00eda retrocedido ni un mil\u00edmetro y los escuchaba, paseando de uno a otro sus ojos saltones, con expresi\u00f3n doctoral. De pronto, haciendo su caracter\u00edstica venia de maestro de ceremonias y en tono muy solemne, les solt\u00f3 la m\u00e1s urbana de las preguntas:\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor acaso, no son ustedes argentinos?\n\nEl churrasquero gordo, que ya echaba espuma por los bigotes \u2014su cara estaba a veinte cent\u00edmetros de la de Pedro Camacho, para lo cual ten\u00eda que inclinarse mucho\u2014, rugi\u00f3 con patriotismo:\n\n\u2014\u00a1Argentinos, s\u00ed, hijo de puta, y a mucha honra!\n\nVi entonces que, ante esta confirmaci\u00f3n \u2014realmente innecesaria porque bastaba o\u00edrles dos palabras para saber que eran argentinos\u2014, el escriba boliviano, como si algo le hubiera estallado dentro, palidec\u00eda, sus ojos se pon\u00edan \u00edgneos, adoptaba una expresi\u00f3n amenazadora y, fustigando el aire con el dedo \u00edndice, los apostrof\u00f3 as\u00ed:\n\n\u2014Me lo ol\u00eda. Pues bien: \u00a1v\u00e1yanse inmediatamente a cantar tangos!\n\nLa orden no era humor\u00edstica, sino funeral. Los churrasqueros quedaron, un segundo, sin saber qu\u00e9 decir. Era evidente que el escriba no bromeaba: desde su peque\u00f1ez tenaz y su total indefensi\u00f3n f\u00edsica, los miraba con ferocidad y desprecio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 ha dicho usted? \u2014articul\u00f3 por fin el churrasquero gordo, confuso y encolerizado\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 cosa, qu\u00e9 cosa?\n\n\u2014\u00a1A cantar tangos y a lavarse las orejas! \u2014enriqueci\u00f3 la orden, con su perfecta pronunciaci\u00f3n, Pedro Camacho. Y, luego de una brev\u00edsima pausa, con tranquilidad escalofriante, deletre\u00f3 la rebuscada temeridad que nos perdi\u00f3\u2014: Si no quieren recibir un rapapolvo.\n\nEsta vez yo qued\u00e9 todav\u00eda m\u00e1s sorprendido que los churrasqueros. Que esa personita m\u00ednima, de f\u00edsico de ni\u00f1o de cuarto de primaria, prometiera una paliza a dos sansones de cien kilos era delirante, adem\u00e1s de suicida. Pero ya el churrasquero gordo reaccionaba, cog\u00eda del cuello al escriba, y, entre las risas de la gente que se hab\u00eda aglomerado alrededor, lo levantaba como una pluma, aullando:\n\n\u2014\u00bfUn rapapolvo, a m\u00ed? Ahora vas a ver, enano...\n\nCuando vi que el churrasquero mayor se preparaba a volatilizar a Pedro Camacho de un derechazo, no me qued\u00f3 m\u00e1s remedio que intervenir. Lo sujet\u00e9 del brazo, al tiempo que trataba de liberar al pol\u00edgrafo, quien, amoratado y suspenso, pataleaba en el aire como una ara\u00f1a, y alcanc\u00e9 a decir algo as\u00ed como: \u00abOiga, no sea abusivo, su\u00e9ltelo\u00bb, cuando el churrasquero menor me lanz\u00f3, sin pre\u00e1mbulos, un pu\u00f1etazo que me sent\u00f3 en el suelo. Desde all\u00ed, y mientras, aturdido, dificultosamente me pon\u00eda de pie y me preparaba a poner en pr\u00e1ctica la filosof\u00eda de mi abuelo, un caballero de la vieja escuela, quien me hab\u00eda ense\u00f1ado que ning\u00fan arequipe\u00f1o digno de esa tierra rechaza jam\u00e1s una invitaci\u00f3n a pelear (y, sobre todo, una invitaci\u00f3n tan contundente como un directo al ment\u00f3n), vi que el churrasquero mayor descargaba una verdadera lluvia de bofetadas (hab\u00eda preferido las bofetadas a los pu\u00f1etes, piadosamente, dada la osatura liliputiense del adversario) sobre el artista. Despu\u00e9s, mientras intercambiaba empujones y trompadas contra el churrasquero menor (\u00aben defensa del arte\u00bb, pensaba) ya no pude ver gran cosa. El pugilato no dur\u00f3 mucho, pero cuando, al fin, gente de Radio Central nos rescat\u00f3 de las manos de los forzudos, yo ten\u00eda unos cuantos chichones y el escriba estaba con la cara tan hinchada y tumefacta que Genaro pap\u00e1 debi\u00f3 llevarlo a la Asistencia P\u00fablica. En vez de darme las gracias por haber arriesgado mi integridad defendiendo a su estrella exclusiva, Genaro hijo, esa tarde, me reprendi\u00f3 por una noticia que Pascual, aprovechando la confusi\u00f3n, hab\u00eda filtrado en dos boletines consecutivos y que comenzaba (con algo de exageraci\u00f3n) as\u00ed: \u00abPandilleros rioplatenses atacaron hoy criminalmente a nuestro director, el conocido periodista\u00bb, etc\u00e9tera.\n\nEsa tarde, cuando Javier se present\u00f3 en mi altillo de Radio Panamericana, se ri\u00f3 a carcajadas con la historia del pugilato, y me acompa\u00f1\u00f3 a preguntarle al escriba c\u00f3mo se encontraba. Le hab\u00edan puesto una venda de pirata en el ojo derecho y dos curitas, una en el cuello y otra debajo de la nariz. \u00bfC\u00f3mo se sent\u00eda? Hizo un gesto desde\u00f1oso, sin dar importancia al asunto, y no me agradeci\u00f3 que, por solidaridad con \u00e9l, me hubiera zambullido en la pelea. Su \u00fanico comentario encant\u00f3 a Javier:\n\n\u2014Al separarnos, los salvaron. Si dura unos minutos m\u00e1s, la gente me hubiera reconocido y pobres de ellos: los linchaban.\n\nFuimos al Bransa y all\u00ed nos cont\u00f3 que en Bolivia, una vez, un futbolista \u00abde ese pa\u00eds\u00bb, que hab\u00eda o\u00eddo sus programas, se present\u00f3 en la radioemisora armado de un rev\u00f3lver, que, por suerte, detectaron a tiempo los guardianes.\n\n\u2014Va a tener que cuidarse \u2014lo previno Javier\u2014. Lima est\u00e1 llena de argentinos ahora.\n\n\u2014Total, a ustedes y a m\u00ed, tarde o temprano tendr\u00e1n que comernos los gusanos \u2014filosof\u00f3 Pedro Camacho.\n\nY nos instruy\u00f3 sobre la transmigraci\u00f3n de las almas, que le parec\u00eda art\u00edculo de fe. Nos hizo una confidencia: si se pudiera elegir, a \u00e9l, en su pr\u00f3ximo estadio vital, le gustar\u00eda ser alg\u00fan animal marino, longevo y calmo, como las tortugas o las ballenas. Aprovech\u00e9 su buen \u00e1nimo para ejercitar esa funci\u00f3n ad hon\u00f3rem de puente entre \u00e9l y los Genaros que hab\u00eda asumido hac\u00eda alg\u00fan tiempo, y le di el mensaje de Genaro pap\u00e1: hab\u00eda llamadas, cartas, episodios de los radioteatros que algunas gentes no entend\u00edan. El viejo le rogaba no complicar los argumentos, tener en cuenta el nivel del oyente medio que era m\u00e1s bien bajo. Trat\u00e9 de dorarle la p\u00edldora, poni\u00e9ndome de su lado (en realidad lo estaba): ese ruego era absurdo, por supuesto, uno deb\u00eda ser libre de escribir como quisiera, yo me limitaba a decirle lo que me hab\u00edan pedido.\n\nMe escuch\u00f3 tan mudo e inexpresivo que me hizo sentir muy inc\u00f3modo. Y, cuando call\u00e9, tampoco dijo ni una palabra. Bebi\u00f3 su \u00faltimo trago de yerbaluisa, se puso de pie, murmur\u00f3 que deb\u00eda regresar a su taller y parti\u00f3 sin decir hasta luego. \u00bfSe hab\u00eda ofendido porque le habl\u00e9 de las llamadas delante de un extra\u00f1o? Javier cre\u00eda que s\u00ed y me aconsej\u00f3 que le pidiera excusas. Me promet\u00ed no servir nunca m\u00e1s de intercesor a los Genaros.\n\nEsa semana que estuve sin ver a la t\u00eda Julia, volv\u00ed a salir varias noches con amigos de Miraflores a quienes, desde mis amores clandestinos, no hab\u00eda vuelto a buscar. Eran compa\u00f1eros de colegio o de barrio, muchachos que estudiaban Ingenier\u00eda, como el Negro Salas, o Medicina, como el Colorao Molfino, o que se hab\u00edan puesto a trabajar, como Coco La\u00f1as, y con quienes, desde ni\u00f1o, hab\u00eda compartido cosas maravillosas: el fulbito y el parque Salazar, la nataci\u00f3n en el Terrazas y las olas de Miraflores, las fiestas de los s\u00e1bados, las enamoradas y los cines. Pero en estas salidas, despu\u00e9s de meses sin frecuentarlos, me di cuenta que algo se hab\u00eda perdido de nuestra amistad. Ya no ten\u00edamos tantas cosas en com\u00fan como antes. Hicimos, las noches de esa semana, las mismas proezas que sol\u00edamos hacer: ir al peque\u00f1o y vetusto cementerio de Surco, para, merodeando a la luz de la luna entre las tumbas removidas por los temblores, tratar de robarnos alguna calavera; ba\u00f1arnos desnudos en la enorme piscina del balneario Santa Rosa, vecino a Anc\u00f3n, todav\u00eda construy\u00e9ndose, y recorrer los l\u00f3bregos burdeles de la avenida Grau. Ellos segu\u00edan siendo los mismos, hac\u00edan los mismos chistes, hablaban de las mismas chicas, pero yo no pod\u00eda hablarles de las cosas que me importaban: la literatura y la t\u00eda Julia. Si les hubiera dicho que escrib\u00eda cuentos y que so\u00f1aba en ser escritor no hay duda que, como la flaca Nancy, hubieran pensado que se me hab\u00eda zafado un tornillo. Y si les hubiera contado \u2014como ellos a m\u00ed sus conquistas\u2014 que estaba con una se\u00f1ora divorciada, que no era mi amante sino mi enamorada (en el sentido m\u00e1s miraflorino de la palabra) me hubieran cre\u00eddo, seg\u00fan una linda y esot\u00e9rica expresi\u00f3n muy en boga en esa \u00e9poca, un cojudo a la vela. No les ten\u00eda ning\u00fan desprecio porque no leyeran literatura, ni me consideraba superior por tener amores con una mujer hecha y derecha, pero lo cierto es que, en esas noches, mientras escarb\u00e1bamos tumbas entre los eucaliptos y los molles de Surco, o chapote\u00e1bamos bajo las estrellas de Santa Rosa, o tom\u00e1bamos cerveza y discut\u00edamos los precios con las putas de Nanette, yo me aburr\u00eda y pensaba m\u00e1s en Los juegos peligrosos (que tampoco esta semana hab\u00eda aparecido en El Comercio) y en la t\u00eda Julia que en lo que me dec\u00edan.\n\nCuando le cont\u00e9 a Javier el decepcionante reencuentro con mis compinches del barrio, me respondi\u00f3, sacando pecho:\n\n\u2014Es que siguen siendo unos mocosos. Usted y yo ya somos hombres, Varguitas.\n\n### XII\n\nEN EL CENTRO polvoriento de la ciudad, al mediar el jir\u00f3n Ica, hay una vieja casa de balcones y celos\u00edas cuyas paredes maculadas por el tiempo y los incultos transe\u00fantes (manos sentimentales que graban flechas y corazones y rasgan nombres de mujer, dedos aviesos que esculpen sexos y palabrotas) dejan ver todav\u00eda, como a lo lejos, celajes de la que fuera pintura original, ese color que en la Colonia adornaba mansiones aristocr\u00e1ticas: el azul a\u00f1il. La construcci\u00f3n, \u00bfantigua residencia de marqueses?, es hoy una endeble f\u00e1brica reparchada que resiste de milagro, no ya los temblores, incluso los moderados vientos lime\u00f1os y hasta la discret\u00edsima gar\u00faa. Corro\u00edda de arriba abajo por las polillas, anidada de ratas y de musara\u00f1as, ha sido dividida y subdividida muchas veces, patios y cuartos que la necesidad vuelve colmenas, para albergar m\u00e1s y m\u00e1s inquilinos. Una muchedumbre de condici\u00f3n modesta vive entre (y puede perecer aplastada bajo) sus fr\u00e1giles tabiques y raqu\u00edticos techos. All\u00ed, en la segunda planta, en media docena de habitaciones llenas de ancianidad y cachivaches, tal vez no pulqu\u00e9rrimas, pero s\u00ed moralmente intachables, funciona la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial.\n\nSus due\u00f1os y administradores son los Bergua, una familia de tres personas que vino a Lima desde la empedrada ciudad serrana de las innumerables iglesias, Ayacucho, hace m\u00e1s de treinta a\u00f1os, y que aqu\u00ed, oh manes de la vida, ha ido declinando en lo f\u00edsico, en lo econ\u00f3mico, en lo social y hasta en lo ps\u00edquico, y que, sin duda, en esta Ciudad de los Reyes entregar\u00e1 su alma y transmigrar\u00e1 a pez, ave o insecto.\n\nHoy, la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial vive una atribulada decadencia, y sus clientes son personas humildes e insolventes, en el mejor caso curitas provincianos que vienen a la capital a hacer tr\u00e1mites arzobispales, y, en el peor, campesinotas de mejillas amoratadas y ojos de vicu\u00f1a que guardan sus monedas en pa\u00f1uelos rosados y rezan el rosario en quechua. No hay sirvientas en la pensi\u00f3n, desde luego, y todo el trabajo de tender las camas, arreglar, hacer la compra, preparar la comida, recae sobre la se\u00f1ora Margarita Bergua y su hija, una doncella de cuarenta a\u00f1os que responde al perfumado nombre de Rosa. La se\u00f1ora Margarita Bergua es (como su nombre en diminutivo parecer\u00eda indicar) una mujer muy renacuajo, delgadita, con m\u00e1s arrugas que una pasa, y que, curiosamente, huele a gato (ya que no hay gatos en la pensi\u00f3n). Trabaja sin descanso desde la madrugada hasta el anochecer, y sus evoluciones por la casa, por la vida, son espectaculares, pues, teniendo una pierna veinte cent\u00edmetros m\u00e1s corta que la otra, usa un zapato tipo zanco, con plataforma de madera parecida a caja de lustrabotas, que le construy\u00f3 hace ya muchos a\u00f1os un habilidoso retablista ayacuchano, y que, al arrastrarse por el suelo de tablas, produce conmoci\u00f3n. Siempre fue ahorrativa, pero, con los a\u00f1os, esta virtud degener\u00f3 en man\u00eda, y ahora no cabe duda que le conviene el acre adjetivo de taca\u00f1a. Por ejemplo, no permite que ning\u00fan pensionista se ba\u00f1e sino el primer viernes de cada mes y ha impuesto la argentina costumbre \u2014tan popular en los hogares del hermano pa\u00eds\u2014 de no jalar la cadena del excusado sino una vez al d\u00eda (lo hace ella misma, antes de acostarse) a lo que la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial debe, en un ciento por ciento, ese tufillo constante, espeso y tibio, que, sobre todo al principio, marea a los pensionistas (ella, imaginaci\u00f3n de mujer que guisa respuestas para todo, sostiene que gracias a \u00e9l duermen mejor).\n\nLa se\u00f1orita Rosa tiene (o m\u00e1s bien ten\u00eda, porque despu\u00e9s de la gran tragedia nocturna hasta eso cambi\u00f3) alma y dedos de artista. De ni\u00f1a, en Ayacucho, cuando la familia estaba en su apogeo (tres casas de piedra y unas tierritas con ovejas) comenz\u00f3 a aprender piano y lo aprendi\u00f3 tan bien que lleg\u00f3 a dar un recital en el teatro de la ciudad al que asistieron el alcalde y el prefecto y en el que sus padres, oyendo los aplausos, lloraron de emoci\u00f3n. Estimulados por esta gloriosa velada, en la que tambi\u00e9n zapatearon unas \u00f1ustas, los Bergua decidieron vender todo lo que ten\u00edan y mudarse a Lima para que su hija llegara a ser concertista. Por eso adquirieron esa casona (que luego fueron vendiendo y alquilando a pedazos), por eso compraron un piano, por eso matricularon a la dotada criatura en el Conservatorio Nacional. Pero la gran ciudad lasciva destroz\u00f3 r\u00e1pido las ilusiones provincianas. Pues pronto descubrieron los Bergua algo que no hubieran sospechado jam\u00e1s: Lima era un antro de un mill\u00f3n de pecadores y todos ellos, sin una miserable excepci\u00f3n, quer\u00edan cometer estupro con la inspirada ayacuchana. Era al menos lo que, ojazos que el susto redondea y moja, contaba la adolescente de bru\u00f1idas trenzas ma\u00f1ana, tarde y noche: el profesor de solfeo se hab\u00eda lanzado sobre ella bufando y pretendido consumar el pecado sobre un colch\u00f3n de partituras, el portero del conservatorio le hab\u00eda consultado obscenamente \u00ab\u00bfquisieras ser mi meretriz?\u00bb, dos compa\u00f1eros la hab\u00edan invitado al ba\u00f1o para que los viera hacer pip\u00ed, el polic\u00eda de la esquina al que pregunt\u00f3 una direcci\u00f3n, confundi\u00e9ndola con alguien la hab\u00eda querido orde\u00f1ar y en el \u00f3mnibus, el conductor, al cobrarle el pasaje le hab\u00eda pellizcado el pez\u00f3n... Decididos a defender la integridad de ese himen que, moral serrana de preceptos indoblegables como m\u00e1rmoles, la joven pianista s\u00f3lo a su futuro amo y esposo deber\u00eda sacrificar, los Bergua cancelaron el conservatorio, contrataron a una se\u00f1orita que daba clases a domicilio, vistieron a Rosa como monja y le prohibieron salir a la calle salvo acompa\u00f1ada por ellos dos. Han pasado veinticinco a\u00f1os desde entonces, y, en efecto, el himen sigue entero y en su sitio, pero a estas alturas ya la cosa no tiene mucho m\u00e9rito, porque fuera de ese atractivo \u2014tan desde\u00f1ado, adem\u00e1s, por los j\u00f3venes modernos\u2014 la ex pianista (desde la tragedia las clases fueron suprimidas y el piano vendido para pagar el hospital y los m\u00e9dicos) carece de otros que ofrecer. Se ha entumecido, torcido, achicado, y, sumergida en esas t\u00fanicas antiafrodis\u00edacas que acostumbra llevar y en esos capuchones que ocultan su pelo y su frente, m\u00e1s parece un bulto andante que una mujer. Ella insiste en que los hombres la tocan, la amedrentan con proposiciones f\u00e9tidas y quieren violarla, pero, a estas alturas, hasta sus padres se preguntan si esas quimeras fueron alguna vez verdad.\n\nPero la figura realmente conmovedora y tutelar de la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial es don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua, anciano de frente ancha, nariz aguile\u00f1a, mirada penetrante y rectitud y bondad en el esp\u00edritu. Hombre chapado a la antigua, si se quiere, ha conservado de sus remotos antepasados, esos hisp\u00e1nicos conquistadores, los hermanos Bergua, oriundos de las alturas de Cuenca, que llegaron al Per\u00fa con Pizarro, no tanto aquella aptitud para el exceso que los llev\u00f3 a dar garrote vil a centenares de incas (cada uno) y a pre\u00f1ar un n\u00famero comparativo de vestales cusque\u00f1as, como el esp\u00edritu acendradamente cat\u00f3lico y la audaz convicci\u00f3n de que los caballeros de rancia estirpe pueden vivir de sus rentas y de la rapi\u00f1a, pero no del sudor. Desde ni\u00f1o, hab\u00eda ido a misa a diario, comulgado todos los viernes en homenaje al Se\u00f1or de Limpias, de quien era devoto pertinaz, y se hab\u00eda dado azotes o llevado cilicio lo menos tres d\u00edas al mes. Su repugnancia al trabajo, quehacer porte\u00f1o y vil, hab\u00eda sido siempre tan extrema que incluso se hab\u00eda negado a cobrar los alquileres de los predios que le permit\u00edan vivir, y, ya radicado en Lima, jam\u00e1s se hab\u00eda molestado en ir al banco por los intereses de los bonos en que ten\u00eda invertido su dinero. Estas obligaciones, pr\u00e1cticos asuntos que est\u00e1n al alcance de las faldas, hab\u00edan corrido siempre a cargo de la diligente Margarita, y, cuando la ni\u00f1a creci\u00f3, de ella y de la ex pianista.\n\nHasta antes de la tragedia que aceler\u00f3 cruelmente la decadencia de los Bergua, maldici\u00f3n de familia de la que no quedar\u00e1 ni el nombre, la vida de don Sebasti\u00e1n en la capital hab\u00eda sido la de un escrupuloso gentilhombre cristiano. Sol\u00eda levantarse tarde, no por pereza sino para no desayunar con los pensionistas \u2014no despreciaba a los humildes pero cre\u00eda en la necesidad de las distancias sociales y, principalmente, raciales\u2014, tomaba una colaci\u00f3n frugal e iba a escuchar la misa. Esp\u00edritu curioso y permeable a la historia, visitaba siempre iglesias distintas \u2014San Agust\u00edn, San Pedro, San Francisco, Santo Domingo\u2014 para, al mismo tiempo que cumplir con Dios, regocijar su sensibilidad contemplando las obras maestras de la fe colonial; esas p\u00e9treas reminiscencias del pasado, por lo dem\u00e1s, trasladaban su esp\u00edritu hacia los tiempos de la Conquista y de la Colonia \u2014cu\u00e1nto m\u00e1s coloreados que el gris\u00e1ceo presente\u2014 en los que hubiera preferido vivir y ser un temerario capit\u00e1n o un p\u00edo destructor de idolatr\u00edas. Imbuido de fantas\u00edas pasadistas, regresaba don Sebasti\u00e1n por las calles atareadas del centro \u2014erecto y cauto en su pulcro terno negro, su camisa de cuello y pu\u00f1os postizos donde destellaba el almid\u00f3n y sus zapatos finiseculares con escarpines de charol\u2014 hacia la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial, donde, arrellanado en una mecedora frente al balc\u00f3n de celos\u00edas \u2014tan af\u00edn a su esp\u00edritu perricholista\u2014 pasaba el resto de la ma\u00f1ana leyendo murmuradoramente los peri\u00f3dicos, avisos incluidos, para saber c\u00f3mo iba el mundo. Leal a su estirpe, luego del almuerzo \u2014que no ten\u00eda m\u00e1s remedio que compartir con los pensionistas, a los que trataba empero con urbanidad\u2014 cumpl\u00eda con el espa\u00f1ol\u00edsimo rito de la siesta. Luego volv\u00eda a enfundarse su terno oscuro, su camisa almidonada, su sombrero gris y caminaba pausadamente hasta el Club Tambo-Ayacucho, instituci\u00f3n que, en unos altos del jir\u00f3n Cailloma, congregaba a muchos conocidos de su bella tierra andina. Jugando domin\u00f3, casino, rocambor, chismeando de pol\u00edtica y, alguna vez \u2014humano que era\u2014, de temas impropios para se\u00f1oritas, ve\u00eda caer la tarde y levantarse la noche. Regresaba entonces, sin prisa, a la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial, tomaba su sopa y su puchero a solas en su habitaci\u00f3n, escuchaba alg\u00fan programa de radio y se dorm\u00eda en paz con su conciencia y con Dios.\n\nPero eso era antes. Hoy, don Sebasti\u00e1n no pone jam\u00e1s los pies en la calle, nunca cambia su atuendo \u2014que es, d\u00eda y noche, un piyama color ladrillo, una bata azul, unas medias de lana y unas zapatillas de alpaca\u2014 y, desde la tragedia, no ha vuelto a pronunciar una frase. Ya no va a misa, ya no lee los diarios. Cuando est\u00e1 bien, los ancianos pensionistas (desde que descubrieron que todos los hombres del mundo eran s\u00e1tiros, los due\u00f1os de la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial s\u00f3lo aceptaron clientes femeninos o decr\u00e9pitos, varones de apetencia sexual mermada a simple vista por enfermedades o edad) lo ven ambular como un fantasma por los oscuros y a\u00f1osos aposentos, con la mirada perdida, sin afeitar y con los casposos cabellos revueltos, o lo ven sentado, columpi\u00e1ndose suavemente en la mecedora, mudo y pasmado, horas de horas. Ya no desayuna ni almuerza con los hu\u00e9spedes, pues, sentido del rid\u00edculo que corretea a los arist\u00f3cratas hasta el hospicio, don Sebasti\u00e1n no puede llevarse el cubierto a la boca, y son su esposa e hija quienes le dan de comer. Cuando est\u00e1 mal, los pensionistas ya no lo ven: el noble anciano permanece en cama, su habitaci\u00f3n clausurada con llave. Pero lo oyen; oyen sus rugidos, sus ayes, su quejumbre o sus alaridos que estremecen los vidrios. Los reci\u00e9n llegados a la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial se sorprenden, durante estas crisis, que, mientras el descendiente de conquistadores a\u00falla, do\u00f1a Margarita y la se\u00f1orita Rosa contin\u00faen barriendo, arreglando, cocinando, sirviendo y conversando como si nada ocurriera. Piensan que son desamoradas, de coraz\u00f3n glacial, indiferentes al sufrimiento del esposo y padre. A los impertinentes que, se\u00f1alando la puerta cerrada, se atreven a preguntar: \u00ab\u00bfDon Sebasti\u00e1n se siente mal?\u00bb, la se\u00f1ora Margarita les responde con mala voluntad: \u00abNo tiene nada, se est\u00e1 acordando de un susto, ya le va a pasar\u00bb. Y, en efecto, a los dos o tres d\u00edas, termina la crisis y don Sebasti\u00e1n emerge a los pasillos y aposentos de la Pensi\u00f3n Bayer, p\u00e1lido y flaco entre las telara\u00f1as y con una mueca de terror.\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 tragedia fue \u00e9sa? \u00bfD\u00f3nde, cu\u00e1ndo, c\u00f3mo ocurri\u00f3?\n\nTodo comenz\u00f3 con la llegada a la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial, veinte a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s, de un joven de ojos tristes que vest\u00eda el h\u00e1bito del Se\u00f1or de los Milagros. Era agente viajero, arequipe\u00f1o, padec\u00eda de estre\u00f1imiento cr\u00f3nico, ten\u00eda nombre de profeta y apellido de pescado \u2014Ezequiel Delf\u00edn\u2014 y, pese a su juventud, fue admitido como pensionista porque su f\u00edsico espiritual (flacura extrema, palidez intensa, huesos finos) y su religiosidad manifiesta \u2014adem\u00e1s de corbata, pa\u00f1uelito y brazalete morados, escond\u00eda una Biblia en su equipaje y un escapulario asomaba entre los pliegues de su ropa\u2014 parec\u00edan una garant\u00eda contra cualquier tentativa de mancillamiento de la p\u00faber.\n\nY, en efecto, al principio, el joven Ezequiel Delf\u00edn s\u00f3lo trajo contento a la familia Bergua. Era inapetente y educado, pagaba sus cuentas con puntualidad, y ten\u00eda gestos simp\u00e1ticos como aparecer de cuando en cuando con unas violetas para do\u00f1a Margarita, un clavel para el ojal de don Sebasti\u00e1n y regalar unas partituras y un metr\u00f3nomo a Rosa en su cumplea\u00f1os. Su timidez, que no le permit\u00eda dirigir la palabra a nadie si no se la dirig\u00edan a \u00e9l antes, y, en estos casos, hablar siempre en voz baja y con los ojos en el suelo, jam\u00e1s en la cara de su interlocutor, y su correcci\u00f3n de maneras y de vocabulario cayeron muy en gracia a los Bergua, que pronto tomaron afecto al hu\u00e9sped, y, tal vez, en el fondo de sus corazones, familia ganada por la vida a la filosof\u00eda del mal menor, comenzaron a acariciar el proyecto de, con el tiempo, promoverlo a yerno.\n\nDon Sebasti\u00e1n, en especial, se encari\u00f1\u00f3 mucho con \u00e9l: \u00bfengre\u00eda tal vez en el delicado viajante a ese hijo que la diligente cojita no le hab\u00eda sabido dar? Una tarde de diciembre lo llev\u00f3 paseando hasta la ermita de Santa Rosa de Lima, donde lo vio tirar una dorada moneda al pozo y pedir una secreta gracia, y cierto domingo de ardiente verano le convid\u00f3 una raspadilla de c\u00edtricos en los portales de la plaza San Mart\u00edn. El muchacho le parec\u00eda elegante, por lo callado y melanc\u00f3lico. \u00bfTen\u00eda alguna misteriosa enfermedad del alma o del cuerpo que lo devoraba, alguna irresta\u00f1able herida de amor? Ezequiel Delf\u00edn era una tumba y, cuando, alguna vez, con las debidas precauciones, los Bergua se hab\u00edan ofrecido como pa\u00f1o de l\u00e1grimas y le hab\u00edan preguntado por qu\u00e9, siendo tan joven, estaba siempre solo, por qu\u00e9 jam\u00e1s iba a una fiesta, a un cine, por qu\u00e9 no se re\u00eda, por qu\u00e9 suspiraba tanto con la mirada perdida en el vac\u00edo, \u00e9l se limitaba a ruborizarse y, balbuceando una disculpa, corr\u00eda a encerrarse en el ba\u00f1o, donde pasaba a veces horas con el pretexto de la constipaci\u00f3n. Iba y ven\u00eda de sus viajes de trabajo como una verdadera esfinge \u2014la familia nunca pudo enterarse siquiera a qu\u00e9 industria serv\u00eda, qu\u00e9 vend\u00eda\u2014 y aqu\u00ed, en Lima, cuando no trabajaba, permanec\u00eda encerrado en su cuarto, \u00bfrezando su Biblia o dedicado a la meditaci\u00f3n? Celestinescos y compadecidos, do\u00f1a Margarita y don Sebasti\u00e1n lo animaban a que asistiera a los ejercicios de piano de Rosita para que se distrajera, y \u00e9l obedec\u00eda: inm\u00f3vil y atento en un rinc\u00f3n de la sala, escuchaba, y, al final, aplaud\u00eda con urbanidad. Muchas veces acompa\u00f1\u00f3 a don Sebasti\u00e1n a sus misas matutinas, y la Semana Santa de ese a\u00f1o hizo el recorrido de las Estaciones con los Bergua. Para entonces ya parec\u00eda miembro de la familia.\n\nFue por eso que el d\u00eda en que Ezequiel, reci\u00e9n regresado de un viaje al norte, rompi\u00f3 s\u00fabitamente a sollozar en medio del almuerzo, haciendo dar un respingo a los dem\u00e1s pensionistas \u2014un juez de paz ancashino, un p\u00e1rroco de Cajatambo y dos chicas de Hu\u00e1nuco, estudiantes de Enfermer\u00eda\u2014 y volcando en la mesa la magra raci\u00f3n de lentejas que le acababan de servir, los Bergua se alarmaron mucho. Entre los tres lo acompa\u00f1aron a su cuarto, don Sebasti\u00e1n le prest\u00f3 su pa\u00f1uelo, do\u00f1a Margarita le prepar\u00f3 una infusi\u00f3n de yerbaluisa y menta y Rosa le abrig\u00f3 los pies con una manta. Ezequiel Delf\u00edn se seren\u00f3 al cabo de unos minutos, pidi\u00f3 disculpas por su debilidad, explic\u00f3 que estaba \u00faltimamente muy nervioso, que no sab\u00eda por qu\u00e9, pero con mucha frecuencia, a cualquier hora y en cualquier sitio, se le escapaban las l\u00e1grimas. Avergonzado, casi sin voz, les revel\u00f3 que en las noches ten\u00eda accesos de terror: permanec\u00eda hasta el amanecer encogido y desvelado, sudando fr\u00edo, pensando en aparecidos, y compadeci\u00e9ndose a s\u00ed mismo de su soledad. Su confesi\u00f3n hizo lagrimear a Rosa y santiguarse a la cojita. Don Sebasti\u00e1n se ofreci\u00f3 \u00e9l mismo a dormir en el cuarto para inspirar confianza y alivio al asustado. \u00c9ste, en agradecimiento, le bes\u00f3 las manos.\n\nUna cama fue arrastrada al cuarto y diligentemente ali\u00f1ada por do\u00f1a Margarita y su hija. Don Sebasti\u00e1n estaba en ese tiempo en la flor de la edad, la cincuentena, y acostumbraba, antes de meterse a la cama, hacer medio centenar de abdominales (hac\u00eda sus ejercicios al acostarse y no al despertar para distinguirse tambi\u00e9n en eso del vulgo), pero esa noche, para no turbar a Ezequiel, se abstuvo. El nervioso se hab\u00eda acostado temprano, despu\u00e9s de cenar un cari\u00f1oso caldito de menudencias, y asegurar que la compa\u00f1\u00eda de don Sebasti\u00e1n lo hab\u00eda serenado de antemano y que estaba seguro de dormir como una marmota.\n\nNunca m\u00e1s se borrar\u00edan de la memoria del gentilhombre ayacuchano los pormenores de esa noche: en la vigilia y en el sue\u00f1o lo acosar\u00edan hasta el final de sus d\u00edas y, qui\u00e9n sabe, a lo mejor lo seguir\u00edan persiguiendo en su pr\u00f3ximo estadio vital. Hab\u00eda apagado la luz temprano, hab\u00eda sentido en la cama vecina la respiraci\u00f3n pausada del sensible y pensado, satisfecho: \u00abSe ha dormido\u00bb. Sent\u00eda que tambi\u00e9n lo iba ganando el sue\u00f1o y hab\u00eda o\u00eddo las campanas de la catedral y la lejana carcajada de un borracho. Luego, se durmi\u00f3 y pl\u00e1cidamente so\u00f1\u00f3 el m\u00e1s grato y reconfortante de los sue\u00f1os: en un castillo puntiagudo, arborescente de escudos, pergaminos, flores her\u00e1ldicas y \u00e1rboles geneal\u00f3gicos que segu\u00edan la pista de sus antepasados hasta Ad\u00e1n, el Se\u00f1or de Ayacucho (\u00a1era \u00e9l!) recib\u00eda cuantioso tributo y fervorosa pleites\u00eda de muchedumbres de indios piojosos, que engordaban simult\u00e1neamente sus arcas y su vanidad.\n\nDe pronto, \u00bfhab\u00edan pasado quince minutos o tres horas?, algo que pod\u00eda ser un ruido, un presentimiento, el traspi\u00e9s de un esp\u00edritu, lo despert\u00f3. Alcanz\u00f3 a divisar, en la oscuridad apenas aliviada por una hebra de luz callejera que divid\u00eda la cortina, una silueta que, desde la cama contigua, se alzaba y silenciosamente flotaba hacia la puerta. Semiaturdido por el sue\u00f1o, supuso que el joven estre\u00f1ido iba al excusado a pujar, o que hab\u00eda vuelto a sentirse mal, y a media voz pregunt\u00f3: \u00ab\u00bfEzequiel, est\u00e1 usted bien?\u00bb. En vez de una respuesta, oy\u00f3, clar\u00edsimo, el pestillo de la puerta (que estaba aherrumbrada y chirriaba). No comprendi\u00f3, se incorpor\u00f3 algo en la cama y, ligeramente sobresaltado, volvi\u00f3 a preguntar: \u00ab\u00bfLe pasa algo, Ezequiel, puedo ayudarlo?\u00bb. Sinti\u00f3 entonces que el joven, hombres gato tan el\u00e1sticos que parecen ubicuos, hab\u00eda regresado y estaba ahora all\u00ed, de pie junto a su lecho, obstruyendo el rayito de luz de la ventana. \u00abPero, cont\u00e9steme, Ezequiel, qu\u00e9 le ocurre\u00bb, murmur\u00f3, buscando a tientas el interruptor de la lamparilla. En ese instante recibi\u00f3 la primera cuchillada, la m\u00e1s profunda y hurgadora, la que se hundi\u00f3 en su plexo como si fuera mantequilla y le trepan\u00f3 una clav\u00edcula. \u00c9l estaba seguro de haber gritado, pedido socorro a voces, y, mientras trataba de defenderse, de desenredarse de las s\u00e1banas que se le enroscaban en los pies, se sent\u00eda sorprendido de que ni su mujer ni su hija ni los otros pensionistas acudieran. Pero, en la realidad, nadie oy\u00f3 nada. M\u00e1s tarde, mientras la polic\u00eda y el juez reconstru\u00edan la carnicer\u00eda, todos se hab\u00edan asombrado de que no hubiera podido desarmar al criminal, siendo \u00e9l un robusto y Ezequiel un enclenque. No pod\u00edan saber que, en las tinieblas ensangrentadas, el propagandista m\u00e9dico parec\u00eda pose\u00eddo de una fuerza sobrenatural: don Sebasti\u00e1n s\u00f3lo atinaba a dar gritos imaginarios y a tratar de adivinar la traves\u00eda de la siguiente cuchillada para atajarla con las manos.\n\nRecibi\u00f3 entre catorce o quince (los m\u00e9dicos pensaban que la boca abierta en la nalga siniestra pod\u00eda ser, coincidencias portentosas que encanecen a un hombre en una noche y hacen creer en Dios, dos cuchilladas en el mismo sitio), equitativamente distribuidas a lo largo y ancho de su cuerpo, con excepci\u00f3n de su cara, la que \u2014\u00bfmilagro del Se\u00f1or de Limpias como pensaba do\u00f1a Margarita o de santa Rosa como dec\u00eda su tocaya?\u2014 no recibi\u00f3 ni un rasgu\u00f1o. El cuchillo, se averigu\u00f3 despu\u00e9s, era de la familia Bergua, filuda hoja de quince cent\u00edmetros que hab\u00eda desaparecido misteriosamente de la cocina hac\u00eda una semana y que dej\u00f3 el cuerpo del hombre de Ayacucho m\u00e1s cicatrizado y comido que el de un espadach\u00edn.\n\n\u00bfA qu\u00e9 se debi\u00f3 que no muriera? A la casualidad, a la misericordia de Dios y (sobre todo) a una cuasi tragedia mayor. Nadie hab\u00eda o\u00eddo, don Sebasti\u00e1n con catorce \u2014\u00bfquince?\u2014 pu\u00f1aladas en el cuerpo acababa de perder el sentido y se desaguaba en la oscuridad, el impulsivo pod\u00eda haber ganado la calle y desaparecido para siempre. Pero, como a tantos famosos de la Historia, lo perdi\u00f3 un capricho extravagante. Concluida la resistencia de su v\u00edctima, Ezequiel Delf\u00edn solt\u00f3 el cuchillo y, en vez de vestirse, se desvisti\u00f3. Desnudo como hab\u00eda venido al mundo, abri\u00f3 la puerta, cruz\u00f3 el pasillo, se present\u00f3 en el cuarto de do\u00f1a Margarita Bergua y, sin m\u00e1s explicaciones, se lanz\u00f3 sobre la cama con la inequ\u00edvoca intenci\u00f3n de fornicarla. \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 a ella? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 pretender estuprar a una dama, de abolengo, s\u00ed, pero cincuentona y piernicorta, menuda, amorfa y, en suma, para cualquier est\u00e9tica conocida, fea sin atenuantes ni remedio? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no haber intentado, m\u00e1s bien, coger el fruto prohibido de la pianista adolescente, que, adem\u00e1s de ser virgen, ten\u00eda el aliento fuerte, las grenchas negr\u00edsimas y la piel alabastrina? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no haber intentado transgredir el serrallo secreto de las enfermeras huanuque\u00f1as, que eran veintea\u00f1eras y, probablemente, de carnes prietas y gustosas? Fueron estas humillantes consideraciones las que llevaron al Poder Judicial a aceptar la tesis de la defensa seg\u00fan la cual Ezequiel Delf\u00edn estaba trastornado y a mandarlo al Larco Herrera en vez de encerrarlo en la c\u00e1rcel.\n\nAl recibir la inesperada y galante visita del joven, la se\u00f1ora Margarita Bergua comprendi\u00f3 que algo grav\u00edsimo ocurr\u00eda. Era una mujer realista y no se hac\u00eda ilusiones sobre sus encantos: \u00abA m\u00ed no vienen a violarme ni en sue\u00f1os, ah\u00ed mismo supe que el calato era demente o criminal\u00bb, declar\u00f3. Se defendi\u00f3, pues, como una leona embravecida \u2014en su testimonio jur\u00f3 por la Virgen que el fogoso no hab\u00eda conseguido infligirle ni un \u00f3sculo\u2014 y, adem\u00e1s de impedir el ultraje a su honor, salv\u00f3 la vida a su marido. Al mismo tiempo que, a rasgu\u00f1os, mordiscos, codazos, rodillazos, manten\u00eda a raya al degenerado, daba gritos (ella s\u00ed) que despertaron a su hija y a los otros inquilinos. Entre Rosa, el juez ancashino, el p\u00e1rroco de Cajatambo y las enfermeras huanuque\u00f1as redujeron al exhibicionista, lo amarraron y todos juntos corrieron en busca de don Sebasti\u00e1n: \u00bfviv\u00eda?\n\nLes tom\u00f3 cerca de una hora conseguir una ambulancia que lo llevara al Hospital Arzobispo Loayza, y cerca de tres que viniera la polic\u00eda a salvar a Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn de las u\u00f1as de la joven pianista, quien, fuera de s\u00ed (\u00bfpor las heridas infligidas a su padre?, \u00bfpor la ofensa a su madre?, \u00bftal vez, alma humana de turbia pulpa y ponzo\u00f1osas esquinas, por el desaire hecho a ella?), pretend\u00eda sacarle los ojos y beberse su sangre. El joven propagandista m\u00e9dico, en la polic\u00eda, recobrando su tradicional suavidad de gestos y de voz, ruboriz\u00e1ndose al hablar de puro t\u00edmido, neg\u00f3 firmemente la evidencia. La familia Bergua y los pensionistas lo calumniaban: jam\u00e1s hab\u00eda agredido a nadie, nunca hab\u00eda pretendido violentar a una mujer y, much\u00edsimo menos, a una lisiada como Margarita Bergua, dama que, por sus bondades y consideraciones, era \u2014despu\u00e9s, claro est\u00e1, de su esposa, esa muchacha de ojos italianos y codos y rodillas musicales que ven\u00eda del pa\u00eds del canto y del amor\u2014 la persona que m\u00e1s respetaba y quer\u00eda en este mundo. Su serenidad, su urbanidad, su mansedumbre, las magn\u00edficas referencias que dieron de \u00e9l sus jefes y compa\u00f1eros de los Laboratorios Bayer, la albura de su registro policial, hicieron vacilar a los custodios del orden. \u00bfCab\u00eda, magia insondable de las apariencias tramposas, que todo fuera una conjuraci\u00f3n de la mujer e hija de la v\u00edctima y de los pensionistas contra este mozo delicado? El cuarto poder del Estado vio esta tesis con simpat\u00eda y la auspici\u00f3.\n\nPara dificultar las cosas y mantener el suspenso en la ciudad, el objeto del delito, don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua, no pod\u00eda aclarar las dudas, pues se debat\u00eda entre la vida y la muerte en el popular nosocomio de la avenida Alfonso Ugarte. Recib\u00eda caudalosas transfusiones de sangre, que pusieron al borde de la tuberculosis a muchos comprovincianos del Club Tambo-Ayacucho, quienes, apenas enterados de la tragedia, hab\u00edan corrido a ofrecerse como donantes, y estas transferencias, m\u00e1s los sueros, las costuras, las desinfecciones, los vendajes, las enfermeras que se turnaban a su cabecera, los facultativos que soldaron sus huesos, reconstruyeron sus \u00f3rganos y apaciguaron sus nervios, devoraron en unas cuantas semanas las ya mermadas (por la inflaci\u00f3n y el galopante costo de la vida) rentas de la familia. \u00c9sta debi\u00f3 malbaratar sus bonos, recortar y alquilar a pedazos su propiedad y arrinconarse en ese segundo piso donde ahora vegetaba.\n\nDon Sebasti\u00e1n se salv\u00f3, s\u00ed, pero su recuperaci\u00f3n, en un principio, no pareci\u00f3 ser suficiente para zanjar las dudas policiales. Por efecto de las cuchilladas, del susto sufrido, o de la deshonra moral de su mujer, qued\u00f3 mudo (y hasta se murmuraba que tonto). Era incapaz de pronunciar palabra, miraba todo y a todos con let\u00e1rgica inexpresividad de tortuga, y tampoco los dedos le obedec\u00edan pues ni siquiera pudo (\u00bfquiso?) contestar por escrito las preguntas que se le hicieron en el juicio del desatinado.\n\nEl proceso alcanz\u00f3 proporciones may\u00fasculas y la Ciudad de los Reyes permaneci\u00f3 en vilo mientras duraron las audiencias. Lima, el Per\u00fa, \u00bfla Am\u00e9rica mestiza toda?, siguieron con apasionamiento las discusiones forenses, las r\u00e9plicas y contrarr\u00e9plicas de los peritos, los alegatos del fiscal y del abogado defensor, un famoso jurisconsulto venido especialmente desde Roma, la ciudad m\u00e1rmol, a defender a Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, por ser \u00e9ste esposo de una italianita que, adem\u00e1s de compatriota suya, era su hija.\n\nEl pa\u00eds se dividi\u00f3 en dos bandos. Los convencidos de la inocencia del propagandista m\u00e9dico \u2014los diarios todos\u2014 sosten\u00edan que don Sebasti\u00e1n hab\u00eda estado a punto de ser v\u00edctima de su esposa y de su v\u00e1staga, coludidas con el juez ancashino, el curita de Cajatambo y las enfermeras huanuque\u00f1as, sin duda con fines de herencia y lucro. El jurisconsulto romano defendi\u00f3 imperialmente esta tesis asegurando que, advertidos de la demencia apacible de Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, familia y pensionistas se hab\u00edan conjurado para endosarle el crimen (\u00bfo inducirlo tal vez a cometerlo?). Y fue acumulando argumentos que los \u00f3rganos de prensa magnificaban, aplaud\u00edan y consagraban como demostrados: \u00bfalguien en su sano juicio pod\u00eda creer que un hombre recibe catorce y tal vez quince cuchilladas en respetuoso silencio? \u00bfY si, como era l\u00f3gico, don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua hab\u00eda aullado de dolor, alguien en su sano juicio pod\u00eda creer que ni la esposa, ni la hija, ni el juez, ni el cura, ni las enfermeras escucharan esos gritos, siendo las paredes de la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial tabiques de ca\u00f1a y barro que dejaban pasar el zumbido de las moscas y las pisadas de un alacr\u00e1n? \u00bfY c\u00f3mo era posible que, siendo las pensionistas de Hu\u00e1nuco estudiantes de Enfermer\u00eda de notas altas, no hubieran atinado a prestar al herido los primeros auxilios, esperando imp\u00e1vidas, mientras el gentilhombre se desangraba, que llegara la ambulancia? \u00bfY c\u00f3mo era posible que en ninguna de las seis personas adultas, viendo que la ambulancia tardaba, hubiera germinado la idea, elemental incluso para un oligofr\u00e9nico, de buscar un taxi, habiendo un paradero de taxis en la misma esquina de la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial? \u00bfNo era todo eso extra\u00f1o, tortuoso, indicador?\n\nA los tres meses de permanecer retenido en Lima, al curita de Cajatambo, que hab\u00eda venido a la capital s\u00f3lo por cuatro d\u00edas a gestionar un nuevo Cristo para la iglesia de su pueblo porque al anterior los palomillas lo hab\u00edan decapitado a hondazos, convulso ante la perspectiva de ser condenado por intento de homicidio y pasar el resto de sus d\u00edas en la c\u00e1rcel, le estall\u00f3 el coraz\u00f3n y muri\u00f3. Su muerte electriz\u00f3 a la opini\u00f3n y tuvo un efecto devastador para la defensa; los diarios, ahora, volvieron la espalda al jurisconsulto importado, lo acusaron de casu\u00edstico, oper\u00e1tico, colonialista y peregrino, y de haber causado por sus insinuaciones sibilinas y anticristianas la muerte de un buen pastor, y los jueces, docilidad de ca\u00f1averales que bailan con los vientos period\u00edsticos, lo desaforaron por extranjero, lo privaron del derecho de alegar ante los tribunales, y, en un fallo que los diarios celebraron con trinos nacionalistas, lo devolvieron indeseablemente a Italia.\n\nLa muerte del curita cajatambino salv\u00f3 a la madre y a la hija y a los inquilinos de una probable condena por semihomicidio y encubrimiento criminal. Al comp\u00e1s de la prensa y la opini\u00f3n, el fiscal torn\u00f3 a simpatizar con las Bergua y acept\u00f3, como al principio, su versi\u00f3n de los acontecimientos. El nuevo abogado de Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, un jurista nativo, cambi\u00f3 radicalmente de estrategia: reconoci\u00f3 que su defendido hab\u00eda cometido los delitos, pero aleg\u00f3 su irresponsabilidad total, por causa de paropsia y raquitismo an\u00edmicos, combinados con esquizofrenia y otras veleidades en el dominio de la patolog\u00eda mental que destacados psiquiatras corroboraron en amenas deposiciones. All\u00ed se argument\u00f3, como prueba definitiva de desquicio, que el inculpado, entre las cuatro mujeres de la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial, hubiera elegido a la m\u00e1s anciana y la \u00fanica coja. Durante el \u00faltimo alegato del fiscal, cl\u00edmax dram\u00e1tico que diviniza a los actores y escalofr\u00eda al p\u00fablico, don Sebasti\u00e1n, que hasta entonces hab\u00eda permanecido silente y lega\u00f1oso en una silla, como si el juicio no le concerniera, levant\u00f3 despacio una mano y, con los ojos enrojecidos por el esfuerzo, la c\u00f3lera o la humillaci\u00f3n, se\u00f1al\u00f3 fijamente, durante un minuto verificado por cron\u00f3metro (un periodista dixit) a Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn. El gesto fue reputado tan extraordinario como si la estatua ecuestre de Sim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar se hubiera puesto efectivamente a cabalgar... La corte acept\u00f3 todas las tesis del fiscal y Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn fue encerrado en el manicomio.\n\nLa familia Bergua no levant\u00f3 cabeza m\u00e1s. Comenz\u00f3 su desmoronamiento material y moral. Arruinados por cl\u00ednicas y leguleyos, debieron renunciar a las clases de piano (y, por lo tanto, a la ambici\u00f3n de convertir a Rosa en artista mundial) y reducir su nivel de vida a extremos que lindaban con las malas costumbres del ayuno y la suciedad. La vieja casona envejeci\u00f3 a\u00fan m\u00e1s y el polvo fue impregn\u00e1ndola y las telara\u00f1as invadi\u00e9ndola y las polillas comi\u00e9ndola; su clientela disminuy\u00f3 y fue bajando de categor\u00eda hasta llegar a la sirvienta y el cargador. Toc\u00f3 fondo el d\u00eda en que un mendigo vino a golpear la puerta y pregunt\u00f3, terriblemente: \u00ab\u00bfEs aqu\u00ed el Dormidero Colonial?\u00bb.\n\nAs\u00ed, d\u00eda que persigue a d\u00eda, mes que sucede a otro mes, llegaron a pasar treinta a\u00f1os.\n\nLa familia Bergua parec\u00eda ya aclimatada a la mediocridad cuando algo vino, de pronto, bomba at\u00f3mica que una madrugada desintegra ciudades japonesas, a ponerla en efervescencia. Hac\u00eda muchos a\u00f1os que no funcionaba la radio y otros tantos que el presupuesto familiar imped\u00eda comprar peri\u00f3dicos. Las noticias del mundo no llegaban, pues, a los Bergua sino rara vez y de rebote, a trav\u00e9s de comentarios y chismes de sus incultivados hu\u00e9spedes.\n\nPero esa tarde, qu\u00e9 casualidad, un camionero de Castrovirreyna solt\u00f3 una carcajada vulgar con un escupitajo verde, murmur\u00f3 \u00ab\u00a1el chiflado es de rifarlo!\u00bb y tir\u00f3 sobre la ara\u00f1ada mesita de la sala el ejemplar de \u00daltima Hora que acababa de leer. La ex pianista lo recogi\u00f3, lo hoje\u00f3. De repente, palidez de mujer que ha recibido el beso del vampiro, corri\u00f3 al cuarto llamando a voces a su madre. Juntas leyeron y releyeron la estrujada noticia, y luego, a gritos, turn\u00e1ndose, se la leyeron a don Sebasti\u00e1n, quien, sin la menor duda, comprendi\u00f3, pues al instante contrajo una de esas sonoras crisis que lo hac\u00edan hipar, sudar, llorar a gritos y revolverse como un poseso.\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 noticia provocaba semejante alarma en esa familia crepuscular?\n\nEn el amanecer de la v\u00edspera, en un concurrido pabell\u00f3n del Hospital Psiqui\u00e1trico V\u00edctor Larco Herrera, de Magdalena del Mar, un pupilo que hab\u00eda pasado entre esos muros el tiempo de una jubilaci\u00f3n, hab\u00eda degollado a un enfermero con un bistur\u00ed, ahorcado a un anciano catat\u00f3nico que dorm\u00eda en una cama contigua a la suya y huido a la ciudad saltando gimn\u00e1sticamente el muro de la Costanera. Su proceder caus\u00f3 sorpresa porque hab\u00eda sido siempre ejemplarmente pac\u00edfico y jam\u00e1s se le vio un gesto de malhumor ni se le oy\u00f3 levantar la voz. Su \u00fanica ocupaci\u00f3n, en treinta a\u00f1os, hab\u00eda sido oficiar misas imaginarias al Se\u00f1or de Limpias y repartir hostias invisibles a inexistentes comulgantes. Antes de huir del hospital, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn \u2014que acababa de cumplir la edad egregia del hombre: cincuenta a\u00f1os\u2014 hab\u00eda escrito una educada esquela de adi\u00f3s: \u00abLo siento pero no tengo m\u00e1s remedio que salir. Me espera un incendio en una vieja casa de Lima, donde una cojita ardiente como una antorcha y su familia ofenden mortalmente a Dios. He recibido la encomienda de apagar las llamas\u00bb.\n\n\u00bfLo har\u00eda? \u00bfLas apagar\u00eda? \u00bfSe aparecer\u00eda ese resucitado del fondo de los a\u00f1os para, por segunda vez, hundir a los Bergua en el horror as\u00ed como ahora los hab\u00eda hundido en el miedo? \u00bfC\u00f3mo terminar\u00eda la empavorecida familia de Ayacucho?\n\n### XIII\n\nLA MEMORABLE semana comenz\u00f3 con un pintoresco episodio (sin las caracter\u00edsticas violentas del encuentro con los churrasqueros) del que fui testigo y a medias protagonista. Genaro hijo se pasaba la vida haciendo innovaciones en los programas y decidi\u00f3 un d\u00eda que, para agilizar los boletines, deb\u00edamos acompa\u00f1arlos de entrevistas. Nos puso en acci\u00f3n a Pascual y a m\u00ed, y, desde entonces, comenzamos a radiar una entrevista diaria, sobre alg\u00fan tema de actualidad, en El Panamericano de la noche. Signific\u00f3 m\u00e1s trabajo para el Servicio de Informaciones (sin aumento de sueldo) pero no lo lament\u00e9, porque era entretenido. Interrogando en el estudio de la calle Bel\u00e9n o ante una grabadora, a artistas de cabaret y a parlamentarios, a futbolistas y a ni\u00f1os prodigio, aprend\u00ed que todo el mundo, sin excepci\u00f3n, pod\u00eda ser tema de cuento.\n\nAntes del pintoresco episodio, el personaje m\u00e1s curioso que entrevist\u00e9 fue un torero venezolano. Esa temporada en la plaza de Acho hab\u00eda tenido un \u00e9xito descomunal. En su primera corrida cort\u00f3 varias orejas y, en la segunda, despu\u00e9s de una faena milagrosa, le dieron una pata y la muchedumbre lo llev\u00f3 en hombros desde el R\u00edmac hasta su hotel, en la plaza San Mart\u00edn. Pero en su tercera y \u00faltima corrida \u2014las entradas se hab\u00edan revendido, por \u00e9l, a precios astron\u00f3micos\u2014 no lleg\u00f3 a ver los toros, porque, presa de p\u00e1nico cerval, corri\u00f3 de ellos toda la tarde; no les hizo un solo pase digno y los mat\u00f3 a pocos, al extremo de que en el segundo le tocaron cuatro avisos. La bronca en los tendidos fue may\u00fascula: intentaron quemar la plaza de Acho y linchar al venezolano, quien, en medio de gran rechifla y lluvia de cojines, debi\u00f3 ser escoltado hasta su hotel por la Guardia Civil. A la ma\u00f1ana siguiente, horas antes de que tomara el avi\u00f3n, lo entrevist\u00e9 en un saloncito del Hotel Bol\u00edvar. Me dej\u00f3 perplejo comprobar que era menos inteligente que los toros que lidiaba y casi tan incapaz como ellos de expresarse mediante la palabra. No pod\u00eda construir una frase coherente, jam\u00e1s acertaba con los tiempos verbales, su manera de coordinar las ideas hac\u00eda pensar en tumores, en afasia, en hombres mono. La forma era no menos extraordinaria que el fondo: hablaba con un acento infeliz, hecho de diminutivos y ap\u00f3copes, que matizaba, durante sus frecuentes vac\u00edos mentales, con gru\u00f1idos zool\u00f3gicos.\n\nEl mexicano que me toc\u00f3 entrevistar el lunes de la semana memorable era, por el contrario, un hombre l\u00facido y un desenvuelto expositor. Dirig\u00eda una revista, hab\u00eda escrito libros sobre la revoluci\u00f3n mexicana, presid\u00eda una delegaci\u00f3n de economistas y estaba alojado en el Bol\u00edvar. Acept\u00f3 venir a la radio y lo fui a buscar yo mismo. Era un caballero alto y derecho, bien vestido, de cabellos blancos, que deb\u00eda andar por los sesenta. Lo acompa\u00f1\u00f3 su se\u00f1ora, una mujer de ojos vivos, menuda, que llevaba un sombrerito de flores. Entre el hotel y la radio preparamos la entrevista y \u00e9sta qued\u00f3 grabada en quince minutos, ante la alarma de Genaro hijo, porque el economista e historiador, en respuesta a una pregunta, atac\u00f3 duramente a las dictaduras militares (en el Per\u00fa padec\u00edamos una, encabezada por un tal Odr\u00eda).\n\nSucedi\u00f3 cuando acompa\u00f1aba a la pareja de regreso al Bol\u00edvar. Era mediod\u00eda y la calle Bel\u00e9n y la plaza San Mart\u00edn rebalsaban de gente. La se\u00f1ora ocupaba la vereda, su marido el centro y yo iba al lado de la pista. Acab\u00e1bamos de pasar frente a Radio Central, y, por decir algo, le repet\u00eda al hombre importante que la entrevista hab\u00eda quedado magn\u00edfica, cuando fui clar\u00edsimamente interrumpido por la vocecita de la dama mexicana:\n\n\u2014Jes\u00fas, Jes\u00fas, me descompongo...\n\nLa mir\u00e9 y la vi demacrada, abriendo y cerrando los ojos y moviendo la boca de manera rar\u00edsima. Pero lo sorprendente fue la reacci\u00f3n del economista e historiador. Al o\u00edr la advertencia, lanz\u00f3 una mirada veloz a su esposa, y me lanz\u00f3 otra a m\u00ed, con expresi\u00f3n confusa, y, al instante, mir\u00f3 de nuevo al frente, y, en lugar de detenerse, aceler\u00f3 el paso. La dama mexicana qued\u00f3 a mi lado, haciendo muecas. Alcanc\u00e9 a cogerla del brazo cuando se iba a desplomar. Como era tan fr\u00e1gil, felizmente, pude sostenerla y ayudarla, mientras el hombre importante hu\u00eda a trancos y me endosaba la delicada tarea de arrastrar a su mujer. La gente nos abr\u00eda paso, se paraba a mirarnos, y en una de \u00e9sas \u2014est\u00e1bamos a la altura del Cine Col\u00f3n y la damita mexicana, adem\u00e1s de hacer morisquetas, hab\u00eda comenzado a echar babas, mocos y l\u00e1grimas\u2014 o\u00ed que un vendedor de cigarrillos dec\u00eda: \u00abTambi\u00e9n se est\u00e1 meando\u00bb. Era verdad: la esposa del economista e historiador (que hab\u00eda cruzado la Colmena y desaparec\u00eda entre la gente agolpada a las puertas del bar del Bol\u00edvar) iba dejando una estela amarilla detr\u00e1s de nosotros. Al llegar a la esquina, no tuve m\u00e1s remedio que cargarla y avanzar as\u00ed, espectacular y galante, los cincuenta metros que faltaban, entre choferes que bocineaban, polic\u00edas que pitaban y gentes que nos se\u00f1alaban. En mis brazos, la damita mexicana se retorc\u00eda sin cesar, continuaba las muecas, y, en las manos y en la nariz, me parec\u00eda comprobar que, adem\u00e1s de pip\u00ed, se estaba haciendo algo m\u00e1s feo. Su garganta emit\u00eda un ruido atrofiado, intermitente. Al entrar al Bol\u00edvar, o\u00ed que me ordenaban, con sequedad: \u00abHabitaci\u00f3n 301\u00bb. Era el hombre importante: estaba medio escondido, detr\u00e1s de unas cortinas. Apenas me dio la orden, volvi\u00f3 a escapar, a alejarse a paso ligero hacia el ascensor, y, mientras sub\u00edamos, ni una vez se dign\u00f3 mirarme o mirar a su consorte, como si no quisiera parecer impertinente. El ascensorista me ayud\u00f3 a llevar a la dama hasta la habitaci\u00f3n. Pero, apenas la depositamos en la cama, el hombre importante nos empuj\u00f3 literalmente hasta la puerta y, sin decir gracias ni adi\u00f3s, nos la cerr\u00f3 con brutalidad en las narices; ten\u00eda en ese momento una expresi\u00f3n salobre.\n\n\u2014No es un mal marido \u2014me explicar\u00eda despu\u00e9s Pedro Camacho\u2014, sino un tipo sensible y con gran sentido del papel\u00f3n.\n\nEsa tarde yo deb\u00eda leerles a la t\u00eda Julia y a Javier un cuento que acababa de terminar: La t\u00eda Eliana. El Comercio no public\u00f3 nunca la historia de los levitadores y me consol\u00e9 escribiendo otra historia, basada en algo que hab\u00eda ocurrido en mi familia. Eliana era una de las muchas t\u00edas que aparec\u00edan por la casa cuando era ni\u00f1o y yo la prefer\u00eda a las otras porque me tra\u00eda chocolates y algunas veces me llevaba a tomar t\u00e9 al Cream Rica. Su afici\u00f3n a los dulces era motivo de burla en las reuniones de la tribu, donde se dec\u00eda que se gastaba todos sus sueldos de secretaria en los pasteles cremosos, las medialunas crujientes, las tortas esponjosas y el chocolate espeso de La Tiendecita Blanca. Era una gordita cari\u00f1osa, risue\u00f1a y parlanchina, y yo tomaba su defensa cuando en la familia, a sus espaldas, comentaban que se estaba quedando para vestir santos. Un d\u00eda, misteriosamente, la t\u00eda Eliana dej\u00f3 de aparecer por la casa y la familia no volvi\u00f3 a nombrarla. Yo tendr\u00eda entonces seis o siete a\u00f1os y recuerdo haber sentido desconfianza ante las respuestas de los parientes cuando les preguntaba por ella: se ha ido de viaje, estaba enferma, ya vendr\u00eda cualquier d\u00eda de \u00e9stos. Unos cinco a\u00f1os despu\u00e9s, la familia entera, de pronto, se visti\u00f3 de luto, y esa noche, en casa de los abuelos, supe que hab\u00edan asistido al entierro de la t\u00eda Eliana, que acababa de morir de c\u00e1ncer. Entonces se aclar\u00f3 el misterio. La t\u00eda Eliana, cuando parec\u00eda condenada a la solter\u00eda, se hab\u00eda casado intempestivamente con un chino, due\u00f1o de una bodega en Jes\u00fas Mar\u00eda, y la familia, empezando por sus padres, horrorizada ante el esc\u00e1ndalo \u2014entonces cre\u00ed que lo escandaloso era que el marido fuese chino, pero ahora deduzco que su tara principal era ser bodeguero\u2014 hab\u00eda decretado su muerte en vida y no la hab\u00eda visitado ni recibido jam\u00e1s. Pero cuando se muri\u00f3 la perdonaron \u2014\u00e9ramos una familia de gentes sentimentales, en el fondo\u2014, fueron a su velorio y a su entierro, y derramaron muchas l\u00e1grimas por ella.\n\nMi cuento era el mon\u00f3logo de un ni\u00f1o que, tendido en su cama, trataba de descifrar el misterio de la desaparici\u00f3n de su t\u00eda, y, como ep\u00edlogo, el velorio de la protagonista. Era un cuento social, cargado de ira contra los parientes prejuiciosos. Lo hab\u00eda escrito en un par de semanas y les habl\u00e9 tanto de \u00e9l a la t\u00eda Julia y a Javier que se rindieron y me pidieron que se lo leyera. Pero, antes de hacerlo, en la tarde de ese lunes, les cont\u00e9 lo ocurrido con la damita mexicana y el hombre importante. Fue un error que pagu\u00e9 caro, porque esta an\u00e9cdota les pareci\u00f3 mucho m\u00e1s divertida que mi cuento.\n\nSe hab\u00eda hecho una costumbre que la t\u00eda Julia viniera a Panamericana. Hab\u00edamos descubierto que era el sitio m\u00e1s seguro, ya que, de hecho, cont\u00e1bamos con la complicidad de Pascual y el Gran Pablito. Se aparec\u00eda despu\u00e9s de las cinco, hora en que comenzaba un periodo de calma: los Genaros se hab\u00edan ido y casi nadie ven\u00eda a merodear por el altillo. Mis compa\u00f1eros de trabajo, por un acuerdo t\u00e1cito, ped\u00edan permiso para tomar un cafecito, de modo que la t\u00eda Julia y yo pudi\u00e9ramos besarnos y hablar a solas. A veces yo me pon\u00eda a escribir y ella se quedaba leyendo una revista o charlando con Javier, quien, invariablemente, ven\u00eda a juntarse con nosotros a eso de las siete. Hab\u00edamos llegado a formar un grupo inseparable y mis amores con la t\u00eda Julia adquir\u00edan, en ese cuartito de tabiques, una naturalidad maravillosa. Pod\u00edamos estar de la mano o besarnos y a nadie le llamaba la atenci\u00f3n. Eso nos hac\u00eda felices. Franquear hacia adentro los l\u00edmites del altillo era ser libres, due\u00f1os de nuestros actos, pod\u00edamos querernos, hablar de lo que nos importaba y sentirnos rodeados de comprensi\u00f3n. Franquearlos hacia afuera era entrar en un dominio hostil, donde est\u00e1bamos obligados a mentir y a escondernos.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSe puede decir que esto es nuestro nido de amor? \u2014me preguntaba la t\u00eda Julia\u2014 \u00bfO tambi\u00e9n es huachafo?\n\n\u2014Por supuesto que es huachafo y que no se puede decir \u2014le respond\u00eda yo\u2014. Pero podemos ponerle Montmartre.\n\nJug\u00e1bamos al profesor y a la alumna y yo le explicaba lo que era huachafo, lo que no se pod\u00eda decir ni hacer y hab\u00eda establecido una censura inquisitorial en sus lecturas, prohibi\u00e9ndole todos sus autores favoritos, que empezaban por Frank Yerby y terminaban con Cor\u00edn Tellado. Nos divert\u00edamos como locos y a veces Javier interven\u00eda, con una dial\u00e9ctica fogosa, en el juego de la huachafer\u00eda.\n\nA la lectura de La t\u00eda Eliana asistieron tambi\u00e9n, porque estaban all\u00ed y no me atrev\u00ed a echarlos, Pascual y el Gran Pablito, y result\u00f3 una suerte, porque fueron los \u00fanicos que celebraron el cuento, aunque, como eran mis subordinados, su entusiasmo resultaba sospechoso. Javier lo encontr\u00f3 irreal, nadie creer\u00eda que una familia condena al ostracismo a una muchacha por casarse con un chino y me asegur\u00f3 que si el marido era negro o indio la historia pod\u00eda salvarse. La t\u00eda Julia me dio una estocada mortal dici\u00e9ndome que el cuento hab\u00eda salido melodram\u00e1tico y que algunas palabritas, como tr\u00e9mula y sollozante, le hab\u00edan sonado huachafas. Yo comenzaba a defender La t\u00eda Eliana cuando divis\u00e9 en la puerta del altillo a la flaca Nancy. Bastaba verla para saber a qu\u00e9 ven\u00eda:\n\n\u2014Ahora s\u00ed se arm\u00f3 la pelotera en la familia \u2014dijo, de un tir\u00f3n.\n\nPascual y el Gran Pablito, olfateando un buen chisme, adelantaron las cabezas. Contuve a mi prima, ped\u00ed a Pascual que preparara el bolet\u00edn de las nueve, y bajamos a tomar un caf\u00e9. En una mesa del Bransa nos detall\u00f3 la noticia. Hab\u00eda sorprendido, mientras se lavaba la cabeza, una conversaci\u00f3n telef\u00f3nica entre su madre y la t\u00eda Jes\u00fas. Se le hab\u00edan helado las u\u00f1as al o\u00edr hablar de la parejita y descubrir que se trataba de nosotros. No estaba muy claro, pero se hab\u00edan dado cuenta de nuestros amores hac\u00eda ya bastante tiempo, porque, en un momento, la t\u00eda Laura hab\u00eda dicho: \u00abY f\u00edjate que hasta Camunchita los vio una vez de la mano a los muy frescos, en el olivar de San Isidro\u00bb (algo que efectivamente hab\u00edamos hecho, una \u00fanica tarde, hac\u00eda meses). Al salir del ba\u00f1o (con \u00abtembladera\u00bb, dec\u00eda) la flaca Nancy se encontr\u00f3 cara a cara con su madre y hab\u00eda tratado de disimular, los o\u00eddos le zumbaban del ruido del secador de pelo, no pod\u00eda o\u00edr nada, pero la t\u00eda Laura la call\u00f3 y la ri\u00f1\u00f3 y la llam\u00f3 \u00abencubridora de esa perdida\u00bb.\n\n\u2014\u00bfLa perdida soy yo? \u2014pregunt\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia, con m\u00e1s curiosidad que furia.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed, t\u00fa \u2014explic\u00f3 mi prima, poni\u00e9ndose colorada\u2014. Te creen la invencionera de todo esto.\n\n\u2014Es verdad, yo soy menor de edad, viv\u00eda tranquilo estudiando abogac\u00eda, hasta que \u2014dije yo, pero nadie me festej\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Si saben que les he contado, me matan \u2014dijo la flaca Nancy\u2014. No vayan a decir una palabra, j\u00farenlo por Dios.\n\nSus padres le hab\u00edan advertido formalmente que, si comet\u00eda cualquier infidencia, la encerrar\u00edan un a\u00f1o sin salir ni a misa. Le hab\u00edan hablado de manera tan solemne que hasta dud\u00f3 si contarnos. La familia sab\u00eda todo desde el principio y hab\u00eda guardado una actitud discreta pensando que era una tonter\u00eda, el coqueteo intrascendente de una mujer ligera de cascos que quer\u00eda anotar en su prontuario una conquista ex\u00f3tica, un adolescente. Pero como la t\u00eda Julia ya no ten\u00eda escr\u00fapulos en lucirse por calles y plazas con el mocoso y cada vez m\u00e1s gente amiga y m\u00e1s parientes descubr\u00edan estos amores \u2014hasta los abuelitos se hab\u00edan enterado, por un chisme de la t\u00eda Celia\u2014 y esto era una verg\u00fcenza y algo que ten\u00eda que estar perjudicando al flaquito (es decir yo), quien, desde que la divorciada le hab\u00eda llenado la cabeza de p\u00e1jaros, probablemente ya no tendr\u00eda \u00e1nimos ni para estudiar, la familia hab\u00eda decidido intervenir.\n\n\u2014\u00bfY qu\u00e9 van a hacer para salvarme? \u2014pregunt\u00e9, todav\u00eda sin demasiado susto.\n\n\u2014Escribirle a tus pap\u00e1s \u2014me contest\u00f3 la flaca Nancy\u2014. Ya lo hicieron. Los t\u00edos mayores: el t\u00edo Jorge y el t\u00edo Lucho.\n\nMis padres viv\u00edan en Estados Unidos y mi padre era un hombre severo al que yo le ten\u00eda mucho miedo. Me hab\u00eda criado lejos de \u00e9l, con mi madre y mi familia materna, y, cuando mis padres se reconciliaron y fui a vivir con \u00e9l, nos llevamos siempre mal. Era conservador y autoritario, de c\u00f3leras fr\u00edas, y, si era verdad que le hab\u00edan escrito, la noticia le iba a hacer el efecto de una bomba y su reacci\u00f3n ser\u00eda violenta. La t\u00eda Julia me cogi\u00f3 la mano por debajo de la mesa:\n\n\u2014Te has puesto p\u00e1lido, Varguitas. Ahora s\u00ed que tienes tema para un buen cuento.\n\n\u2014Lo mejor es conservar la cabeza en su sitio y el pulso firme \u2014me dio \u00e1nimos Javier\u2014. No te asustes y planeemos una buena estrategia para hacer frente al bolondr\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Contigo tambi\u00e9n est\u00e1n furiosos \u2014le advirti\u00f3 Nancy\u2014. Tambi\u00e9n te creen esa palabrita fea.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAlcahuete? \u2014sonri\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia. Y, volvi\u00e9ndose a m\u00ed, se puso triste\u2014: Lo que me importa es que van a separarnos y no te podr\u00e9 ver nunca m\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014Eso es huachafo y no se puede decir de ese modo \u2014le expliqu\u00e9.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 bien han disimulado \u2014dijo la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Ni mi hermana, ni mi cu\u00f1ado, ninguno de tus parientes me hicieron sospechar que sab\u00edan y que me detestaban. Siempre tan cari\u00f1osos conmigo, esos hip\u00f3critas.\n\n\u2014Por lo pronto, tienen que dejar de verse \u2014dijo Javier\u2014. Que Julita salga con galanes, t\u00fa invita a otras chicas. Que la familia crea que se han peleado.\n\nAlica\u00eddos, la t\u00eda Julia y yo convinimos en que era la \u00fanica soluci\u00f3n. Pero, cuando la flaca Nancy se fue \u2014le juramos que nunca la traicionar\u00edamos\u2014 y Javier parti\u00f3 tras ella y la t\u00eda Julia me acompa\u00f1\u00f3 hasta Panamericana, ambos, sin necesidad de decirlo, mientras baj\u00e1bamos cabizbajos y de la mano por la calle Bel\u00e9n, h\u00fameda de gar\u00faa, sab\u00edamos que esa estrategia pod\u00eda convertir la mentira en verdad. Si no nos ve\u00edamos, si cada uno sal\u00eda por su lado, lo nuestro, tarde o temprano, se terminar\u00eda. Quedamos en hablar por tel\u00e9fono todos los d\u00edas, a horas precisas, y nos despedimos bes\u00e1ndonos largamente en la boca.\n\nEn el tembleque ascensor, mientras sub\u00eda a mi altillo, sent\u00ed, como otras veces, unos inexplicables deseos de contarle mis miserias a Pedro Camacho. Fue como una premonici\u00f3n, pues en la oficina me estaban esperando, enfrascados en una animada conversaci\u00f3n con el Gran Pablito, mientras Pascual insuflaba cat\u00e1strofes al bolet\u00edn (nunca respet\u00f3 mi prohibici\u00f3n de incluir muertos, por supuesto), los principales colaboradores del escriba boliviano: Luciano Pando, Josefina S\u00e1nchez y Bat\u00e1n. Esperaron d\u00f3cilmente que echara una mano a Pascual con las \u00faltimas noticias y cuando \u00e9ste y el Gran Pablito nos dieron las buenas noches, y quedamos los cuatro solos en el altillo, se miraron, inc\u00f3modos, antes de hablar. El asunto, no cab\u00eda duda, era el artista.\n\n\u2014Es usted su mejor amigo y por eso hemos venido \u2014murmur\u00f3 Luciano Pando. Era un hombrecito torcido; sesent\u00f3n, con los ojos disparados en direcciones opuestas, que llevaba invierno y verano, d\u00eda y noche, una bufanda grasienta. S\u00f3lo le conoc\u00eda ese terno marr\u00f3n a rayitas azules que era ya una ruina de tantas lavadas y planchadas. Su zapato derecho ten\u00eda una cicatriz en el empeine por donde asomaba la media\u2014. Se trata de algo delicad\u00edsimo. Ya se puede imaginar...\n\n\u2014La verdad, no, don Luciano \u2014le dije\u2014. \u00bfSe refiere a Pedro Camacho? Bueno, somos amigos, s\u00ed, aunque usted ya sabe, es una persona a quien uno nunca acaba de conocer. \u00bfLe pasa algo?\n\nAsinti\u00f3, pero permaneci\u00f3 mudo, mir\u00e1ndose los zapatos, como si lo abrumara lo que iba a decir. Interrogu\u00e9 con los ojos a su compa\u00f1era, a Bat\u00e1n, que estaban serios e inm\u00f3viles.\n\n\u2014Hacemos esto por cari\u00f1o y agradecimiento \u2014trin\u00f3, con su bell\u00edsima voz de terciopelo, Josefina S\u00e1nchez\u2014. Porque nadie puede saber, joven, lo que debemos a Pedro Camacho quienes trabajamos en este oficio tan mal pagado.\n\n\u2014Siempre fuimos la quinta rueda del coche, nadie daba medio por nosotros, viv\u00edamos tan acomplejados que nos cre\u00edamos una basura \u2014dijo Bat\u00e1n, tan conmovido que me imagin\u00e9 de pronto un accidente\u2014. Gracias a \u00e9l descubrimos nuestro oficio, aprendimos que era art\u00edstico.\n\n\u2014Pero est\u00e1n hablando como si se hubiera muerto \u2014les dije.\n\n\u2014Porque \u00bfqu\u00e9 har\u00eda la gente sin nosotros? \u2014cit\u00f3 Josefina S\u00e1nchez, sin o\u00edrme, a su \u00eddolo\u2014. \u00bfQui\u00e9nes les dan las ilusiones y las emociones que los ayudan a vivir?\n\nEra una mujer a la que le hab\u00edan dado esa hermosa voz para indemnizarla de alg\u00fan modo por la aglomeraci\u00f3n de equivocaciones que era su cuerpo. Resultaba imposible adivinar su edad, aunque ten\u00eda que haber dejado atr\u00e1s el medio siglo. Morena, se oxigenaba los pelos, que sobresal\u00edan, amarillos paja, de un turbante granate y se le chorreaban sobre las orejas, sin llegar desgraciadamente a ocultarlas, pues eran enormes, muy abiertas y como \u00e1vidamente proyectadas sobre los ruidos del mundo. Pero lo m\u00e1s llamativo de ella era su papada, una bolsa de pellejos que ca\u00eda sobre sus blusas multicolores. Ten\u00eda un bozo espeso que hubiera podido llamarse bigote y cultivaba la atroz costumbre de sob\u00e1rselo al hablar. Se fajaba las piernas con unas medias el\u00e1sticas de futbolista, porque sufr\u00eda de v\u00e1rices. En cualquier otro momento, su visita me habr\u00eda llenado de curiosidad. Pero esa noche estaba demasiado preocupado por mis propios problemas.\n\n\u2014Claro que s\u00e9 lo que le deben todos a Pedro Camacho \u2014dije, con impaciencia\u2014. Por algo son sus radioteatros los m\u00e1s populares del pa\u00eds.\n\nLos vi cambiar una mirada, darse \u00e1nimos.\n\n\u2014Precisamente \u2014dijo por fin Luciano Pando, ansioso y apenado\u2014. Al principio, no le dimos importancia. Pensamos que eran descuidos, voladuras que le ocurren a cualquiera. Tanto m\u00e1s a alguien que trabaja de sol a sol.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPero qu\u00e9 es lo que le pasa a Pedro Camacho? \u2014lo interrump\u00ed\u2014. No entiendo nada, don Luciano.\n\n\u2014Los radioteatros, joven \u2014murmur\u00f3 Josefina S\u00e1nchez, como si cometiera un sacrilegio\u2014. Se est\u00e1n volviendo cada vez m\u00e1s raros.\n\n\u2014Los actores y los t\u00e9cnicos nos turnamos para contestar el tel\u00e9fono de Radio Central y hacer de parachoques a las protestas de los oyentes \u2014encaden\u00f3 Bat\u00e1n; ten\u00eda los pelos de puercoesp\u00edn lucientes, como si se hubiera echado brillantina; llevaba, igual que siempre, un overol de cargador y los zapatos sin cordones y parec\u00eda a punto de llorar\u2014. Para que los Genaros no lo boten, se\u00f1or.\n\n\u2014Usted sabe de sobra que \u00e9l no tiene medio y vive tambi\u00e9n a tres dobles y un repique \u2014a\u00f1adi\u00f3 Luciano Pando\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 ser\u00eda de \u00e9l si lo botan? \u00a1Se morir\u00eda de hambre!\n\n\u2014\u00bfY de nosotros? \u2014dijo soberbiamente Josefina S\u00e1nchez\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 ser\u00eda de nosotros, sin \u00e9l?\n\nEmpezaron a disputarse la palabra, a cont\u00e1rmelo todo con lujo de detalles. Las incongruencias (las \u00abmetidas de pata\u00bb dec\u00eda Luciano Pando) hab\u00edan comenzado hac\u00eda cerca de dos meses, pero al principio eran tan insignificantes que probablemente s\u00f3lo los actores las advirtieron. No le hab\u00edan dicho una palabra a Pedro Camacho porque, conociendo su car\u00e1cter, nadie se atrev\u00eda, y, adem\u00e1s, durante un buen tiempo se preguntaron si no eran astucias deliberadas. Pero en las tres \u00faltimas semanas las cosas se hab\u00edan agravado much\u00edsimo.\n\n\u2014Lo cierto es que se han vuelto una mescolanza, joven \u2014dijo Josefina S\u00e1nchez, desolada\u2014. Se enredan unos con otros y nosotros mismos ya no somos capaces de desenredarlos.\n\n\u2014Hip\u00f3lito Lituma siempre fue un sargento, terror del crimen en el Callao, en el radioteatro de las diez \u2014dijo, con la voz demudada, Luciano Pando\u2014. Pero hace tres d\u00edas resulta ser el nombre del juez del de las cuatro. Y el juez se llamaba Pedro Barreda. Por ejemplo.\n\n\u2014Y ahora don Pedro Barreda hab\u00eda de cazar ratas, porque se comieron a su hijita \u2014se le llenaron los ojos de l\u00e1grimas a Josefina S\u00e1nchez\u2014. Y a quien se comieron fue a la de don Federico T\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui.\n\n\u2014Imag\u00ednese los ratos que pasamos en las grabaciones \u2014balbuce\u00f3 Bat\u00e1n\u2014. Diciendo y haciendo cosas que son disparates.\n\n\u2014Y no hay manera de arreglar las confusiones \u2014susurr\u00f3 Josefina S\u00e1nchez\u2014. Porque ya ha visto c\u00f3mo controla el se\u00f1or Camacho los programas. No permite que se cambie ni una coma. Si no, le dan unos colerones terribles.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 cansado, \u00e9sa es la explicaci\u00f3n \u2014dijo Luciano Pando, moviendo la cabeza con pesadumbre\u2014. No se puede trabajar veinte horas diarias sin que a uno se le mezclen las ideas. Necesita unas vacaciones, para volver a ser el que era.\n\n\u2014Usted se lleva bien con los Genaros \u2014dijo Josefina S\u00e1nchez\u2014. \u00bfNo podr\u00eda hablarles? Decirles solamente que est\u00e1 cansado, que le den unas semanitas para reponerse.\n\n\u2014Lo m\u00e1s dif\u00edcil ser\u00e1 convencerlo a \u00e9l que las tome \u2014dijo Luciano Pando\u2014. Pero las cosas no pueden seguir como van. Terminar\u00edan por despedirlo.\n\n\u2014La gente llama todo el tiempo a la radio \u2014dijo Bat\u00e1n\u2014. Hay que hacer milagros para despistarlos. Y el otro d\u00eda ya sali\u00f3 algo en La Cr\u00f3nica.\n\nNo les dije que Genaro pap\u00e1 ya sab\u00eda y que me hab\u00eda encomendado una gesti\u00f3n con Pedro Camacho. Acordamos que yo sondear\u00eda a Genaro hijo, y que, seg\u00fan como fuera su reacci\u00f3n, decidir\u00edamos si era aconsejable que ellos mismos vinieran, en nombre de todos sus compa\u00f1eros, a tornar la defensa del escriba. Les agradec\u00ed la confianza y trat\u00e9 de darles un poco de optimismo: Genaro hijo era m\u00e1s moderno y comprensivo que Genaro pap\u00e1 y seguramente se dejar\u00eda convencer y le dar\u00eda esas vacaciones. Seguimos hablando, mientras apagaba las luces y cerraba el altillo. En la calle Bel\u00e9n nos dimos la mano. Los vi perderse en la calle vac\u00eda, feos y generosos, bajo la gar\u00faa.\n\nEsa noche la pas\u00e9 enteramente desvelado. Como de costumbre, encontr\u00e9 la comida servida y tapada en casa de los abuelos, pero no prob\u00e9 bocado (y para que la abuelita no se inquietara ech\u00e9 el apanado con arroz a la basura). Los viejitos estaban acostados pero despiertos, y, cuando entr\u00e9 a besarlos, los escrut\u00e9 policialmente, tratando de descubrir en sus caras la inquietud por mis amores escandalosos. Nada, ning\u00fan signo: estaban cari\u00f1osos y sol\u00edcitos y el abuelo me pregunt\u00f3 algo para el crucigrama. Pero me dieron la buena noticia: mi mam\u00e1 hab\u00eda escrito que ella y mi pap\u00e1 vendr\u00edan a Lima de vacaciones muy pronto, ya avisar\u00edan la fecha de llegada. No pudieron ense\u00f1arme la carta, se la hab\u00eda llevado alguna t\u00eda. Era el resultado de las cartas delatoras, no hab\u00eda duda. Mi padre habr\u00eda dicho: \u00abNos vamos al Per\u00fa a poner en orden las cosas\u00bb. Y mi madre: \u00ab\u00a1C\u00f3mo ha podido hacer Julia una cosa as\u00ed!\u00bb. (La t\u00eda Julia y ella hab\u00edan sido amigas, cuando mi familia viv\u00eda en Bolivia y yo no ten\u00eda a\u00fan uso de raz\u00f3n.)\n\nDorm\u00eda en un cuartito peque\u00f1o, abarrotado de libros, maletas y ba\u00fales donde los abuelos guardaban sus recuerdos, muchas fotos de su extinta bonanza, cuando ten\u00edan una hacienda de algod\u00f3n en Caman\u00e1, cuando el abuelo hac\u00eda de agricultor pionero en Santa Cruz de la Sierra, cuando era c\u00f3nsul en Cochabamba o prefecto en Piura. Tumbado boca arriba en mi cama, en la oscuridad, pens\u00e9 mucho en la t\u00eda Julia y en que, no hab\u00eda duda, de un modo u otro, tarde o temprano, nos iban efectivamente a separar. Me daba mucha c\u00f3lera y me parec\u00eda todo est\u00fapido y mezquino y, de repente, se me ven\u00eda a la cabeza la imagen de Pedro Camacho. Pensaba en las llamadas telef\u00f3nicas de t\u00edos y t\u00edas y primos y primas, sobre la t\u00eda Julia y sobre m\u00ed, y empezaba a escuchar las llamadas de los oyentes desorientados con esos personajes que cambiaban de nombre y saltaban del radioteatro de las tres al de las cinco, y con esos episodios que se entreveraban como una selva, y hac\u00eda esfuerzos por adivinar lo que ocurr\u00eda en la intrincada cabeza del escriba, pero no me daba risa, y, al contrario, me conmov\u00eda pensar en los actores de Radio Central, conspirando con los t\u00e9cnicos de sonido, las secretarias, los porteros, para atajar las llamadas y salvar de la despedida al artista. Me emocionaba que Luciano Pando, Josefina S\u00e1nchez y Bat\u00e1n hubieran pensado que yo, la quinta rueda del coche, pod\u00eda influir en los Genaros. Qu\u00e9 poca cosa deb\u00edan sentirse, qu\u00e9 miserias deb\u00edan ganar, para que yo les pareciera importante. A ratos ten\u00eda unos deseos incontenibles de ver, tocar, besar en ese mismo instante a la t\u00eda Julia. As\u00ed vi asomar la luz y o\u00ed ladrar a los perros de la madrugada.\n\nEstuve en mi altillo de Panamericana m\u00e1s temprano que de costumbre y, cuando llegaron Pascual y el Gran Pablito, a las ocho, ya ten\u00eda preparados los boletines y le\u00eddos, anotados y cuadriculados (para el plagio) todos los peri\u00f3dicos. Mientras hac\u00eda esas cosas, miraba el reloj. La t\u00eda Julia me llam\u00f3 exactamente a la hora convenida.\n\n\u2014No he pegado los ojos toda la noche \u2014me susurr\u00f3 con una voz que se perd\u00eda\u2014. Te quiero mucho, Varguitas.\n\n\u2014Yo tambi\u00e9n, con toda mi alma \u2014susurr\u00e9, sintiendo indignaci\u00f3n al ver que Pascual y el Gran Pablito se acercaban para o\u00edr mejor\u2014. Tampoco he pegado los ojos, pensando en ti.\n\n\u2014No puedes saber c\u00f3mo han estado de cari\u00f1osos mi hermana y mi cu\u00f1ado \u2014dijo la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Nos quedamos jugando cartas. Me cuesta creer que saben, que est\u00e1n conspirando.\n\n\u2014Pero est\u00e1n \u2014le cont\u00e9\u2014. Mis padres han anunciado que vienen a Lima. La \u00fanica raz\u00f3n es \u00e9sa. Ellos nunca viajan en esta \u00e9poca.\n\nSe call\u00f3 y adivin\u00e9, al otro lado de la l\u00ednea, su expresi\u00f3n, entristecida, furiosa, decepcionada. Le volv\u00ed a decir que la quer\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Te llamo a las cuatro, como quedamos \u2014me dijo al fin\u2014. Estoy en el chino de la esquina y hay una cola esperando. Cha\u00edto.\n\nBaj\u00e9 donde Genaro hijo, pero no estaba. Le dej\u00e9 dicho que ten\u00eda urgencia de hablar con \u00e9l, y, por hacer algo, para llenar de alg\u00fan modo el vac\u00edo que sent\u00eda, fui a la universidad. Me toc\u00f3 una clase de derecho penal, cuyo catedr\u00e1tico me hab\u00eda parecido siempre un personaje de cuento. Perfecta combinaci\u00f3n de satiriasis y coprolalia, miraba a las alumnas como desnud\u00e1ndolas y todo le serv\u00eda de pretexto para decir frases de doble sentido y obscenidades. A una chica, que le respondi\u00f3 bien una pregunta y que ten\u00eda el pecho plano, la felicit\u00f3, regodeando la palabra: \u00abEs usted muy sint\u00e9tica, se\u00f1orita\u00bb, y al comentar un art\u00edculo lanz\u00f3 una perorata sobre enfermedades ven\u00e9reas. En la radio, Genaro hijo me esperaba en su oficina:\n\n\u2014Supongo que no vas a pedirme aumento \u2014me advirti\u00f3 desde la puerta\u2014. Estamos casi en quiebra.\n\n\u2014Quiero hablarte de Pedro Camacho \u2014lo tranquilic\u00e9.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSabes que ha empezado a hacer toda clase de barbaridades? \u2014me dijo, como festejando una travesura\u2014. Cruza tipos de un radioteatro a otro, les cambia nombres, enreda los argumentos y est\u00e1 convirtiendo todas las historias en una. \u00bfNo es genial?\n\n\u2014Bueno, algo he o\u00eddo \u2014le dije, desconcertado por su entusiasmo\u2014. Precisamente, anoche habl\u00e9 con los actores. Est\u00e1n preocupados. Trabaja demasiado, piensan que le puede dar un surmenage. Perder\u00edas a la gallina de los huevos de oro. Por qu\u00e9 no le das unas vacaciones, para que se entone un poco.\n\n\u2014\u00bfVacaciones a Camacho? \u2014se espant\u00f3 el empresario progresista\u2014. \u00bf\u00c9l te ha pedido semejante cosa?\n\nLe dije que no, que era una sugerencia de sus colaboradores.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1n hartos de que los haga trabajar como se pide y quieren librarse de \u00e9l unos d\u00edas \u2014me explic\u00f3\u2014. Ser\u00eda demente darle vacaciones ahora \u2014cogi\u00f3 unos papeles y los blandi\u00f3 con aire triunfante\u2014: Hemos vuelto a batir el r\u00e9cord de sinton\u00eda este mes. O sea que la ocurrencia de cabecear las historias funciona. Mi padre estaba inquieto con esos existencialismos, pero dan resultado, ah\u00ed est\u00e1n los surveys \u2014se volvi\u00f3 a re\u00edr\u2014. Total, mientras al p\u00fablico le guste hay que aguantarle las excentricidades.\n\nNo insist\u00ed, para no meter la pata. Y, despu\u00e9s de todo, \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 no iba a tener raz\u00f3n Genaro hijo? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no pod\u00edan ser esas incongruencias algo perfectamente programado por el escriba boliviano? No ten\u00eda ganas de ir a la casa y decid\u00ed hacer un derroche. Convenc\u00ed al cajero de la radio que me diera un adelanto y, luego de El Panamericano, fui al cub\u00edculo de Pedro Camacho a invitarlo a almorzar. Tecleaba como un desaforado, por supuesto. Acept\u00f3 sin entusiasmo, advirti\u00e9ndome que no ten\u00eda mucho tiempo.\n\nFuimos a un restaurante criollo, a la espalda del Colegio de la Inmaculada en el jir\u00f3n Chancay, donde serv\u00edan unos platos arequipe\u00f1os que, le dije, tal vez le recordar\u00edan los famosos picantes bolivianos. Pero el artista, fiel a su norma frugal, se content\u00f3 con un caldillo de huevos y unos frejoles colados a los que apenas prob\u00f3 la temperatura. No pidi\u00f3 dulce y protest\u00f3, con palabrejas que maravillaron a los mozos, porque no supieron prepararle su compuesto de yerbaluisa y menta.\n\n\u2014Estoy pasando una mala racha \u2014le dije, apenas hubimos ordenado\u2014. Mi familia ha descubierto mis amores con su paisana, y, como es mayor que yo y divorciada, est\u00e1n furiosos. Van a hacer algo para separarnos y eso me tiene amargado.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMi paisana? \u2014se sorprendi\u00f3 el escriba\u2014. \u00bfEst\u00e1 usted en amores con una argentina, perd\u00f3n, boliviana?\n\nLe record\u00e9 que conoc\u00eda a la t\u00eda Julia, que hab\u00edamos estado en su cuarto de La Tapada compartiendo su comida, y que ya antes le hab\u00eda contado mis problemas amorosos y que \u00e9l me recet\u00f3 cur\u00e1rmelos con ciruelas en ayunas y cartas an\u00f3nimas. Lo hice a prop\u00f3sito, insistiendo en los detalles, observ\u00e1ndolo. Me escuchaba muy serio, sin pesta\u00f1ear.\n\n\u2014No est\u00e1 mal tener esas contrariedades \u2014dijo, sorbiendo su primera cucharada de caldo\u2014. El sufrimiento educa.\n\nY cambi\u00f3 de tema. Peror\u00f3 sobre el arte de la cocina y la necesidad de ser sobrio para mantenerse espiritualmente sano. Me asegur\u00f3 que el abuso de grasas, f\u00e9culas y az\u00facares entumec\u00eda los principios morales y hac\u00eda proclives al delito y al vicio a las personas.\n\n\u2014Haga una estad\u00edstica entre sus conocidos \u2014me aconsej\u00f3\u2014. Ver\u00e1 que los perversos se reclutan sobre todo entre los gordos. En cambio, no hay flaco de malas inclinaciones.\n\nA pesar de que hac\u00eda esfuerzos por disimularlo, se sent\u00eda inc\u00f3modo. No hablaba con la naturalidad y convicci\u00f3n de otras veces, sino, era evidente, de la boca para afuera, distra\u00eddo por preocupaciones que quer\u00eda ocultar. En sus ojitos saltones, hab\u00eda una sombra azarosa, un temor, una verg\u00fcenza y de rato en rato se mord\u00eda los labios. Su larga cabellera herv\u00eda de caspa y, en el cuello que le bailaba dentro de la camisa, le descubr\u00ed una medallita que a veces acariciaba con dos dedos. Me explic\u00f3, mostr\u00e1ndomela: \u00abUn caballero muy milagroso: el Se\u00f1or de Limpias\u00bb. Su saquito negro se le resbalaba de los hombros y se lo ve\u00eda p\u00e1lido. Hab\u00eda decidido no mencionar los radioteatros, pero all\u00ed, de pronto, al ver que se hab\u00eda olvidado de la existencia de la t\u00eda Julia y de nuestras conversaciones sobre ella, sent\u00ed una curiosidad malsana. Hab\u00edamos terminado el caldillo de huevos, esper\u00e1bamos el plato fuerte tomando chicha morada.\n\n\u2014Esta ma\u00f1ana estuve hablando con Genaro hijo de usted \u2014le cont\u00e9, en el tono m\u00e1s desenvuelto que pude\u2014. Una buena noticia: seg\u00fan los surveys de las agencias de publicidad, sus radioteatros han vuelto a aumentar de sinton\u00eda. Los oyen hasta las piedras.\n\nAdvert\u00ed que se pon\u00eda r\u00edgido, que desviaba la vista, que comenzaba a enrollar y desenrollar la servilleta, muy de prisa, pesta\u00f1eando seguido. Dud\u00e9 sobre si continuar o cambiar de tema, pero la curiosidad fue m\u00e1s fuerte:\n\n\u2014Genaro hijo cree que el aumento de sinton\u00eda se debe a esa idea de mezclar los personajes de un radioteatro a otro, de enlazar las historias \u2014le dije, viendo que soltaba la servilleta, que me buscaba los ojos, que se pon\u00eda blanco\u2014. Le parece genial.\n\nComo no dec\u00eda nada, s\u00f3lo me miraba, segu\u00ed hablando, sintiendo que se me torc\u00eda la lengua. Habl\u00e9 de la vanguardia, de la experimentaci\u00f3n, cit\u00e9 o invent\u00e9 autores que, le asegur\u00e9, eran la sensaci\u00f3n de Europa porque hac\u00edan innovaciones parecidas a las suyas: cambiar la identidad de los personajes en el curso de la historia, simular incongruencias para mantener suspenso al lector. Hab\u00edan tra\u00eddo los frejoles colados y empec\u00e9 a comer, feliz de poder callarme y bajar los ojos para no seguir viendo el malestar del escriba boliviano. Estuvimos en silencio un buen rato, yo comiendo, \u00e9l revolviendo con su tenedor el pur\u00e9 de frejoles, los granos de arroz.\n\n\u2014Me est\u00e1 pasando algo engorroso \u2014le o\u00ed decir, por fin, en voz bajita, como a s\u00ed mismo\u2014. No llevo bien la cuenta de los libretos, tengo dudas y se deslizan confusiones \u2014me mir\u00f3 con zozobra\u2014. S\u00e9 que es usted un joven leal, un amigo en quien se puede confiar. \u00a1Ni una palabra a los mercaderes!\n\nSimul\u00e9 sorpresa, lo abrum\u00e9 con protestas de afecto. Era otro: atormentado, inseguro, fr\u00e1gil, y con un brillo de sudor en la frente verdosa. Se toc\u00f3 las sienes:\n\n\u2014Esto es un volc\u00e1n de ideas, por supuesto \u2014afirm\u00f3\u2014. Lo traicionero es la memoria. Eso de los nombres, quiero decir. Confidencialmente, mi amigo. Yo no los mezclo, se mezclan. Cuando me doy cuenta, es tarde. Hay que hacer malabares para volverlos adonde corresponde, para explicar sus mudanzas. Una br\u00fajula que confunde el norte con el sur puede ser grave, grave.\n\nLe dije que estaba cansado, nadie pod\u00eda trabajar a ese ritmo sin destruirse, que deb\u00eda tomar unas vacaciones.\n\n\u2014\u00bfVacaciones? S\u00f3lo en la tumba \u2014me repuso, amenazante, como si lo hubiera ofendido.\n\nPero, un momento despu\u00e9s, con humildad, me cont\u00f3 que, al darse cuenta de los olvidos, hab\u00eda intentado hacer un fichero. S\u00f3lo que era imposible, no ten\u00eda tiempo, ni siquiera para consultar los programas radiados: todas sus horas estaban tomadas en la producci\u00f3n de nuevos libretos. \u00abSi paro, el mundo se vendr\u00eda abajo\u00bb, murmur\u00f3. \u00bfY por qu\u00e9 no lo pod\u00edan ayudar sus colaboradores? \u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no acud\u00eda a ellos cuando se presentaban esas dudas?\n\n\u2014Eso jam\u00e1s \u2014me contest\u00f3\u2014. Me perder\u00edan el respeto. Ellos son s\u00f3lo una materia prima, mis soldados, y si meto la pata su obligaci\u00f3n es meterla conmigo.\n\nCort\u00f3 abruptamente el di\u00e1logo para sermonear a los mozos por la infusi\u00f3n, que encontr\u00f3 ins\u00edpida, y luego debimos volver al trote a la radio, porque lo esperaba el radioteatro de las tres. Al despedirnos, le dije que har\u00eda cualquier cosa por ayudarlo.\n\n\u2014Lo \u00fanico que le pido es silencio \u2014me dijo. Y, con su sonrisita helada, a\u00f1adi\u00f3\u2014: No se preocupe: a grandes males, grandes remedios.\n\nEn mi altillo, revis\u00e9 los peri\u00f3dicos de la tarde, se\u00f1al\u00e9 las noticias, concert\u00e9 una entrevista para las seis con un neurocirujano historicista que hab\u00eda cometido una trepanaci\u00f3n de cr\u00e1neo con instrumentos incaicos que le prest\u00f3 el Museo de Antropolog\u00eda. A las tres y media, comenc\u00e9 a mirar el reloj y el tel\u00e9fono, alternativamente. La t\u00eda Julia telefone\u00f3 a las cuatro en punto. Pascual y el Gran Pablito no hab\u00edan llegado.\n\n\u2014Mi hermana me habl\u00f3 a la hora del almuerzo \u2014me dijo, con voz l\u00fagubre\u2014. Que el esc\u00e1ndalo es demasiado grande, que tus pap\u00e1s vienen a sacarme los ojos. Me ha pedido que regrese a Bolivia. \u00bfQu\u00e9 puedo hacer? Tengo que irme, Varguitas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQuieres casarte conmigo? \u2014le pregunt\u00e9.\n\nSe ri\u00f3, con poca alegr\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Te estoy hablando en serio \u2014insist\u00ed.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMe est\u00e1s pidiendo que me case contigo de veras? \u2014volvi\u00f3 a re\u00edrse la t\u00eda Julia, ahora s\u00ed m\u00e1s divertida.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEs s\u00ed o es no? \u2014le dije\u2014. Ap\u00farate, ahorita llegan Pascual y el Gran Pablito.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMe pides eso para demostrarle a tu familia que ya eres grande? \u2014me dijo la t\u00eda Julia, con cari\u00f1o.\n\n\u2014Tambi\u00e9n por eso \u2014reconoc\u00ed.\n\n### XIV\n\nLA HISTORIA del reverendo padre don Seferino Huanca Leyva, ese p\u00e1rroco del muladar que colinda con el futbol\u00edstico barrio de La Victoria y que se llama Mendocita, comenz\u00f3 medio siglo atr\u00e1s, una noche de carnavales, cuando un joven de buena familia, que gustaba darse ba\u00f1os de pueblo, estupr\u00f3 en un callej\u00f3n del Chirimoyo a una jacarandosa lavandera: la Negra Teresita.\n\nCuando \u00e9sta descubri\u00f3 que estaba encinta y como ya ten\u00eda ocho hijos, carec\u00eda de marido y era improbable que, con tantas cr\u00edas, alg\u00fan hombre la llevara al altar, recurri\u00f3 r\u00e1pidamente a los servicios de do\u00f1a Ang\u00e9lica, vieja sabia de la plaza de la Inquisici\u00f3n que oficiaba de comadrona, pero era sobre todo surtidora de hu\u00e9spedes al limbo (en palabras sencillas: abortera). Sin embargo, pese a los ponzo\u00f1osos cocimientos (de orines propios con ratones macerados) que do\u00f1a Ang\u00e9lica hizo beber a la Negra Teresita, el feto del estupro, con terquedad que hac\u00eda presagiar lo que ser\u00eda su car\u00e1cter, se neg\u00f3 a desprenderse de la placenta materna, y all\u00ed sigui\u00f3, enroscado como un tornillo, creciendo y form\u00e1ndose, hasta que, cumplidos nueve meses de los fornicatorios carnavales, la lavandera no tuvo m\u00e1s remedio que parirlo.\n\nLe pusieron Seferino para halagar a su padrino de bautizo, un portero del Congreso que llevaba ese nombre, y los dos apellidos de la madre. En su ni\u00f1ez, nada permiti\u00f3 adivinar que ser\u00eda cura, porque lo que le gustaba no eran las pr\u00e1cticas piadosas sino bailar trompos y volar cometas. Pero siempre, aun antes de saber hablar, demostr\u00f3 ser persona de car\u00e1cter. La lavandera Teresita practicaba una filosof\u00eda de la crianza intuitivamente inspirada en Esparta o Darwin y consist\u00eda en hacer saber a sus hijos que, si ten\u00edan inter\u00e9s en continuar en esta jungla, ten\u00edan que aprender a recibir y dar mordiscos, y que eso de tomar leche y comer era asunto que les concern\u00eda plenamente desde los tres a\u00f1os de edad, porque, lavando ropa diez horas al d\u00eda y reparti\u00e9ndola por todo Lima otras ocho horas, s\u00f3lo lograban subsistir ella y las cr\u00edas que no hab\u00edan cumplido la edad m\u00ednima para bailar con su propio pa\u00f1uelo.\n\nEl hijo del estupro mostr\u00f3 para sobrevivir la misma terquedad que para vivir hab\u00eda demostrado cuando estaba en la barriga: fue capaz de alimentarse tragando todas las porquer\u00edas que recog\u00eda en los tachos de basura y que disputaba a los mendigos y perros. En tanto que sus medio hermanos mor\u00edan como moscas, tuberculosos o intoxicados, o, ni\u00f1os que llegan a adultos aquejados de raquitismo y taras ps\u00edquicas, pasaban la prueba s\u00f3lo a medias, Seferino Huanca Leyva creci\u00f3 sano, fuerte y mentalmente pasable. Cuando la lavandera (\u00bfaquejada de hidrofobia?) ya no pudo trabajar, fue \u00e9l quien la mantuvo, y, m\u00e1s tarde, le coste\u00f3 un entierro de primera en la Casa Guimet que el Chirimoyo celebr\u00f3 como el mejor de la historia del barrio (era ya entonces p\u00e1rroco de Mendocita).\n\nEl muchacho hizo de todo y fue precoz. Al mismo tiempo que a hablar, aprendi\u00f3 a pedir limosna a los transe\u00fantes de la avenida Abancay, poniendo una cara de angelito del fango que volv\u00eda caritativas a las se\u00f1oras de alcurnia. Luego, fue lustrabotas, cuidante de autom\u00f3viles, vendedor de peri\u00f3dicos, de emoliente, de turrones, acomodador en el Estadio y ropavejero. \u00bfQui\u00e9n hubiera dicho que esa criatura de u\u00f1as negras, pies inmundos, cabeza hirviendo de liendres, reparchado y embutido en una chompa con agujeros ser\u00eda, al cabo de los a\u00f1os, el m\u00e1s controvertido curita del Per\u00fa?\n\nFue un misterio que aprendiera a leer, porque nunca pis\u00f3 la escuela. En el Chirimoyo se dec\u00eda que su padrino, el portero del Congreso, le hab\u00eda ense\u00f1ado a deletrear el alfabeto y a formar s\u00edlabas, y que lo dem\u00e1s le vino, muchachos del arroyo que a base de tes\u00f3n llegan al Nobel, por esfuerzo de la voluntad. Seferino Huanca Leyva ten\u00eda doce a\u00f1os y recorr\u00eda la ciudad pidiendo en los palacios ropa inservible y zapatos viejos (que luego vend\u00eda en las barriadas) cuando conoci\u00f3 a la persona que le dar\u00eda los medios de ser santo: una latifundista vasca, Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui, en la que era imposible discernir si era m\u00e1s grande la fortuna o la fe, el tama\u00f1o de sus haciendas o su devoci\u00f3n al Se\u00f1or de Limpias. Sal\u00eda de su morisca residencia de la avenida San Felipe, en Orrantia, y el chofer le abr\u00eda ya la puerta del Cadillac cuando la dama percibi\u00f3, plantado en medio de la calle, junto a su carreta de ropas viejas recogidas esa ma\u00f1ana, al producto del estupro. Su miseria supina, sus ojos inteligentes, sus rasgos de lobezno voluntarioso, le hicieron gracia. Le dijo que ir\u00eda a visitarlo, a la ca\u00edda del sol.\n\nEn el Chirimoyo hubo risas cuando Seferino Huanca Leyva anunci\u00f3 que esa tarde vendr\u00eda a verlo una se\u00f1ora en un carrazo que manejaba un chofer uniformado de azul. Pero cuando, a las seis, el Cadillac fren\u00f3 ante el callej\u00f3n, y do\u00f1a Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui, elegante como una duquesa, ingres\u00f3 en \u00e9l y pregunt\u00f3 por Teresita, todos quedaron convencidos (y estupefactos). Do\u00f1a Mayte, mujeres de negocios que tienen contado hasta el tiempo de la menstruaci\u00f3n, directamente hizo una propuesta a la lavandera que le arranc\u00f3 un alarido de felicidad. Ella costear\u00eda la educaci\u00f3n de Seferino Huanca Leyva y dar\u00eda una gratificaci\u00f3n de diez mil soles a su madre a condici\u00f3n de que el muchacho fuera cura.\n\nFue as\u00ed como el hijo del estupro result\u00f3 pupilo del Seminario Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo, en Magdalena del Mar. A diferencia de otros casos, en los que la vocaci\u00f3n precede la acci\u00f3n, Serefino Huanca Leyva descubri\u00f3 que hab\u00eda nacido para cura despu\u00e9s de ser seminarista. Se volvi\u00f3 un estudiante piadoso y aprovechado, al que mimaban sus maestros y que enorgullec\u00eda a la Negra Teresita y a su protectora. Pero, al mismo tiempo que sus notas en lat\u00edn, teolog\u00eda y patr\u00edstica ascend\u00edan a enhiestas cimas, y que su religiosidad se manifestaba de manera irreprochable en misas o\u00eddas, oraciones dichas y flagelaciones autopropinadas, desde adolescente comenzaron a advertirse en \u00e9l s\u00edntomas de lo que, en el futuro, cuando los grandes debates que sus audacias provocaron, sus defensores llamar\u00edan impaciencias de celo religioso, y sus detractores el mandato delictuoso y mat\u00f3n del Chirimoyo. As\u00ed, por ejemplo, antes de ordenarse, comenz\u00f3 a propagar entre los seminaristas la tesis de que era necesario resucitar las cruzadas, volver a luchar contra Sat\u00e1n no s\u00f3lo con las armas femeninas de la oraci\u00f3n y el sacrificio, sino con las viriles (y, aseguraba, m\u00e1s eficaces) del pu\u00f1o, el cabezazo y, si las circunstancias lo exig\u00edan, la chaveta y la bala.\n\nSus superiores, alarmados, se apresuraron a combatir estas extravagancias, pero ellas, en cambio, fueron calurosamente apoyadas por do\u00f1a Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui, y como la filantr\u00f3pica latifundista subven\u00eda al mantenimiento de un tercio de los seminaristas, aqu\u00e9llos, razones de presupuesto que hacen de tripas coraz\u00f3n, debieron disimular y cerrar ojos y o\u00eddos ante las teor\u00edas de Seferino Huanca Leyva. No eran s\u00f3lo teor\u00edas: las corroboraba la pr\u00e1ctica. No hab\u00eda d\u00eda de salida en que, al anochecer, no volviera el muchacho del Chirimoyo con alg\u00fan ejemplo de lo que llamaba la pr\u00e9dica armada. Era, un d\u00eda, que viendo en las agitadas calles de su barrio c\u00f3mo un marido borracho aporreaba a su mujer, hab\u00eda intervenido rompi\u00e9ndole las canillas a puntapi\u00e9s al abusivo y d\u00e1ndole una conferencia sobre el comportamiento del buen esposo cristiano. Era, otro d\u00eda, que habiendo sorprendido en el \u00f3mnibus de Cinco Esquinas a un carterista biso\u00f1o que pretend\u00eda desplumar a una anciana, lo hab\u00eda desbaratado a cabezazos (llev\u00e1ndolo \u00e9l mismo, luego, a la Asistencia P\u00fablica, a que le suturaran la cara). Era, por fin, un d\u00eda, que habiendo sorprendido, entre las crecidas hierbas del bosque de Matamula, a una pareja que se refocilaba animalmente, los hab\u00eda azotado a ambos hasta la sangre y hecho jurar, de rodillas, so amenaza de nuevas palizas, que ir\u00edan a casarse en el t\u00e9rmino de la distancia. Pero, el broche de oro (para calificarlo de alg\u00fan modo) de Seferino Huanca Leyva, en lo que se refiere a su axioma de \u00abla pureza, como el abecedario, con sangre entra\u00bb, fue el pu\u00f1etazo que descerraj\u00f3, nada menos que en la capilla del seminario, a su tutor y maestro de filosof\u00eda tomista, el manso padre Alberto de Quinteros, quien, en gesto de fraternidad o arrebato solidario, hab\u00eda intentado besarlo en la boca. Hombre sencillo y nada rencoroso (hab\u00eda ingresado al sacerdocio tarde, luego de conquistar fortuna y gloria como psic\u00f3logo con un caso c\u00e9lebre, la curaci\u00f3n de un joven m\u00e9dico que atropell\u00f3 y mat\u00f3 a su propia hija en las afueras de Pisco), el reverendo padre Quinteros, al regresar del hospital donde le soldaron la herida de la boca y le repusieron los tres dientes perdidos, se opuso a que Seferino Huanca Leyva fuera expulsado y \u00e9l mismo, generosidad de los esp\u00edritus grandes que de tanto poner la otra mejilla suben p\u00f3stumamente a los altares, apadrin\u00f3 la misa en la que el hijo del estupro se consagr\u00f3 sacerdote.\n\nPero no s\u00f3lo su convicci\u00f3n de que la Iglesia deb\u00eda combatir el mal pugil\u00edsticamente inquiet\u00f3 a sus superiores cuando Seferino Huanca Leyva era seminarista, sino, m\u00e1s todav\u00eda, su creencia, (\u00bfdesinteresada?) de que, en el vasto repertorio de los pecados mortales, no deb\u00eda figurar de ning\u00fan modo el tocamiento personal. Pese a las reprensiones de sus maestros, que, citas b\u00edblicas y bulas papales numerosas que fulminan a On\u00e1n, pretendieron sacarlo de su error, el hijo de la abortera do\u00f1a Ang\u00e9lica, terco como era desde antes de nacer, soliviantaba nocturnamente a sus compa\u00f1eros asegur\u00e1ndoles que el acto manual hab\u00eda sido concebido por Dios para indemnizar a los eclesi\u00e1sticos por el voto de castidad, y, en todo caso, hacerlo llevadero. El pecado, argumentaba, est\u00e1 en el placer que ofrece la carne de mujer, o (m\u00e1s perversamente) la carne ajena, pero \u00bfpor qu\u00e9 hab\u00eda de estarlo en el humilde, solitario e improductivo desahogo que ofrecen, ayuntados, la fantas\u00eda y los dedos? En una disertaci\u00f3n le\u00edda en la clase del venerable padre Leoncio Zacar\u00edas, Seferino Huanca Leyva lleg\u00f3 a sugerir, interpretando capciosos episodios del Nuevo Testamento, que hab\u00eda razones para no descartar como descabellada la hip\u00f3tesis de que Cristo en persona, alguna vez \u2014\u00bfacaso despu\u00e9s de conocer a Magdalena?\u2014 hubiera combatido masturbatoriamente la tentaci\u00f3n de ser impuro. El padre Zacar\u00edas sufri\u00f3 un soponcio y el protegido de la pianista vasca estuvo a punto de ser expulsado del seminario por blasfemo.\n\nSe arrepinti\u00f3, pidi\u00f3 perd\u00f3n, hizo las penitencias que se le impusieron, y, por un tiempo, dej\u00f3 de propagar esas disparatadas especies que afiebraban a sus maestros y enardec\u00edan a los seminaristas. Pero, en lo que toca a su persona, no dej\u00f3 de ponerlas en pr\u00e1ctica, pues, muy pronto, sus confesores volvieron a o\u00edrlo decir, apenas arrodillado ante los crujientes confesionarios: \u00abEsta semana he sido el enamorado de la reina de Saba, de Dalila y de la esposa de Holofernes\u00bb. Fue este capricho el que le impidi\u00f3 hacer un viaje que hubiera enriquecido su esp\u00edritu. Acababa de ordenarse y, como, pese a sus devaneos heterodoxos, Seferino Huanca Leyva hab\u00eda sido un alumno excepcionalmente aplicado y nadie puso nunca en duda la vibraci\u00f3n de su inteligencia, la jerarqu\u00eda decidi\u00f3 enviarlo a hacer estudios de doctorado en la Universidad Gregoriana de Roma. De inmediato, el flamante sacerdote anunci\u00f3 su prop\u00f3sito de preparar, eruditos que enceguecen consultando los polvosos manuscritos de la Biblioteca Vaticana, una tesis que titular\u00eda Del vicio solitario como ciudadela de la castidad eclesial. Rechazado airadamente su proyecto, renunci\u00f3 al viaje a Roma y fue a sepultarse en el infierno de Mendocita, de donde no saldr\u00eda m\u00e1s.\n\n\u00c9l mismo eligi\u00f3 el barrio cuando supo que todos los sacerdotes de Lima le tem\u00edan como a la peste, no tanto por la concentraci\u00f3n microbiana que hab\u00eda hecho de su jerogl\u00edfica topograf\u00eda de arenosas veredas y casuchas de materiales variopintos \u2014cart\u00f3n, calamina, estera, tabla, trapo y peri\u00f3dico\u2014 un laboratorio de las formas m\u00e1s refinadas de la infecci\u00f3n y la parasitosis, como por la violencia social que imperaba en Mendocita. La barriada, en efecto, era en ese entonces una universidad del delito, en sus especialidades m\u00e1s proletarias: robo por efracci\u00f3n o escalamiento, prostituci\u00f3n, chaveter\u00eda, estafa al menudeo, tr\u00e1fico de pichicata y cafichazgo.\n\nEl padre Seferino Huanca Leyva construy\u00f3 con sus manos, en un par de d\u00edas, una casucha de adobes a la que no le puso puerta, llev\u00f3 all\u00ed un camastro de segunda mano y un colch\u00f3n de paja comprados en la Parada, y anunci\u00f3 que todos los d\u00edas oficiar\u00eda a las siete una misa al aire libre. Hizo saber tambi\u00e9n que confesar\u00eda de lunes a s\u00e1bado, a las mujeres de dos a seis y a los hombres de siete a medianoche, para evitar promiscuidades. Y advirti\u00f3 que, en las ma\u00f1anas, de ocho a dos de la tarde, se propon\u00eda organizar un parvulario donde los chicos del barrio aprender\u00edan el alfabeto, los n\u00fameros y el catecismo. Su entusiasmo se hizo a\u00f1icos contra la dura realidad. Su clientela a las misas madrugadoras fueron apenas un pu\u00f1ado de ancianos y ancianas lega\u00f1osos, de agonizantes reflejos corporales, que, a veces, sin saberlo, practicaban esa imp\u00eda costumbre de las gentes de cierto pa\u00eds (\u00bfconocido por sus vacas y por sus tangos?) de soltar cuescos y hacer sus necesidades con la ropa puesta durante el oficio. Y, en lo que se refiere a la confesi\u00f3n de las tardes y al parvulario de las ma\u00f1anas, no compareci\u00f3 ni un curioso de casualidad.\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 ocurr\u00eda? El curandero del barrio, Jaime Concha, un fornido ex sargento de la Guardia Civil que hab\u00eda colgado el uniforme desde que su instituci\u00f3n le orden\u00f3 ejecutar a balazos a un pobre amarillo llegado como polizonte hasta el Callao desde alg\u00fan puerto de oriente, y dedicado desde entonces con tanto \u00e9xito a la medicina plebeya que ten\u00eda realmente en un pu\u00f1o el coraz\u00f3n de Mendocita, hab\u00eda visto con recelo la llegada de un posible competidor y organizado el boicot de la parroquia.\n\nEnterado de esto por una delatora (la ex bruja de Mendocita, do\u00f1a Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui, una vasca de sangre azul a\u00f1il venida a menos y desalojada como reina y se\u00f1ora del barrio por Jaime Concha), el padre Seferino Huanca Leyva supo, alegr\u00edas que empa\u00f1an la vista y abrasan el pecho, que hab\u00eda llegado por fin el momento propicio para poner en acci\u00f3n su teor\u00eda de la pr\u00e9dica armada. Como un anunciador de circo, recorri\u00f3 las mosqueadas callejuelas diciendo a voz en cuello que ese domingo, a las once de la ma\u00f1ana, en el canch\u00f3n de los partidos de f\u00fatbol, \u00e9l y el curandero averiguar\u00edan, a los pu\u00f1os, qui\u00e9n de los dos era el m\u00e1s macho. Cuando el musculoso Jaime Concha se present\u00f3 a la casucha de adobes a preguntar al padre Seferino si deb\u00eda interpretar eso como un desaf\u00edo a trompearse, el hombre del Chirimoyo se limit\u00f3 a preguntarle a su vez, fr\u00edamente, si prefer\u00eda que las manos, en vez de ir desnudas a la pelea, fueran armadas de chavetas. El ex sargento se alej\u00f3, contorsion\u00e1ndose de risa y explicando a los vecinos que \u00e9l, cuando era guardia civil, acostumbraba matar de un cocacho en el cerebro a los perros bravos que se encontraba por la calle.\n\nLa pelea del sacerdote y el curandero concit\u00f3 una expectativa extraordinaria y no s\u00f3lo Mendocita entera, sino tambi\u00e9n La Victoria, El Porvenir, el Cerro San Cosme y El Agustino vinieron a presenciarla. El padre Seferino se present\u00f3 con pantal\u00f3n y camiseta y se persign\u00f3 antes del combate. \u00c9ste fue corto pero llamativo. El hombre del Chirimoyo era f\u00edsicamente menos potente que el ex guardia civil pero lo superaba en tretas. De arranque le ech\u00f3 un pocot\u00f3n de polvo de aj\u00ed en los ojos que llevaba preparado (despu\u00e9s explicar\u00eda a la hinchada: \u00abEn las trompeaduras criollas todo vale\u00bb), y, cuando el gigant\u00f3n, Goliat deteriorado por el hondazo inteligente de David, comenz\u00f3 a dar traspi\u00e9s, ciego, lo debilit\u00f3 con una andanada de patadas en las partes pudendas hasta que lo vio doblarse. Sin darle tregua, inici\u00f3 entonces un ataque frontal contra su cara, a derechazos y zurdazos, y s\u00f3lo cambi\u00f3 de estilo cuando lo tuvo tumbado sobre la tierra. All\u00ed consum\u00f3 la masacre, pisote\u00e1ndole las costillas y el est\u00f3mago. Jaime Concha, rugiendo de dolor y de verg\u00fcenza, se confes\u00f3 derrotado. Entre aplausos, el padre Seferino Huanca Leyva cay\u00f3 de rodillas y or\u00f3 devotamente, la cara al cielo y las manos en cruz.\n\nEste episodio \u2014que se abri\u00f3 paso hasta las p\u00e1ginas de los peri\u00f3dicos y que incomod\u00f3 al arzobispo\u2014 comenz\u00f3 a ganarle al padre Seferino las simpat\u00edas de sus todav\u00eda potenciales parroquianos. A partir de entonces, las misas matutinas se vieron m\u00e1s concurridas y algunas almas pecadoras, sobre todo femeninas, solicitaron confesi\u00f3n, aunque, por supuesto, esos raros casos no llegaban a ocupar ni la d\u00e9cima parte de los dilatados horarios que \u2014calculando, a ojo, la capacidad pecadora de Mendocita\u2014 hab\u00eda fijado el optimista p\u00e1rroco. Otro hecho bien recibido en el barrio y que le gan\u00f3 nuevos clientes fue su comportamiento con Jaime Concha despu\u00e9s de su humillante derrota. \u00c9l mismo ayud\u00f3 a las vecinas a echarle mercurio cromo y \u00e1rnica, y le hizo saber que no lo expulsaba de Mendocita, y que, por el contrario, generosidad de Napoleones que invitan champa\u00f1a y casan con su hija al general cuyo ej\u00e9rcito acaban de volatilizar, estaba dispuesto a asociarlo a la parroquia en calidad de sacrist\u00e1n. El curandero qued\u00f3 autorizado a seguir proporcionando filtros para la amistad y la enemistad, el mal de ojo y el amor, pero a tarifas moderadas que estipulaba el propio p\u00e1rroco, y s\u00f3lo qued\u00f3 prohibido de ocuparse de cuestiones relativas al alma. Tambi\u00e9n le permiti\u00f3 seguir ejerciendo de huesero, para aquellos vecinos que se luxaban o sent\u00edan, a condici\u00f3n de que no intentara curar a enfermos de otra \u00edndole, los mismos que deb\u00edan ser encaminados al hospital.\n\nLa manera como el padre Seferino Huanca Leyva consigui\u00f3 atraer, moscas que sienten la miel, alcatraces que divisan el pez, hacia su desairado parvulario a los chiquillos de Mendocita, fue poco ortodoxa y le gan\u00f3 la primera advertencia seria de la curia. Hizo saber que, por cada semana de asistencia, los ni\u00f1os recibir\u00edan de regalo una estampita. Este cebo hubiera resultado insuficiente para la desalada concurrencia de desarrapados que motiv\u00f3, si las eufem\u00edsticas estampitas del muchacho del Chirimoyo no hubieran sido, en realidad, im\u00e1genes desvestidas de mujeres que era dif\u00edcil confundir con v\u00edrgenes. A ciertas madres de familia que se mostraron extra\u00f1adas de sus m\u00e9todos pedag\u00f3gicos, el p\u00e1rroco les asegur\u00f3, solemnemente, que, aunque pareciera mentira, las estampitas mantendr\u00edan a sus cachorros lejos de la carne impura y los har\u00edan menos traviesos, m\u00e1s d\u00f3ciles y so\u00f1olientos.\n\nPara conquistar a las ni\u00f1as del barrio se vali\u00f3 de las inclinaciones que hicieron de la mujer la primera pecadora b\u00edblica y de los servicios de Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui, tambi\u00e9n incorporada al plantel de la parroquia en calidad de ayudante. \u00c9sta, sabidur\u00eda que s\u00f3lo veinte a\u00f1os de regencia de lupanares en Tingo Mar\u00eda puede forjar, supo ganarse la simpat\u00eda de las ni\u00f1as d\u00e1ndoles cursos que las divert\u00edan: c\u00f3mo pintarrajearse labios y mejillas y p\u00e1rpados sin necesidad de comprar maquillaje en las boticas, c\u00f3mo fabricar con algod\u00f3n, almohadillas y aun papel peri\u00f3dico, pechos y caderas y nalgas postizas, y c\u00f3mo bailar los bailes de moda: la rumba, la huaracha, el porro y el mambo. Cuando el visitador de la jerarqu\u00eda inspeccion\u00f3 la parroquia y vio, en la secci\u00f3n femenina del parvulario, la aglomeraci\u00f3n de mocosas, turn\u00e1ndose el \u00fanico par de zapatos de taco alto del barrio y contone\u00e1ndose ante la vigilancia magisterial de la ex celestina, se restreg\u00f3 los ojos. Al fin, recuperando el habla, pregunt\u00f3 al padre Seferino si hab\u00eda creado una Academia para Prostitutas.\n\n\u2014La respuesta es s\u00ed \u2014contest\u00f3 el hijo de la Negra Teresita, var\u00f3n que no le tem\u00eda a las palabras\u2014. Ya que no hay m\u00e1s remedio que se dediquen a ese oficio, por lo menos que lo ejerzan con talento.\n\n(Fue por esto que recibi\u00f3 la segunda advertencia seria de la curia.)\n\nPero no es cierto que el padre Seferino, como llegaron a propalar sus detractores, fuera el Gran Cafiche de Mendocita. Era s\u00f3lo un hombre realista, que conoc\u00eda la vida palmo a palmo. No foment\u00f3 la prostituci\u00f3n, trat\u00f3 de adecentarla y libr\u00f3 soberbias batallas para impedir que las mujeres que se ganaban la vida con su cuerpo (todas las de Mendocita entre los doce y sesenta a\u00f1os) contrajeran purgaciones y fueran despojadas por los macr\u00f3s. La erradicaci\u00f3n de la veintena de cafiches del barrio (en algunos casos, su regeneraci\u00f3n) fue una labor heroica, de salubridad social, que gan\u00f3 al padre Seferino varios chavetazos y una felicitaci\u00f3n del alcalde de La Victoria. Emple\u00f3 para ello su filosof\u00eda de la pr\u00e9dica armada. Hizo saber, mediante preg\u00f3n callejero de Jaime Concha, que la ley y la religi\u00f3n prohib\u00edan a los hombres vivir como z\u00e1nganos, a costilla de seres inferiores, y que, en consecuencia, vecino que explotara a las mujeres se topar\u00eda con sus pu\u00f1os. As\u00ed, tuvo que desmandibular al Gran Margarina Pacheco, dejar tuerto al Padrillo, impotente a Pedrito Garrote, idiota al Macho Sampedri y con viol\u00e1ceos hematomas a Cojinoba Huambachano. Durante esa quijotesca campa\u00f1a fue una noche emboscado y cosido a chavetazos; los asaltantes, crey\u00e9ndolo muerto, lo dejaron en el fango, para los perros. Pero la reciedumbre del muchacho darwiniano fue m\u00e1s fuerte que las enmohecidas hojas de cuchillo que lo pincharon, y salv\u00f3, conservando, eso s\u00ed \u2014marcas de fierro en cuerpo y cara de var\u00f3n que damas l\u00fabricas suelen llamar apetitosas\u2014 la media docena de cicatrices que, luego del juicio, mandaron al Hospital Psiqui\u00e1trico, como loco incurable, al jefe de sus agresores, el arequipe\u00f1o de nombre religioso y apellido mar\u00edtimo, Ezequiel Delf\u00edn.\n\nSacrificios y esfuerzos rindieron los frutos esperados y Mendocita, asombrosamente, qued\u00f3 limpio de cafiches. El padre Seferino fue la adoraci\u00f3n de las mujeres del barrio; desde entonces concurrieron masivamente a las misas y se confesaron todas las semanas. Para hacerles menos maligno el oficio que les daba de comer, el padre Seferino invit\u00f3 al barrio a un m\u00e9dico de la Acci\u00f3n Cat\u00f3lica a que les diera consejos de profilaxia sexual y las adoctrinara sobre las maneras pr\u00e1cticas de advertir a tiempo, en el cliente o en s\u00ed mismas, la aparici\u00f3n del gonococo. Para los casos en que las t\u00e9cnicas de control de la natalidad que Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui les inculcaba no dieran resultado, el padre Seferino trasplant\u00f3, desde el Chirimoyo a Mendocita, a una disc\u00edpula de do\u00f1a Ang\u00e9lica, a fin de que despachara oportunamente al limbo a los renacuajos del amor mercenario. La advertencia seria que recibi\u00f3 de la curia, cuando \u00e9sta supo que el p\u00e1rroco auspiciaba el uso de preservativos y pesarios y era un entusiasta del aborto, fue la decimotercera.\n\nLa decimocuarta fue por la llamada Escuela de Oficios que tuvo la audacia de formar. En ella, los experimentados del barrio, en amenas charlas \u2014an\u00e9cdotas van, an\u00e9cdotas vienen bajo las nubes o las casuales estrellas de la noche lime\u00f1a\u2014, ense\u00f1aban a los novatos sin prontuario maneras diversas de ganarse los frejoles. All\u00ed se pod\u00edan aprender, por ejemplo, los ejercicios que hacen de los dedos unos inteligentes y discret\u00edsimos intrusos capaces de deslizarse en la intimidad de cualquier bolsillo, bolso, cartera o malet\u00edn, y de reconocer, entre las heterog\u00e9neas piezas, la presa codiciada. All\u00ed se descubr\u00eda c\u00f3mo, con paciencia artesanal, cualquier alambre es capaz de reemplazar con ventaja a la m\u00e1s barroca llave en la apertura de puertas, y c\u00f3mo se puede encender los motores de las distintas marcas de autom\u00f3viles si uno, por acaso, resulta no ser el propietario. All\u00ed se ense\u00f1aba a arrancar prendas al escape, a pie o en bicicleta, a escalar muros y a desvidriar silenciosamente las ventanas de las casas, a hacer la cirug\u00eda pl\u00e1stica de cualquier objeto que cambiara abruptamente de due\u00f1o y la forma de salir de los varios calabozos de Lima sin autorizaci\u00f3n del comisario. Hasta la fabricaci\u00f3n de chavetas y \u2014\u00bfmurmuraciones de la envidia?\u2014 la destilaci\u00f3n de pasta de pichicata se aprend\u00eda en esa Escuela, que gan\u00f3 al padre Seferino, por fin, la amistad y compadrazgo de los varones de Mendocita, y tambi\u00e9n su primera refriega con la comisar\u00eda de La Victoria, donde fue conducido una noche y amenazado de juicio y c\u00e1rcel por eminencia gris de delitos. Lo salv\u00f3, naturalmente, su influyente protectora.\n\nYa en esta \u00e9poca el padre Seferino se hab\u00eda convertido en una figura popular, de la cual se ocupaban los peri\u00f3dicos, las revistas y las radios. Sus iniciativas eran objeto de pol\u00e9micas. Hab\u00eda quienes lo consideraban un protosanto, un adelantado de esa nueva hornada de sacerdotes que revolucionar\u00edan a la Iglesia, y hab\u00eda quienes estaban convencidos de que era un quintacolumnista de Sat\u00e1n encargado de socavar la Casa de Pedro desde el interior. Mendocita (\u00bfgracias a \u00e9l o por su culpa?) se convirti\u00f3 en una atracci\u00f3n tur\u00edstica: curiosos, beatas, periodistas, snobs se llegaban hasta el antiguo para\u00edso del hampa para ver, tocar, entrevistar o pedir aut\u00f3grafos al padre Seferino. Esta publicidad divid\u00eda a la Iglesia: un sector la consideraba beneficiosa y otro perjudicial para la causa.\n\nCuando el padre Seferino Huanca Leyva, con motivo de una procesi\u00f3n a la gloria del Se\u00f1or de Limpias \u2014culto introducido por \u00e9l en Mendocita y que hab\u00eda prendido como paja seca\u2014, anunci\u00f3 triunfalmente que, en la parroquia, no hab\u00eda un solo ni\u00f1o vivo, incluidos los nacidos en las \u00faltimas diez horas, que no estuviera bautizado, un sentimiento de orgullo se apoder\u00f3 de los creyentes, y la jerarqu\u00eda, por una vez, entre tantas admoniciones, le envi\u00f3 unas palabras de felicitaci\u00f3n.\n\nPero, en cambio, origin\u00f3 un esc\u00e1ndalo el d\u00eda que, con motivo de la fiesta de la patrona de Lima, santa Rosa, hizo saber al mundo, en una pr\u00e9dica al aire libre desde el canch\u00f3n de Mendocita, que, dentro de los l\u00edmites polvorientos de su ministerio, no hab\u00eda pareja cuya uni\u00f3n no hubiera sido santificada ante Dios y el altar de la casucha de adobes. Pasmados, pues sab\u00edan muy bien que en el ex imperio de los incas la m\u00e1s s\u00f3lida y acatada instituci\u00f3n \u2014excluidos la Iglesia y el Ej\u00e9rcito\u2014 era la manceb\u00eda, los prelados de la Iglesia peruana vinieron (\u00bfarrastrando los pies?) a comprobar personalmente la haza\u00f1a. Lo que se encontraron, curioseando en las promiscuas viviendas de Mendocita, los dej\u00f3 aterrados y con un regusto de escarnio sacramental en la boca. Las explicaciones del padre Seferino les resultaron abstrusas y arg\u00f3ticas (el muchacho del Chirimoyo, luego de tantos a\u00f1os de barriada, hab\u00eda olvidado el castizo castellano del seminario y contra\u00eddo todos los barbarismos e idiotismos de la replana mendocita) y fue el ex curandero y ex guardia civil, Lituma, quien les explic\u00f3 el sistema empleado para abolir el concubinato. Era sacr\u00edlegamente simple. Consist\u00eda en cristianizar, ante los evangelios, a toda pareja constituida o por constituir. \u00c9stas, al primer refocilo, acud\u00edan presurosas a casarse como Dios manda, ante su querido p\u00e1rroco, y el padre Seferino, sin molestarlos con preguntas impertinentes, les confer\u00eda el sacramento. Y como, de este modo, muchos vecinos resultaron casados varias veces sin haber previamente enviudado \u2014aeron\u00e1utica velocidad con que las parejas del barrio se deshac\u00edan, barajaban y rehac\u00edan\u2014, el padre Seferino recompon\u00eda los estragos que esto causaba, en el dominio del pecado, con la purificadora confesi\u00f3n. (\u00c9l lo hab\u00eda explicado con un refr\u00e1n que, adem\u00e1s de her\u00e9tico, resultaba vulgar: \u00abUn chupo tapa otro chupo\u00bb.) Desautorizado, reprendido, poco menos que abofeteado por el arzobispo, el padre Seferino Huanca Leyva festej\u00f3 con este motivo una longeva efem\u00e9rides: la advertencia seria n\u00famero cien.\n\nAs\u00ed, entre temerarias iniciativas y publicitadas reprimendas, objeto de pol\u00e9micas, amado por unos y vilipendiado por otros, lleg\u00f3 el padre Seferino Huanca Leyva a la flor de la edad: los cincuenta a\u00f1os. Era un hombre de frente ancha, nariz aguile\u00f1a, mirada penetrante y rectitud y bondad en el esp\u00edritu, al que su convicci\u00f3n, desde los aurorales d\u00edas de seminarista, de que el amor imaginario no era pecado y s\u00ed un poderoso guardaespaldas para la castidad, hab\u00eda mantenido efectivamente puro, cuando hizo su llegada al barrio de Mendocita, serpiente del para\u00edso que adopta las formas voluptuosas, ub\u00e9rrimas, llenas de brillos lujuriantes de la hembra, una pervertida que se llamaba Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui y que se hac\u00eda pasar por trabajadora social (en verdad era, \u00bfmujer al fin y al cabo?, meretriz).\n\nDec\u00eda haber trabajado abnegadamente en las selvas de Tingo Mar\u00eda, sacando par\u00e1sitos de las barrigas de los nativos, y haber huido de all\u00ed, muy contrariada, debido a que una pandilla de ratas carn\u00edvoras devoraron a su hijo. Era de sangre vasca y, por lo tanto, aristocr\u00e1tica. Pese a que sus horizontes turgentes y su andar de gelatina debieron alertarlo sobre el peligro, el padre Seferino Huanca Leyva cometi\u00f3, atracci\u00f3n del abismo que ha visto sucumbir monol\u00edticas virtudes, la insensatez de aceptarla como ayudante, creyendo que, como ella dec\u00eda, su designio era salvar almas y matar par\u00e1sitos. En realidad, quer\u00eda hacerlo pecar. Puso en pr\u00e1ctica su programa, vini\u00e9ndose a vivir a la casucha de adobes, en un camastro separado de \u00e9l por una rid\u00edcula cortinilla que para colmo era trasl\u00facida. En las noches, a la luz de un vel\u00f3n, la tentadora, con el pretexto de que as\u00ed dorm\u00eda mejor y conservaba el organismo sano, hac\u00eda ejercicios. \u00bfPero, se pod\u00eda llamar gimnasia sueca a esa danza de har\u00e9n miliunanochesco que, en el sitio, bamboleando las caderas, estremeciendo los hombros, agitando las piernas y revelando los brazos, realizaba la vasca, y que percib\u00eda, a trav\u00e9s de la cortinilla iluminada por los reflejos del vel\u00f3n, como un desquiciador espect\u00e1culo de sombras chinescas, el jadeante eclesi\u00e1stico? Y, m\u00e1s tarde, ya silenciadas por el sue\u00f1o las gentes de Mendocita, Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui ten\u00eda la insolencia de inquirir con voz meliflua, al escuchar los crujidos del camastro vecino: \u00ab\u00bfEst\u00e1 usted desvelado, padrecito?\u00bb.\n\nEs verdad que, para disimular, la bella corruptora trabajaba doce horas diarias, poniendo vacunas y curando sarnas, desinfectando cuchitriles y asoleando ancianos. Pero lo hac\u00eda en shorts, piernas y hombros y brazos y cintura al aire, alegando que en la selva se hab\u00eda acostumbrado a andar as\u00ed. El padre Seferino continuaba desplegando su creativo ministerio, pero enflaquec\u00eda a ojos vistas, ten\u00eda ojeras, la mirada se le iba todo el tiempo en busca de Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui y, al verla pasar, se le abr\u00eda la boca y un hilillo de saliva venial le mojaba los labios. En esta \u00e9poca adquiri\u00f3 la costumbre de andar d\u00eda y noche con las manos en los bolsillos, y su sacristana, la ex abortera do\u00f1a Ang\u00e9lica, profetizaba que en cualquier momento comenzar\u00eda a escupir la sangre del tuberculoso.\n\n\u00bfSucumbir\u00eda el pastor a las malas artes de la trabajadora social, o sus debilitantes ant\u00eddotos le permitir\u00edan resistir? \u00bfLo llevar\u00edan \u00e9stos al manicomio, a la tumba? Con esp\u00edritu deportivo, los feligreses de Mendocita segu\u00edan esta lucha y comenzaron a cruzar apuestas, en las que se fijaban plazos perentorios y se barajaban al\u00e9rgicas opciones: la vasca quedar\u00eda embarazada de simiente de cura, el hombre del Chirimoyo la matar\u00eda para matar la tentaci\u00f3n, o colgar\u00eda los h\u00e1bitos y se casar\u00eda con ella. La vida, por supuesto, se encarg\u00f3 de derrotar a todo el mundo con una carta marcada.\n\nEl padre Seferino, con el argumento de que hab\u00eda que volver a la Iglesia de los primeros tiempos, a la pura y sencilla Iglesia de los evangelios, cuando todos los creyentes viv\u00edan juntos y compart\u00edan sus bienes, inici\u00f3 en\u00e9rgicamente una campa\u00f1a para restablecer en Mendocita \u2014verdadero laboratorio de experimentaci\u00f3n cristiana\u2014 la vida comunal. Las parejas deb\u00edan disolverse en colectividades de quince o veinte miembros, que se distribuir\u00edan el trabajo, la manutenci\u00f3n y las obligaciones dom\u00e9sticas, y vivir\u00edan juntos en casas adaptadas para albergar estas nuevas c\u00e9lulas de la vida social que reemplazar\u00edan a la pareja cl\u00e1sica. El padre Seferino dio el ejemplo, ampliando su casucha e instalando en ella, adem\u00e1s de la trabajadora social, a sus dos sacristanes: el ex sargento Lituma y la ex abortera do\u00f1a Ang\u00e9lica. Esta microcomuna fue la primera de Mendocita, a ejemplo de la cual deb\u00edan irse constituyendo las otras.\n\nEl padre Seferino estipul\u00f3 que, dentro de cada comuna cat\u00f3lica, existiera la m\u00e1s democr\u00e1tica igualdad entre los miembros de un mismo sexo. Los varones entre ellos y las mujeres entre ellas deb\u00edan tutearse, pero, para que no se olvidaran las diferencias de musculatura, inteligencia y sentido com\u00fan establecidas por Dios, aconsej\u00f3 que las hembras hablasen de usted a los machos y procuraran no mirarlos a los ojos en se\u00f1al de respeto. Las tareas de cocinar, barrer, traer agua del ca\u00f1o, matar cucarachas y pericotes, lavar ropa y dem\u00e1s actividades dom\u00e9sticas se asum\u00edan rotativamente y el dinero ganado \u2014de buena o mala manera\u2014 por cada miembro deb\u00eda ser \u00edntegramente cedido a la comunidad, la que, a su vez, lo redistribu\u00eda a partes iguales luego de atender los gastos comunes. Las viviendas carec\u00edan de paredes, para abolir el h\u00e1bito pecaminoso del secreto, y todos los quehaceres de la vida, desde la evacuaci\u00f3n del intestino hasta el \u00f3sculo sexual, deb\u00edan hacerse a la vista de los otros.\n\nAntes de que la polic\u00eda y el ej\u00e9rcito invadieran Mendocita, con un cinematogr\u00e1fico despliegue de carabinas, m\u00e1scaras antigases y bazukas e hicieran esa redada que tuvo encerrados muchos d\u00edas a los hombres y mujeres del barrio en los cuarteles, no por lo que en realidad eran o hab\u00edan sido (ladrones, chaveteros, meretrices) sino por subversivos y disolventes, y el padre Seferino fuera llevado ante un tribunal militar acusado de establecer, al amparo de la sotana, una cabecera de puente para el comunismo (fue absuelto gracias a gestiones de su protectora, la millonaria Mayte Unz\u00e1tegui), el experimento de las arcaicas comunas cristianas estaba ya condenado.\n\nCondenado por la curia, desde luego (advertencia seria doscientas treinta y tres), que lo encontr\u00f3 sospechoso como teor\u00eda e insensato como pr\u00e1ctica (los hechos, ay, le dieron la raz\u00f3n), pero, sobre todo, por la naturaleza de los hombres y mujeres de Mendocita claramente al\u00e9rgica al colectivismo. El problema n\u00famero uno fueron los tr\u00e1ficos sexuales. Al est\u00edmulo de la oscuridad, en los dormitorios colectivos, de colch\u00f3n a colch\u00f3n, se produc\u00edan los m\u00e1s ardientes tocamientos, roces seminales, frotaciones, o, directamente, estupros, sodom\u00edas, embarazos, y, en consecuencia, se multiplicaron los cr\u00edmenes por celos. El problema n\u00famero dos fueron los robos: la convivencia, en vez de abolir el apetito de propiedad, lo exacerb\u00f3 hasta la locura. Los vecinos se robaban unos a otros hasta el vaho p\u00fatrido que respiraban. La cohabitaci\u00f3n, en lugar de hermanar a las gentes de Mendocita, las enemist\u00f3 a muerte. Fue en este periodo de behetr\u00eda y desquiciamiento, que la trabajadora social (\u00bfMayte Unz\u00e1tegui?) declar\u00f3 estar encinta y el ex sargento Lituma admiti\u00f3 ser el padre de la criatura. Con l\u00e1grimas en los ojos, el padre Seferino cristianiz\u00f3 esa uni\u00f3n forjada a causa de sus invenciones sociocat\u00f3licas. (Dicen que desde entonces acostumbra sollozar en las noches cantando eleg\u00edas a la luna.)\n\nPero, casi inmediatamente despu\u00e9s, debi\u00f3 hacer frente a una cat\u00e1strofe peor que la de haber perdido a esa vasca que nunca lleg\u00f3 a poseer: la llegada a Mendocita de un competidor de marca, el pastor evangelista don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua. Era \u00e9ste un hombre todav\u00eda joven, de aspecto deportivo y fuertes b\u00edceps, que, nada m\u00e1s llegar, hizo saber que se propon\u00eda, en un plazo de seis meses, ganar para la verdadera religi\u00f3n \u2014la reformada\u2014 a todo Mendocita, incluido el p\u00e1rroco cat\u00f3lico y sus tres ac\u00f3litos. Don Sebasti\u00e1n (que hab\u00eda sido, antes de pastor, \u00bfun ginec\u00f3logo atiborrado de millones?) ten\u00eda medios para impresionar a los vecinos: se construy\u00f3 para \u00e9l una casita de ladrillos, dando trabajo regiamente pagado a la gente del barrio, e inici\u00f3 los llamados desayunos religiosos a los que gratuitamente convidaba a quienes asistieran a sus pl\u00e1ticas sobre la Biblia y memorizaran ciertos cantos. Los mendocitas, seducidos por su elocuencia y voz de bar\u00edtono o por el caf\u00e9 con leche y el pan con chicharr\u00f3n que la acompa\u00f1aba, comenzaron a desertar los adobes cat\u00f3licos por los ladrillos evangelistas.\n\nEl padre Seferino recurri\u00f3, naturalmente, a la pr\u00e9dica armada. Ret\u00f3 a don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua a probar a pu\u00f1etazos qui\u00e9n era el verdadero ministro de Dios. Debilitado por la sobrepr\u00e1ctica del ejercicio de On\u00e1n que le hab\u00eda permitido resistir las provocaciones del demonio, el hombre del Chirimoyo cay\u00f3 noqueado al segundo pu\u00f1etazo de don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua, que, durante veinte a\u00f1os, hab\u00eda hecho, una hora diaria, calistenia y boxeo (\u00bfen el Gimnasio Remigius de San Isidro?). No fue perder dos incisivos y quedar con la nariz achatada lo que desesper\u00f3 al padre Seferino, sino la humillaci\u00f3n de ser derrotado con sus propias armas y notar que, cada d\u00eda, perd\u00eda m\u00e1s feligreses ante su adversario.\n\nPero, temerarios que crecen ante el peligro y practican lo de a gran mal peor remedio, un d\u00eda, misteriosamente, el hombre del Chirimoyo trajo a su casucha de adobes unas latas llenas de un l\u00edquido que ocult\u00f3 a las miradas de los curiosos (pero que cualquier olfato sensible hubiera reconocido como kerosene). Esa noche, cuando todos dorm\u00edan, acompa\u00f1ado por su fiel Lituma, tapi\u00f3 desde afuera, con gruesas tablas y clavos obesos, las puertas y ventanas de la casa de ladrillos. Don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua dorm\u00eda el sue\u00f1o de los justos, fantaseando en torno de un sobrino incestuoso que, arrepentido de haber afrentado a su hermana, terminaba de cura papista en una barriada de Lima: \u00bfMendocita? No pod\u00eda o\u00edr los martillazos de Lituma que convert\u00edan el templo evangelista en ratonera, porque la ex comadrona do\u00f1a Ang\u00e9lica, por \u00f3rdenes del padre Serafino, le hab\u00eda dado una p\u00f3cima espesa y anest\u00e9sica. Cuando la misi\u00f3n estuvo tapiada, el hombre del Chirimoyo en persona la roci\u00f3 con kerosene. Luego, persign\u00e1ndose, encendi\u00f3 un f\u00f3sforo y se dispuso a arrojarlo. Pero, algo lo hizo vacilar. El ex sargento Lituma, la trabajadora social, la ex abortera, los perros de Mendocita, lo vieron, largo y flaco bajo las estrellas, los ojos atormentados, con un f\u00f3sforo entre los dedos, dudando sobre si achicharrar\u00eda a su enemigo.\n\n\u00bfLo har\u00eda? \u00bfLanzar\u00eda el f\u00f3sforo? \u00bfConvertir\u00eda el padre Seferino Huanca Leyva la noche de Mendocita en crepitante infierno? \u00bfArruinar\u00eda as\u00ed una vida entera consagrada a la religi\u00f3n y el bien com\u00fan? \u00bfO, pisoteando la llamita que le quemaba las u\u00f1as, abrir\u00eda la puerta de la casa de ladrillos para, de rodillas, implorar perd\u00f3n al pastor evangelista? \u00bfC\u00f3mo terminar\u00eda esta par\u00e1bola de la barriada?\n\n### XV\n\nLA PRIMERA persona a la que habl\u00e9 de mi propuesta de matrimonio a la t\u00eda Julia no fue Javier sino mi prima Nancy. La llam\u00e9, luego de la conversaci\u00f3n telef\u00f3nica con la t\u00eda Julia, y le propuse que fu\u00e9ramos al cine. En realidad fuimos a El Patio, un caf\u00e9 bar de la calle San Mart\u00edn, en Miraflores, donde sol\u00edan reunirse los luchadores que Max Aguirre, el promotor del Luna Park, tra\u00eda a Lima. El local \u2014una casita de un piso, concebida como vivienda de clase media, a la que las funciones de bar notoriamente irritaban\u2014 estaba vac\u00edo, y pudimos conversar tranquilos, mientras yo tomaba la d\u00e9cima taza de caf\u00e9 del d\u00eda y la flaca Nancy una Coca-Cola.\n\nApenas nos sentamos, comenc\u00e9 a maquinar en qu\u00e9 forma pod\u00eda dorarle la noticia. Pero fue ella la que se adelant\u00f3 a darme novedades. La v\u00edspera hab\u00eda habido una reuni\u00f3n en casa de la t\u00eda Hortensia, a la que hab\u00edan concurrido una docena de parientes, para tratar el asunto. All\u00ed se hab\u00eda decidido que el t\u00edo Lucho y la t\u00eda Olga le pidieran a la t\u00eda Julia regresar a Bolivia.\n\n\u2014Lo han hecho por ti \u2014me explic\u00f3 la flaca Nancy\u2014. Parece que tu pap\u00e1 est\u00e1 hecho una fiera y ha escrito una carta terrible.\n\nLos t\u00edos Jorge y Lucho, que me quer\u00edan tanto, estaban ahora inquietos por el castigo que pod\u00eda infligirme. Pensaban que, si la t\u00eda Julia hab\u00eda ya partido cuando \u00e9l llegara a Lima, se aplacar\u00eda y no ser\u00eda tan severo.\n\n\u2014La verdad es que ahora esas cosas no tienen importancia \u2014le dije, con suficiencia\u2014. Porque le he pedido a la t\u00eda Julia que se case conmigo.\n\nSu reacci\u00f3n fue llamativa y caricatural, le ocurri\u00f3 algo de pel\u00edcula. Estaba tomando un trago de Coca-Cola y se ator\u00f3. Le vino un acceso de tos francamente ofensivo y se le llenaron los ojos de l\u00e1grimas.\n\n\u2014D\u00e9jate de payasadas, pedazo de tonta \u2014la re\u00f1\u00ed, muy enojado\u2014. Necesito que me ayudes.\n\n\u2014No me ator\u00e9 por eso sino porque el l\u00edquido se me fue por otro lado \u2014balbuce\u00f3 mi prima, sec\u00e1ndose los ojos y todav\u00eda carraspeando. Y, unos segundos despu\u00e9s, bajando la voz, a\u00f1adi\u00f3\u2014: Pero si eres un bebe. \u00bfAcaso tienes plata para casarte? \u00bfY tu pap\u00e1? \u00a1Te va a matar!\n\nPero, instant\u00e1neamente, ganada por su terrible curiosidad, me acribill\u00f3 a preguntas sobre detalles en los que yo no hab\u00eda tenido tiempo de pensar: \u00bfLa Julita hab\u00eda aceptado? \u00bf\u00cdbamos a escaparnos? \u00bfQui\u00e9nes iban a ser los testigos? \u00bfNo pod\u00edamos casarnos por la Iglesia porque ella era divorciada, no es cierto? \u00bfD\u00f3nde \u00edbamos a vivir?\n\n\u2014Pero, Marito \u2014repiti\u00f3 al final de su cascada de preguntas, asombr\u00e1ndose de nuevo\u2014. \u00bfNo te das cuenta que tienes dieciocho a\u00f1os?\n\nSe ech\u00f3 a re\u00edr y yo tambi\u00e9n me ech\u00e9 a re\u00edr. Le dije que tal vez ten\u00eda raz\u00f3n, pero que ahora se trataba de que me ayudara a poner ese proyecto en pr\u00e1ctica. Nos hab\u00edamos criado juntos y revueltos, nos quer\u00edamos mucho, y yo sab\u00eda que en cualquier caso estar\u00eda de mi lado.\n\n\u2014Claro que si me lo pides te voy a ayudar, aunque sea a hacer locuras y aunque me maten contigo \u2014me dijo al fin\u2014. A prop\u00f3sito, \u00bfhas pensado en la reacci\u00f3n de la familia si de verdad te casas?\n\nDe muy buen humor, estuvimos un rato jugando a qu\u00e9 dir\u00edan y qu\u00e9 har\u00edan los t\u00edos y las t\u00edas, los primos y las primas cuando se enfrentaran a la noticia. La t\u00eda Hortensia llorar\u00eda, la t\u00eda Jes\u00fas ir\u00eda a la iglesia, el t\u00edo Javier pronunciar\u00eda su cl\u00e1sica exclamaci\u00f3n (\u00a1Qu\u00e9 desverg\u00fcenza!), y el benjam\u00edn de los primos, Jaimito, que ten\u00eda tres a\u00f1os y ceceaba, preguntar\u00eda qu\u00e9 era casarse, mam\u00e1. Terminamos ri\u00e9ndonos a carcajadas, con una risa nerviosa que hizo venir a los mozos a averiguar cu\u00e1l era el chiste. Cuando nos calmamos, la flaca Nancy hab\u00eda aceptado ser nuestra esp\u00eda, comunicarnos todos los movimientos e intrigas de la familia. Yo no sab\u00eda cu\u00e1ntos d\u00edas me tomar\u00edan los preparativos y necesitaba estar al tanto de qu\u00e9 tramaban los parientes. De otro lado, har\u00eda de mensajera con la t\u00eda Julia y, de tanto en tanto, la sacar\u00eda a la calle para que yo pudiera verla.\n\n\u2014Okey, okey \u2014asinti\u00f3 Nancy\u2014. Ser\u00e9 la madrina. Eso s\u00ed, si alg\u00fan d\u00eda me hace falta, espero que se porten igualito.\n\nCuando est\u00e1bamos ya en la calle, caminando hacia su casa, mi prima se toc\u00f3 la cabeza:\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 suerte tienes \u2014se acord\u00f3\u2014. Te puedo conseguir justo lo que te hace falta. Un departamento en una quinta de la calle Porta. Un solo cuarto, su cocinita y su ba\u00f1o, lind\u00edsimo, de juguete. Y apenas quinientos al mes.\n\nSe hab\u00eda desocupado hac\u00eda unos d\u00edas y una amiga suya lo estaba alquilando; ella le pod\u00eda hablar. Qued\u00e9 maravillado con el sentido pr\u00e1ctico de mi prima, capaz de pensar en ese momento en el problema terrestre de la vivienda en tanto que yo andaba extraviado en la estratosfera rom\u00e1ntica del problema. Por lo dem\u00e1s, quinientos soles estaban a mi alcance. Ahora s\u00f3lo necesitaba ganar m\u00e1s dinero \u00abpara los lujos\u00bb (como dec\u00eda el abuelito). Sin pensarlo dos veces, le ped\u00ed que le dijera a su amiga que le ten\u00eda un inquilino.\n\nDespu\u00e9s de dejar a Nancy, corr\u00ed a la pensi\u00f3n de Javier en la avenida 28 de Julio, pero la casa estaba a oscuras y no me atrev\u00ed a despertar a la due\u00f1a, que era malhumorada. Sent\u00ed una gran frustraci\u00f3n, pues ten\u00eda necesidad de contarle a mi mejor amigo mi gran proyecto y escuchar sus consejos. Esa noche dorm\u00ed un sue\u00f1o sobresaltado de pesadillas. Tom\u00e9 desayuno al alba, con el abuelo, que se levantaba siempre con la luz, y corr\u00ed a la pensi\u00f3n. Encontr\u00e9 a Javier cuando sal\u00eda. Caminamos hacia la avenida Larco, para tomar el colectivo a Lima. La noche anterior, por primera vez en su vida, hab\u00eda escuchado completo un cap\u00edtulo de una radionovela de Pedro Camacho, junto con la due\u00f1a y los otros pensionistas, y estaba impresionado.\n\n\u2014La verdad que tu compinche Camacho es capaz de cualquier cosa \u2014me dijo\u2014. \u00bfSabes qu\u00e9 pas\u00f3 anoche? Una pensi\u00f3n vieja de Lima, una familia pobretona bajada de la sierra. Estaban en medio del almuerzo, conversando, y, de repente, un terremoto. Tan bien hecha la tembladera de vidrios y puertas, el griter\u00edo, que nos paramos y la se\u00f1ora Gracia sali\u00f3 corriendo hasta el jard\u00edn...\n\nMe imagin\u00e9 al genial Bat\u00e1n roncando para imitar el eco profundo de la tierra, reproduciendo con ayuda de sonajas o de bolitas de vidrio que frotaba junto al micr\u00f3fono la danza de los edificios y casas de Lima, y con los pies rompiendo nueces o chocando piedras para que se escucharan los crujidos de techos y paredes al cuartearse, de las escaleras al rajarse y desplomarse, mientras Josefina, Luciano y los otros actores se asustaban, rezaban, aullaban de dolor y ped\u00edan socorro bajo la mirada vigilante de Pedro Camacho.\n\n\u2014Pero el terremoto es lo de menos \u2014me interrumpi\u00f3 Javier, cuando le contaba las proezas de Bat\u00e1n\u2014. Lo bueno es que la pensi\u00f3n se vino abajo y todos murieron apachurrados. No se salv\u00f3 ni uno de muestra, aunque te parezca mentira. Un tipo capaz de matar a todos los personajes de una historia, de un terremoto, es digno de respeto.\n\nHab\u00edamos llegado al paradero de los colectivos y no pude aguantar m\u00e1s. Le cont\u00e9 en cuatro palabras lo que hab\u00eda ocurrido la v\u00edspera y mi gran decisi\u00f3n. Se hizo el que no se sorprend\u00eda:\n\n\u2014Bueno, t\u00fa tambi\u00e9n eres capaz de cualquier cosa \u2014dijo, moviendo la cabeza compasivamente. Y un momento despu\u00e9s\u2014: \u00bfSeguro que quieres casarte?\n\n\u2014Nunca he estado tan seguro de nada en la vida \u2014le jur\u00e9.\n\nEn ese momento ya era verdad. La v\u00edspera, cuando le hab\u00eda pedido a la t\u00eda Julia que se casara conmigo, todav\u00eda ten\u00eda la sensaci\u00f3n de algo irreflexivo, de una pura frase, casi de una broma, pero ahora, despu\u00e9s de haber hablado con Nancy, sent\u00eda una gran seguridad. Me parec\u00eda estar comunic\u00e1ndole una decisi\u00f3n inquebrantable, largamente meditada.\n\n\u2014Lo cierto es que estas locuras tuyas terminar\u00e1n por llevarme a la c\u00e1rcel \u2014coment\u00f3 Javier, resignado, en el colectivo. Y, luego de unas cuadras, a la altura de la avenida Javier Prado\u2014: Te queda poco tiempo. Si tus t\u00edos le han pedido a Julita que se vaya, no puede seguir con ellos muchos d\u00edas m\u00e1s. Y la cosa tiene que estar hecha antes de que llegue el cuco, pues con tu padre ac\u00e1 ser\u00e1 dif\u00edcil.\n\nEstuvimos callados un rato, mientras el colectivo iba caleteando en las esquinas de la avenida Arequipa, dejando y recogiendo pasajeros. Al pasar frente al Colegio Raimondi, Javier volvi\u00f3 a hablar, ya totalmente posesionado del problema:\n\n\u2014Vas a necesitar plata. \u00bfQu\u00e9 vas a hacer?\n\n\u2014Pedir un adelanto en la radio. Vender todo lo viejo que tengo, ropa, libros. Y empe\u00f1ar mi m\u00e1quina de escribir, mi reloj, en fin, todo lo que sea empe\u00f1able. Y empezar a buscar otros trabajos, como loco.\n\n\u2014Yo tambi\u00e9n puedo empe\u00f1ar algunas cosas, mi radio, mis lapiceros, y mi reloj, que es de oro \u2014dijo Javier. Entrecerrando los ojos y haciendo sumas con los dedos, calcul\u00f3\u2014: Creo que te podr\u00e9 prestar unos mil soles.\n\nNos despedimos en la plaza San Mart\u00edn y quedamos en vernos al mediod\u00eda, en mi altillo de Panamericana. Conversar con \u00e9l me hab\u00eda hecho bien y llegu\u00e9 a la oficina de buen humor, muy optimista. Le\u00ed los peri\u00f3dicos, seleccion\u00e9 las noticias, y, por segunda vez, Pascual y el Gran Pablito encontraron los primeros boletines terminados. Desgraciadamente, ambos estaban ah\u00ed cuando llam\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia y estropearon la conversaci\u00f3n. No me atrev\u00ed a contarle delante de ellos que hab\u00eda hablado con Nancy y con Javier.\n\n\u2014Tengo que verte hoy d\u00eda mismo, aunque sea unos minutos \u2014le ped\u00ed\u2014. Todo est\u00e1 caminando.\n\n\u2014De repente se me ha venido el alma a los pies \u2014me dijo la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Yo que siempre he sabido ponerle buena cara al mal tiempo, ahora me siento hecha un trapo.\n\nTen\u00eda una buena raz\u00f3n para venir al centro de Lima sin despertar sospechas: reservar en las oficinas del Lloyd A\u00e9reo Boliviano su vuelo a La Paz. Pasar\u00eda por la radio a eso de las tres. Ni ella ni yo mencionamos el tema del matrimonio, pero a m\u00ed me produjo angustia o\u00edrla hablar de aviones. Inmediatamente despu\u00e9s de colgar el tel\u00e9fono, fui a la municipalidad de Lima, a averiguar qu\u00e9 se necesitaba para el matrimonio civil. Ten\u00eda un compa\u00f1ero que trabajaba all\u00e1 y \u00e9l me hizo las averiguaciones, creyendo que eran para un pariente que iba a casarse con una extranjera divorciada. Los requisitos resultaron alarmantes. La t\u00eda Julia ten\u00eda que presentar su partida de nacimiento y la sentencia de divorcio legalizada por los ministerios de Relaciones Exteriores de Bolivia y del Per\u00fa. Yo, mi partida de nacimiento. Pero, como era menor de edad, necesitaba autorizaci\u00f3n notarial de mis padres para contraer matrimonio o ser \u00abemancipado\u00bb (declarado mayor de edad) por ellos, ante el juez de menores. Ambas posibilidades estaban descartadas.\n\nSal\u00ed de la municipalidad haciendo c\u00e1lculos; s\u00f3lo conseguir la legalizaci\u00f3n de los papeles de la t\u00eda Julia, suponiendo que los tuviera en Lima, tomar\u00eda semanas. Si no los ten\u00eda y deb\u00eda pedirlos a Bolivia, a la municipalidad y juzgado respectivos, meses. \u00bfY en cuanto a mi partida de nacimiento? Yo hab\u00eda nacido en Arequipa y escribirle a alg\u00fan pariente de all\u00e1 que me la mandara tomar\u00eda tambi\u00e9n tiempo (adem\u00e1s de ser riesgoso). Las dificultades se levantaban una tras otra, como desaf\u00edos, pero, en vez de disuadirme, reforzaban mi decisi\u00f3n (desde chico hab\u00eda sido muy porfiado). Cuando estaba a medio camino de la radio, a la altura de La Prensa, de pronto, en un rapto de inspiraci\u00f3n, cambi\u00e9 de rumbo, y, casi a la carrera, me dirig\u00ed al parque Universitario, donde llegu\u00e9 sudando. En la secretar\u00eda de la Facultad de Derecho, la se\u00f1ora Riofr\u00edo, encargada de hacernos saber las notas, me recibi\u00f3 con su expresi\u00f3n maternal de siempre y escuch\u00f3 llena de benevolencia la complicada historia que le cont\u00e9, de tr\u00e1mites judiciales urgentes, de una oportunidad \u00fanica de conseguir un trabajo que me ayudar\u00eda a costear mis estudios.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 prohibido por el reglamento \u2014se quej\u00f3, levantando su apacible humanidad del apolillado escritorio y avanzando, conmigo al lado, hacia el archivo\u2014. Como tengo buen coraz\u00f3n, ustedes abusan. Un d\u00eda voy a perder mi puesto por hacer estos favores y nadie levantar\u00e1 un dedo por m\u00ed.\n\nLe dije, mientras ella escarbaba los expedientes de alumnos, levantando nubecillas de polvo que nos hac\u00edan estornudar, que si alg\u00fan d\u00eda ocurriera eso, la facultad se declarar\u00eda en huelga. Encontr\u00f3 por fin mi expediente, donde, en efecto, figuraba mi partida de nacimiento y me advirti\u00f3 que me la prestaba s\u00f3lo media hora. Apenas necesit\u00e9 quince minutos para sacar dos fotocopias en una librer\u00eda de la calle Az\u00e1ngaro y devolverle una de ellas a la se\u00f1ora Riofr\u00edo. Llegu\u00e9 a la radio exultante, sinti\u00e9ndome capaz de pulverizar a todos los dragones que me salieran al encuentro.\n\nEstaba sentado en mi escritorio, despu\u00e9s de redactar otros dos boletines y haber entrevistado para El Panamericano al Gaucho Guerrero (un fondista argentino, naturalizado peruano, que se pasaba la vida batiendo su propio r\u00e9cord; corr\u00eda alrededor de una plaza, d\u00edas y noches, y era capaz de comer, afeitarse, escribir y dormir mientras corr\u00eda), descifrando, tras la prosa burocr\u00e1tica de la partida, algunos detalles de mi nacimiento \u2014hab\u00eda nacido en el bulevard Parra, mi abuelo y mi t\u00edo Alejandro hab\u00edan ido a la alcald\u00eda a participar mi llegada al mundo\u2014 cuando Pascual y el Gran Pablito, que entraban al altillo, me distrajeron. Ven\u00edan hablando de un incendio, muertos de risa con los ayes de las v\u00edctimas al ser achicharradas. Trat\u00e9 de seguir leyendo la abstrusa partida, pero los comentarios de mis redactores sobre los guardias civiles de esa comisar\u00eda del Callao rociada de gasolina por un pir\u00f3mano demente, que hab\u00edan perecido todos carbonizados, desde el comisario hasta el \u00faltimo sopl\u00f3n e incluso el perro mascota, me distrajeron de nuevo.\n\n\u2014He visto todos los peri\u00f3dicos y se me ha pasado, \u00bfd\u00f3nde la han le\u00eddo? \u2014les pregunt\u00e9. Y a Pascual\u2014: Cuidadito con dedicar todos los boletines de hoy al incendio \u2014y a los dos\u2014: Qu\u00e9 tal par de s\u00e1dicos.\n\n\u2014No es una noticia, sino el radioteatro de las once \u2014me explic\u00f3 el Gran Pablito\u2014. La historia del sargento Lituma, el terror del hampa chalaca.\n\n\u2014\u00c9l tambi\u00e9n se volvi\u00f3 chicharr\u00f3n \u2014encaden\u00f3 Pascual\u2014. Hubiera podido salvarse, estaba saliendo a hacer su ronda, pero regres\u00f3 para salvar a su capit\u00e1n. Su buen coraz\u00f3n lo freg\u00f3.\n\n\u2014Al capit\u00e1n no, a la perra Choclito \u2014lo rectific\u00f3 el Gran Pablito.\n\n\u2014Eso nunca qued\u00f3 claro \u2014dijo Pascual\u2014. Le cay\u00f3 una de las rejas del calabozo encima. Si lo hubiera visto a don Pedro Camacho mientras se quemaba. \u00a1Qu\u00e9 actorazo!\n\n\u2014Y qu\u00e9 decir de Bat\u00e1n \u2014se entusiasm\u00f3 el Gran Pablito, generosamente\u2014. Si me hubieran jurado que con dos dedos se pod\u00eda hacer cantar un incendio, no me lo hubiera cre\u00eddo. \u00a1Pero lo han visto estos ojos, don Mario!\n\nInterrumpi\u00f3 esta charla la llegada de Javier. Fuimos a tomar el consabido caf\u00e9 al Bransa y all\u00ed le resum\u00ed mis averiguaciones y le mostr\u00e9 triunfalmente mi partida de nacimiento.\n\n\u2014He estado pensando y tengo que decirte que es una estupidez que te cases \u2014me solt\u00f3 de entrada, un poco inc\u00f3modo\u2014. No s\u00f3lo porque eres un mocoso, sino, sobre todo, por el asunto plata. Vas a tener que romperte el alma trabajando en cojudeces para poder comer.\n\n\u2014O sea que t\u00fa tambi\u00e9n vas a repetirme las cosas que me van a decir mi mam\u00e1 y mi pap\u00e1 \u2014me burl\u00e9 de \u00e9l\u2014. \u00bfQue por casarme voy a interrumpir mis estudios de Derecho? \u00bfQue nunca llegar\u00e9 a ser un gran jurisconsulto?\n\n\u2014Que por casarte no vas a tener tiempo ni de leer \u2014me contest\u00f3 Javier\u2014. Que por casarte no llegar\u00e1s nunca a ser un escritor.\n\n\u2014Nos vamos a pelear si sigues por ese camino \u2014le advert\u00ed.\n\n\u2014Bueno, entonces me meto la lengua al bolsillo \u2014se ri\u00f3\u2014. Ya cumpl\u00ed con mi conciencia, adivin\u00e1ndote el porvenir. Lo cierto es que, si la flaca Nancy quisiera, yo tambi\u00e9n me casar\u00eda hoy mismo. \u00bfPor d\u00f3nde empezamos?\n\n\u2014Como no hay forma de que mis padres me autoricen el matrimonio o me emancipen, y como es posible que tampoco Julia tenga todos los papeles que hacen falta, la \u00fanica soluci\u00f3n es encontrar un alcalde buena gente.\n\n\u2014Querr\u00e1s decir un alcalde corrompible \u2014me corrigi\u00f3. Me examin\u00f3 como a un escarabajo\u2014: \u00bfPero a qui\u00e9n puedes corromper t\u00fa, muerto de hambre?\n\n\u2014Alg\u00fan alcalde un poco despistado \u2014insist\u00ed\u2014. Uno al que se le pueda contar el cuento del t\u00edo.\n\n\u2014Bueno, pong\u00e1monos a buscar ese cacaseno descomunal capaz de casarte contra todas las leyes existentes \u2014se ech\u00f3 a re\u00edr de nuevo\u2014. L\u00e1stima que Julita sea divorciada, te hubieras casado por la Iglesia. Eso era f\u00e1cil, entre los curas abundan los cacasenos.\n\nJavier me pon\u00eda siempre de buen \u00e1nimo y terminamos bromeando sobre mi luna de miel, sobre los honorarios que me cobrar\u00eda (ayudarlo a raptar a la flaca Nancy, por supuesto), y lamentando no estar en Piura, donde, como la fuga matrimonial era costumbre tan extendida, no hubiera sido problema encontrar al cacaseno. Cuando nos despedimos, se hab\u00eda comprometido a buscar al alcalde desde esa misma tarde y a empe\u00f1ar todos sus bienes prescindibles para contribuir a la boda.\n\nLa t\u00eda Julia deb\u00eda pasar a las tres y como a las tres y media no hab\u00eda llegado comenc\u00e9 a inquietarme. A las cuatro se me atracaban los dedos en la m\u00e1quina de escribir y fumaba sin parar. A las cuatro y media el Gran Pablito me pregunt\u00f3 si me sent\u00eda mal, porque se me ve\u00eda p\u00e1lido. A las cinco hice que Pascual llamara a casa del t\u00edo Lucho y preguntara por ella. No hab\u00eda llegado. Y tampoco hab\u00eda llegado media hora despu\u00e9s, ni a las seis de la tarde ni a las siete de la noche. Luego del \u00faltimo bolet\u00edn, en vez de bajar en la calle de los abuelos, segu\u00ed en el colectivo hasta la avenida Armend\u00e1riz y estuve merodeando por los alrededores de la casa de mis t\u00edos, sin atreverme a tocar. Por las ventanas divis\u00e9 a la t\u00eda Olga, cambiando el agua de un florero, y, poco despu\u00e9s, al t\u00edo Lucho, que apagaba las luces del comedor. Di varias vueltas a la manzana, pose\u00eddo de sentimientos encontrados: desasosiego, c\u00f3lera, tristeza, ganas de abofetear a la t\u00eda Julia y de besarla. Terminaba una de esas vueltas agitadas cuando la vi bajar de un auto lujoso, con placa diplom\u00e1tica. Me acerqu\u00e9 a trancos, sintiendo que los celos y la ira me hac\u00edan temblar las piernas y decidido a darle de trompadas a mi rival, fuera quien fuera. Se trataba de un caballero canoso y hab\u00eda adem\u00e1s una se\u00f1ora en el interior del autom\u00f3vil. La t\u00eda Julia me present\u00f3 como un sobrino de su cu\u00f1ado y a ellos como los embajadores de Bolivia. Sent\u00ed una sensaci\u00f3n de rid\u00edculo y, al mismo tiempo, que me quitaban un gran peso de encima. Cuando el auto parti\u00f3, cog\u00ed a la t\u00eda Julia del brazo y casi a rastras la hice cruzar la avenida y caminar hacia el Malec\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014Vaya, qu\u00e9 geniecito \u2014la o\u00ed decir, mientras nos acerc\u00e1bamos al mar\u2014. Le pusiste al pobre doctor Gumucio cara de estrangulador.\n\n\u2014A quien voy a estrangular es a ti \u2014le dije\u2014. Te estoy esperando desde las tres y son las once de la noche. \u00bfTe olvidaste que ten\u00edamos una cita?\n\n\u2014No me olvid\u00e9 \u2014me repuso, con determinaci\u00f3n\u2014. Te dej\u00e9 plantado a prop\u00f3sito.\n\nHab\u00edamos llegado al parquecito situado frente al seminario de los jesuitas. Estaba desierto, y, aunque no llov\u00eda, la humedad hac\u00eda brillar el pasto, los laureles, las matas de geranios. La neblina formaba unas sombrillas fantasmales en torno a los conos amarillos de los postes de luz.\n\n\u2014Bueno, vamos a postergar esa pelea para otro d\u00eda \u2014le dije, haci\u00e9ndola sentar en el bordillo del Malec\u00f3n, sobre el acantilado, de donde sub\u00eda, sincr\u00f3nico, profundo, el sonido del mar\u2014. Ahora hay poco tiempo y muchos problemas. \u00bfTienes aqu\u00ed tu partida de nacimiento y la sentencia de tu divorcio?\n\n\u2014Lo que tengo aqu\u00ed es mi pasaje para La Paz \u2014me dijo, tocando su cartera\u2014. Me voy el domingo, a las diez de la ma\u00f1ana. Y estoy feliz. El Per\u00fa y los peruanos ya me llegaron a la coronilla.\n\n\u2014Lo siento por ti, pues por ahora no hay posibilidades de que cambiemos de pa\u00eds \u2014le dije, sent\u00e1ndome a su lado y pas\u00e1ndole el brazo sobre los hombros\u2014. Pero te prometo que, alg\u00fan d\u00eda, nos iremos a vivir a una buhardilla en Par\u00eds.\n\nHasta ese momento, pese a las cosas agresivas que dec\u00eda, hab\u00eda estado tranquila, ligeramente burlona, muy segura de s\u00ed misma. Pero, de pronto, se le dibuj\u00f3 en la cara un rictus amargo y habl\u00f3 con voz dura, sin mirarme:\n\n\u2014No me lo hagas m\u00e1s dif\u00edcil, Varguitas. Me regreso a Bolivia por culpa de tus parientes, pero, tambi\u00e9n, porque lo nuestro es una estupidez. Sabes muy bien que no podemos casarnos.\n\n\u2014S\u00ed podemos \u2014le dije, bes\u00e1ndola en la mejilla, en el cuello, apret\u00e1ndola con fuerza, toc\u00e1ndole \u00e1vidamente los pechos, busc\u00e1ndole la boca con mi boca\u2014. Necesitamos un alcalde cacaseno. Javier me est\u00e1 ayudando. Y la flaca Nancy ya nos encontr\u00f3 un departamentito, en Miraflores. No hay motivo para ponerse pesimistas.\n\nSe dejaba besar y acariciar, pero permanec\u00eda distante, muy seria. Le cont\u00e9 la conversaci\u00f3n con mi prima, con Javier, mis averiguaciones en la municipalidad, la forma como hab\u00eda conseguido mi partida, le dije que la quer\u00eda con toda mi alma, que \u00edbamos a casarnos aunque tuviera que matar a un mont\u00f3n de gente. Cuando porfi\u00e9 con mi lengua, para que separara los dientes, se resisti\u00f3, pero luego abri\u00f3 la boca y pude entrar en ella y gustar su paladar, sus enc\u00edas, su saliva. Sent\u00ed que el brazo libre de la t\u00eda Julia me rodeaba el cuello, que se acurrucaba contra m\u00ed, que se pon\u00eda a llorar con sollozos que estremec\u00edan su pecho. Yo la consolaba, con voz que era un susurro incoherente, sin dejar de besarla.\n\n\u2014Todav\u00eda eres un mocosito \u2014la o\u00ed murmurar, entre risas y pucheros, mientras yo, sin aliento, le dec\u00eda que la necesitaba, que la quer\u00eda, que nunca la dejar\u00eda regresar a Bolivia, que me matar\u00eda si se iba. Por fin, volvi\u00f3 a hablar, en tono muy bajito, tratando de hacer una broma\u2014: Quien con mocosos se acuesta siempre amanece mojado. \u00bfHas o\u00eddo ese refr\u00e1n?\n\n\u2014Es huachafo y no se puede decir \u2014le contest\u00e9, sec\u00e1ndole los ojos con mis labios, con las yemas de los dedos\u2014. \u00bfTienes aqu\u00ed esos papeles? \u00bfTu amigo el embajador los podr\u00eda legalizar?\n\nYa estaba m\u00e1s repuesta. Hab\u00eda dejado de llorar y me miraba con ternura.\n\n\u2014\u00bfCu\u00e1nto durar\u00eda, Varguitas? \u2014me pregunt\u00f3, con voz tristona\u2014. \u00bfAl cu\u00e1nto tiempo te cansar\u00edas? \u00bfAl a\u00f1o, a los dos, a los tres? \u00bfCrees que es justo que dentro de dos o tres a\u00f1os me largues y tenga que empezar de nuevo?\n\n\u2014\u00bfEl embajador los podr\u00e1 legalizar? \u2014insist\u00ed\u2014. Si \u00e9l los legaliza por el lado boliviano, ser\u00e1 f\u00e1cil conseguir la legalizaci\u00f3n peruana. Encontrar\u00e9 en el Ministerio alg\u00fan amigo que nos ayude.\n\nSe qued\u00f3 observ\u00e1ndome, entre compadecida y conmovida. En su cara fue apareciendo una sonrisa.\n\n\u2014Si me juras que me aguantar\u00e1s cinco a\u00f1os, sin enamorarte de otra, queri\u00e9ndome s\u00f3lo a m\u00ed, okey \u2014me dijo\u2014. Por cinco a\u00f1os de felicidad cometo esa locura.\n\n\u2014\u00bfTienes los papeles? \u2014le dije, arregl\u00e1ndole los cabellos, bes\u00e1ndoselos\u2014. \u00bfLos legalizar\u00e1 el embajador?\n\nLos ten\u00eda y conseguimos, en efecto, que la embajada boliviana los legalizara con una buena cantidad de sellos y firmas multicolores. La operaci\u00f3n dur\u00f3 apenas media hora, pues el embajador se trag\u00f3 diplom\u00e1ticamente el cuento de la t\u00eda Julia: necesitaba los papeles esa misma ma\u00f1ana, para formalizar una gesti\u00f3n que le permitir\u00eda sacar de Bolivia los bienes que hab\u00eda recibido al divorciarse. Tampoco fue dif\u00edcil que el ministro de Relaciones Exteriores del Per\u00fa, a su vez, legalizara los documentos bolivianos. Me ech\u00f3 una mano un profesor de la universidad, asesor de la canciller\u00eda, a quien tuve que inventar otro embrollado radioteatro: una se\u00f1ora cancerosa, en estado ag\u00f3nico, a la que hab\u00eda que casar cuanto antes, con el hombre con el que cohabitaba hac\u00eda a\u00f1os, a fin de que muriera en paz con Dios.\n\nAll\u00ed, en una habitaci\u00f3n de a\u00f1osas maderas coloniales y de j\u00f3venes acicalados del Palacio de Torre Tagle, mientras esperaba que el funcionario, avivado por el telefonazo de mi profesor, pusiera a la partida de nacimiento y a la sentencia de divorcio de la t\u00eda Julia m\u00e1s sellos y recolectara las firmas correspondientes, o\u00ed hablar de una nueva cat\u00e1strofe. Se trataba de un naufragio, algo casi inconcebible. Un barco italiano, atracado en un muelle del Callao, repleto de pasajeros y de visitas que los desped\u00edan, de pronto, contraviniendo todas las leyes de la f\u00edsica y de la raz\u00f3n, giraba sobre s\u00ed mismo, se volcaba sobre babor, y se hund\u00eda r\u00e1pidamente en el Pac\u00edfico, muriendo, por efecto de contusiones, ahogo, o, asombrosamente, mordiscos de tiburones, toda la gente que se hallaba a bordo. Eran dos se\u00f1oras, conversaban a mi lado, en espera de alg\u00fan tr\u00e1mite. No bromeaban, se tomaban el naufragio muy en serio.\n\n\u2014\u00bfOcurri\u00f3 en un radioteatro de Pedro Camacho, no es cierto? \u2014me entromet\u00ed.\n\n\u2014En el de las cuatro \u2014asinti\u00f3 la mayor, una mujer huesuda y en\u00e9rgica, con fuerte acento eslavo\u2014. El de Alberto de Quinteros, el cardi\u00f3logo.\n\n\u2014Ese que era ginec\u00f3logo el mes pasado \u2014meti\u00f3 su cuchara, sonriendo, una jovencita que escrib\u00eda a m\u00e1quina. Y se toc\u00f3 la sien, indicando que alguien se hab\u00eda vuelto loco.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo oy\u00f3 el programa de ayer? \u2014se apiad\u00f3 cari\u00f1osamente la acompa\u00f1ante de la extranjera, una se\u00f1ora con anteojos y entonaci\u00f3n ultralime\u00f1a\u2014. El doctor Quinteros se estaba yendo de vacaciones a Chile, con su esposa y su hijita Charo. \u00a1Y se ahogaron los tres!\n\n\u2014Se ahogaron todos \u2014precis\u00f3 la se\u00f1ora extranjera\u2014. El sobrino Richard, y Elianita y su marido, el Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez, el tontito, y hasta el hijito del incesto, Rubencito. Hab\u00edan ido a despedirlos.\n\n\u2014Pero lo costeante es que se ahogara el teniente Jaime Concha, que es de otro radioteatro, y que ya se hab\u00eda muerto en el incendio del Callao, hace tres d\u00edas \u2014volvi\u00f3 a intervenir, muerta de risa, la muchacha; hab\u00eda dejado la m\u00e1quina\u2014. Esos radioteatros se han vuelto un puro chiste, \u00bfno les parece?\n\nUn jovencito acicalado, con aire de intelectual (especialidad L\u00edmites Patrios), le sonri\u00f3 con benevolencia y a nosotros nos lanz\u00f3 una mirada que Pedro Camacho hubiera tenido todo el derecho de llamar argentina:\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo te he dicho que eso de pasar personajes de una historia a otra lo invent\u00f3 Balzac? \u2014dijo, hinchando el pecho con sabidur\u00eda. Pero sac\u00f3 una conclusi\u00f3n que lo perdi\u00f3\u2014: Si se entera que lo est\u00e1 plagiando, lo manda a la c\u00e1rcel.\n\n\u2014El chiste no es que los pase de una a otra, sino que los resucite \u2014se defendi\u00f3 la muchacha\u2014. El teniente Concha se hab\u00eda quemado, mientras le\u00eda un Pato Donald, \u00bfc\u00f3mo puede ahora resultar ahog\u00e1ndose?\n\n\u2014Es un tipo sin suerte \u2014sugiri\u00f3 el jovencito acicalado que tra\u00eda mis papeles.\n\nPart\u00ed feliz, con los documentos oleados y sacramentados, dejando a las dos se\u00f1oras, la secretaria y los diplom\u00e1ticos empe\u00f1ados en una animada charla sobre el escriba boliviano. La t\u00eda Julia me estaba esperando en un caf\u00e9 y se ri\u00f3 del cuento; no hab\u00eda vuelto a o\u00edr los programas de su compatriota.\n\nSalvo la legalizaci\u00f3n de esos papeles, que result\u00f3 tan simple, todas las otras gestiones, en esa semana de diligencias y averiguaciones infinitas que hice, solo o acompa\u00f1ado por Javier, en las alcald\u00edas de Lima, resultaron frustradoras y agobiantes. No pon\u00eda los pies en la radio sino para El Panamericano, y dejaba todos los boletines en manos de Pascual, quien pudo ofrecer as\u00ed a los radioescuchas un verdadero fest\u00edn de accidentes, cr\u00edmenes, asaltos, secuestros, que hizo correr por Radio Panamericana tanta sangre como la que, contiguamente, produc\u00eda mi amigo Camacho en su sistem\u00e1tico genocidio de personajes.\n\nComenzaba el recorrido muy temprano. Fui al principio a las municipalidades m\u00e1s ra\u00eddas y alejadas del centro, la del R\u00edmac, la de El Porvenir, la de Vitarte, la de Chorrillos. Una y cincuenta veces (al principio ruboriz\u00e1ndome, luego con desparpajo) expliqu\u00e9 el problema a alcaldes, tenientes alcalde, s\u00edndicos, secretarios, porteros, portapliegos, y cada vez recib\u00ed negativas categ\u00f3ricas. La piedra de toque era siempre la misma: mientras no obtuviera autorizaci\u00f3n notarial de mis padres, o fuera emancipado ante el juez, no pod\u00eda casarme. Luego intent\u00e9 suerte en las alcald\u00edas de los barrios c\u00e9ntricos, con exclusi\u00f3n de Miraflores y San Isidro (donde pod\u00eda haber conocidos de la familia) con id\u00e9ntico resultado. Los mun\u00edcipes, luego de revisar los documentos, sol\u00edan hacerme bromas que eran patadas en el est\u00f3mago: \u00ab\u00bfPero c\u00f3mo, quieres casarte con tu mam\u00e1?\u00bb, \u00abno seas tonto, muchacho, para qu\u00e9 te vas a casar, arrej\u00fantate nom\u00e1s\u00bb. El \u00fanico sitio donde brill\u00f3 una luz de esperanza fue en la municipalidad de Surco, donde un secretario rollizo y cejijunto nos dijo que el asunto se pod\u00eda arreglar por diez mil soles, \u00abpues hab\u00eda que taparle la boca a mucha gente\u00bb. Intent\u00e9 regatear y llegu\u00e9 a ofrecerle una cantidad que dif\u00edcilmente hubiera podido reunir (cinco mil soles), pero el gordito, como asustado de su audacia, dio marcha atr\u00e1s y termin\u00f3 sac\u00e1ndonos de la alcald\u00eda.\n\nHablaba por tel\u00e9fono con la t\u00eda Julia dos veces al d\u00eda y la enga\u00f1aba, todo estaba en regla, que tuviera un malet\u00edn de mano listo con las cosas indispensables, en cualquier momento le dir\u00eda \u00abya\u00bb. Pero me sent\u00eda cada vez m\u00e1s desmoralizado. El viernes en la noche, al regresar a casa de los abuelos, encontr\u00e9 un telegrama de mis padres: \u00abLlegamos lunes, Panagra, vuelo 516\u00bb.\n\nEsa noche, despu\u00e9s de pensar largo rato, dando vueltas en la cama, prend\u00ed la lamparita del velador y escrib\u00ed en un cuaderno, donde anotaba temas para cuentos, en orden de prioridad, las cosas que har\u00eda. La primera era casarme con la t\u00eda Julia y poner a la familia ante un hecho legal consumado al que tendr\u00edan que resignarse, quisi\u00e9ranlo o no. Como faltaban pocos d\u00edas y la resistencia de los mun\u00edcipes lime\u00f1os era tan tenaz, esa primera opci\u00f3n se volv\u00eda cada instante m\u00e1s ut\u00f3pica. La segunda era huir con la t\u00eda Julia al extranjero. No a Bolivia; la idea de vivir en un mundo donde ella hab\u00eda vivido sin m\u00ed, donde ten\u00eda tantos conocidos, su mismo ex marido, me molestaba. El pa\u00eds indicado era Chile. Ella pod\u00eda partir a La Paz, para enga\u00f1ar a la familia, y yo me escapar\u00eda en \u00f3mnibus o colectivo hasta Tacna. Alguna manera habr\u00eda de cruzar clandestinamente la frontera, hasta Arica, y luego seguir\u00eda por tierra hasta Santiago, donde la t\u00eda Julia vendr\u00eda a reunirse conmigo o me estar\u00eda esperando. La posibilidad de viajar y vivir sin pasaporte (para sacarlo se necesitaba tambi\u00e9n autorizaci\u00f3n paterna) no me parec\u00eda imposible, y me gustaba, por su car\u00e1cter novelesco. Si la familia, como era seguro, me hac\u00eda buscar, me localizaba y repatriaba, me escapar\u00eda de nuevo, todas las veces que hiciera falta, y as\u00ed ir\u00eda viviendo hasta alcanzar los codiciados, liberadores veinti\u00fan a\u00f1os. La tercera opci\u00f3n era matarme, dejando una carta bien escrita, para sumir a mis parientes en el remordimiento.\n\nAl d\u00eda siguiente, muy temprano, corr\u00ed a la pensi\u00f3n de Javier. Pas\u00e1bamos revista, cada ma\u00f1ana, mientras \u00e9l se afeitaba y duchaba, a los acontecimientos de la v\u00edspera y prepar\u00e1bamos el plan de acci\u00f3n de la jornada. Sentado sobre el excusado, vi\u00e9ndolo jabonarse, le le\u00ed el cuaderno donde hab\u00eda resumido, con comentarios marginales, las opciones de mi destino. Mientras se enjuagaba, me rog\u00f3 encarecidamente que trastocara las prioridades y pusiera el suicidio a la cabeza:\n\n\u2014Si te matas, las porquer\u00edas que has escrito se volver\u00e1n interesantes, la gente morbosa querr\u00e1 leerlas y ser\u00e1 f\u00e1cil publicarlas en un libro \u2014me convenc\u00eda, a la vez que se secaba con furia\u2014. Te volver\u00e1s, aunque sea p\u00f3stumamente, un escritor.\n\n\u2014Me vas a hacer perder el primer bolet\u00edn \u2014lo apuraba yo\u2014. D\u00e9jate de jugar a Cantinflas que tu humor me hace maldita gracia.\n\n\u2014Si te matas, ya no tendr\u00eda que faltar tanto a mi trabajo ni a la universidad \u2014continuaba Javier, mientras se vest\u00eda\u2014. Lo ideal es que procedas hoy, esta ma\u00f1ana, ahorita. As\u00ed me librar\u00edas de empe\u00f1ar mis cosas, que, por supuesto, terminar\u00e1n rematando, porque \u00bfacaso me vas a pagar alg\u00fan d\u00eda?\n\nY ya en la calle, mientras trot\u00e1bamos hacia el colectivo, sinti\u00e9ndose un humorista eximio:\n\n\u2014Y, por \u00faltimo, si te matas, te volver\u00e1s famoso, y a tu mejor amigo, tu confidente, el testigo de la tragedia, le har\u00e1n reportajes y saldr\u00e1 retratado en los peri\u00f3dicos. \u00bfY t\u00fa crees que tu prima Nancy no se ablandar\u00eda con esa publicidad?\n\nEn la llamada (horriblemente) Caja de Pignoraci\u00f3n de la plaza de Armas, empe\u00f1amos mi m\u00e1quina de escribir y su radio, mi reloj y sus lapiceros, y, al final, lo convenc\u00ed de que tambi\u00e9n empe\u00f1ara su reloj. Pese a que regateamos como lobos, s\u00f3lo obtuvimos dos mil soles. Los d\u00edas anteriores, sin que lo advirtieran los abuelos, yo hab\u00eda ido vendiendo, en los ropavejeros de la calle La Paz, ternos, zapatos, camisas, corbatas, chompas, hasta quedarme pr\u00e1cticamente con lo que llevaba puesto. Pero la inmolaci\u00f3n de mi vestuario signific\u00f3 apenas cuatrocientos soles. En cambio, hab\u00eda tenido m\u00e1s suerte con el empresario progresista, al que, despu\u00e9s de media hora dram\u00e1tica, convenc\u00ed de que me adelantara cuatro sueldos y me los fuera descontando a lo largo de un a\u00f1o. La conversaci\u00f3n tuvo un final inesperado. Yo le juraba que ese dinero era para una operaci\u00f3n de hernia de mi abuelita, urgent\u00edsima, y no lo conmov\u00eda. Pero, de pronto, dijo: \u00abBueno\u00bb. Con una sonrisa de amigo, a\u00f1adi\u00f3: \u00abConfiesa que es para hacer abortar a una hembrita\u00bb. Baj\u00e9 los ojos y le rogu\u00e9 que me guardara el secreto.\n\nAl ver mi depresi\u00f3n por el poco dinero conseguido con el empe\u00f1o, Javier me acompa\u00f1\u00f3 hasta la radio. Quedamos en pedir permiso en nuestros trabajos para ir en la tarde a Huacho. Tal vez en provincias los mun\u00edcipes fueran m\u00e1s sentimentales. Llegu\u00e9 al altillo cuando sonaba el tel\u00e9fono. La t\u00eda Julia estaba hecha una furia. La v\u00edspera hab\u00edan llegado a casa del t\u00edo Lucho, de visita, la t\u00eda Hortensia y el t\u00edo Alejandro y no le hab\u00edan contestado el saludo.\n\n\u2014Me miraron con un desprecio ol\u00edmpico, s\u00f3lo les falt\u00f3 decirme pe \u2014me cont\u00f3, indignada\u2014. Tuve que morderme para no mandarlos ya sabes ad\u00f3nde. Lo hice por mi hermana, pero tambi\u00e9n por nosotros, para no complicar m\u00e1s las cosas. \u00bfC\u00f3mo va todo, Varguitas?\n\n\u2014El lunes, a primera hora \u2014le asegur\u00e9\u2014. Tienes que decir que atrasas un d\u00eda el vuelo a La Paz. Tengo todo casi listo.\n\n\u2014No te preocupes por el alcalde cacaseno \u2014me dijo la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Ya me entr\u00f3 la rabieta y no me importa. Aunque no lo encuentres, nos escapamos lo mismo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfPor qu\u00e9 no se casan en Chincha, don Mario? \u2014le o\u00ed decir a Pascual, apenas colgu\u00e9 el tel\u00e9fono. Al ver mi estupor, se confundi\u00f3\u2014: No es que yo sea chismoso y quiera entrometerme. Pero, claro, oy\u00e9ndolos, nos enteramos de las cosas. Lo hago para ayudarlo. El alcalde de Chincha es mi primo y lo casa en un dos por tres, con o sin papeles, sea o no sea mayor de edad.\n\nEse mismo d\u00eda qued\u00f3 todo milagrosamente resuelto. Javier y Pascual partieron esa tarde a Chincha, en un colectivo, con los papeles y la consigna de dejar todo preparado para el lunes. Mientras, yo fui con mi prima Nancy a alquilar el cuartito de la quinta miraflorina, ped\u00ed tres d\u00edas de permiso en la radio (los obtuve despu\u00e9s de una discusi\u00f3n hom\u00e9rica con Genaro pap\u00e1, a quien temerariamente amenac\u00e9 con renunciar si me los negaba) y plane\u00e9 la fuga de Lima. El s\u00e1bado en la noche, Javier volvi\u00f3 con buenas noticias. El alcalde era un tipo joven y simp\u00e1tico, y, cuando \u00e9l y Pascual le contaron la historia, se hab\u00eda re\u00eddo y festejado el proyecto de rapto.\n\n\u00abQu\u00e9 rom\u00e1ntico\u00bb, les hab\u00eda dicho. Se qued\u00f3 con los papeles y les asegur\u00f3 que, entre amigos, tambi\u00e9n se pod\u00eda obviar el asunto de las proclamas.\n\nEl domingo previne a la t\u00eda Julia, por tel\u00e9fono, que hab\u00eda encontrado al cacaseno, que nos fugar\u00edamos al d\u00eda siguiente, a las ocho de la ma\u00f1ana, y que al mediod\u00eda ser\u00edamos marido y mujer.\n\n### XVI\n\nJOAQU\u00cdN HINOSTROZA Bellmont, quien habr\u00eda de estremecer los estadios, no metiendo goles ni atajando penales sino arbitrando partidos de f\u00fatbol, y cuya sed de alcohol dejar\u00eda huella y deudas en los bares de Lima, naci\u00f3 en una de esas residencias que los mandarines se construyeron hace treinta a\u00f1os, en La Perla, cuando pretendieron convertir a ese bald\u00edo en una Copacabana lime\u00f1a (pretensi\u00f3n malograda por la humedad, que, castigo de camello que se obstina en pasar por el ojo de la aguja, devast\u00f3 gargantas y bronquios de la aristocracia peruana).\n\nFue Joaqu\u00edn hijo \u00fanico de una familia que, adem\u00e1s de adinerada, entroncaba, frondosa selva de \u00e1rboles que son t\u00edtulos y escudos, con marquesados de Espa\u00f1a y Francia. Pero el padre del futuro r\u00e9feri y borrach\u00edn hab\u00eda puesto de lado los pergaminos y consagrado su vida al ideal moderno de multiplicar su fortuna en negocios que comprend\u00edan desde la fabricaci\u00f3n de casimires hasta la introducci\u00f3n del ardiente cultivo de la pimienta en la Amazon\u00eda. La madre, madona linf\u00e1tica, esposa abnegada, hab\u00eda pasado su vida gastando el dinero que produc\u00eda su marido en m\u00e9dicos y curanderos (pues padec\u00eda diversas enfermedades de alta clase social). Ambos hab\u00edan tenido a Joaqu\u00edn algo crecidos, despu\u00e9s de mucho rogar a Dios que les concediera un heredero. El advenimiento constituy\u00f3 una felicidad indescriptible para sus padres, quienes, desde la cuna, so\u00f1aron para \u00e9l un porvenir de pr\u00edncipe de la industria, rey de la agricultura, mago de la diplomacia o Lucifer de la pol\u00edtica.\n\n\u00bfFue por rebelde, en insubordinaci\u00f3n contra este destino de gloria cremat\u00edstica y brillo social, que el ni\u00f1o result\u00f3 \u00e1rbitro de f\u00fatbol, o m\u00e1s bien por insuficiencia de psicolog\u00eda? No, fue por genuina vocaci\u00f3n. Tuvo, naturalmente, desde la mamadera hasta el bozo, una variopinta sucesi\u00f3n de institutrices, importadas de pa\u00edses ex\u00f3ticos: Francia, Inglaterra. Y en los mejores colegios de Lima fueron reclutados profesores para ense\u00f1arle los n\u00fameros y las letras. Todos, uno tras otro, terminaron renunciando al ping\u00fce salario, desmoralizados e hist\u00e9ricos, por la indiferencia ontol\u00f3gica del ni\u00f1o ante cualquier especie de saber. A los ocho a\u00f1os no hab\u00eda aprendido a sumar y del alfabeto a duras penas memorizaba las vocales. S\u00f3lo dec\u00eda monos\u00edlabos, era tranquilo, se paseaba por las habitaciones de La Perla, entre muchedumbres de juguetes adquiridos en distintos puntos del orbe para distraerlo \u2014mecanos alemanes, trenes japoneses, rompecabezas chinos, soldaditos austriacos, triciclos norteamericanos\u2014, con expresi\u00f3n de aburrimiento mortal. Lo \u00fanico que parec\u00eda sacarlo, a ratos, de su sopor brahm\u00e1nico eran las figuritas de f\u00fatbol de los chocolatines Mar del Sur, que pegaba en cuadernos satinados y contemplaba, horas de horas, con curiosidad.\n\nAterrados ante la idea de haber procreado un fin de raza, hemof\u00edlico y tarado, que ser\u00eda m\u00e1s tarde hazmerre\u00edr del p\u00fablico, los padres acudieron a la ciencia. Ilustres galenos comparecieron en La Perla. Fue el pediatra estrella de la ciudad, el doctor Alberto de Quinteros, quien desasn\u00f3 luminosamente a los atormentados:\n\n\u2014Tiene lo que llamo mal de invernadero \u2014les explic\u00f3\u2014. Las flores que no viven en el jard\u00edn, entre flores e insectos, crecen mustias y su perfume es hediondo. La c\u00e1rcel dorada lo est\u00e1 atontando. Amas y d\u00f3mines deben ser despedidos y el ni\u00f1o matriculado en un colegio para que alterne con gente de su edad. \u00a1Ser\u00e1 normal el d\u00eda que un compa\u00f1ero le rompa la nariz!\n\nDispuesta a cualquier sacrificio con tal de desimbecilizarlo, la orgullosa pareja consinti\u00f3 en dejar que Joaquincito se zambullera en el plebeyo mundo exterior. Se escogi\u00f3 para \u00e9l, claro est\u00e1, el colegio m\u00e1s caro de Lima, los padres de Santa Mar\u00eda, y, a fin de no destruir todas las jerarqu\u00edas, se le mand\u00f3 hacer un uniforme de color reglamentario, pero en terciopelo.\n\nLa receta del famoso dio resultados apreciables. Es verdad que Joaqu\u00edn sacaba notas extraordinariamente bajas y que, para aprobar sus ex\u00e1menes, \u00e1urea codicia que produjo cismas, sus padres deb\u00edan hacer donaciones (vitrales para la capilla del colegio, faldas de pa\u00f1o para los ac\u00f3litos, pupitres robustos para la escuelita de los pobres, etc\u00e9tera), pero el hecho es que el ni\u00f1o se volvi\u00f3 sociable y que a partir de entonces se le vio algunas veces contento. En esta \u00e9poca se manifest\u00f3 el primer indicio de su genialidad (su incomprensivo padre le dec\u00eda tara): un inter\u00e9s por el balompi\u00e9. Cuando fueron informados que el ni\u00f1o Joaqu\u00edn, apenas se calzaba los zapatos de f\u00fatbol, de anest\u00e9sico y monosil\u00e1bico se transformaba en un ser din\u00e1mico y g\u00e1rrulo, sus padres se alegraron mucho. Y, de inmediato, adquirieron un terreno contiguo a su casa de La Perla, para construir una cancha de f\u00fatbol, de proporciones apreciables, donde Joaquincito pudiera divertirse a sus anchas.\n\nSe vio, a partir de entonces, en la neblinosa avenida de las Palmeras, de La Perla, desembarcar del \u00f3mnibus del Santa Mar\u00eda, a la salida de clases, a veintid\u00f3s alumnos \u2014cambiaban las caras pero permanec\u00eda el n\u00famero\u2014 que ven\u00edan a jugar en la cancha de los Hinostroza Bellmont. La familia regalaba a los jugadores, despu\u00e9s del partido, con un t\u00e9 acompa\u00f1ado de chocolates, gelatinas, merengues y helados. Los ricos gozaban viendo cada tarde a su hijito Joaqu\u00edn jadeando feliz.\n\nS\u00f3lo despu\u00e9s de algunas semanas, se percat\u00f3 el pionero del cultivo de la pimienta en el Per\u00fa que ocurr\u00eda algo extra\u00f1o. Dos, tres, diez veces hab\u00eda encontrado a Joaquincito arbitrando el partido. Con un silbato en la boca y una gorrita para el sol, corr\u00eda tras los jugadores, se\u00f1alaba faltas, impon\u00eda penales. Aunque el ni\u00f1o no parec\u00eda acomplejado por cumplir este papel en vez de ser jugador, el millonario se enoj\u00f3. \u00bfLos invitaba a su casa, los engordaba con dulces, les permit\u00eda codearse con su hijo de igual a igual y ten\u00edan la desfachatez de relegar a Joaqu\u00edn a la mediocre funci\u00f3n de \u00e1rbitro? Estuvo a punto de abrir las jaulas de los d\u00f3berman y dar un buen susto a esos frescos. Pero se limit\u00f3 a recriminarlos. Ante su sorpresa, los muchachos se declararon inocentes, juraron que Joaqu\u00edn era \u00e1rbitro porque le gustaba serlo y el damnificado corrobor\u00f3 por Dios y por su madre que era as\u00ed. Unos meses despu\u00e9s, consultando su libreta y los informes de sus mayordomos, el padre se enfrent\u00f3 a este balance: en ciento treinta y dos partidos disputados en su cancha, Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont no hab\u00eda sido jugador en ninguno y hab\u00eda arbitrado ciento treinta y dos. Cambiando una mirada, los padres subliminalmente se dijeron que algo andaba mal: \u00bfc\u00f3mo pod\u00eda ser esto la normalidad? Nuevamente, fue requerida la ciencia.\n\nFue el m\u00e1s connotado astr\u00f3logo de la ciudad, un hombre que le\u00eda las almas en las estrellas y que resta\u00f1aba los esp\u00edritus de sus clientes (\u00e9l hubiera preferido: amigos) mediante los signos del zodiaco, el profesor Lucio Ac\u00e9mila, quien, despu\u00e9s de muchos hor\u00f3scopos, interrogatorios a los cuerpos celestes y meditaci\u00f3n lunar, dio el veredicto que, si no el m\u00e1s certero, result\u00f3 el m\u00e1s halag\u00fce\u00f1o para los padres:\n\n\u2014El ni\u00f1o se sabe celularmente un arist\u00f3crata, y, fiel a su origen, no tolera la idea de ser igual a los dem\u00e1s \u2014les explic\u00f3, quit\u00e1ndose las gafas \u00bfpara que fuera m\u00e1s notoria la lucecita inteligente que aparec\u00eda en sus pupilas al emitir un pron\u00f3stico?\u2014. Prefiere ser r\u00e9feri a jugador porque el que arbitra un partido es el que manda. \u00bfCre\u00edan ustedes que en ese rect\u00e1ngulo verde Joaquincito hace deporte? Error, error. Ejercita un ancestral apetito de dominaci\u00f3n, de singularidad y jerarqu\u00eda, que, sin duda, le corre por las venas.\n\nSollozando de felicidad, el padre sofoc\u00f3 a besos a su hijo, se declar\u00f3 hombre bienaventurado, y agreg\u00f3 un cero a los honorarios, ya de por s\u00ed regios, que le hab\u00eda pasado el profesor Ac\u00e9mila. Convencido de que esa man\u00eda de arbitrar los partidos de f\u00fatbol de sus compa\u00f1eros resultaba de avasalladores \u00edmpetus de subyugaci\u00f3n y prepotencia, que, m\u00e1s tarde, convertir\u00edan a su hijo en due\u00f1o del mundo (o, en el peor de los casos, del Per\u00fa), el industrial abandon\u00f3 muchas tardes su m\u00faltiple oficina para, debilidades de le\u00f3n que lagrimea viendo a su cachorro despedazar a la primera oveja, venir a su estadio privado de La Perla a gozar paternalmente viendo a Joaqu\u00edn, enfundado en el lindo uniforme que le hab\u00eda regalado, dando pitazos detr\u00e1s de esa bastarda confusi\u00f3n (\u00bflos jugadores?).\n\nDiez a\u00f1os despu\u00e9s, los confundidos padres no tuvieron m\u00e1s remedio que empezar a decirse que, tal vez, las profec\u00edas astrales hab\u00edan pecado de optimistas. Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont ten\u00eda ya dieciocho a\u00f1os y hab\u00eda llegado al \u00faltimo grado de la secundaria varios a\u00f1os despu\u00e9s que sus compa\u00f1eros del comienzo y s\u00f3lo gracias a la filantrop\u00eda familiar. Los genes de conquistador del mundo, que, seg\u00fan Lucio Ac\u00e9mila, se camuflaban bajo el inofensivo capricho de arbitrar f\u00fatbol, no aparec\u00edan por ninguna parte, y, en cambio, terriblemente se hac\u00eda inocultable que el hijo de arist\u00f3cratas era una calamidad sin remedio para todo lo que no fuera cobrar tiros libres. Su inteligencia, a juzgar por las cosas que dec\u00eda, lo colocaba, darwinianamente hablando, entre el oligofr\u00e9nico y el mono, y su falta de gracia, de ambiciones, de inter\u00e9s por todo lo que no era esa agitada actividad de r\u00e9feri, hac\u00edan de \u00e9l un ser profundamente soso.\n\nAhora, es verdad que en lo que concern\u00eda a su vicio primero (el segundo fue el alcohol) el muchacho denotaba algo que merec\u00eda llamarse talento. Su imparcialidad teratol\u00f3gica (\u00bfen el espacio sagrado de la cancha y el tiempo hechicero de la competencia?) le gan\u00f3 prestigio como \u00e1rbitro entre alumnos y profesores del Santa Mar\u00eda, y, tambi\u00e9n, gavil\u00e1n que desde la nube divisa bajo el algarrobo la rata que ser\u00e1 su almuerzo, su visi\u00f3n que le permit\u00eda infaliblemente detectar, a cualquier distancia y desde cualquier \u00e1ngulo, el artero puntapi\u00e9 del defensa a la canilla del delantero centro, o el vil codazo del alero al guardameta que saltaba con \u00e9l. Tambi\u00e9n eran ins\u00f3litas su omnisciencia de las reglas y la intuici\u00f3n feliz que le hac\u00eda suplir con decisiones rel\u00e1mpago los vac\u00edos reglamentarios. Su fama salt\u00f3 los muros del Santa Mar\u00eda y el arist\u00f3crata de La Perla comenz\u00f3 a arbitrar competencias inter-escolares, campeonatos de barrio, y, un d\u00eda se supo que, \u00bfen la cancha del Potao?, hab\u00eda reemplazado a un r\u00e9feri en un partido de segunda divisi\u00f3n.\n\nTerminado el colegio, se plante\u00f3 un problema a los abrumados progenitores: el futuro de Joaqu\u00edn. La idea de que fuera a la universidad fue apenadamente descartada, para evitar al muchacho humillaciones in\u00fatiles, complejos de inferioridad, y, a la fortuna familiar, nuevos forados en forma de donaciones. Un intento de hacerlo aprender idiomas desemboc\u00f3 en estrepitoso fracaso. Un a\u00f1o en Estados Unidos y otro en Francia no le ense\u00f1aron una sola palabra de ingl\u00e9s ni de franc\u00e9s, y, en cambio, tuberculizaron su de por s\u00ed raqu\u00edtico espa\u00f1ol. Cuando volvi\u00f3 a Lima, el fabricante de casimires opt\u00f3 por resignarse a que su hijo no ostentara ning\u00fan t\u00edtulo, y, lleno de desilusi\u00f3n, lo puso a trabajar en la maleza de empresas caseras. Los resultados fueron previsiblemente catastr\u00f3ficos. En dos a\u00f1os, sus actos u omisiones hab\u00edan quebrado dos hilander\u00edas, reducido al d\u00e9ficit la m\u00e1s floreciente firma del conglomerado \u2014una constructora de caminos\u2014 y las plantaciones de pimienta de la selva hab\u00edan sido carcomidas por plagas, aplastadas por avalanchas y ahogadas por inundaciones (lo que confirm\u00f3 que Joaquincito era tambi\u00e9n un f\u00falmine). Aturdido por la inconmensurable incompetencia de su hijo, herido en su amor propio, el padre perdi\u00f3 energ\u00edas, se volvi\u00f3 nihilista y descuid\u00f3 sus negocios que, en poco tiempo, fueron desangrados por \u00e1vidos lugartenientes, y contrajo un tic risible que consist\u00eda en sacar la lengua para tratar (\u00bfinsensatamente?) de lamerse la oreja. Su nerviosismo y desvelos lo arrojaron, siguiendo los pasos de su esposa, en manos de psiquiatras y psicoanalistas (\u00bfAlberto de Quinteros? \u00bfLucio Ac\u00e9mila?) que dieron r\u00e1pida cuenta de sus residuos de cordura y de plata.\n\nEl colapso econ\u00f3mico y la ruina mental de sus engendradores no pusieron al borde del suicidio a Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont. Viv\u00eda siempre en La Perla, en una residencia fantom\u00e1quica, que se hab\u00eda ido despintando, aherrumbrando, despoblando, perdiendo jardines y cancha de f\u00fatbol (para pagar deudas) y que hab\u00edan invadido la suciedad y las ara\u00f1as. El joven se pasaba el d\u00eda arbitrando los partidos callejeros que organizaban los vagabundos del barrio, en los descampados que separan Bellavista y La Perla. Fue en uno de esos matches disputados por ca\u00f3ticos palomillas, en plena v\u00eda p\u00fablica, donde un par de piedras hac\u00edan de arco y una ventana y un poste de l\u00edmites, y que Joaqu\u00edn \u2014principismo de elegante que se viste de baile para cenar en plena selva virgen\u2014 arbitraba como si fueran final de campeonato, que el hijo de arist\u00f3cratas conoci\u00f3 a la persona que har\u00eda de \u00e9l un cirroso y una estrella: \u00bfSarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda?\n\nLa hab\u00eda visto jugar varias veces en esos partidos del mont\u00f3n e incluso le hab\u00eda cobrado muchas faltas por la agresividad con que arremet\u00eda contra el adversario. Le dec\u00edan Marimacho, pero ni por \u00e9sas se le hubiera ocurrido a Joaqu\u00edn que ese adolescente cetrino, calzado con viejas zapatillas, cubierto por unos blue jeans y una chompa rotosa, hubiera sido mujer. Lo descubri\u00f3 er\u00f3ticamente. Un d\u00eda, por haberla castigado con un penal indiscutible (Marimacho hab\u00eda metido un gol con bola y arquero), recibi\u00f3 como respuesta una mentada de madre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 has dicho? \u2014se indign\u00f3 el hijo de arist\u00f3cratas \u00bfpensando que en esos mismos momentos su madre estar\u00eda ingiriendo una p\u00edldora, paladeando una p\u00f3cima, soportando un agujazo?\u2014: Repite si eres hombre.\n\n\u2014No soy, pero repito \u2014repuso Marimacho. Y, honor de espartana capaz de ir a la hoguera por no dar su brazo a torcer, repiti\u00f3, enriquecida con adjetivos del arroyo, la mentada de madre.\n\nJoaqu\u00edn intent\u00f3 lanzarle un pu\u00f1ete, que s\u00f3lo dio en el aire, y, al instante, se vio arrojado al suelo por un cabezazo de Marimacho, quien cay\u00f3 sobre \u00e9l, golpe\u00e1ndolo con manos, pies, rodillas, codos. All\u00ed, forcejeos gimn\u00e1sticos sobre la lona que acaban pareciendo los apretones del amor, descubri\u00f3, estupefacto, erogenizado, eyaculante, que su adversario era mujer. La emoci\u00f3n que le produjeron los roces pugil\u00edsticos con esas turgencias inesperadas fue tan grande que cambi\u00f3 su vida. Ah\u00ed mismo, al amistarse despu\u00e9s de la pelea y saber que se llamaba Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, la invit\u00f3 al cine a ver Tarz\u00e1n, y una semana m\u00e1s tarde le propuso el altar. La negativa de Sarita a ser su esposa e incluso a dejarse besar empujaron cl\u00e1sicamente a Joaqu\u00edn a las cantinas. En poco tiempo, pas\u00f3 de rom\u00e1ntico que ahoga penas en whisky a alcoh\u00f3lico irredento que puede apagar su africana sed con kerosene.\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 despert\u00f3 en Joaqu\u00edn esa pasi\u00f3n por Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda? Era joven y ten\u00eda un f\u00edsico esbelto de gallito, una piel curtida por la intemperie, un cerquillo bailar\u00edn, y, como jugadora de f\u00fatbol, no estaba mal. Por su manera de vestirse, las cosas que hac\u00eda y las personas que frecuentaba, parec\u00eda contrariada con su condici\u00f3n de mujer. \u00bfEra esto, tal vez \u2014vicio de originalidad, frenes\u00ed de extravagancia\u2014 lo que la hac\u00eda tan atractiva para el arist\u00f3crata? El primer d\u00eda que llev\u00f3 a Marimacho a la ruinosa casa de La Perla, sus padres, despu\u00e9s que la pareja hubo partido, se miraron asqueados. El ex rico encarcel\u00f3 en una frase la amargura de su esp\u00edritu: \u00abNo s\u00f3lo hemos creado a un est\u00fapido, sino, tambi\u00e9n, a un pervertido sexual\u00bb.\n\nSin embargo, Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, a la vez que alcoholiz\u00f3 a Joaqu\u00edn, fue el trampol\u00edn que lo ascendi\u00f3 de los partidos callejeros con pelota de trapo a los campeonatos del Estadio Nacional.\n\nMarimacho no se contentaba con rechazar la pasi\u00f3n del arist\u00f3crata; se complac\u00eda en hacerlo sufrir. Se dejaba invitar al cine, al f\u00fatbol, a los toros, a restaurantes, consent\u00eda en recibir costosos regalos (\u00bfen los que el enamorado dilapidaba los escombros del patrimonio familiar?), pero no permit\u00eda que Joaqu\u00edn le hablara de amor. Apenas intentaba \u00e9ste, timidez de doncel que enrojece al piropear a una flor, ator\u00e1ndose, decirle cu\u00e1nto la amaba, Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda se pon\u00eda de pie, iracunda, lo her\u00eda con insultos de una soecidad bajopontina, y se mandaba mudar. Era entonces cuando Joaqu\u00edn comenzaba a beber, pasando de una cantina a otra y mezclando licores para obtener efectos prontos y explosivos. Fue un espect\u00e1culo corriente, para sus padres, verlo recogerse a la hora de las lechuzas, y cruzar las habitaciones de La Perla, dando traspi\u00e9s, perseguido por una estela de v\u00f3mitos. Cuando ya parec\u00eda a punto de desintegrarse en alcohol, una llamada de Sarita lo resucitaba. Conceb\u00eda nuevas esperanzas y se reanudaba el ciclo infernal. Demolidos por la amargura, el hombre del tic y la hipocondr\u00edaca murieron casi al mismo tiempo y fueron sepultados en un mausoleo del Cementerio Presb\u00edtero Maestro. La encogida residencia de La Perla, al igual que los bienes que sobreviv\u00edan, fueron rematados por acreedores o incautados por el Estado. Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont tuvo que ganarse la vida.\n\nTrat\u00e1ndose de quien se trataba (su pasado rug\u00eda que morir\u00eda de consunci\u00f3n o terminar\u00eda mendigo) lo hizo m\u00e1s que bien. \u00bfQu\u00e9 profesi\u00f3n eligi\u00f3? \u00a1\u00c1rbitro de f\u00fatbol! Acicateado por el hambre y el deseo de seguir festejando a la esquiva Sarita, comenz\u00f3 pidiendo unos soles a los mataperros cuyos partidos le ped\u00edan arbitrar, y, al ver que ellos, prorrate\u00e1ndose, se los daban, dos m\u00e1s dos son cuatro y cuatro y dos son seis, fue aumentando las tarifas y administr\u00e1ndose mejor. Como era conocida su habilidad en la cancha, consigui\u00f3 contratos en competencias juveniles, y, un d\u00eda, audazmente, se present\u00f3 en la Asociaci\u00f3n de \u00c1rbitros y Entrenadores de F\u00fatbol y solicit\u00f3 su inscripci\u00f3n. Pas\u00f3 los ex\u00e1menes con una brillantez que dej\u00f3 mareados a los que, a partir de entonces, pudo (\u00bfvanidosamente?) llamar colegas.\n\nLa aparici\u00f3n de Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont \u2014uniforme negro pespuntado de blanco, viserita verde en la frente, silbato plateado en la boca\u2014 en el Estadio Nacional de Jos\u00e9 D\u00edaz, estableci\u00f3 una efem\u00e9rides en el f\u00fatbol nacional. Un experimentado cronista deportivo lo dir\u00eda: \u00abCon \u00e9l ingresaron a las canchas la justicia inflexible y la inspiraci\u00f3n art\u00edstica\u00bb. Su correcci\u00f3n, su imparcialidad, su rapidez para descubrir la falta y su tino para sancionarla, su autoridad (los jugadores se dirig\u00edan siempre a \u00e9l bajando los ojos y trat\u00e1ndolo de don), y ese estado f\u00edsico que le permit\u00eda correr los noventa minutos del partido y no estar nunca a m\u00e1s de diez metros de la pelota, lo hicieron r\u00e1pidamente popular. Fue, como se dijo en un discurso, el \u00fanico r\u00e9feri nunca desobedecido por los jugadores ni agredido por los espectadores, y el \u00fanico al que, despu\u00e9s de cada partido, ovacionaban las tribunas.\n\n\u00bfNac\u00edan esos talentos y esfuerzos s\u00f3lo de una sobresaliente conciencia profesional? Tambi\u00e9n. Pero la raz\u00f3n profunda era que Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont pretend\u00eda, con su magia arbitral, secreto de muchacho que triunfa en Europa y vive amargo porque lo que quer\u00eda era el aplauso de su pueblecito andino, impresionar a Marimacho. Segu\u00edan vi\u00e9ndose, casi a diario, y la escabrosa maledicencia popular los cre\u00eda amantes. En realidad, pese a su tes\u00f3n sentimental, inc\u00f3lume a lo largo de los a\u00f1os, el r\u00e9feri no hab\u00eda conseguido vencer la resistencia de Sarita.\n\n\u00c9sta, un d\u00eda, luego de rescatarlo del suelo de una cantina del Callao, de llevarlo a la pensi\u00f3n del centro donde viv\u00eda, de limpiarle las manchas de escupitajo y de aserr\u00edn y de acostarlo, le cont\u00f3 el secreto de su vida. Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont supo as\u00ed, lividez de hombre que ha recibido el beso del vampiro, que en la primera juventud de esa muchacha hab\u00eda un amor maldito y un terremoto conyugal. En efecto, entre Sarita y su hermano (\u00bfRichard?) hab\u00eda brotado un enamoramiento tr\u00e1gico, que \u2014cataratas de fuego, lluvia de veneno sobre la humanidad\u2014 hab\u00eda cristalizado en embarazo. Habiendo contra\u00eddo astutamente matrimonio con un gal\u00e1n al que antes desairaba (\u00bfel Pelirrojo Ant\u00fanez? \u00bfLuis Marroqu\u00edn?) para que el hijo del incesto tuviera un apellido impoluto, el joven y dichoso marido, sin embargo \u2014cola del diablo que se mete en la olla y arruina el pastel\u2014, hab\u00eda descubierto a tiempo la supercher\u00eda y repudiado a la tramposa que quer\u00eda contrabandearle un entenado como hijo. Obligada a abortar, Sarita huy\u00f3 de su familia encopetada, de su barrio residencial, de su apellido resonante, y, convertida en vagabunda, en los descampados de Bellavista y La Perla hab\u00eda adquirido la personalidad y el apodo de Marimacho. Desde entonces, hab\u00eda jurado no entregarse nunca m\u00e1s a un hombre y vivir siempre, para todos los efectos pr\u00e1cticos (\u00bfsalvo, ay, el de los espermatozoides?), como var\u00f3n.\n\nConocer la tragedia, aderezada de sacrilegio, transgresi\u00f3n de tab\u00faes, pisoteo de la moral civil y de mandamientos religiosos, de Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, no cancel\u00f3 la pasi\u00f3n amorosa de Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont; la robusteci\u00f3. El hombre de La Perla concibi\u00f3, incluso, la idea de curar a Marimacho de sus traumas y reconciliarla con la sociedad y los hombres; quiso hacer de ella, otra vez, una lime\u00f1a femenina y coqueta, p\u00edcara y salerosa \u00bfcomo la Perricholi?\n\nAl mismo tiempo que su fama crec\u00eda y era solicitado para arbitrar partidos internacionales en Lima y en el extranjero, y recib\u00eda ofertas para trabajar en M\u00e9xico, Brasil, Colombia, Venezuela, que \u00e9l, patriotismo de sabio que renuncia a las computadoras de Nueva York para seguir experimentando con las cobayas tuberculosas de San Fernando, siempre rechaz\u00f3, su asedio al coraz\u00f3n de la incestuosa se hizo m\u00e1s tenaz.\n\nY le pareci\u00f3 entrever algunas se\u00f1ales \u2014humo apache en las colinas, tam-tams en la floresta africana\u2014 de que Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda pod\u00eda ceder. Una tarde, luego de un caf\u00e9 con medialunas en el Hait\u00ed de la plaza de Armas, Joaqu\u00edn pudo retener entre las suyas la diestra de la muchacha por m\u00e1s de un minuto (exacto: su cabeza de \u00e1rbitro lo cronometr\u00f3). Poco despu\u00e9s, hubo un partido en que la selecci\u00f3n nacional se enfrent\u00f3 a una pandilla de homicidas, de un pa\u00eds de escaso renombre \u2014\u00bfArgentina o algo as\u00ed?\u2014, que se presentaron a jugar con los zapatos acorazados de clavos, y rodilleras y coderas que, en verdad, eran instrumentos para malherir al adversario. Sin atender a sus argumentos (por lo dem\u00e1s ciertos) de que en su pa\u00eds era costumbre jugar al f\u00fatbol as\u00ed \u2014\u00bfcabece\u00e1ndolo con la tortura y el crimen?\u2014, Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont los fue expulsando de la cancha, hasta que el equipo peruano gan\u00f3 t\u00e9cnicamente por falta de competidores. El \u00e1rbitro, por supuesto, sali\u00f3 en hombros de la multitud y Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, cuando estuvieron solos \u2014\u00bfarranque de peruanidad? \u00bfsensibler\u00eda deportiva?\u2014, le ech\u00f3 los brazos al cuello y lo bes\u00f3. Una vez que estuvo enfermo (la cirrosis, discreta, fat\u00eddica, iba mineralizando el h\u00edgado del hombre de los estadios y comenzaba a provocarle crisis peri\u00f3dicas) lo atendi\u00f3 sin moverse de su lado, la semana que permaneci\u00f3 en el Hospital Carri\u00f3n y Joaqu\u00edn la vio, una noche, derramar algunas l\u00e1grimas \u00bfpor \u00e9l? Todo esto lo envalentonaba y cada d\u00eda le propon\u00eda, con argumentos renovados, matrimonio. Era in\u00fatil. Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda asist\u00eda a todos los partidos que \u00e9l interpretaba (los cronistas comparaban sus arbitrajes al manejo de una sinfon\u00eda), lo acompa\u00f1aba al extranjero y hasta se hab\u00eda mudado a la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial donde Joaqu\u00edn viv\u00eda con su hermana pianista y sus ancianos padres. Pero se negaba a que esa fraternidad dejara de ser casta y se convirtiera en refocilo. La incertidumbre, margarita cuyos p\u00e9talos no se termina jam\u00e1s de deshojar, fue agravando el alcoholismo de Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont, a quien acab\u00f3 por verse m\u00e1s borracho que sobrio.\n\nEl alcohol fue el tal\u00f3n de Aquiles de su vida profesional, el lastre que, dec\u00edan los entendidos, le impidi\u00f3 arbitrar en Europa. \u00bfC\u00f3mo se explica, de otra parte, que un hombre que beb\u00eda tanto hubiera podido ejercer una profesi\u00f3n de tantos rigores f\u00edsicos? El hecho es que, enigmas que empiedran la historia, desenvolvi\u00f3 ambas vocaciones al mismo tiempo, y, a partir de la treintena, ambas fueron simult\u00e1neas: Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont comenz\u00f3 a arbitrar partidos borracho como una cuba y a seguirlos arbitrando imaginativamente en las cantinas.\n\nEl alcohol no amortiguaba su talento: ni empa\u00f1aba su vista, ni debilitaba su autoridad, ni demoraba su carrera. Es verdad que, alguna vez, en medio de un partido se le vio atacado de hipos, y que, calumnias que enturbian el aire y acuchillan la virtud, se aseguraba que una vez, aquejado de sahariana sed, arrebat\u00f3 a un enfermero que corr\u00eda a auxiliar a un jugador una botella de linimento y se la bebi\u00f3 como agua fresca. Pero estos episodios \u2014anecdotario pintoresco, mitolog\u00eda del genio\u2014 no interrumpieron su carrera de \u00e9xitos.\n\nAs\u00ed, entre los atronadores aplausos del Estadio y las penitentes borracheras con que trataba de calmar los remordimientos \u2014pinzas de inquisidor que hurgan las carnes, potro que descoyunta los huesos\u2014, en su alma de misionero de la verdadera fe (\u00bftestigos de Jehov\u00e1?), por haber violado inopinadamente, en una noche loca de la juventud, a una menor de La Victoria (\u00bfSarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda?), lleg\u00f3 Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Bellmont a la flor de la edad: la cincuentena. Era un hombre de frente ancha, nariz aguile\u00f1a, mirada penetrante, rectitud y bondad en el esp\u00edritu, que hab\u00eda trepado a la cumbre de su profesi\u00f3n.\n\nEn esas circunstancias le toc\u00f3 a Lima ser escenario del m\u00e1s importante encuentro futbol\u00edstico del medio siglo, la final del campeonato sudamericano entre dos equipos que, en las eliminatorias, hab\u00edan, cada uno por su lado, infligido deshonrosas goleadas a sus adversarios: Bolivia y Per\u00fa. Aunque la costumbre aconsejaba que arbitrara ese partido un r\u00e9feri de pa\u00eds neutral, los dos equipos, y, con especial insistencia \u2014hidalgu\u00eda del Altiplano, nobleza colla, pundonor aymara\u2014, los extranjeros, exigieron que fuera el famoso Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza Marroqu\u00edn quien arbitrara el partido. Y, como jugadores, suplentes y entrenadores amenazaron con una huelga si no se les satisfac\u00eda, la Federaci\u00f3n accedi\u00f3 y el Testigo de Jehov\u00e1 recibi\u00f3 la misi\u00f3n de gobernar ese match que todos profetizaban memorable.\n\nLas ac\u00e9rrimas nubes grises de Lima se despejaron ese domingo para que el sol calentara el encuentro. Muchas personas hab\u00edan pasado la noche a la intemperie, con la ilusi\u00f3n de conseguir entradas (era sabido que estaban agotadas hac\u00eda un mes). Desde el amanecer, todo el entorno del Estadio Nacional se volvi\u00f3 un hervor de gentes en pos de revendedores y dispuestas a cualquier delito por entrar. Dos horas antes del partido, en el Estadio no cab\u00eda un alfiler. Varios centenares de ciudadanos del gran pa\u00eds del sur (\u00bfBolivia?), llegados hasta Lima desde sus limpias alturas en avi\u00f3n, auto y a pie, se hab\u00edan concentrado en la Tribuna de Oriente. Los v\u00edtores y maquinitas de visitantes y abor\u00edgenes caldeaban el ambiente, en espera de los equipos.\n\nAnte la magnitud de la concentraci\u00f3n popular, las autoridades hab\u00edan tomado precauciones. La m\u00e1s c\u00e9lebre brigada de la Guardia Civil, aquella que, en pocos meses \u2014hero\u00edsmo y abnegaci\u00f3n, audacia y urbanidad\u2014 hab\u00eda limpiado de delincuentes y malvados el Callao, fue tra\u00edda a Lima a fin de garantizar la seguridad y la convivencia ciudadanas en la tribuna y en las canchas. Su jefe, el c\u00e9lebre capit\u00e1n Lituma, terror del crimen, se paseaba afiebradamente por el Estadio y recorr\u00eda las puertas y calles adyacentes, verificando si las patrullas permanec\u00edan en sus sitios y dictando inspiradas instrucciones a su aguerrido adjunto, el sargento Jaime Concha.\n\nEn la Tribuna Occidental, magullados entre la masa rugiente y casi sin respiraci\u00f3n, se encontraban al darse el pitazo inicial, adem\u00e1s de Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda \u2014quien, masoquismo de v\u00edctima que vive prendada de su violador, no se perd\u00eda jam\u00e1s los partidos que arbitraba\u2014, el venerable don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua, recientemente incorporado del lecho de dolor donde yac\u00eda por las cuchilladas que recibi\u00f3 del propagandista m\u00e9dico Luis Marroqu\u00edn Bellmont (\u00bfquien estaba en el Estadio, en la Tribuna Norte, por un permiso especial\u00edsimo de la Direcci\u00f3n de Prisiones?), su esposa Margarita y su hija Rosa, ya del todo restablecida de los mordiscos que recibiera \u2014oh infausto amanecer selv\u00e1tico\u2014 de una camada de ratas.\n\nNada hac\u00eda presagiar la tragedia, cuando Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza (\u00bfTello? \u00bfDelf\u00edn?) \u2014quien, como de costumbre, hab\u00eda sido obligado a dar la vuelta ol\u00edmpica agradeciendo aplausos\u2014, apuesto, \u00e1gil, arranc\u00f3 el partido. Al contrario, todo transcurr\u00eda en una atm\u00f3sfera de entusiasmo y caballerosidad: las acciones de los jugadores, los aplausos de las barras que premiaban los avances de los delanteros y las atajadas de los guardametas. Desde el primer momento fue notorio que se cumplir\u00edan los or\u00e1culos: el juego estaba equilibrado y aunque pundonoroso era recio. M\u00e1s creativo que nunca, Joaqu\u00edn Hinostroza (\u00bfAbril?) se deslizaba sobre el c\u00e9sped como en patines, sin estorbar a los jugadores y coloc\u00e1ndose siempre en el \u00e1ngulo m\u00e1s afortunado, y sus decisiones, severas pero justas, imped\u00edan que, ardores de la contienda que la vuelven gresca, el partido degenerara en violencia. Pero, fronteras de la condici\u00f3n humana, ni un santo Testigo de Jehov\u00e1 pod\u00eda impedir que se cumpliera lo que, indiferencia de fakir, flema de ingl\u00e9s, hab\u00eda urdido el destino.\n\nEl mecanismo infernal irremisiblemente comenz\u00f3 a marchar, en el segundo tiempo, cuando los equipos iban uno a uno y los espectadores se hallaban af\u00f3nicos y con las manos ardiendo. El capit\u00e1n Lituma y el sargento Concha se dec\u00edan, c\u00e1ndidamente, que todo iba bien: ni un solo incidente \u2014robo, pelea, extrav\u00edo de ni\u00f1o\u2014 hab\u00eda venido a malograr la tarde.\n\nPero he aqu\u00ed que a las cuatro y trece minutos, a los cincuenta mil espectadores les fue dado conocer lo ins\u00f3lito. Del fondo m\u00e1s promiscuo de la Tribuna Sur, de pronto \u2014negro, flaco, alt\u00edsimo, dient\u00f3n\u2014, emergi\u00f3 un hombre que escal\u00f3 livianamente el enrejado e irrumpi\u00f3 en la cancha dando gritos incomprensibles. No sorprendi\u00f3 tanto a la gente verlo casi desnudo \u2014llevaba apenas un taparrabos colgado de la cintura\u2014 como que, de pies a cabeza, tuviera el cuerpo lleno de incisiones. Un ronquido de p\u00e1nico estremeci\u00f3 las tribunas; todos comprendieron que el tatuado se propon\u00eda victimar al \u00e1rbitro. No hab\u00eda duda: el gigante aullador corr\u00eda directamente hacia el \u00eddolo de la afici\u00f3n (\u00bfGumercindo Hinostroza Delf\u00edn?), quien, absorto en su arte, no lo hab\u00eda visto y segu\u00eda modelando el partido.\n\n\u00bfQui\u00e9n era el inminente agresor? \u00bfTal vez el polizonte aquel, llegado misteriosamente al Callao, y sorprendido por la ronda nocturna? \u00bfEra el mismo infeliz al que las autoridades hab\u00edan eutan\u00e1sicamente decidido ejecutar y al que el sargento (\u00bfConcha?) perdon\u00f3 la vida en una noche oscura? Ni el capit\u00e1n Lituma ni el sargento Concha tuvieron tiempo de averiguarlo. Comprendiendo que, si no proced\u00edan en el acto, una gloria nacional pod\u00eda sufrir un atentado, el capit\u00e1n \u2014superior y subordinado ten\u00edan un m\u00e9todo para entenderse con movimientos de pesta\u00f1as\u2014 orden\u00f3 al sargento que actuara. Jaime Concha, entonces, sin ponerse de pie, sac\u00f3 su pistola y dispar\u00f3 sus doce tiros, que fueron todos a incrustarse (cincuenta metros m\u00e1s all\u00e1) en distintas partes del calato. De este modo, el sargento ven\u00eda a cumplir, m\u00e1s vale tarde que nunca dice el refr\u00e1n, la orden recibida, porque, en efecto, \u00a1se trataba del polizonte del Callao!\n\nBast\u00f3 que viera acribillado a balazos al potencial verdugo de su \u00eddolo, al que un instante atr\u00e1s odiaba, para que, inmediatamente \u2014veleidades de fr\u00edvola sentimental, coqueter\u00edas de hembra mudable\u2014, la muchedumbre se solidarizara con \u00e9l, lo convirtiera en v\u00edctima, y se enemistara con la Guardia Civil. Una silbatina que ensordeci\u00f3 a los p\u00e1jaros del cielo se elev\u00f3 por los aires en la que las tribunas de sombra y de sol entonaban su c\u00f3lera por el espect\u00e1culo del negro que, all\u00e1, sobre la tierra, se iba quedando sin sangre por doce agujeros. Los balazos hab\u00edan desconcertado a los peones, pero el Gran Hinostroza (\u00bfT\u00e9llez Unz\u00e1tegui?), fiel a s\u00ed mismo, no hab\u00eda permitido que se interrumpiera la fiesta, y segu\u00eda luci\u00e9ndose, alrededor del cad\u00e1ver del espont\u00e1neo, sordo ante la silbatina, a la que ahora se a\u00f1ad\u00edan interjecciones, alaridos, insultos. Ya comenzaban a caer \u2014multicolores, volanderos\u2014 los emisarios del que pronto ser\u00eda diluvio de cojines contra el destacamento policial del capit\u00e1n Lituma. \u00c9ste olfate\u00f3 el hurac\u00e1n y decidi\u00f3 actuar r\u00e1pido. Orden\u00f3 que los guardias prepararan las granadas lacrim\u00f3genas. Quer\u00eda evitar una sangr\u00eda a toda costa. Y, unos momentos despu\u00e9s, cuando ya las barreras hab\u00edan sido traspasadas en muchos puntos del redondel, y, aqu\u00ed y all\u00e1, taur\u00f3filos enardecidos se precipitaban hacia el coso con belicosidad, orden\u00f3 a sus hombres que rociaran el per\u00edmetro con unas cuantas granadas. Las l\u00e1grimas y los estornudos, pensaba, calmar\u00edan a los iracundos y la paz reinar\u00eda de nuevo en la plaza de Acho apenas el viento disipara los efluvios qu\u00edmicos. Dispuso asimismo que un grupo de cuatro guardias rodeara al sargento Jaime Concha, quien se hab\u00eda convertido en el objetivo de los exaltados: visiblemente, estaban decididos a lincharlo, aunque para ello tuvieran que enfrentarse al toro.\n\nPero el capit\u00e1n Lituma olvidaba algo esencial: \u00e9l mismo, dos horas atr\u00e1s, para impedir que los aficionados sin entradas que rondaban la plaza, amenazantes, intentaran invadir el local por la fuerza, hab\u00eda ordenado bajar las rejas y cortinas met\u00e1licas que cerraban el acceso a los tendidos. As\u00ed, cuando, puntuales ejecutores de \u00f3rdenes, los guardias regalaron al p\u00fablico una bandada de granadas lacrim\u00f3genas, y aqu\u00ed y all\u00e1, en pocos segundos, se elevaron pestilentes humaredas en los grader\u00edos, la reacci\u00f3n de los espectadores fue huir. Atropelladamente, saltando, empujando, mientras se cubr\u00edan la boca con un pa\u00f1uelo y comenzaban a llorar, corrieron hacia las salidas. Las correntadas humanas se vieron frenadas por las cortinas y rejas met\u00e1licas que las clausuraban. \u00bfFrenadas? S\u00f3lo unos segundos, los suficientes para que las primeras filas de cada columna, convertidas en arietes por la presi\u00f3n de quienes ven\u00edan atr\u00e1s, las abollaran, hincharan, rajaran y arrancaran de cuajo. De este modo, los vecinos del R\u00edmac que, por azar, transitaban ese domingo alrededor de la plaza de toros a las cuatro y treinta minutos de la tarde pudieron apreciar un espect\u00e1culo b\u00e1rbaramente original: de pronto, en medio de un crepitar ag\u00f3nico, las puertas de Acho volaban en pedazos y comenzaban a escupir cad\u00e1veres apachurrados, que, bien vengas mal si vienes solo, eran encima pisoteados por la muchedumbre enloquecida que escapaba por los boquetes sanguinolentos.\n\nEntre las primeras v\u00edctimas del holocausto bajopontino, les cupo figurar a los introductores de los Testigos de Jehov\u00e1 en el Per\u00fa: el moqueguano don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua, su esposa Margarita, y su hija Rosa, la eximia tocadora de flauta dulce. Perdi\u00f3 a la religiosa familia lo que hubiera debido salvarla: su prudencia. Porque, apenas ocurrido el incidente del can\u00edbal espont\u00e1neo, cuando \u00e9ste acababa de ser despedazado por el corn\u00fapeta, don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua, cejas enarcadas y dedo dictatorial, hab\u00eda ordenado a su tribu: \u00abEn retirada\u00bb. No era miedo, palabra que el predicador desconoc\u00eda, sino buen tino, la idea que ni \u00e9l ni sus parientes deb\u00edan verse mezclados en ning\u00fan esc\u00e1ndalo, para evitar que, amparados en ese pretexto, los enemigos trataran de enlodar el nombre de su fe. As\u00ed, la familia Bergua, apresuradamente, abandon\u00f3 su tendido de sol y bajaba las gradas hacia la salida cuando estallaron las granadas lacrim\u00f3genas. Se hallaban los tres, beat\u00edficos, junto a la cortina met\u00e1lica n\u00famero seis, esperando que la levantaran, cuando vieron irrumpir a sus espaldas, tronante y lacrimal, a la multitud. No tuvieron tiempo de arrepentirse de los pecados que no ten\u00edan cuando fueron literalmente desintegrados (\u00bfhechos pur\u00e9, sopa humana?) contra la cortina met\u00e1lica, por la masa empavorecida. Un segundo antes de pasar a esa otra vida que \u00e9l negaba, don Sebasti\u00e1n alcanz\u00f3 todav\u00eda a gritar, terco, creyente y heterodoxo: \u00abEl Cristo muri\u00f3 en un \u00e1rbol, no en una cruz\u00bb.\n\nLa muerte del desequilibrado acuchillador de don Sebasti\u00e1n Bergua, y violador de do\u00f1a Margarita y de la artista, fue, \u00bfcabr\u00eda la expresi\u00f3n?, menos injusta. Porque, estallada la tragedia, el joven Marroqu\u00edn Delf\u00edn crey\u00f3 llegada su oportunidad: en medio de la confusi\u00f3n, huir\u00eda del agente que la Direcci\u00f3n de Prisiones le hab\u00eda destinado como acompa\u00f1ante para que viera la hist\u00f3rica corrida, y escapar\u00eda de Lima, del Per\u00fa, y, en el extranjero, con otro nombre, iniciar\u00eda una nueva vida de locura y cr\u00edmenes. Ilusiones que se pulverizar\u00edan cinco minutos despu\u00e9s, cuando, en la puerta de salida n\u00famero cinco, a (\u00bfLucho? \u00bfEzequiel?) Marroqu\u00edn Delf\u00edn y al agente de prisiones Chumpitaz, que lo ten\u00eda de la mano, les toc\u00f3 el dudoso honor de formar parte de la primera fila de taur\u00f3filos triturados por la multitud. (Los dedos entrelazados del polic\u00eda y el propagandista m\u00e9dico, aunque cad\u00e1veres, dieron que hablar.)\n\nEl deceso de Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda tuvo, al menos, la elegancia de ser menos promiscuo. Constituy\u00f3 un caso de malentendido garrafal, de equivocada evaluaci\u00f3n de actos e intenciones por parte de la autoridad. Al estallar los incidentes, ver al can\u00edbal corneado, los humos de las granadas, o\u00edr los aullidos de los fracturados, la muchacha de Tingo Mar\u00eda decidi\u00f3 que, pasi\u00f3n de amor que quita el miedo a la muerte, deb\u00eda estar junto al hombre que amaba. A la inversa de la afici\u00f3n, entonces, baj\u00f3 hacia el redondel, lo que la salv\u00f3 de perecer aplastada. Pero no la salv\u00f3 de la mirada de \u00e1guila del capit\u00e1n Lituma, quien advirtiendo, entre las nubes de gas que se expand\u00edan, una figurilla incierta y desalada, que saltaba el burladero y corr\u00eda hacia el diestro (quien, pese a todo, segu\u00eda citando al animal y haciendo pases de rodillas), y convencido de que su obligaci\u00f3n era impedir, mientras le quedara un h\u00e1lito de vida, que el matador fuera agredido, sac\u00f3 su rev\u00f3lver y, de tres r\u00e1pidos disparos, cort\u00f3 en seco la carrera y la vida de la enamorada: Sarita vino a caer muerta a los pies mismos de Gumercindo Bellmont.\n\nEl hombre de La Perla fue el \u00fanico, entre los muertos de esa tarde griega, que falleci\u00f3 de muerte natural. Si se puede llamar natural al fen\u00f3meno, ins\u00f3lito en tiempos prosaicos, de un hombre al que el espect\u00e1culo de su bienamada, muerta a sus pies, le paraliza el coraz\u00f3n y mata. Cay\u00f3 junto a Sarita y alcanzaron los dos, con el \u00faltimo aliento, a estrecharse y entrar as\u00ed, unidos, en la noche de los amantes desgraciados (\u00bfcomo ciertos Julieta y Romeo?)...\n\nPara entonces, el custodio del orden de inmaculada foja de servicios, considerando con melancol\u00eda que, pese a su experiencia y sagacidad, el orden no s\u00f3lo hab\u00eda sido alterado sino que la plaza de Acho y alrededores se hab\u00edan convertido en un cementerio de insepultos cad\u00e1veres, utiliz\u00f3 la \u00faltima bala que le quedaba para, lobo de mar que acompa\u00f1a su barco al fondo del oc\u00e9ano, volarse los sesos y acabar (viril ya que no exitosamente) su biograf\u00eda. Apenas vieron perecer a su jefe, la moral de los guardias se descalabr\u00f3; olvidaron la disciplina, el esp\u00edritu de cuerpo, el amor a la instituci\u00f3n, y s\u00f3lo pensaron en quitarse los uniformes, disimularse dentro de las ropas civiles que arranchaban a los muertos y escapar. Varios lo consiguieron. Pero no Jaime Concha, a quien los sobrevivientes, despu\u00e9s de castrar, ahorcaron con su propio correaje de cuero en el travesa\u00f1o del toril. All\u00ed qued\u00f3 el sano lector de Pato Donalds, el diligente centuri\u00f3n, columpi\u00e1ndose bajo el cielo de Lima, que, \u00bfqueriendo ponerse a tono con lo sucedido?, se hab\u00eda encrespado de nubes y comenzaba a llorar su gar\u00faa de invierno...\n\n\u00bfTerminar\u00eda as\u00ed, en dantesca carnicer\u00eda, esta historia? \u00bfO, como la Paloma F\u00e9nix (\u00bfla Gallina?), renacer\u00eda de sus cenizas con nuevos episodios y personajes recalcitrantes? \u00bfQu\u00e9 ocurrir\u00eda con esta tragedia taurina?\n\n### XVII\n\nPARTIMOS DE Lima a las nueve de la ma\u00f1ana, en un colectivo que tomamos en el parque Universitario. La t\u00eda Julia hab\u00eda salido de casa de mis t\u00edos con el pretexto de hacer las \u00faltimas compras antes de su viaje, y yo, de la de mis abuelos, como si fuera a trabajar a la radio. Ella hab\u00eda metido en una bolsa un camis\u00f3n de dormir y una muda de ropa interior; yo llevaba, en los bolsillos, mi escobilla de dientes, un peine y una maquinilla de afeitar (que, la verdad, a\u00fan no me serv\u00eda de gran cosa).\n\nPascual y Javier estaban esper\u00e1ndonos en el parque Universitario y hab\u00edan comprado los pasajes. Por suerte, no se present\u00f3 ning\u00fan otro viajero. Pascual y Javier, muy discretos, se sentaron delante, con el chofer, y nos dejaron el asiento de atr\u00e1s a la t\u00eda Julia y a m\u00ed. Era una ma\u00f1ana de invierno, t\u00edpica, de cielo encapotado y gar\u00faa continua, que nos escolt\u00f3 buena parte del desierto. Casi todo el viaje, la t\u00eda Julia y yo estuvimos bes\u00e1ndonos, apasionadamente, estrech\u00e1ndonos las manos, sin hablar, mientras o\u00edamos, mezclado al ruido del motor, el rumor de la conversaci\u00f3n entre Pascual y Javier, y, a veces, algunos comentarios del chofer. Llegamos a Chincha a las once y media de la ma\u00f1ana, con un sol espl\u00e9ndido y un calorcito delicioso. El cielo limpio, la luminosidad del aire, la algarab\u00eda de las calles repletas de gente, todo parec\u00eda de buen ag\u00fcero. La t\u00eda Julia sonre\u00eda, contenta.\n\nMientras Pascual y Javier se adelantaban a la municipalidad a ver si todo estaba listo, la t\u00eda Julia y yo fuimos a instalarnos en el Hotel Sudamericano. Era una vieja casa de un solo piso, de madera y adobes, con un patio techado que hac\u00eda las veces de comedor, y una docena de cuartitos alineados a ambos lados de un pasillo de baldosas, como un burdel. El hombre del mostrador nos pidi\u00f3 papeles; se content\u00f3 con mi carnet de periodista, y, al poner yo \u00aby se\u00f1ora\u00bb al lado de mi apellido, se limit\u00f3 a echar a la t\u00eda Julia una ojeada burlona. El cuartito que nos dieron ten\u00eda unas losetas despanzurradas por las que se ve\u00eda la tierra, una cama doble y hundida con una colcha de rombos verdes, una silleta de paja y unos clavos gordos en la pared para colgar la ropa. Apenas entramos, nos abrazamos con ardor y estuvimos bes\u00e1ndonos y acarici\u00e1ndonos, hasta que la t\u00eda Julia me apart\u00f3, ri\u00e9ndose:\n\n\u2014Alto ah\u00ed, Varguitas, primero tenemos que casarnos.\n\nEstaba arrebatada, con los ojos brillantes y alegres, y yo sent\u00eda que la quer\u00eda mucho, estaba feliz de casarme con ella, y, mientras esperaba que se lavara las manos y peinara, en el ba\u00f1o com\u00fan del corredor, me juraba que no ser\u00edamos como todos los matrimonios que conoc\u00eda, una calamidad m\u00e1s, sino que vivir\u00edamos siempre felices, y que casarme no me impedir\u00eda llegar a ser alg\u00fan d\u00eda un escritor. La t\u00eda Julia sali\u00f3 por fin y fuimos andando, de la mano, a la municipalidad.\n\nEncontramos a Pascual y a Javier en la puerta de una bodega, tomando un refresco. El alcalde hab\u00eda ido a presidir una inauguraci\u00f3n, pero ya volver\u00eda. Les pregunt\u00e9 si estaban absolutamente seguros de haber quedado con el pariente de Pascual en que nos casar\u00eda a mediod\u00eda y ellos se burlaron de m\u00ed. Javier hizo unas bromas sobre el novio impaciente y trajo a colaci\u00f3n un oportuno refr\u00e1n: el que espera desespera. Para hacer tiempo, los cuatro dimos unas vueltas bajo los altos eucaliptos y los robles de la plaza de Armas. Hab\u00eda unos muchachos correteando y unos viejos que se hac\u00edan lustrar los zapatos mientras le\u00edan los peri\u00f3dicos de Lima. Media hora despu\u00e9s est\u00e1bamos de regreso en la municipalidad. El secretario, un hombrecito flaco y con anteojos muy anchos, nos dio una mala noticia: el alcalde hab\u00eda vuelto de la inauguraci\u00f3n, pero se hab\u00eda ido a almorzar a El Sol de Chincha.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNo le avis\u00f3 usted que lo esper\u00e1bamos, para la boda? \u2014lo reprendi\u00f3 Javier.\n\n\u2014Estaba con una comitiva y no era el momento \u2014dijo el secretario, con aire de conocedor de la etiqueta.\n\n\u2014Vamos a buscarlo al restaurante y nos lo traemos \u2014me tranquiliz\u00f3 Pascual\u2014. No se preocupe, don Mario.\n\nPreguntando, encontramos El Sol de Chincha en las vecindades de la plaza. Era un restaurante criollo, con mesitas sin manteles, y una cocina al fondo, que chisporroteaba y humeaba, y en torno a la cual unas mujeres manipulaban ollas de cobre, peroles y fuentes olorosas. Hab\u00eda una radiola a todo volumen, tocando un vals, y se ve\u00eda mucha gente. Cuando la t\u00eda Julia comenzaba a decir, en la puerta, que tal vez ser\u00eda m\u00e1s prudente esperar que el alcalde terminara el almuerzo, \u00e9ste reconoci\u00f3 a Pascual, desde una esquina, y lo llam\u00f3. Vimos al redactor de Panamericana darse de abrazos con un hombre joven, medio rubio, que se puso de pie en una mesa donde hab\u00eda media docena de comensales, todos hombres, y otras tantas botellas de cerveza. Pascual nos hizo se\u00f1as de que nos acerc\u00e1ramos.\n\n\u2014Claro, los novios, me hab\u00eda olvidado por completo \u2014dijo el alcalde, estrech\u00e1ndonos la mano y calibrando a la t\u00eda Julia de arriba abajo, con una mirada de experto. Se volvi\u00f3 a sus compa\u00f1eros, que lo contemplaban servilmente, y les cont\u00f3, en voz alta, para hacerse o\u00edr por sobre el vals\u2014: Estos dos acaban de fugarse de Lima y yo los voy a casar.\n\nHubo risas, aplausos, manos que se estiraban hacia nosotros y el alcalde exigi\u00f3 que nos sent\u00e1ramos con ellos y pidi\u00f3 m\u00e1s cerveza para brindar por nuestra felicidad.\n\n\u2014Pero nada de ponerse juntos, para eso tendr\u00e1n toda la vida \u2014dijo, euf\u00f3rico, cogiendo a la t\u00eda Julia del brazo e instal\u00e1ndola junto a \u00e9l\u2014. La novia aqu\u00ed, a mi lado, que felizmente no est\u00e1 mi mujer.\n\nLa comitiva lo festej\u00f3. Eran mayores que el alcalde, comerciantes o agricultores vestidos de fiesta, y todos parec\u00edan tan borrachos como \u00e9l. Algunos conoc\u00edan a Pascual y le preguntaban sobre su vida en Lima y cu\u00e1ndo volver\u00eda a la tierra. Sentado junto a Javier, en un extremo de la mesa, yo procuraba sonre\u00edr, tomaba traguitos de una cerveza medio tibia, y contaba los minutos. Muy pronto, el alcalde y la comitiva se desinteresaron de nosotros. Se suced\u00edan las botellas, primero solas, despu\u00e9s acompa\u00f1adas de cebiche y de un sudado de corvina, de unos alfajores, y, luego, otra vez solas. Nadie recordaba el matrimonio, ni siquiera Pascual, que, con ojos encendidos y voz empalagosa, coreaba tambi\u00e9n los valses del alcalde. \u00c9ste, despu\u00e9s de haber piropeado todo el almuerzo a la t\u00eda Julia, intentaba ahora pasarle el brazo por los hombros y le acercaba su cara abotagada. Haciendo esfuerzos por sonre\u00edr, la t\u00eda Julia lo manten\u00eda a raya, y, de rato en rato, nos lanzaba miradas de angustia.\n\n\u2014Tranquilo, compadre \u2014me dec\u00eda Javier\u2014. Piensa en el matrimonio y nada m\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014Creo que ya se freg\u00f3 \u2014le dije, cuando o\u00ed que el alcalde, en el colmo de la dicha, hablaba de traer guitarristas, de cerrar El Sol de Chincha, de ponernos a bailar\u2014. Y me parece que voy a ir preso por romperle la cara a ese huev\u00f3n.\n\nEstaba furioso y decidido a romp\u00e9rsela si se pon\u00eda insolente, cuando me levant\u00e9 y le dije a la t\u00eda Julia que nos \u00edbamos. Ella se par\u00f3 de inmediato, aliviada, y el alcalde no intent\u00f3 detenerla. Sigui\u00f3 cantando marineras, con buen o\u00eddo, y, al vernos salir, nos hizo adi\u00f3s con una sonrisita que me pareci\u00f3 sarc\u00e1stica. Javier, que vino detr\u00e1s, dec\u00eda que era s\u00f3lo alcoh\u00f3lica. Mientras camin\u00e1bamos hacia el Hotel Sudamericano, yo hablaba pestes contra Pascual, a quien, no s\u00e9 por qu\u00e9, hac\u00eda responsable de ese almuerzo absurdo.\n\n\u2014No te hagas el ni\u00f1o malcriado, aprende a conservar la cabeza fr\u00eda \u2014me re\u00f1\u00eda Javier\u2014. El tipo est\u00e1 zampado y no se acuerda de nada. Pero no te amargues, hoy los casa. Esperen en el hotel hasta que los llame.\n\nApenas estuvimos solos, en el cuarto, nos echamos uno en brazos del otro y comenzamos a besarnos con una especie de desesperaci\u00f3n. No nos dec\u00edamos nada, pero nuestras manos y bocas se dec\u00edan locuazmente las cosas intensas y hermosas que sent\u00edamos. Hab\u00edamos comenzado bes\u00e1ndonos de pie, junto a la puerta, y poco a poco fuimos acerc\u00e1ndonos a la cama, donde luego nos sentamos y por fin nos tendimos, sin haber aflojado el estrecho abrazo ni un instante. Medio ciego de felicidad y de deseo, acarici\u00e9 el cuerpo de la t\u00eda Julia con manos inexpertas y \u00e1vidas, primero sobre la ropa, luego desaboton\u00e9 su blusa color ladrillo, ya arrugada, y estaba bes\u00e1ndole los senos, cuando unos nudillos inoportunos estremecieron la puerta.\n\n\u2014Todo listo, concubinos \u2014o\u00edmos la voz de Javier\u2014. Dentro de cinco minutos, en la alcald\u00eda. El cacaseno est\u00e1 esper\u00e1ndolos.\n\nSaltamos de la cama, dichosos, aturdidos, y la t\u00eda Julia, roja de verg\u00fcenza, se acomodaba la ropa y yo, cerrando los ojos, como de chiquito, pensaba en cosas abstractas y respetables \u2014n\u00fameros, tri\u00e1ngulos, c\u00edrculos, la abuelita, mi mam\u00e1\u2014 para que cediera la erecci\u00f3n. En el ba\u00f1o del pasillo, ella primero, yo despu\u00e9s, nos aseamos y peinamos un poco, y regresamos a la municipalidad a paso tan r\u00e1pido que llegamos sin respiraci\u00f3n. El secretario nos hizo pasar de inmediato a la oficina del alcalde, un cuarto amplio, en el que hab\u00eda un escudo peruano colgado en la pared, dominando un escritorio con banderines y libros de actas, y media docena de bancas, como pupitres de colegio. Con la cara lavada y el pelo todav\u00eda h\u00famedo, muy compuesto, el rubicundo burgomaestre nos hizo una venia ceremoniosa desde detr\u00e1s del escritorio. Era otra persona: lleno de formas y de solemnidad. A ambos lados del escritorio, Javier y Pascual nos sonre\u00edan con picard\u00eda.\n\n\u2014Bien, procedamos \u2014dijo el alcalde; su voz lo traicionaba: pastosa y vacilante, parec\u00eda qued\u00e1rsele atascada en la lengua\u2014. \u00bfD\u00f3nde est\u00e1n los papeles?\n\n\u2014Los tiene usted, se\u00f1or alcalde \u2014le repuso Javier, con infinita educaci\u00f3n\u2014. Pascual y yo se los dejamos el viernes, para ir adelantando los tr\u00e1mites, \u00bfno se acuerda?\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 zampado est\u00e1s que ya se te olvid\u00f3, primo \u2014se ri\u00f3 Pascual, con voz tambi\u00e9n borrachosa\u2014. Si t\u00fa mismo pediste que te los dej\u00e1ramos.\n\n\u2014Bueno, entonces los debe tener el secretario \u2014murmur\u00f3 el alcalde, inc\u00f3modo, y mirando a Pascual con disgusto, llam\u00f3\u2014: \u00a1Secretario!\n\nEl hombrecito flaco y de anchos anteojos se demor\u00f3 varios minutos en encontrar las partidas de nacimiento y la sentencia de divorcio de la t\u00eda Julia. Esperamos en silencio, mientras el alcalde fumaba, bostezaba y miraba su reloj con impaciencia. Al fin las trajo, escudri\u00f1\u00e1ndolas con antipat\u00eda. Al ponerlas sobre el escritorio, murmur\u00f3, con un tonito burocr\u00e1tico:\n\n\u2014Aqu\u00ed est\u00e1n, se\u00f1or alcalde. Hay un impedimento por la edad del joven, ya le dije.\n\n\u2014\u00bfAlguien le ha preguntado a usted algo? \u2014dijo Pascual, dando un paso hacia \u00e9l como si fuera a estrangularlo.\n\n\u2014Yo cumplo con mi deber \u2014le contest\u00f3 el secretario. Y, volvi\u00e9ndose al alcalde, insisti\u00f3 con acidez, se\u00f1al\u00e1ndome\u2014: S\u00f3lo tiene dieciocho a\u00f1os y no presenta dispensa judicial para casarse.\n\n\u2014C\u00f3mo es posible que tengas a un imb\u00e9cil de ayudante, primo \u2014estall\u00f3 Pascual\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 esperas para botarlo y traer a alguien con un poco de cacumen?\n\n\u2014C\u00e1llate, se te ha subido el trago y te est\u00e1s poniendo agresivo \u2014dijo el alcalde. Carraspe\u00f3, ganando tiempo. Cruz\u00f3 los brazos y nos mir\u00f3 a la t\u00eda Julia y a m\u00ed, gravemente\u2014. Yo estaba dispuesto a pasar por alto las proclamas, para hacerles un favor. Pero esto es m\u00e1s serio. Lo siento mucho.\n\n\u2014\u00bfQu\u00e9 cosa? \u2014dije yo, desconcertado\u2014. \u00bfAcaso no sab\u00eda usted desde el viernes lo de mi edad?\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 farsa es \u00e9sta \u2014intervino Javier\u2014. Usted y yo quedamos en que los casar\u00eda sin problemas.\n\n\u2014\u00bfMe est\u00e1 pidiendo que cometa un delito? \u2014se indign\u00f3 a su vez el alcalde. Y con aire ofendido\u2014: Adem\u00e1s, no me levante la voz. Las personas se entienden hablando, no a gritos.\n\n\u2014Pero, primo, te has vuelto loco \u2014dijo Pascual, fuera de s\u00ed, golpeando el escritorio\u2014. T\u00fa estabas de acuerdo, t\u00fa sab\u00edas lo de la edad, t\u00fa dijiste que no importaba. No te me vengas a hacer el amn\u00e9sico ni el legalista. \u00a1C\u00e1salos de una vez y d\u00e9jate de cojudeces!\n\n\u2014No digas malas palabras delante de una dama y no vuelvas a chupar porque no tienes cabeza \u2014dijo tranquilamente el alcalde. Se volvi\u00f3 al secretario y, con un adem\u00e1n, le indic\u00f3 que se retirara. Cuando nos quedamos solos, baj\u00f3 la voz y nos sonri\u00f3 con aire c\u00f3mplice\u2014: \u00bfNo ven que ese sujeto es un esp\u00eda de mis enemigos? Ahora que \u00e9l se dio cuenta, ya no puedo casarlos. Me meter\u00eda en un l\u00edo de padre y se\u00f1or m\u00edo.\n\nNo hubo razones para convencerlo: le jur\u00e9 que mis padres viv\u00edan en Estados Unidos, por eso no presentaba la dispensa judicial, nadie en mi familia har\u00eda l\u00edo por el matrimonio, la t\u00eda Julia y yo apenas casados nos ir\u00edamos al extranjero para siempre.\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1bamos de acuerdo, usted no puede hacernos esa perrada \u2014dec\u00eda Javier.\n\n\u2014No seas tan desgraciado, primo \u2014le cog\u00eda el brazo Pascual\u2014. \u00bfNo te das cuenta que hemos venido desde Lima?\n\n\u2014Calma, no me hagan cargamont\u00f3n, se me ocurre una idea, ya est\u00e1, todo resuelto \u2014dijo al fin el alcalde. Se puso de pie y nos gui\u00f1\u00f3 un ojo\u2014: \u00a1Tambo de Mora! \u00a1El pescador Mart\u00edn! Vayan ahora mismo. D\u00edganle que van de mi parte. El pescador Mart\u00edn, un zambo simpatiqu\u00edsimo. Los casar\u00e1 encantado. Es mejor as\u00ed, un pueblo chiquito, nada de bulla. Mart\u00edn, el alcalde Mart\u00edn. Le regalan una propina y ya est\u00e1. Casi no sabe leer ni escribir, ni mirar\u00e1 estos papeles.\n\nTrat\u00e9 de convencerlo que viniera con nosotros, le hice bromas, lo adul\u00e9 y le rogu\u00e9, pero no hubo manera: ten\u00eda compromisos, trabajo, su familia lo esperaba. Nos acompa\u00f1\u00f3 hasta la puerta, asegur\u00e1ndonos que en Tambo de Mora todo ser\u00eda cuesti\u00f3n de dos minutos.\n\nEn la misma puerta de la alcald\u00eda contratamos un viejo taxi con la carrocer\u00eda remendada para que nos llevara a Tambo de Mora. Durante el viaje, Javier y Pascual hablaban del alcalde, Javier dec\u00eda que era el peor c\u00ednico que hab\u00eda conocido, Pascual trataba de endosarle la culpa al secretario, y, de pronto, el chofer meti\u00f3 su cuchara y comenz\u00f3 tambi\u00e9n a echar sapos y culebras contra el burgomaestre de Chincha, y a decir que s\u00f3lo viv\u00eda para los negociados y las coimas. La t\u00eda Julia y yo \u00edbamos con las manos enlazadas, mir\u00e1ndonos a los ojos, y, a ratos, yo le susurraba al o\u00eddo que la quer\u00eda.\n\nLlegamos a Tambo de Mora a la hora del crep\u00fasculo y, desde la playa, vimos un disco de fuego hundi\u00e9ndose en el mar, bajo un cielo sin nubes, en el que empezaban a brotar mir\u00edadas de estrellas. Recorrimos las dos docenas de ranchos de ca\u00f1a y barro que constitu\u00edan el poblado, entre barcas desfondadas y redes de pescar tendidas sobre estacas para el remiendo. Ol\u00edamos a pescado fresco y a mar. Nos rodeaban negritos semidesnudos que nos com\u00edan a preguntas: qui\u00e9nes \u00e9ramos, de d\u00f3nde ven\u00edamos, qu\u00e9 quer\u00edamos comprar. Por fin encontramos el rancho del alcalde. Su mujer, una negra que atizaba un brasero con un abanico de paja, quit\u00e1ndose el sudor de la frente con la mano, nos dijo que su marido estaba pescando. Consult\u00f3 al cielo y a\u00f1adi\u00f3 que ya estar\u00eda por volver. Fuimos a esperarlo a la playita, y, durante una hora, sentados sobre un tronco, vimos regresar a las barcas, finalizado el trabajo, y vimos la complicada operaci\u00f3n que era arrastrarlas por la arena y descubrimos c\u00f3mo las mujeres de los reci\u00e9n llegados, estorbadas por perros codiciosos, descabezaban y quitaban las v\u00edsceras, ah\u00ed mismo en la playa, a los pescados. Mart\u00edn fue el \u00faltimo en volver. Estaba oscuro y hab\u00eda salido la luna.\n\nEra un negro canoso y con una enorme barriga, bromista y locuaz, que, pese al fresco del anochecer, vest\u00eda s\u00f3lo un viejo calz\u00f3n que se le pegaba a la piel. Lo saludamos como a un ser bajado de los cielos, lo ayudamos a varar su barca y lo escoltamos hasta su rancho. Mientras camin\u00e1bamos, a la escu\u00e1lida luz de los fogones de las viviendas sin puertas de los pescadores, le explicamos la raz\u00f3n de la visita. Mostrando unos dientes grandotes de caballo, se ech\u00f3 a re\u00edr:\n\n\u2014Ni de a vainas, compa\u00f1eros, b\u00fasquense otro manso para que les fr\u00eda ese churrasco \u2014nos dijo, con un vozarr\u00f3n musical\u2014. Por una broma parecida, casi me gano mi balazo.\n\nNos cont\u00f3 que, hac\u00eda unas semanas, por hacerle un favor al alcalde de Chincha, hab\u00eda casado a una parejita pasando por alto las proclamas. A los cuatro d\u00edas se le hab\u00eda presentado, loco de rabia, el marido de la novia \u2014\u00abuna muchacha nacida en el pueblo de Cachiche, donde todas las mujeres tienen escoba y vuelan de noche\u00bb, dec\u00eda\u2014, que ya estaba casada hac\u00eda dos a\u00f1os, amenazando matar a ese alcahuete que se atrev\u00eda a legalizar la uni\u00f3n de los ad\u00falteros.\n\n\u2014Mi colega de Chincha se las sabe todas, se va a ir al cielo volando de puro vivo que es \u2014se burlaba, d\u00e1ndose palmadas en la gran barriga brillante de gotitas de agua\u2014. Cada vez que se le presenta algo podrido se lo manda de regalo al pescador Mart\u00edn, y que el negro cargue con el muerto. \u00a1Pero qu\u00e9 vivo que es!\n\nNo hubo manera de ablandarlo. Ni siquiera quiso echar una ojeada a los papeles, y a los argumentos m\u00edos, de Javier, de Pascual \u2014la t\u00eda Julia permanec\u00eda muda, sonriendo a veces a la fuerza ante el buen humor p\u00edcaro del negro\u2014, contestaba con bromas, se re\u00eda del alcalde de Chincha, o nos contaba de nuevo, a carcajadas, la historia del marido que hab\u00eda querido matarlo por casar con otro a la brujita de Cachiche sin estar \u00e9l muerto ni divorciado. Al llegar a su rancho, encontramos una aliada inesperada en su mujer. \u00c9l mismo le cont\u00f3 lo que quer\u00edamos, mientras se secaba la cara, los brazos, el ancho torso, y olfateaba con apetito la olla que herv\u00eda en el brasero.\n\n\u2014C\u00e1salos, negro sin sentimientos \u2014le dijo la mujer, se\u00f1alando compasiva a la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Mira a la pobre, se la han robado y no se puede casar, estar\u00e1 sufriendo con todo esto. A ti qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s te da, \u00bfo se te han subido los humos porque eres alcalde?\n\nMart\u00edn iba y ven\u00eda, con sus pies cuadrados, por el piso de tierra del rancho, recolectando vasos, tazas, mientras nosotros volv\u00edamos a la carga y le ofrec\u00edamos de todo: desde nuestro agradecimiento eterno hasta una recompensa que equivaldr\u00eda a muchos d\u00edas de pesca. \u00c9l se mantuvo inflexible y termin\u00f3 dici\u00e9ndole de mal modo a su mujer que no metiera la jeta en lo que no entend\u00eda. Pero recobr\u00f3 inmediatamente el humor y nos puso un vasito o una taza en la mano a cada uno y nos sirvi\u00f3 un traguito de pisco:\n\n\u2014Para que no hayan hecho el viaje de balde, compa\u00f1eros \u2014nos consol\u00f3, sin pizca de iron\u00eda, levantando su copa. Su brindis fue, dadas las circunstancias, fatal\u2014: Salud, por la felicidad de los novios.\n\nAl despedirnos nos dijo que hab\u00edamos cometido un error yendo a Tambo de Mora, por el precedente de la muchacha de Cachiche. Pero que fu\u00e9ramos a Chincha Baja, a El Carmen, a Sunampe, a San Pedro, a cualquiera de los otros pueblitos de la provincia, y que nos casar\u00edan en el acto.\n\n\u2014Esos alcaldes son unos vagos, no tienen nada que hacer y, cuando se les presenta una boda, se emborrachan de contentos \u2014nos grit\u00f3.\n\nRegresamos adonde nos esperaba el taxi, sin hablar. El chofer nos advirti\u00f3 que, como la espera hab\u00eda sido tan larga, ten\u00edamos que discutir de nuevo la tarifa. Durante el regreso a Chincha acordamos que, al d\u00eda siguiente, desde muy temprano, recorrer\u00edamos los distritos y caser\u00edos, uno por uno, ofreciendo recompensas generosas, hasta encontrar al maldito alcalde.\n\n\u2014Ya son cerca de las nueve \u2014dijo la t\u00eda Julia, de pronto\u2014. \u00bfYa le habr\u00e1n avisado a mi hermana?\n\nYo le hab\u00eda hecho memorizar y repetir diez veces al Gran Pablito lo que ten\u00eda que decir a mi t\u00edo Lucho o a mi t\u00eda Olga, y, para mayor seguridad, termin\u00e9 escribi\u00e9ndoselo en un papel: \u00abMario y Julia se han casado. No se preocupen por ellos. Est\u00e1n muy bien y volver\u00e1n a Lima dentro de unos d\u00edas\u00bb. Deb\u00eda llamar a las nueve de la noche, desde un tel\u00e9fono p\u00fablico y cortar inmediatamente despu\u00e9s de trasmitir el mensaje. Mir\u00e9 el reloj, a la luz de un f\u00f3sforo: s\u00ed, la familia ya estaba enterada.\n\n\u2014Se la deben estar comiendo a preguntas a Nancy \u2014dijo la t\u00eda Julia, esforz\u00e1ndose por hablar con naturalidad, como si el asunto concerniera a otras gentes\u2014. Saben que es c\u00f3mplice. Le van a hacer pasar un mal rato a la flaquita.\n\nEn la trocha llena de baches, el viejo taxi rebotaba, a cada instante parec\u00eda atascarse, y todas sus latas y tornillos chirriaban. La luna encend\u00eda tenuemente los m\u00e9danos, y, a ratos, divis\u00e1bamos manchas de palmas, higueras y huarangos. Hab\u00eda muchas estrellas.\n\n\u2014O sea que ya le dieron la noticia a tu pap\u00e1 \u2014dijo Javier\u2014. Nada m\u00e1s bajar del avi\u00f3n. \u00a1Qu\u00e9 tal recibimiento!\n\n\u2014Juro por Dios que encontraremos un alcalde \u2014dijo Pascual\u2014. No soy chinchano si ma\u00f1ana no los casamos en esta tierra. Mi palabra de hombre.\n\n\u2014\u00bfNecesitan un alcalde que los case? \u2014se interes\u00f3 el chofer\u2014. \u00bfSe ha robado usted a la se\u00f1orita? Por qu\u00e9 no me lo dijeron antes, qu\u00e9 falta de confianza. Los hubiera llevado a Grocio Prado, el alcalde es mi compadre y los casaba ah\u00ed mismo.\n\nYo propuse seguir hasta Grocio Prado, pero \u00e9l me quit\u00f3 los br\u00edos. El alcalde no estar\u00eda en el pueblo a estas horas, sino en su chacrita, como a una hora de camino en burro. Era mejor dejarlo para ma\u00f1ana. Quedamos en que pasar\u00eda a recogernos a las ocho y le ofrec\u00ed una buena gratificaci\u00f3n si nos echaba una mano con su compadre:\n\n\u2014Por supuesto \u2014nos anim\u00f3\u2014. Qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s se puede pedir, se casar\u00e1n en el pueblo de la beata Melchorita.\n\nEn el Hotel Sudamericano estaban ya por cerrar el comedor, pero Javier convenci\u00f3 al mozo que nos preparara algo. Nos trajo unas Coca-Colas y unos huevos fritos con arroz recalentado, que apenas probamos. De pronto, a media comida, nos dimos cuenta que est\u00e1bamos hablando en voz baja, como conspiradores, y nos dio un ataque de risa. Cuando sal\u00edamos hacia nuestros respectivos dormitorios \u2014Pascual y Javier iban a regresar a Lima ese d\u00eda, despu\u00e9s de la boda, pero, como hab\u00edan cambiado las cosas, se quedaron y, para ahorrar plata, compartieron un cuarto\u2014 vimos entrar en el comedor a media docena de tipos, algunos con botas y pantal\u00f3n de montar, pidiendo cerveza a gritos. Ellos, con sus voces alcoh\u00f3licas, sus carcajadas, sus choques de vasos, sus chistes est\u00fapidos y sus brindis groseros, y, m\u00e1s tarde, con sus eructos y arcadas, fueron la m\u00fasica de fondo de nuestra noche de bodas. Pese a la frustraci\u00f3n municipal del d\u00eda, fue una intensa y bella noche de bodas, en la que, en esa vieja cama que chirriaba como un gato con nuestros besos, y que, seguramente, ten\u00eda muchas pulgas, hicimos varias veces el amor, con fuego que renac\u00eda cada vez, dici\u00e9ndonos, mientras nuestras manos y labios aprend\u00edan a conocerse y a hacerse gozar, que nos quer\u00edamos y que nunca nos mentir\u00edamos ni nos enga\u00f1ar\u00edamos ni nos separar\u00edamos. Cuando vinieron a tocarnos la puerta \u2014hab\u00edamos pedido que nos despertaran a las siete\u2014, los borrachos acababan de callarse y nosotros est\u00e1bamos todav\u00eda con los ojos abiertos, desnudos y enredados sobre la colcha de rombos verdes, sumidos en una embriagadora modorra, mir\u00e1ndonos con gratitud.\n\nEl aseo, en el ba\u00f1o com\u00fan del Hotel Sudamericano, fue una haza\u00f1a. La ducha parec\u00eda no haber sido usada nunca, de la mohosa regadera sal\u00edan chorros en todas direcciones salvo la del ba\u00f1ista, y hab\u00eda que recibir un largo enjuague de l\u00edquido negro antes de que el agua viniera limpia. No hab\u00eda toallas, s\u00f3lo un trapo sucio para las manos, de manera que tuvimos que secarnos con las s\u00e1banas. Pero est\u00e1bamos felices y exaltados y los inconvenientes nos divert\u00edan. En el comedor encontramos a Javier y Pascual ya vestidos, amarillentos de sue\u00f1o, mirando con repugnancia el estado catastr\u00f3fico en que hab\u00edan dejado el local los borrachos de la v\u00edspera: vasos rotos, puchos, v\u00f3mitos y escupitajos sobre los que un empleado echaba baldazos de aserr\u00edn, y una gran pestilencia. Fuimos a tomar un caf\u00e9 con leche a la calle, a una bodeguita desde la que se pod\u00edan ver los tupidos y altos \u00e1rboles de la plaza. Era una sensaci\u00f3n rara, viniendo de la neblina cenicienta de Lima, ese comenzar el d\u00eda con sol potente y cielo despejado. Cuando regresamos, en el hotel estaba ya esper\u00e1ndonos el chofer.\n\nEn el trayecto a Grocio Prado, por una trocha polvorienta que contorneaba vi\u00f1edos y algodonales y desde la que se divisaba, al fondo, tras el desierto, el horizonte pardo de la cordillera, el chofer, presa de una locuacidad que contrastaba con nuestro mutismo, habl\u00f3 hasta por los codos de la beata Melchorita: daba todo lo que ten\u00eda a los pobres, cuidaba a los enfermos y a los viejitos, consolaba a los que sufr\u00edan, ya en vida hab\u00eda sido tan c\u00e9lebre que de todos los pueblos del departamento ven\u00edan devotos a rezar junto a ella. Nos cont\u00f3 algunos de sus milagros. Hab\u00eda salvado agonizantes incurables, hablado con santos que se le aparec\u00edan, visto a Dios y hecho florecer una rosa en una piedra que se conservaba.\n\n\u2014Es m\u00e1s popular que la beatita de Humay y que el Se\u00f1or de Luren, basta ver cu\u00e1nta gente viene a su ermita y a su procesi\u00f3n \u2014dec\u00eda\u2014. No hay derecho que no la hagan santa. Ustedes, que son de Lima, mu\u00e9vanse y apuren la cosa. Es de justicia, cr\u00e9anme.\n\nCuando llegamos, por fin, enterrados de pies a cabeza, a la ancha y cuadrada plaza sin \u00e1rboles de Grocio Prado, comprobamos la popularidad de Melchorita. Montones de chiquillos y mujeres rodearon el auto y, a gritos y accionando, nos propon\u00edan llevarnos a conocer la ermita, la casa donde hab\u00eda nacido, el lugar donde se mortificaba, donde hab\u00eda hecho milagros, donde hab\u00eda sido enterrada, y nos ofrec\u00edan estampitas, oraciones, escapularios y medallas con la efigie de la beata. El chofer tuvo que convencerlos que no \u00e9ramos peregrinos ni turistas para que nos dejaran en paz.\n\nLa municipalidad, una vivienda de adobe con techo de calamina, peque\u00f1a y pobr\u00edsima, languidec\u00eda en un flanco de la plaza. Estaba cerrada:\n\n\u2014Mi compadre no tardar\u00e1 en llegar \u2014dijo el chofer\u2014. Esper\u00e9moslo a la sombrita.\n\nNos sentamos en la vereda, bajo el alero de la alcald\u00eda, y desde all\u00ed pod\u00edamos ver, al final de las calles rectas, de tierra, que a menos de cincuenta metros a la redonda terminaban las casitas endebles y los ranchos de ca\u00f1a brava y comenzaban las chacras y el desierto. La t\u00eda Julia estaba a mi lado, con la cabeza apoyada en mi hombro, y ten\u00eda los ojos cerrados. Llev\u00e1bamos ah\u00ed una media hora, viendo cruzar a los arrieros, a pie o en burro, y a mujeres que iban a sacar agua de un arroyo que corr\u00eda por una de las esquinas, cuando pas\u00f3 un viejo montado a caballo.\n\n\u2014\u00bfEsperan a don Jacinto? \u2014nos pregunt\u00f3, quit\u00e1ndose el sombrerote de paja\u2014. Se ha ido a Ica, a hablarle al prefecto, para que saque a su hijo del cuartel. Se lo llevaron los soldados para el servicio militar. No volver\u00e1 hasta la tarde.\n\nEl chofer propuso que nos qued\u00e1ramos en Grocio Prado, visitando los lugares de Melchorita, pero yo insist\u00ed en probar suerte en otros pueblos. Despu\u00e9s de regatear un buen rato, acept\u00f3 seguir con nosotros hasta mediod\u00eda.\n\nEran s\u00f3lo las nueve de la ma\u00f1ana cuando iniciamos la traves\u00eda, que, zangoloteando por senderos de ac\u00e9milas, aren\u00e1ndonos en trochas medio comidas por los m\u00e9danos, acerc\u00e1ndonos a veces al mar y otras a las extremidades de la cordillera, nos hizo recorrer pr\u00e1cticamente toda la provincia de Chincha. A la entrada de El Carmen se nos revent\u00f3 una llanta, y, como el chofer no ten\u00eda gata, tuvimos que sujetar los cuatro el auto en peso, mientras le cambiaba la rueda de repuesto. A partir de media ma\u00f1ana, el sol, que se hab\u00eda ido enardeciendo hasta convertirse en un suplicio, recalentaba la carrocer\u00eda y todos sud\u00e1bamos como en el ba\u00f1o turco. El radiador comenz\u00f3 a humear y fue preciso llevar con nosotros una lata llena de agua para refrescarlo cada cierto tiempo.\n\nHablamos con tres o cuatro alcaldes de distritos y otros tantos tenientes alcalde de caser\u00edos que eran a veces s\u00f3lo veinte chozas, hombres r\u00fasticos a los que hab\u00eda que ir a buscar a la chacrita donde estaban trabajando la tierra, o al almac\u00e9n donde despachaban aceite y cigarrillos a los vecinos, y a uno de ellos, el de Sunampe, debimos despertarlo a remezones de la zanja donde dorm\u00eda una borrachera. Apenas localiz\u00e1bamos a la autoridad municipal, bajaba yo del taxi, acompa\u00f1ado a veces de Pascual, a veces del chofer, a veces de Javier \u2014la experiencia mostr\u00f3 que mientras m\u00e1s fu\u00e9ramos m\u00e1s se intimidaba el alcalde\u2014 a dar las explicaciones. Fueran cuales fueran los argumentos, ve\u00eda infaliblemente en la cara del campesino, pescador o comerciante (el de Chincha Baja se present\u00f3 a s\u00ed mismo como \u00abcurandero\u00bb) brotar la desconfianza, un brillo de alarma en los ojos. S\u00f3lo dos de ellos se negaron francamente: el de Alto Lar\u00e1n, un viejecito que, mientras le hablaba, iba cargando unas ac\u00e9milas con atados de alfalfa, nos dijo que \u00e9l no casaba a nadie que no fuera del pueblo, y el de San Juan de Yanac, un zambo agricultor que se asust\u00f3 mucho al vernos, pues, crey\u00f3 que \u00e9ramos de la polic\u00eda y que le ven\u00edamos a tomar cuentas por algo. Cuando supo qu\u00e9 quer\u00edamos, se enfureci\u00f3: \u00abNo, ni de a vainas, algo malo habr\u00e1 para que unos blanquitos se vengan a casar a este pueblo dejado de la mano de Dios\u00bb. Los otros nos dieron pretextos que se parec\u00edan. El m\u00e1s com\u00fan: el libro de registros se hab\u00eda perdido o agotado, y, hasta que mandaran uno nuevo de Chincha, la alcald\u00eda no pod\u00eda certificar nacimientos ni defunciones ni casar a nadie. La respuesta m\u00e1s imaginativa nos la dio el alcalde de Chav\u00edn: no pod\u00eda por falta de tiempo, ten\u00eda que ir a matar un zorro que cada noche se com\u00eda dos o tres gallinas de la regi\u00f3n. S\u00f3lo estuvimos a punto de lograrlo en Pueblo Nuevo. El alcalde nos escuch\u00f3 con atenci\u00f3n, asinti\u00f3 y dijo que eximirnos de las proclamas nos iba a costar cincuenta libras. No le dio ninguna importancia a mis a\u00f1os y pareci\u00f3 creer lo que le aseguramos, que la mayor\u00eda de edad era, ahora, no a los veintiuno sino a los dieciocho. Est\u00e1bamos ya instalados frente a un tabl\u00f3n sobre dos barriles que hac\u00eda las veces de escritorio (el local era un rancho de adobes, con un techo agujereado por el que se ve\u00eda el cielo), cuando el alcalde se puso a deletrear, palabra por palabra, los documentos. Despert\u00f3 su temor el hecho de que la t\u00eda Julia fuera boliviana. No sirvi\u00f3 de nada explicarle que \u00e9se no era impedimento, que los extranjeros tambi\u00e9n pod\u00edan casarse, ofrecerle m\u00e1s dinero. \u00abNo quiero comprometerme \u2014dec\u00eda\u2014, eso de que la se\u00f1orita sea boliviana puede ser grave\u00bb.\n\nRegresamos a Chincha cerca de las tres de la tarde, muertos de calor, llenos de polvo y deprimidos. En las afueras, la t\u00eda Julia se ech\u00f3 a llorar. Yo la abrazaba, le dec\u00eda al o\u00eddo que no se pusiera as\u00ed, que la quer\u00eda, que nos casar\u00edamos aunque hubiera que recorrer todos los pueblecitos del Per\u00fa.\n\n\u2014No es por lo que no podamos casarnos \u2014dec\u00eda ella, entre lagrimones, tratando de sonre\u00edr\u2014. Sino por lo rid\u00edculo que resulta todo esto.\n\nEn el hotel, le pedimos al chofer que volviera una hora despu\u00e9s, para ir a Grocio Prado, a ver si hab\u00eda regresado su compadre.\n\nNinguno de los cuatro ten\u00edamos mucha hambre, de modo que nuestro almuerzo consisti\u00f3 en un s\u00e1ndwich de queso y una Coca-Cola, que tomamos de pie, en el mostrador. Luego, fuimos a descansar. Pese al desvelo de la noche y a las frustraciones de la ma\u00f1ana, tuvimos \u00e1nimos para hacer el amor, ardientemente, sobre la colcha de rombos, en una luz rala y terrosa. Desde la cama, ve\u00edamos los residuos de sol que apenas pod\u00edan filtrarse, adelgazados, envilecidos, por una alta claraboya que ten\u00eda los cristales cubiertos de mugre. Inmediatamente despu\u00e9s, en vez de levantarnos para reunirnos con nuestros c\u00f3mplices en el comedor, ca\u00edmos dormidos. Fue un sue\u00f1o ansioso y sobresaltado, en el que, a intensos ramalazos de deseo que nos hac\u00edan buscarnos y acariciarnos instintivamente, suced\u00edan pesadillas; despu\u00e9s nos las contamos y supimos que en las de ambos aparec\u00edan caras de parientes, y la t\u00eda Julia se ri\u00f3 cuando le dije que, en un momento del sue\u00f1o, me hab\u00eda sentido viviendo uno de los cataclismos \u00faltimos de Pedro Camacho.\n\nMe despertaron unos golpes en la puerta. Estaba oscuro, y, por las rendijas de la claraboya, se ve\u00edan unas varillas de luz el\u00e9ctrica. Grit\u00e9 que ya iba, y, mientras, sacudiendo la cabeza para ahuyentar el torpor del sue\u00f1o, prend\u00ed un f\u00f3sforo y mir\u00e9 el reloj. Eran las siete de la noche. Sent\u00ed que se me ven\u00eda el mundo encima; otro d\u00eda perdido y, lo peor, ya casi no me quedaban fondos para seguir buscando alcaldes. Fui a tientas hasta la puerta, la entreabr\u00ed e iba a re\u00f1ir a Javier por no haberme despertado, cuando not\u00e9 que su cara me sonre\u00eda de oreja a oreja:\n\n\u2014Todo listo, Varguitas \u2014dijo, orgulloso como un pavo real\u2014. El alcalde de Grocio Prado est\u00e1 haciendo el acta y preparando el certificado. D\u00e9jense de pecar y ap\u00farense. Los esperamos en el taxi.\n\nCerr\u00f3 la puerta y o\u00ed su risa, alej\u00e1ndose. La t\u00eda Julia se hab\u00eda incorporado en la cama, se frotaba los ojos, y, en la penumbra, yo alcanzaba a adivinar su expresi\u00f3n asombrada y un poco incr\u00e9dula.\n\n\u2014A ese chofer le voy a dedicar el primer libro que escriba \u2014dec\u00eda yo, mientras nos vest\u00edamos.\n\n\u2014Todav\u00eda no cantes victoria \u2014sonre\u00eda la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Ni cuando vea el certificado lo voy a creer.\n\nSalimos atropell\u00e1ndonos, y, al pasar por el comedor, donde hab\u00eda ya muchos hombres tomando cerveza, alguien pirope\u00f3 a la t\u00eda Julia con tanta gracia que muchos se rieron. Pascual y Javier estaban dentro del taxi, pero \u00e9ste no era el de la ma\u00f1ana, ni tampoco el chofer.\n\n\u2014Se las quiso dar de vivo y cobrarnos el doble, aprovech\u00e1ndose de las circunstancias \u2014nos explic\u00f3 Pascual\u2014. As\u00ed que lo mandamos donde se merec\u00eda y contratamos aqu\u00ed al maestro, una persona como Dios manda.\n\nMe entraron toda clase de terrores, pensando que el cambio de chofer frustrar\u00eda una vez m\u00e1s la boda. Pero Javier nos tranquiliz\u00f3. El otro chofer tampoco hab\u00eda ido con ellos a Grocio Prado en la tarde, sino \u00e9ste. Nos contaron, como una travesura, que hab\u00edan decidido \u00abdejarnos descansar\u00bb para que la t\u00eda Julia no pasara el mal rato de otra negativa, e ir solos a hacer la gesti\u00f3n en Grocio Prado. Hab\u00edan tenido una larga conversaci\u00f3n con el alcalde.\n\n\u2014Un cholo sabid\u00edsimo, uno de esos hombres superiores que s\u00f3lo produce la tierra de Chincha \u2014dec\u00eda Pascual\u2014. Tendr\u00e1s que agradec\u00e9rselo a Melchorita viniendo a su procesi\u00f3n.\n\nEl alcalde de Grocio Prado hab\u00eda escuchado tranquilo las explicaciones de Javier, le\u00eddo todos los documentos con parsimonia, reflexionado un buen rato, y, luego, estipulado sus condiciones: mil soles, pero a condici\u00f3n de que a mi partida de nacimiento le cambiaran un seis por un tres, de manera que yo naciera tres a\u00f1os antes.\n\n\u2014La inteligencia de los proletarios \u2014dec\u00eda Javier\u2014. Somos una clase en decadencia, conv\u00e9ncete. Ni siquiera se nos pas\u00f3 por la cabeza y este hombre del pueblo, con su luminoso sentido com\u00fan, lo vio en un instante. Ya est\u00e1, ya eres mayor de edad.\n\nAh\u00ed mismo en la alcald\u00eda, entre el alcalde y Javier, hab\u00edan cambiado el seis por el tres, a mano, y el hombre hab\u00eda dicho: qu\u00e9 m\u00e1s da que la tinta no sea la misma, lo que importa es el contenido. Llegamos a Grocio Prado a eso de las ocho. Era una noche clara, con estrellas, de una tibieza bienhechora, y en todas las casitas y ranchos del pueblo titilaban mecheros. Vimos una vivienda m\u00e1s iluminada, con un gran chisporroteo de velas entre los carrizos, y Pascual, persign\u00e1ndose, nos dijo que era la ermita donde hab\u00eda vivido la beata.\n\nEn la municipalidad, el alcalde estaba terminando de redactar el acta, en un librote de tapas negras. El suelo de la \u00fanica habitaci\u00f3n era de tierra, hab\u00eda sido mojado recientemente y se elevaba de \u00e9l un vaho h\u00famedo. Sobre la mesa hab\u00eda tres velas encendidas y su pobre resplandor mostraba, en las paredes encaladas, una bandera peruana sujeta con tachuelas y un cuadrito con la cara del Presidente de la Rep\u00fablica. El alcalde era un hombre cincuent\u00f3n, gordo e inexpresivo; escrib\u00eda despacio, con un lapicero de pluma, que mojaba despu\u00e9s de cada frase en un tintero de largo cuello. Nos salud\u00f3 a la t\u00eda Julia y a m\u00ed con una reverencia f\u00fanebre. Calcul\u00e9 que al ritmo que escrib\u00eda le habr\u00eda tomado m\u00e1s de una hora redactar el acta. Cuando termin\u00f3, sin moverse, dijo:\n\n\u2014Se necesitan dos testigos.\n\nSe adelantaron Javier y Pascual, pero s\u00f3lo este \u00faltimo fue aceptado por el alcalde, pues Javier era menor de edad. Sal\u00ed a hablar con el chofer, que permanec\u00eda en el taxi; acept\u00f3 ser nuestro testigo por cien soles. Era un zambo delgado, con un diente de oro; fumaba todo el tiempo y, en el viaje de venida, hab\u00eda estado mudo. En el momento en que el alcalde le indic\u00f3 d\u00f3nde deb\u00eda firmar, movi\u00f3 la cabeza con pesadumbre:\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 calamidad \u2014dijo, como arrepinti\u00e9ndose\u2014. \u00bfD\u00f3nde se ha visto una boda sin una miserable botella para brindar por los novios? Yo no puedo apadrinar una cosa as\u00ed \u2014nos ech\u00f3 una mirada compasiva y a\u00f1adi\u00f3 desde la puerta\u2014: Esp\u00e9renme un segundo.\n\nCruz\u00e1ndose de brazos, el alcalde cerr\u00f3 los ojos y pareci\u00f3 que se echaba a dormir. La t\u00eda Julia, Pascual, Javier y yo nos miramos sin saber qu\u00e9 hacer. Por fin, me dispuse a buscar otro testigo en la calle.\n\n\u2014No es necesario, va a volver \u2014me ataj\u00f3 Pascual\u2014. Adem\u00e1s, lo que ha dicho es muy cierto. Debimos pensar en el brindis. Ese zambo nos ha dado una lecci\u00f3n.\n\n\u2014No hay nervios que resistan \u2014susurr\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia, cogi\u00e9ndome la mano\u2014. \u00bfNo te sientes como si estuvieras robando un banco y fuera a llegar la polic\u00eda?\n\nEl zambo demor\u00f3 unos diez minutos, que parecieron a\u00f1os, pero volvi\u00f3 al fin, con dos botellas de vino en la mano. La ceremonia pudo continuar. Una vez que firmaron los testigos, el alcalde nos hizo firmar a la t\u00eda Julia y a m\u00ed, abri\u00f3 un c\u00f3digo, y, acerc\u00e1ndolo a una de las velas, nos ley\u00f3, tan despacio como escrib\u00eda, los art\u00edculos correspondientes a las obligaciones y deberes conyugales. Despu\u00e9s, nos alcanz\u00f3 un certificado y nos dijo que est\u00e1bamos casados. Nos besamos y, luego, nos abrazaron los testigos y el alcalde. El chofer descorch\u00f3 a mordiscos las botellas de vino. No hab\u00eda vasos, as\u00ed que bebimos a pico de botella, pas\u00e1ndolas de mano en mano despu\u00e9s de cada trago. En el viaje de vuelta a Chincha \u2014todos \u00edbamos alegres y al mismo tiempo sosegados\u2014 Javier estuvo intentando catastr\u00f3ficamente silbar la marcha nupcial.\n\nDespu\u00e9s de pagar el taxi, fuimos a la plaza de Armas, para que Javier y Pascual tomaran un colectivo a Lima. Hab\u00eda uno que sal\u00eda dentro de una hora, de modo que tuvimos tiempo de comer en El Sol de Chincha. All\u00ed trazamos un plan. Javier, llegando a Miraflores, ir\u00eda donde mis t\u00edos Olga y Lucho, para tomar la temperatura a la familia y nos llamar\u00eda por tel\u00e9fono. Nosotros regresar\u00edamos a Lima al d\u00eda siguiente, en la ma\u00f1ana. Pascual tendr\u00eda que inventar una buena excusa para justificar su inasistencia de m\u00e1s de dos d\u00edas a la radio.\n\nLos despedimos en la estaci\u00f3n del colectivo y regresamos al Hotel Sudamericano conversando como dos viejos esposos. La t\u00eda Julia se sent\u00eda mal y cre\u00eda que era el vino de Grocio Prado. Yo le dije que a m\u00ed me hab\u00eda parecido un vino riqu\u00edsimo, pero no le cont\u00e9 que era la primera vez que tomaba vino en mi vida.\n\n### XVIII\n\nEL BARDO de Lima, Crisanto Maravillas, naci\u00f3 en el centro de la ciudad, un callej\u00f3n de la plaza de Santa Ana desde cuyos techos se hac\u00edan volar las m\u00e1s airosas cometas del Per\u00fa, hermosos objetos de papel de seda, que, cuando se elevaban gallardamente sobre los Barrios Altos, sal\u00edan a espiar por sus claraboyas las monjitas de clausura del Convento de las Descalzas. Precisamente, el nacimiento del ni\u00f1o que, a\u00f1os m\u00e1s tarde, llevar\u00eda a alturas cometeras el vals criollo, la marinera, las polkas, coincidi\u00f3 con el bautizo de una cometa, fiesta que congregaba en el callej\u00f3n de Santa Ana a los mejores guitarristas, cajoneadores y cantores del barrio. La comadrona, al abrir la ventanilla del cuarto H, donde se produjo el alumbramiento, para anunciar que la demograf\u00eda de ese rinc\u00f3n de la ciudad hab\u00eda aumentado, pronostic\u00f3: \u00abSi sobrevive, ser\u00e1 jaranista\u00bb.\n\nPero parec\u00eda dudoso que sobreviviera: pesaba menos de un kilo y sus piernecitas eran tan reducidas que, probablemente, no caminar\u00eda jam\u00e1s. Su padre, Valent\u00edn Maravillas, que se hab\u00eda pasado la vida tratando de aclimatar en el barrio la devoci\u00f3n del Se\u00f1or de Limpias (hab\u00eda fundado en su propio cuarto la Hermandad, y, acto temerario o viveza para asegurarse una larga vejez, jurado que antes de su muerte tendr\u00eda m\u00e1s miembros que la del Se\u00f1or de los Milagros), proclam\u00f3 que su santo patrono har\u00eda la haza\u00f1a: salvar\u00eda a su hijo y le permitir\u00eda andar como un cristiano normal. Su madre, Mar\u00eda Portal, cocinera de dedos m\u00e1gicos que nunca hab\u00eda sufrido ni un resfr\u00edo, qued\u00f3 tan impresionada al ver que el hijo tan so\u00f1ado y pedido a Dios era eso \u2014\u00bfuna larva de hom\u00ednido, un feto triste?\u2014 que ech\u00f3 al marido de la casa, responsabiliz\u00e1ndolo y acus\u00e1ndolo, delante del vecindario, de ser s\u00f3lo medio hombre por culpa de su beater\u00eda.\n\nLo cierto es que Crisanto Maravillas sobrevivi\u00f3 y, pese a sus piernecitas rid\u00edculas, lleg\u00f3 a andar. Sin ninguna elegancia, desde luego, m\u00e1s bien como un t\u00edtere, que articula cada paso en tres movimientos \u2014alzar la pierna, doblar la rodilla, bajar el pie\u2014 y con tanta lentitud que, quienes iban a su lado ten\u00edan la sensaci\u00f3n de estar siguiendo la procesi\u00f3n cuando se embotella en las calles angostas. Pero, al menos, dec\u00edan sus progenitores (ya reconciliados), Crisanto se desplazaba por el mundo sin muletas y por su propia voluntad. Don Valent\u00edn, arrodillado en la Iglesia de Santa Ana, se lo agradec\u00eda al Se\u00f1or de Limpias con ojos h\u00famedos, pero Mar\u00eda Portal dec\u00eda que el autor del milagro era, exclusivamente, el m\u00e1s famoso galeno de la ciudad, un especialista en tullidos, que hab\u00eda convertido en velocistas a sinn\u00famero de paral\u00edticos: el doctor Alberto de Quinteros. Mar\u00eda hab\u00eda preparado banquetes criollos memorables en su casa y el sabio le hab\u00eda ense\u00f1ado masajes, ejercicios y cuidados para que, pese a ser tan menudas y raqu\u00edticas, las extremidades de Crisanto pudieran sostenerlo y moverlo por los caminos del mundo.\n\nNadie podr\u00e1 decir que Crisanto Maravillas tuvo una infancia semejante a la de otros ni\u00f1os del tradicional barrio donde le toc\u00f3 nacer. Para desgracia o fortuna suya, su esmirriado organismo no le permiti\u00f3 compartir ninguna de esas actividades que iban cuajando el cuerpo y el esp\u00edritu de los muchachos de la vecindad: no jug\u00f3 al f\u00fatbol con pelota de trapo, nunca pudo boxear en un ring ni trompearse en una esquina, jam\u00e1s particip\u00f3 en esos combates a honda, pedrada o puntapi\u00e9, que, en las calles de la vieja Lima, enfrentaban a los muchachos de la plaza de Santa Ana con las pandillas del Chirimoyo, de Cocharcas, de Cinco Esquinas, del Cercado. No pudo ir con sus compa\u00f1eros de la escuelita fiscal de la plazuela de Santa Clara (donde aprendi\u00f3 a leer) a robar fruta a las huertas de Cantogrande y \u00d1a\u00f1a, ni ba\u00f1arse desnudo en el R\u00edmac ni montar burros a pelo en los potreros del Santoyo. Peque\u00f1ito hasta las lindes del enanismo, flaco como una escoba, con la piel achocolatada de su padre y los pelos lacios de su madre, Crisanto miraba, desde lejos, con ojos inteligentes, a sus compa\u00f1eros, y los ve\u00eda divertirse, sudar, crecer y fortalecerse en esas aventuras que le estaban prohibidas, y en su cara se dibujaba una expresi\u00f3n \u00bfde resignada melancol\u00eda, de apacible tristeza?\n\nPareci\u00f3, en una \u00e9poca, que iba a resultar tan religioso como su padre (quien, adem\u00e1s del culto al Se\u00f1or de Limpias, se hab\u00eda pasado la vida cargando andas de distintos Cristos y V\u00edrgenes, y cambiando de h\u00e1bitos) porque, durante a\u00f1os, fue un empe\u00f1oso monaguillo en las iglesias de las vecindades de la plaza de Santa Ana. Como era puntual, se sab\u00eda las r\u00e9plicas al dedillo y ten\u00eda aire inocente, los p\u00e1rrocos del barrio le perdonaban la calma y torpeza de sus movimientos y lo llamaban con frecuencia para que ayudara misas, repicara la campanilla en los v\u00eda crucis de Semana Santa o echara incienso en las procesiones. Vi\u00e9ndolo embutido en la capa de monaguillo, que siempre le quedaba grande, y oy\u00e9ndolo recitar con devoci\u00f3n, en buen lat\u00edn, en los altares de las trinitarias, de San Andr\u00e9s, del Carmen, de la Buena Muerte y aun de la iglesita de Cocharcas (pues hasta de ese alejado barrio lo llamaban), Mar\u00eda Portal, que hubiera deseado para su hijo un tempestuoso destino de militar, de aventurero, de irresistible gal\u00e1n, reprim\u00eda un suspiro. Pero el rey de los cofrades de Lima, Valent\u00edn Maravillas, sent\u00eda que le crec\u00eda el coraz\u00f3n ante la perspectiva de que el resabio de su sangre fuera cura.\n\nTodos se equivocaban, el ni\u00f1o no ten\u00eda vocaci\u00f3n religiosa. Estaba dotado de intensa vida interior y su sensibilidad no hallaba c\u00f3mo, d\u00f3nde, de qu\u00e9 alimentarse. El ambiente de cirios chisporroteantes, de sahumerios y rezos, de im\u00e1genes consteladas de exvotos, de responsos y ritos y cruces y genuflexiones aplac\u00f3 su precoz avidez de poes\u00eda, su hambre de espiritualidad. Mar\u00eda Portal ayudaba a las madres descalzas en sus labores de reposter\u00eda y artes dom\u00e9sticas y era, por ello, una de las contadas personas que franqueaban la r\u00edgida clausura del convento. La egregia cocinera llevaba con ella a Crisanto, y cuando \u00e9ste fue creciendo (en edad, no en estatura) las Descalzas se hab\u00edan acostumbrado tanto a verlo (simple cosa, gui\u00f1apo, medio ser, dije humano) que lo dejaron seguir vagabundeando por los claustros mientras Mar\u00eda Portal preparaba con las monjitas las celestiales pastas, las temblorosas mazamorras, los blancos suspiros, los huevos chimbos y los mazapanes que luego se vender\u00edan a fin de reunir fondos para las misiones del \u00c1frica. As\u00ed fue como Crisanto Maravillas, a los diez a\u00f1os de edad, conoci\u00f3 el amor...\n\nLa ni\u00f1a que instant\u00e1neamente lo sedujo se llamaba F\u00e1tima, ten\u00eda su misma edad y cumpl\u00eda en el femenino universo de las Descalzas las humildes funciones de sirvienta. Cuando Crisanto Maravillas la vio por primera vez, la peque\u00f1a acababa de baldear los corredores de lajas serranas del claustro y se dispon\u00eda a regar los rosales y las azucenas de la huerta. Era una ni\u00f1a que, pese a estar sumergida en un costal con agujeros y tener los cabellos bajo un trapo de tocuyo, a la manera de una toca, no pod\u00eda ocultar su origen: tez marfile\u00f1a, ojeras azules, ment\u00f3n arrogante, tobillos esbeltos. Se trataba, tragedias de sangre azul que envidia el vulgo, de una recogida. Hab\u00eda sido abandonada, una noche de invierno, envuelta en una manta celeste, en el torno de la calle Jun\u00edn, con un mensaje llorosamente caligrafiado: \u00abSoy hija de un amor funesto, que desespera a una familia honorable, y no podr\u00eda vivir en la sociedad sin ser una acusaci\u00f3n contra el pecado de los autores de mis d\u00edas, quienes, por tener el mismo padre y la misma madre, est\u00e1n impedidos de amarse, de tenerme y de reconocerme. Ustedes, Descalzas bienaventuradas, son las \u00fanicas personas que pueden criarme sin avergonzarse de m\u00ed ni avergonzarme. Mis atormentados progenitores retribuir\u00e1n a la congregaci\u00f3n con abundancia esta obra de caridad que abrir\u00e1 a ustedes las puertas del cielo\u00bb.\n\nLas monjitas encontraron, junto a la hija del incesto, una talega repleta de dinero, que, can\u00edbales de la paganidad a los que hay que evangelizar y vestir y alimentar, acab\u00f3 de convencerlas: la tendr\u00edan como dom\u00e9stica, y, m\u00e1s tarde, si mostraba vocaci\u00f3n, har\u00edan de ella otra esclava del Se\u00f1or, de h\u00e1bito blanco. La bautizaron con el nombre de F\u00e1tima, pues hab\u00eda sido recogida el d\u00eda de la aparici\u00f3n de la Virgen a los pastorcitos de Portugal. La ni\u00f1a creci\u00f3 as\u00ed, lejos del mundo, entre las virginales murallas de las Descalzas, en una atm\u00f3sfera impoluta, sin ver otro hombre (antes de Crisanto) que el anciano y gotoso don Sebasti\u00e1n (\u00bfBergua?), el capell\u00e1n que ven\u00eda una vez por semana a absolver de sus pecadillos (siempre veniales) a las monjitas. Era dulce, suave, d\u00f3cil y las religiosas m\u00e1s entendidas dec\u00edan que, pureza de mente que abuena la mirada y beatifica el aliento, se advert\u00edan en su manera de ser signos inequ\u00edvocos de santidad.\n\nCrisanto Maravillas, haciendo un esfuerzo sobrehumano para vencer la timidez que le agarrotaba la lengua, se acerc\u00f3 a la ni\u00f1a y le pregunt\u00f3 si pod\u00eda ayudarla a regar la huerta. Ella consinti\u00f3 y, desde entonces, vez que Mar\u00eda Portal iba al convento, mientras ella cocinaba con las monjitas, F\u00e1tima y Crisanto barr\u00edan juntos las celdas o juntos fregaban los patios o cambiaban juntos las flores del altar o juntos lavaban los vidrios de las ventanas o juntos enceraban las baldosas o desempolvaban juntos los devocionarios. Entre el muchacho feo y la ni\u00f1a bonita fue naciendo, primer amor que se recuerda siempre como el mejor, un v\u00ednculo que \u00bfromper\u00eda la muerte?\n\nFue cuando el joven semibaldado estaba merodeando los doce a\u00f1os que Valent\u00edn Maravillas y Mar\u00eda Portal advirtieron los primeros brotes de esa inclinaci\u00f3n que har\u00eda de Crisanto, en poco tiempo, poeta inspirad\u00edsimo e \u00ednclito compositor.\n\nOcurr\u00eda durante las celebraciones que, al menos una vez por semana, reun\u00edan a los vecinos de la plaza de Santa Ana. En la cochera del sastre Chumpitaz, en el patiecito de la ferreter\u00eda de los Lama, en el callej\u00f3n de Valent\u00edn, con motivo de un nacimiento o de un velorio (\u00bfpara festejar una alegr\u00eda o cicatrizar una pena?), nunca faltaban pretextos, se organizaban jaranas hasta el amanecer que transcurr\u00edan bajo el punteo de las guitarras, los sones del caj\u00f3n, el cascabeleo de las palmas y la voz de los tenores. Mientras las parejas, entonadas \u2014\u00a1enardecido aguardiente y arom\u00e1ticas viandas de Mar\u00eda Portal!\u2014, sacaban chispas a las baldosas, Crisanto Maravillas miraba a los guitarristas, cantantes y cajoneadores, como si sus palabras y sonidos fueran algo sobrenatural. Y, cuando los m\u00fasicos hac\u00edan un alto para fumar un cigarrillo o libar una copita, el ni\u00f1o, en actitud reverencial, se acercaba a las guitarras, las acariciaba con cuidado para no asustarlas, pulsaba las seis cuerdas y se o\u00edan unos arpegios...\n\nMuy pronto fue evidente que se trataba de una aptitud, de un sobresaliente don. El baldado ten\u00eda o\u00eddo notable, captaba y reten\u00eda en el acto cualquier ritmo, y, aunque sus manitas eran d\u00e9biles, sab\u00eda acompa\u00f1ar expertamente cualquier m\u00fasica criolla en el caj\u00f3n. En esos entreactos de la orquesta para comer o brindar, aprendi\u00f3 solo los secretos y se hizo amigo \u00edntimo de las guitarras. Los vecinos se acostumbraron a verlo tocar en las fiestas como un m\u00fasico m\u00e1s.\n\nSus piernas no hab\u00edan crecido y, aunque ten\u00eda ya catorce a\u00f1os, parec\u00eda de ocho. Era muy flaquito, pues \u2014se\u00f1al fehaciente de naturaleza art\u00edstica, esbeltez que hermana a los inspirados\u2014 viv\u00eda cr\u00f3nicamente inapetente, y, si Mar\u00eda Portal no hubiese estado all\u00ed, con su dinamismo militar, para embutirle el alimento, el joven bardo se hubiera volatilizado. Esa fr\u00e1gil hechura, sin embargo, no conoc\u00eda la fatiga en lo que se refiere a la m\u00fasica. Los guitarristas del barrio rodaban por el suelo, exhaustos, despu\u00e9s de tocar y cantar muchas horas, se les acalambraban los dedos y merec\u00edan la mudez por afon\u00eda, pero el baldado segu\u00eda all\u00ed, en una sillita de paja (piececitos de japon\u00e9s que nunca llegan a tocar el suelo, peque\u00f1os dedos incansables), arrancando arrobadoras armon\u00edas a las hebras y canturreando como si la fiesta acabara de empezar. No ten\u00eda voz potente; hubiera sido incapaz de emular las proezas del c\u00e9lebre Ezequiel Delf\u00edn que, al cantar ciertos valses, en llave de sol, rajaba los vidrios de las ventanas que ten\u00eda al frente. Pero, la falta de fuerza, la compensaban su indesmayable entonaci\u00f3n, el mani\u00e1tico afinamiento, esa riqueza de matices que nunca desde\u00f1aba ni malher\u00eda una nota.\n\nSin embargo, no lo har\u00edan famoso sus condiciones de int\u00e9rprete sino las de compositor. Que el muchacho tullido de los Barrios Altos, adem\u00e1s de tocar y cantar la m\u00fasica criolla, sab\u00eda inventarla, se hizo p\u00fablico un s\u00e1bado, en medio de una sarmentosa fiesta que, bajo papeles de colores, quitasue\u00f1os y serpentinas, alegraba el callej\u00f3n de Santa Ana, en homenaje al santo de la cocinera. A medianoche, los m\u00fasicos sorprendieron a la concurrencia con una polkita in\u00e9dita cuya letra dialogaba picarescamente:\n\n\u00bfC\u00f3mo?\n\nCon amor, con amor, con amor\n\n\u00bfQu\u00e9 haces?\n\nLlevo una flor, una flor, una flor\n\n\u00bfD\u00f3nde?\n\nEn el ojal, en el ojal, en el ojal\n\n\u00bfA qui\u00e9n?\n\nA Mar\u00eda Portal, Mar\u00eda Portal, Mar\u00eda Portal...\n\nEl ritmo contagi\u00f3 a los asistentes un compulsivo deseo de bailar, de saltar, de brincar, y la letra los divirti\u00f3 y conmovi\u00f3. La curiosidad fue un\u00e1nime: \u00bfqui\u00e9n era el autor? Los m\u00fasicos volvieron las cabezas y se\u00f1alaron a Crisanto Maravillas, quien, modestia de los verdaderamente grandes, baj\u00f3 los ojos. Mar\u00eda Portal lo devor\u00f3 a besos, el cofrade Valent\u00edn enjug\u00f3 una l\u00e1grima y todo el barrio premi\u00f3 con una ovaci\u00f3n al novel forjador de versos. En la ciudad de las tapadas, hab\u00eda nacido un artista.\n\nLa carrera de Crisanto Maravillas (si puede este t\u00e9rmino pedestremente atl\u00e9tico calificar un quehacer signado \u00bfpor el soplo de Dios?) fue mete\u00f3rica. A los pocos meses sus canciones eran conocidas en Lima, y en unos a\u00f1os estaban en la memoria y coraz\u00f3n del Per\u00fa. No hab\u00eda cumplido los veinte cuando abeles y ca\u00ednes reconoc\u00edan que era el compositor m\u00e1s querido del pa\u00eds. Sus valses alegraban las fiestas de los ricos, se bailaban en los \u00e1gapes de la clase media y eran el manjar de los pobres. Los conjuntos de la capital rivalizaban interpretando su m\u00fasica y no hab\u00eda hombre o mujer que, al iniciarse en la dif\u00edcil profesi\u00f3n del canto, no eligiera las maravillas de Maravillas para su repertorio. Le editaron discos, cancioneros, y en las radios y en las revistas su presencia fue una obligaci\u00f3n. Para los chismes y la fantas\u00eda de la gente el compositor baldado de los Barrios Altos se volvi\u00f3 leyenda.\n\nLa gloria y la popularidad no marearon al sencillo muchacho que recib\u00eda estos homenajes con indiferencia de cisne. Dej\u00f3 el colegio en el segundo de media para dedicarse al arte. Con los regalos que le hac\u00edan por tocar en las fiestas, dar serenatas o componer acr\u00f3sticos, pudo comprarse una guitarra. El d\u00eda que la tuvo fue feliz: hab\u00eda encontrado un confidente para sus penas, un compa\u00f1ero para la soledad y una voz para su inspiraci\u00f3n.\n\nNo sab\u00eda escribir ni leer m\u00fasica y nunca aprendi\u00f3 a hacerlo. Trabajaba al o\u00eddo, a base de intuici\u00f3n. Una vez que ten\u00eda aprendida la melod\u00eda, se la cantaba al cholo Blas Sanjin\u00e9s, un profesor del barrio, y \u00e9l se la pon\u00eda en notas y pentagramas. Jam\u00e1s quiso administrar su talento: nunca patent\u00f3 sus composiciones, ni cobr\u00f3 por ellas derechos, y, cuando los amigos ven\u00edan a contarle que las mediocridades de los bajos fondos art\u00edsticos plagiaban sus m\u00fasicas y letras, se limitaba a bostezar. Pese a este desinter\u00e9s, lleg\u00f3 a ganar alg\u00fan dinero, que le enviaban las casas de discos, las radios, o que le exig\u00edan recibir los due\u00f1os cuando tocaba en una fiesta. Crisanto ofrec\u00eda esa plata a sus progenitores, y, cuando \u00e9stos murieron (ten\u00eda ya treinta a\u00f1os), la gastaba con sus amigos. Jam\u00e1s quiso dejar los Barrios Altos, ni el cuarto letra H del callej\u00f3n donde hab\u00eda nacido. \u00bfEra por fidelidad y cari\u00f1o a su origen humilde, por amor al arroyo? Tambi\u00e9n, sin duda. Pero era, sobre todo, porque en ese angosto zagu\u00e1n estaba a tiro de piedra de la ni\u00f1a de sangres aleda\u00f1as, llamada F\u00e1tima, que conoci\u00f3 cuando era sirvienta y que ahora hab\u00eda tomado los h\u00e1bitos y hecho los votos de obediencia, pobreza y (ay) castidad como esposa del Se\u00f1or.\n\nEra, fue, el secreto de su vida, la raz\u00f3n de ser de esa tristeza que todo el mundo, ceguera de la multitud por las llagas del alma, atribuy\u00f3 siempre a sus piernas maceradas, y a su figurilla asim\u00e9trica. Por lo dem\u00e1s, gracias a esa deformidad que le retroced\u00eda los a\u00f1os, Crisanto hab\u00eda seguido acompa\u00f1ando a su madre a la ciudadela religiosa de las Descalzas, y, una vez por semana cuando menos, hab\u00eda podido ver a la muchacha de sus sue\u00f1os. \u00bfAmaba sor F\u00e1tima al inv\u00e1lido como \u00e9l a ella? Imposible saberlo. Flor de invernadero, ignorante de los misterios rijosos del polen de los campos, F\u00e1tima hab\u00eda adquirido conciencia, sentimientos, pasado de ni\u00f1a a adolescente y a mujer en un mundo as\u00e9ptico y conventual, rodeada de ancianas. Todo lo que hab\u00eda llegado a sus o\u00eddos, a sus ojos, a su fantas\u00eda, estuvo rigurosamente filtrado por el cernidor moral de la congregaci\u00f3n (estricta entre las estrictas). \u00bfC\u00f3mo hubiera adivinado esta virtud corporizada que eso que ella cre\u00eda propiedad de Dios (\u00bfel amor?) pod\u00eda ser tambi\u00e9n tr\u00e1fico humano?\n\nPero, agua que desciende la monta\u00f1a para encontrar el r\u00edo, ternerillo que antes de abrir los ojos busca la teta para mamar la leche blanca, tal vez lo amaba. En todo caso fue su amigo, la sola persona de su edad que conoci\u00f3, el \u00fanico compa\u00f1ero de juegos que tuvo, si es propio llamar juegos a esos trabajos que compart\u00edan mientras Mar\u00eda Portal, la eximia costurera, ense\u00f1aba a las monjitas el secreto de sus bordados: barrer pisos, fregar vidrios, regar plantas y encender cirios.\n\nPero es verdad que los ni\u00f1os, despu\u00e9s j\u00f3venes, conversaron mucho a lo largo de esos a\u00f1os. Di\u00e1logos ingenuos \u2014ella era inocente, \u00e9l era t\u00edmido\u2014, en los que, delicadeza de azucenas y espiritualidad de palomas, se hablaba de amor sin mencionarlo, por temas interp\u00f3sitos, como los lindos colores de la colecci\u00f3n de estampitas de sor F\u00e1tima y las explicaciones que Crisanto le hac\u00eda de qu\u00e9 eran los tranv\u00edas, los autos, los cinemas. Todo eso est\u00e1 contado, entienda quien quiera entender, en las canciones de Maravillas dedicadas a esa misteriosa mujer nunca nombrada, salvo en el famos\u00edsimo vals, de t\u00edtulo que tanto ha intrigado a sus admiradores: F\u00e1tima es la Virgen de F\u00e1tima.\n\nAunque sab\u00eda que nunca podr\u00eda sacarla del convento y hacerla suya, Crisanto Maravillas se sent\u00eda feliz viendo a su musa unas horas por semana. De esos breves encuentros sal\u00eda robustecida su inspiraci\u00f3n y as\u00ed surg\u00edan las mozamalas, los yarav\u00edes, los festejos y las resbalosas. La segunda tragedia de su vida (despu\u00e9s de su invalidez) ocurri\u00f3 el d\u00eda en que, por casualidad, la superiora de las Descalzas lo descubri\u00f3 vaciando la vejiga. La madre Lituma cambi\u00f3 varias veces de color y tuvo un ataque de hipo. Corri\u00f3 a preguntar a Mar\u00eda Portal la edad de su hijo y la costurera confes\u00f3 que, aunque su altura y formas eran de diez, hab\u00eda cumplido dieciocho a\u00f1os. La madre Lituma, santigu\u00e1ndose, le prohibi\u00f3 la entrada al convento para siempre.\n\nFue un golpe casi homicida para el bardo de la plaza de Santa Ana, quien cay\u00f3 enfermo de rom\u00e1ntico, inubicable mal. Estuvo muchos d\u00edas en cama \u2014alt\u00edsimas fiebres, delirios melodiosos\u2014, mientras m\u00e9dicos y curanderos probaban ung\u00fcentos y conjuros para regresarlo del coma. Cuando se levant\u00f3, era un espectro que apenas se ten\u00eda en pie. Pero \u00bfpod\u00eda ser de otra manera?, quedar desgajado de su amada fue provechoso para su arte: sentimentaliz\u00f3 su m\u00fasica hasta la l\u00e1grima y dramatiz\u00f3 virilmente sus letras. Las grandes canciones de amor de Crisanto Maravillas son de estos a\u00f1os. Sus amistades, cada vez que escuchaban, acompa\u00f1ando las dulces melod\u00edas, esos versos desgarrados que hablaban de una muchacha encarcelada, jilguerito en su jaula, palomita cazada, flor recogida y secuestrada en el templo del Se\u00f1or, y de un hombre doliente que amaba a la distancia y sin esperanzas, se preguntaban: \u00ab\u00bfQui\u00e9n es ella?\u00bb. Y, curiosidad que perdi\u00f3 a Eva, trataban de identificar a la hero\u00edna entre las mujeres que asediaban al aeda.\n\nPorque, pese a su encogimiento y fealdad, Crisanto Maravillas ten\u00eda un hechicero atractivo para las lime\u00f1as. Blancas con cuentas de banco, cholitas de medio pelo, zambas de conventillo, muchachitas que aprend\u00edan a vivir o viejas que se resbalaban, aparec\u00edan en el modesto interior H, pretextando pedir un aut\u00f3grafo. Le hac\u00edan ojitos, regalitos, zalamer\u00edas, se insinuaban, le propon\u00edan citas o, directamente, pecados. \u00bfEra que, estas mujeres, como las de cierto pa\u00eds que hasta en el nombre de su capital hace gala de pedanter\u00eda (\u00bfbuenos vientos, buenos tiempos, aires saludables?), ten\u00edan la costumbre de preferir a los hombres deformes, por ese est\u00fapido prejuicio seg\u00fan el cual son mejores, matrimonialmente hablando, que los normales? No, en este caso ocurr\u00eda que la riqueza de su arte nimbaba al hombrecito de la plaza de Santa Ana de una apostura espiritual, que desaparec\u00eda su miseria f\u00edsica y hasta lo hac\u00eda apetecible.\n\nCrisanto Maravillas, suavidad de convaleciente de tuberculosis, desalentaba educadamente estos avances y hac\u00eda saber a las solicitantes que perd\u00edan su tiempo. Pronunciaba entonces una esot\u00e9rica frase que produc\u00eda un indescriptible desasosiego de chismes a su alrededor: \u00abYo creo en la fidelidad y soy un pastorcito de Portugal\u00bb.\n\nSu vida era, para entonces, la bohemia de los gitanos del esp\u00edritu. Se levantaba a eso del mediod\u00eda y sol\u00eda almorzar con el p\u00e1rroco de la Iglesia de Santa Ana, un ex juez de instrucci\u00f3n en cuyo despacho se hab\u00eda mutilado un cu\u00e1quero (\u00bfdon Pedro Barreda y Zald\u00edvar?) para demostrar su inocencia de un crimen que se le atribu\u00eda (\u00bfhaber matado a un negro polizonte venido en la panza de un trasatl\u00e1ntico desde el Brasil?). El doctor don Gumercindo Tello, profundamente impresionado, cambi\u00f3 entonces la toga por la sotana. El suceso de la mutilaci\u00f3n fue inmortalizado por Crisanto Maravillas en un festejo de quijada, guitarra y caj\u00f3n: La sangre me absuelve.\n\nEl bardo y el padre Gumercindo acostumbraban ir juntos por esas calles lime\u00f1as donde Crisanto \u2014\u00bfartista que se nutr\u00eda de la vida misma?\u2014 recog\u00eda personajes y temas para sus canciones. Su m\u00fasica \u2014tradici\u00f3n, historia, folclore, chismograf\u00eda\u2014 eternizaba en melod\u00edas los tipos y las costumbres de la ciudad. En los corrales vecinos a la plaza del Cercado y en los del Santo Cristo, Maravillas y el padre Gumercindo asist\u00edan al entrenamiento que los galleros daban a sus campeones para las peleas en el Coliseo de Sandia, y as\u00ed naci\u00f3 la marinera Cu\u00eddate del aj\u00ed seco, mam\u00e1. O se asoleaban en la placita del Carmen Alto, en cuyo atrio, viendo al titiritero Monle\u00f3n divertir al vecindario con sus mu\u00f1ecos de trapo, encontr\u00f3 Crisanto el tema del vals La doncellita del Carmen Alto (que comienza as\u00ed: \u00abTienes deditos de alambre y coraz\u00f3n de paja, ay, mi amor\u00bb). Fue tambi\u00e9n, sin duda, durante esos paseos criollistas por la vieja Lima que Crisanto cruz\u00f3 a las viejecitas de mantas negras que aparecen en el vals Beatita, t\u00fa tambi\u00e9n fuiste mujer, y donde asisti\u00f3 a esas peleas de adolescentes de las que habla la polkita Los mataperros.\n\nA eso de las seis, los amigos se separaban; el curita volv\u00eda a la parroquia a rezar por el alma del can\u00edbal asesinado en el Callao y el bardo iba al garaje del sastre Chumpitaz. All\u00ed, con el grupo de \u00edntimos \u2014el cajoneador Sifuentes, el rascador Tiburcio, \u00bfla cantante Luc\u00eda Ac\u00e9mila?, los guitarristas Felipe y Juan Portocarrero\u2014, ensayaban nuevas canciones, hac\u00edan arreglos, y, cuando ca\u00eda la oscuridad, alguien sacaba la fraterna botellita de pisco. As\u00ed, entre m\u00fasicas y conversaci\u00f3n, ensayo y traguitos, se les pasaban las horas. Cuando era noche, el grupo se iba a comer a cualquier restaurante de la ciudad, donde el artista era siempre invitado de honor. Otros d\u00edas los esperaban fiestas \u2014cumplea\u00f1os, cambio de aros, matrimonios\u2014 o contratos en alg\u00fan club. Regresaban al amanecer y los amigos sol\u00edan despedir al bardo tullido en la puerta de su hogar. Pero, cuando hab\u00edan partido y se hallaban durmiendo en sus tugurios, la sombra de una figurilla contrahecha y torpe de andar emerg\u00eda del callej\u00f3n. Cruzaba la noche h\u00fameda, arrastrando una guitarra, fantasmal entre la gar\u00faa y la neblina del alba, e iba a sentarse en la desierta placita de Santa Ana, en la banca de piedra que mira a las Descalzas. Los gatos del amanecer escuchaban entonces los m\u00e1s sentidos arpegios jam\u00e1s brotados de guitarra terrena, las m\u00e1s ardientes canciones de amor salidas de estro humano. Unas beatas madrugadoras que, alguna vez, lo sorprendieron as\u00ed, cantando bajito y llorando frente al convento, propalaron la especie atroz de que, ebrio de vanidad, se hab\u00eda enamorado de la Virgen, a quien daba serenatas al despuntar el d\u00eda.\n\nPasaron semanas, meses, a\u00f1os. La fama de Crisanto Maravillas fue, destino de globo que crece y sube en pos del sol, extendi\u00e9ndose como su m\u00fasica. Nadie, sin embargo, ni su \u00edntimo amigo, el p\u00e1rroco Gumercindo Lituma, ex guardia civil apaleado brutalmente por su esposa e hijos (\u00bfpor criar ratones?) y que, mientras convalec\u00eda, escuch\u00f3 el llamado del Se\u00f1or, sospechaba la historia de su inconmensurable pasi\u00f3n por la recluida sor F\u00e1tima, quien, en todos estos a\u00f1os, hab\u00eda seguido trotando hacia la santidad. La casta pareja no pudo cambiar palabra desde el d\u00eda en que la superiora (\u00bfsor Luc\u00eda Ac\u00e9mila?) descubri\u00f3 que el bardo era un ser dotado de virilidad (\u00bfpese a lo ocurrido, esa ma\u00f1ana infausta, en el despacho del juez instructor?). Pero, a lo largo de los a\u00f1os, tuvieron la dicha de verse, aunque con dificultad y a distancia. Sor F\u00e1tima, una vez monjita, pas\u00f3, como sus compa\u00f1eras del convento, a hacer las guardias que tienen orando en la capilla, de dos en dos, las veinticuatro horas del d\u00eda, a las madres descalzas. Las monjitas veladoras est\u00e1n separadas del p\u00fablico por una rejilla de madera que, pese a ser de calado fino, permite que las gentes de ambos lados lleguen a verse. Esto explicaba, en buena parte, la religiosidad tenaz del bardo de Lima, que lo hab\u00eda hecho v\u00edctima, a menudo, de las burlas del vecindario, a las que Maravillas respondi\u00f3 con el piadoso tondero S\u00ed, creyente soy...\n\nCrisanto pasaba, efectivamente, muchos momentos del d\u00eda en la Iglesia de las Descalzas. Entraba varias veces a santiguarse y echar una ojeada a la rejilla. Si \u2014vuelco en el coraz\u00f3n, carrera del pulso, fr\u00edo en la espalda\u2014 a trav\u00e9s del cuadriculado maderamen, en uno de los reclinatorios ocupados por las eternas siluetas de h\u00e1bitos blancos, reconoc\u00eda a sor F\u00e1tima, inmediatamente ca\u00eda de hinojos en las baldosas coloniales. Se colocaba en una posici\u00f3n sesgada (lo ayudaba su f\u00edsico, en el que no era f\u00e1cil diferenciar el frente y el perfil), que le permit\u00eda dar la impresi\u00f3n de estar mirando el altar cuando en realidad ten\u00eda los ojos prendidos de esas nubes talares, de los almidonados copos que envolv\u00edan el cuerpo de su amada. Sor F\u00e1tima, a veces, respiros que se toma el atleta para redoblar esfuerzos, interrump\u00eda sus rezos, alzaba la vista hacia el (\u00bfacrucigramado?) altar, y reconoc\u00eda entonces, interpuesto, el bulto de Crisanto. Una imperceptible sonrisa aparec\u00eda en la n\u00edvea faz de la monjita y en su delicado coraz\u00f3n se reavivaba un tierno sentimiento, al reconocer al amigo de la infancia. Se encontraban sus ojos y en esos segundos \u2014sor F\u00e1tima se sent\u00eda obligada a bajar los suyos\u2014 se dec\u00edan \u00bfcosas que hasta ruborizaban a los \u00e1ngeles del cielo? Porque \u2014s\u00ed, s\u00ed\u2014 esa muchachita milagrosamente salvada de las ruedas del autom\u00f3vil conducido por el propagandista m\u00e9dico Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, que la arroll\u00f3 una ma\u00f1ana soleada, en las afueras de Pisco, cuando a\u00fan no ten\u00eda cinco a\u00f1os, y que en agradecimiento a la Virgen de F\u00e1tima se hab\u00eda hecho monja, hab\u00eda llegado, con el tiempo, en la soledad de su celda, a amar de amor sincero al aeda de los Barrios Altos.\n\nCrisanto Maravillas se hab\u00eda resignado a no desposar carnalmente a su amada, a s\u00f3lo comunicarse con ella de esa manera subliminal en la capilla. Pero nunca se conform\u00f3 a la idea \u2014cruel para un hombre cuya \u00fanica belleza era su arte\u2014 de que sor F\u00e1tima no oyera su m\u00fasica, esas canciones que, sin saberlo, inspiraba. Ten\u00eda la sospecha \u2014certeza para cualquiera que echara un vistazo al espesor fortificado del convento\u2014 que a los o\u00eddos de su amada no llegaban las serenatas, que, desafiando la pulmon\u00eda, le daba cada madrugada desde hac\u00eda veinte a\u00f1os. Un d\u00eda, Crisanto Maravillas comenz\u00f3 a incorporar temas religiosos y m\u00edsticos a su repertorio: los milagros de santa Rosa, las proezas (\u00bfzool\u00f3gicas?) de san Mart\u00edn de Porres, an\u00e9cdotas de los m\u00e1rtires y execraciones a Pilatos sucedieron a las canciones costumbristas. Esto no debilit\u00f3 el aprecio de las multitudes, pero le gan\u00f3 una nueva legi\u00f3n de fan\u00e1ticos: curas y frailes, las monjitas, la Acci\u00f3n Cat\u00f3lica. La m\u00fasica criolla, dignificada, aromosa de incienso, cuajada de temas santos, empez\u00f3 a salvar las murallas que la ten\u00edan arraigada en salones y clubs, y a o\u00edrse en lugares donde antes era inconcebible: iglesias, procesiones, casas de retiro, seminarios.\n\nEl astuto plan demor\u00f3 diez a\u00f1os pero tuvo \u00e9xito. El Convento de las Descalzas no pudo rechazar el ofrecimiento que recibi\u00f3 un d\u00eda de admitir que el bardo mimado de la feligres\u00eda, el poeta de las congregaciones, el m\u00fasico de los v\u00eda crucis, brindara en su capilla y claustros un recital de canciones a beneficio de los misioneros del \u00c1frica. El arzobispo de Lima, sabidur\u00eda p\u00farpura y o\u00eddo de conocedor, hizo saber que autorizaba el acto y que, por unas horas, suspender\u00eda la clausura a fin de que las madres descalzas pudieran deleitarse en m\u00fasica. \u00c9l mismo se propon\u00eda asistir al recital con su corte de dignatarios.\n\nEl acontecimiento, efem\u00e9rides de efem\u00e9rides en la Ciudad de los Virreyes, tuvo lugar el d\u00eda en que Crisanto Maravillas llegaba a la flor de la edad: \u00bfla cincuentena? Era un hombre de frente penetrante, nariz ancha, mirada aguile\u00f1a, rectitud y bondad en el esp\u00edritu, y de una apostura f\u00edsica que reproduc\u00eda su belleza moral.\n\nAunque, previsiones del individuo que la sociedad tritura, se hab\u00edan repartido invitaciones personales y advertido que nadie sin ellas podr\u00eda asistir al evento, el peso de la realidad se impuso: la barrera policial, comandada por el c\u00e9lebre sargento Lituma y su adjunto el cabo Jaime Concha, cedi\u00f3 como si fuera de papel ante las muchedumbres. \u00c9stas, congregadas all\u00ed desde la noche anterior, inundaron el local y anegaron claustros, zaguanes, escaleras, vest\u00edbulos, en actitud reverenciosa. Los invitados debieron ingresar por una puerta secreta, directamente a los altos, donde, api\u00f1ados detr\u00e1s de a\u00f1ejos barandales, se dispusieron a gozar del espect\u00e1culo.\n\nCuando, a las seis de la tarde, el bardo \u2014sonrisa de conquistador, traje azul marino, paso de gimnasta, cabellera dorada flotando al viento\u2014 ingres\u00f3 escoltado por su orquesta y coro, una ovaci\u00f3n que rebot\u00f3 por los techos conmovi\u00f3 las Descalzas. Desde all\u00ed, mientras se pon\u00eda de hinojos, y, con voz de bar\u00edtono, Gumercindo Maravillas entonaba un padrenuestro y un avemar\u00eda, sus ojos (\u00bfmielosos?) iban identificando, entre las cabezas, a un ramillete de conocidos.\n\nEstaba all\u00ed, en primera fila, un afamado astr\u00f3logo, el profesor (\u00bfEzequiel?) Delf\u00edn Ac\u00e9mila, quien, escrutando los cielos, midiendo las mareas y haciendo pases cabal\u00edsticos, hab\u00eda averiguado el destino de las se\u00f1oras millonarias de la ciudad, y que, simpleza de sabio que juega a las bolitas, ten\u00eda la debilidad de la m\u00fasica criolla. Y estaba all\u00ed tambi\u00e9n, de punta en blanco, un clavel rojo en el ojal y una sarita flamante, el negro m\u00e1s popular de Lima, aquel que habiendo cruzado el oc\u00e9ano como polizonte en la barriga de un \u00bfavi\u00f3n?, hab\u00eda rehecho aqu\u00ed su vida (\u00bfdedicado al c\u00edvico pasatiempo de matar ratones mediante venenos t\u00edpicos de su tribu, con lo que se hizo rico?). Y, casualidades que urden el diablo o el azar, comparec\u00edan igualmente, atra\u00eddos por su com\u00fan admiraci\u00f3n al m\u00fasico, el Testigo de Jehov\u00e1 Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, quien, a ra\u00edz de la proeza que protagonizara \u2014\u00bfautodecapitarse, con un fluido cortapapeles, el dedo \u00edndice de la mano derecha?\u2014 se hab\u00eda ganado el apodo de El Mocho, y Sarita Huanca Salaverr\u00eda, la bella victoriana, caprichosa y gentil, que le hab\u00eda exigido, en ofrenda de amor, tan dura prueba. \u00bfY c\u00f3mo no iba a verse, exang\u00fce entre la multitud criollista, al miraflorino Richard Quinteros? Aprovechando que, una vez en la vida basta y sobra, se abr\u00edan las puertas de las Carmelitas, se hab\u00eda deslizado al claustro, confundido entre las gentes, para ver aunque fuera de lejos a esa hermana suya (\u00bfsor F\u00e1tima? \u00bfsor Lituma? \u00bfsor Luc\u00eda?) encerrada all\u00ed por sus padres para librarla de su incestuoso amor. Y hasta los Bergua, sordomudos que jam\u00e1s abandonaban la Pensi\u00f3n Colonial donde viv\u00edan, dedicados a la altruista ocupaci\u00f3n de ense\u00f1ar a dialogar entre s\u00ed, con muecas y ademanes, a los ni\u00f1os pobres privados de audici\u00f3n y habla, se hab\u00edan hecho presentes, contagiados por la curiosidad general, para ver (ya que no o\u00edr) al \u00eddolo de Lima.\n\nEl apocalipsis que enlutar\u00eda la ciudad se desencaden\u00f3 cuando el padre Gumercindo Tello ya hab\u00eda iniciado el recital. Ante la hipnosis de cientos de espectadores arracimados en zaguanes, patios, escaleras, techos, el l\u00edrico, acompa\u00f1ado por el \u00f3rgano, interpretaba las \u00faltimas notas del primoroso ap\u00f3strofe Mi religi\u00f3n no se vende. La misma salva de aplausos que premi\u00f3 al padre Gumercindo, mal y bien que se mezclan como el caf\u00e9 con leche, perdi\u00f3 a los asistentes. Pues, demasiado absorbidos por el canto, demasiado atentos a las palmas, hurras, v\u00edtores, confundieron los primeros s\u00edntomas del cataclismo con la agitaci\u00f3n creada en ellos por el Canario del Se\u00f1or. No reaccionaron en los segundos en que a\u00fan era posible correr, salir, ponerse a salvo. Cuando, rugido volc\u00e1nico que destroza los t\u00edmpanos, descubrieron que no temblaban ellos sino la tierra, era tarde. Porque las tres \u00fanicas puertas de las Carmelitas \u2014coincidencia, voluntad de Dios, torpeza de arquitecto\u2014 hab\u00edan quedado bloqueadas por los primeros derrumbes, sepultando, el gran angelote de piedra que tapi\u00f3 la puerta principal, al sargento Crisanto Maravillas, quien, secundado por el cabo Jaime Concha y el guardia Lituma, al iniciarse el terremoto, trataba de evacuar el convento. El valeroso c\u00edvico y sus dos adjuntos fueron las primeras v\u00edctimas de la deflagraci\u00f3n subterr\u00e1nea. As\u00ed acabaron, cucarachas que apachurra el zapato, bajo un indiferente personaje de granito, en las puertas santas de las Carmelitas (\u00bfen espera del Juicio Final?) los tres mosqueteros del Cuerpo de Bomberos del Per\u00fa.\n\nEntre tanto, en el interior del convento, los fieles all\u00ed congregados por la m\u00fasica y la religi\u00f3n mor\u00edan como moscas. A los aplausos hab\u00eda sucedido un coro de ayes, alaridos y aullidos. Las nobles piedras, los rancios adobes no pudieron resistir el estremecimiento \u2014convulsivo, interminable\u2014 de las profundidades. Una a una las paredes se fueron resquebrajando, desmoronando y triturando a quienes trataban de escalarlas para ganar la calle. As\u00ed murieron unos c\u00e9lebres exterminadores de ratas y ratones: \u00bflos Bergua? Segundos despu\u00e9s se desfondaron, ruido de infierno y polvo de tornado, las galer\u00edas del segundo piso, precipitando \u2014proyectiles vivos, b\u00f3lidos humanos\u2014 contra las gentes api\u00f1adas en el patio a las gentes que se hab\u00edan instalado en los altos para escuchar mejor a la madre Gumercinda. As\u00ed muri\u00f3, el cr\u00e1neo reventado contra las baldosas, el psic\u00f3logo de Lima, Lucho Abril Marroqu\u00edn, que hab\u00eda desneurotizado a media ciudad mediante un tratamiento de su invenci\u00f3n (\u00bfque consist\u00eda en jugar al retumbante juego del palitroque?). Pero fue el derrumbe de los techos carmelitas lo que produjo el mayor n\u00famero de muertos en el m\u00ednimo tiempo. As\u00ed muri\u00f3, entre otros, la madre Luc\u00eda Ac\u00e9mila, quien tanta fama hab\u00eda ganado en el mundo, luego de desertar su antigua secta, los Testigos de Jehov\u00e1, por escribir un libro que alab\u00f3 el Papa: Escarnio del Tronco en nombre de la Cruz.\n\nLa muerte de sor F\u00e1tima y Richard, \u00edmpetu de amor que ni la sangre ni el h\u00e1bito detienen, fue todav\u00eda m\u00e1s triste. Ambos, durante los siglos que dur\u00f3 el fuego, permanecieron indemnes, abraz\u00e1ndose, mientras a su alrededor, asfixiadas, pisoteadas, chamuscadas, perec\u00edan las gentes. Ya hab\u00eda cesado el incendio y, entre carbones y espesas nubes, los dos amantes se besaban, rodeados de mortandad. Hab\u00eda llegado el momento de ganar la calle. Richard, entonces, tomando de la cintura a la madre F\u00e1tima, la arrastr\u00f3 hacia uno de los boquetes abiertos en los muros por la braveza del incendio. Pero, apenas hab\u00edan dado unos pasos los amantes, cuando \u2014\u00bfinfamia de la tierra carn\u00edvora?, \u00bfjusticia celestial?\u2014 se abri\u00f3 el suelo a sus pies. El fuego hab\u00eda devorado la trampa que ocultaba la cueva colonial donde las Carmelitas guardaban los huesos de sus muertos, y all\u00ed cayeron, desbarat\u00e1ndose contra el osario, los hermanos \u00bfluciferinos?\n\n\u00bfEra el diablo quien se los llevaba? \u00bfEra el infierno el ep\u00edlogo de sus amores? \u00bfO era Dios, que, compadecido de su azaroso padecer, los sub\u00eda a los cielos? \u00bfHab\u00eda terminado o tendr\u00eda una continuaci\u00f3n ultraterrena esta historia de sangre, canto, misticismo y fuego?\n\n### XIX\n\nJAVIER NOS llam\u00f3 por tel\u00e9fono desde Lima a las siete de la ma\u00f1ana. La comunicaci\u00f3n era p\u00e9sima, pero ni los zumbidos ni las vibraciones que la interfer\u00edan disimulaban lo alarmada que estaba su voz.\n\n\u2014Malas noticias \u2014me dijo, de entrada\u2014. Montones de malas noticias.\n\nA unos cincuenta kil\u00f3metros de Lima, el colectivo donde \u00e9l y Pascual regresaban la v\u00edspera, se sali\u00f3 de la carretera y dio una vuelta de campana en el arenal. Ninguno de los dos se hiri\u00f3, pero el chofer y otro pasajero hab\u00edan sufrido contusiones serias; fue una pesadilla conseguir, en plena noche, que alg\u00fan auto se detuviera y les echara una mano. Javier hab\u00eda llegado a su pensi\u00f3n molido de fatiga. All\u00ed recibi\u00f3 un susto todav\u00eda mayor. En la puerta lo esperaba mi padre. Se le hab\u00eda acercado, l\u00edvido, le hab\u00eda mostrado un rev\u00f3lver, lo hab\u00eda amenazado con pegarle un tiro si no revelaba al instante d\u00f3nde est\u00e1bamos yo y la t\u00eda Julia. Muerto de p\u00e1nico (\u00abhasta ahora s\u00f3lo hab\u00eda visto rev\u00f3lveres en pel\u00edcula, compadre\u00bb), Javier le jur\u00f3 y requetejur\u00f3 por su madre y por todos los santos que no lo sab\u00eda, que no me ve\u00eda hac\u00eda una semana. Por \u00faltimo, mi padre se hab\u00eda calmado algo y le hab\u00eda dejado una carta, para que me la entregara en persona. Aturdido con lo que acababa de ocurrir, Javier (\u00abqu\u00e9 nochecita, Varguitas\u00bb), apenas se fue mi padre, decidi\u00f3 hablar inmediatamente con el t\u00edo Lucho, para saber si mi familia materna hab\u00eda llegado tambi\u00e9n a esos extremos de rabia. El t\u00edo Lucho lo recibi\u00f3 en bata. Hab\u00edan conversado cerca de una hora. \u00c9l no estaba col\u00e9rico, sino apenado, preocupado, confuso. Javier le confirm\u00f3 que est\u00e1bamos casados con todas las de la ley y le asegur\u00f3 que \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n hab\u00eda tratado de disuadirme, pero en vano. El t\u00edo Lucho suger\u00eda que volvi\u00e9ramos a Lima cuanto antes, para coger al toro por los cuernos y tratar de arreglar las cosas.\n\n\u2014El gran problema es tu padre, Varguitas \u2014concluy\u00f3 su informe Javier\u2014. El resto de la familia se ir\u00e1 conformando poco a poco. Pero \u00e9l est\u00e1 echando chispas. \u00a1No sabes la carta que te ha dejado!\n\nLo re\u00f1\u00ed por leerse las cartas ajenas, y le dije que regres\u00e1bamos a Lima de inmediato, que a mediod\u00eda pasar\u00eda a verlo a su trabajo o que lo llamar\u00eda por tel\u00e9fono. Le cont\u00e9 todo a la t\u00eda Julia mientras se vest\u00eda, sin ocultarle nada, pero tratando de restar truculencia a los hechos.\n\n\u2014Lo que no me gusta nada es lo del rev\u00f3lver \u2014coment\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia\u2014. Supongo que a quien querr\u00e1 pegarle un tiro ser\u00e1 a m\u00ed, \u00bfno? Oye, Varguitas, espero que mi suegro no me mate en plena luna de miel. \u00bfY lo del choque? \u00a1Pobre Javier! \u00a1Pobre Pascual! En qu\u00e9 l\u00edo los hemos metido con nuestras locuras.\n\nNo estaba asustada ni apenada en absoluto, se la ve\u00eda muy contenta y resuelta a enfrentar todas las calamidades. As\u00ed me sent\u00eda yo tambi\u00e9n. Pagamos el hotel, fuimos a tomar un caf\u00e9 con leche a la plaza de Armas y media hora despu\u00e9s est\u00e1bamos otra vez en la carretera, en un viejo colectivo, rumbo a Lima. Casi todo el trayecto nos besamos, en la boca, en las mejillas, en las manos, dici\u00e9ndonos al o\u00eddo que nos quer\u00edamos y burl\u00e1ndonos de las miradas intranquilas de los pasajeros y del chofer que nos espiaba por el espejo retrovisor.\n\nLlegamos a Lima a las diez de la ma\u00f1ana. Era un d\u00eda gris, la neblina afantasmaba las casas y las gentes, todo estaba h\u00famedo y uno ten\u00eda la sensaci\u00f3n de respirar agua. El colectivo nos dej\u00f3 en la casa de la t\u00eda Olga y el t\u00edo Lucho. Antes de tocar la puerta, nos apretamos con fuerza las manos, para darnos valor. La t\u00eda Julia se hab\u00eda puesto seria y yo sent\u00ed que el coraz\u00f3n se me apuraba.\n\nNos abri\u00f3 el t\u00edo Lucho en persona. Hizo una sonrisa que le sali\u00f3 terriblemente forzada, bes\u00f3 a la t\u00eda Julia en la mejilla y me bes\u00f3 a m\u00ed tambi\u00e9n.\n\n\u2014Tu hermana est\u00e1 todav\u00eda en cama, pero ya despierta \u2014le dijo a la t\u00eda Julia, se\u00f1alando el dormitorio\u2014. Entra, nom\u00e1s.\n\n\u00c9l y yo fuimos a sentarnos a la salita desde la cual se ve\u00eda el seminario de los jesuitas, el Malec\u00f3n y el mar, cuando no hab\u00eda neblina. Ahora s\u00f3lo se distingu\u00edan, borrosas, la pared y la azotea de ladrillos rojos del seminario.\n\n\u2014No te voy a jalar las orejas porque ya est\u00e1s grande para que te jalen las orejas \u2014murmur\u00f3 el t\u00edo Lucho. Se lo ve\u00eda realmente abatido, con se\u00f1ales de desvelo en la cara\u2014. \u00bfAl menos sospechas en lo que te has metido?\n\n\u2014Era la \u00fanica manera de que no nos separaran \u2014le repuse, con las frases que ten\u00eda preparadas\u2014. Julia y yo nos queremos. No hemos hecho ninguna locura. Lo hemos pensado y estamos seguros de lo que hicimos. Te prometo que vamos a salir adelante.\n\n\u2014Eres un mocoso, no tienes una profesi\u00f3n ni donde caerte muerto, tendr\u00e1s que dejar la universidad y romperte el alma para mantener a tu mujer \u2014susurr\u00f3 el t\u00edo Lucho, prendiendo un cigarrillo, moviendo la cabeza\u2014. Te has puesto la soga al cuello t\u00fa solito. Nadie se conforma, porque en la familia todos esper\u00e1bamos que llegar\u00edas a ser alguien. Da pena ver que por un capricho te has zambullido en la mediocridad.\n\n\u2014No voy a dejar los estudios, voy a terminar la universidad, voy a hacer las mismas cosas que hubiera hecho sin casarme \u2014le asegur\u00e9 yo, con \u00edmpetu\u2014. Tienes que creerme y hacer que la familia me crea. Julia me va a ayudar, ahora estudiar\u00e9, trabajar\u00e9 con m\u00e1s ganas.\n\n\u2014Por lo pronto, hay que calmar a tu padre, que est\u00e1 fuera de sus casillas \u2014me dijo el t\u00edo Lucho, abland\u00e1ndose de golpe. Ya hab\u00eda cumplido con jalarme las orejas y ahora parec\u00eda dispuesto a ayudarme\u2014. No entiende razones, amenaza con denunciar a Julia a la polic\u00eda y no s\u00e9 cu\u00e1ntas cosas.\n\nLe dije que hablar\u00eda con \u00e9l y procurar\u00eda que aceptara los hechos. El t\u00edo Lucho me mir\u00f3 de pies a cabeza: era una verg\u00fcenza que un flamante novio estuviera con la camisa sucia, deber\u00eda ir a cambiarme y ba\u00f1arme, y, de paso, tranquilizar a los abuelitos, que estaban muy inquietos. Conversamos todav\u00eda un rato, y hasta tomamos un caf\u00e9, sin que la t\u00eda Julia saliera del cuarto de la t\u00eda Olga. Yo afinaba el o\u00eddo tratando de descubrir si hab\u00eda llanto, gritos, discusi\u00f3n. No, ning\u00fan ruido atravesaba la puerta. La t\u00eda Julia apareci\u00f3 por fin, sola. Ven\u00eda arrebatada, como si hubiera tomado mucho sol, pero sonriendo.\n\n\u2014Por lo menos est\u00e1s viva y enterita \u2014dijo el t\u00edo Lucho\u2014. Pens\u00e9 que tu hermana te jalar\u00eda de las mechas.\n\n\u2014El primer momento casi me pega una cachetada \u2014confes\u00f3 la t\u00eda Julia, sent\u00e1ndose a mi lado\u2014. Me ha dicho barbaridades, por supuesto. Pero parece que, a pesar de todo, puedo seguir en la casa, hasta que se aclaren las cosas.\n\nMe par\u00e9 y dije que ten\u00eda que ir a Radio Panamericana: ser\u00eda tr\u00e1gico que, precisamente ahora, perdiera el trabajo. El t\u00edo Lucho me acompa\u00f1\u00f3 hasta la puerta, me dijo que volviera a almorzar, y cuando, al despedirme, bes\u00e9 a la t\u00eda Julia, lo vi que sonre\u00eda.\n\nCorr\u00ed a la bodega de la esquina a telefonear a mi prima Nancy y tuve la suerte de que ella misma contestara la llamada. Se le fue la voz al reconocerme. Quedamos en encontrarnos dentro de diez minutos en el parque Salazar. Cuando llegu\u00e9 al parque, la flaquita estaba ya all\u00ed, muerta de curiosidad. Antes de que me contara nada, tuve que narrarle toda la aventura de Chincha y responder a innumerables preguntas suyas sobre detalles inesperados, como, por ejemplo, qu\u00e9 vestido se hab\u00eda puesto la t\u00eda Julia para el matrimonio. Lo que le encant\u00f3 y celebr\u00f3 a carcajadas (pero no me crey\u00f3) fue la ligeramente distorsionada versi\u00f3n seg\u00fan la cual el alcalde que nos hab\u00eda casado era un pescador negro, semicalato y sin zapatos. Por fin, despu\u00e9s de esto, consegu\u00ed que me informara c\u00f3mo hab\u00eda recibido la noticia la familia. Hab\u00eda ocurrido lo previsible: ir y venir de casa a casa, concili\u00e1bulos efervescentes, telefonazos innumerables, copiosas l\u00e1grimas, y, al parecer, mi madre hab\u00eda sido consolada, visitada, acompa\u00f1ada, como si hubiera perdido a su \u00fanico hijo. En cuanto a Nancy, la hab\u00edan acosado a preguntas y amenazas, convencidos de que era nuestra aliada, para que dijera d\u00f3nde est\u00e1bamos. Pero ella hab\u00eda resistido, negando rotundamente, y hasta derram\u00f3 unos lagrimones de cocodrilo que los hicieron dudar. Tambi\u00e9n la flaca Nancy estaba inquieta con mi padre:\n\n\u2014No se te vaya a ocurrir verlo hasta que se le pase el coler\u00f3n \u2014me advirti\u00f3\u2014. Est\u00e1 tan furioso que podr\u00eda desaparecerte.\n\nLe pregunt\u00e9 por el departamentito que hab\u00eda alquilado y me sorprendi\u00f3 otra vez con su sentido pr\u00e1ctico. Esa misma ma\u00f1ana hab\u00eda hablado con la due\u00f1a. Ten\u00edan que arreglar el ba\u00f1o, cambiar una puerta y pintarlo, de modo que no estar\u00eda habitable antes de diez d\u00edas. Se me cay\u00f3 el alma a los pies. Mientras caminaba a casa de los abuelos, iba pensando d\u00f3nde diablos podr\u00edamos refugiarnos esas dos semanas.\n\nSin haber resuelto el problema llegu\u00e9 a casa de los abuelitos y all\u00ed me encontr\u00e9 con mi madre. Estaba en la sala y, al verme, rompi\u00f3 en un llanto espectacular. Me abraz\u00f3 con fuerza, y, mientras me acariciaba los ojos, las mejillas, me hund\u00eda los dedos en los cabellos, medio ahogada por los sollozos, repet\u00eda con infinita l\u00e1stima: \u00abHijito, cholito, amor m\u00edo, qu\u00e9 te han hecho, qu\u00e9 ha hecho contigo esa mujer\u00bb. Hac\u00eda cerca de un a\u00f1o que no la ve\u00eda y, pese al llanto que le hinchaba la cara, la encontr\u00e9 rejuvenecida y apuesta. Hice lo posible por calmarla, asegur\u00e1ndole que no me hab\u00edan hecho nada, que yo solito hab\u00eda tomado la decisi\u00f3n de casarme. Ella no pod\u00eda o\u00edr mencionar el nombre de su recient\u00edsima nuera sin que recrudeciera su llanto; ten\u00eda raptos de furia, en los que llamaba a la t\u00eda Julia \u00abesa vieja\u00bb, \u00abesa abusiva\u00bb, \u00abesa divorciada\u00bb. De pronto, en medio de la escena, descubr\u00ed algo que no se me hab\u00eda pasado por la cabeza: m\u00e1s que el qu\u00e9 dir\u00e1n la hac\u00eda sufrir la religi\u00f3n. Era muy cat\u00f3lica y no le importaba tanto que la t\u00eda Julia fuese mayor que yo como que estuviera divorciada (es decir, impedida de casarse por la Iglesia).\n\nPor fin consegu\u00ed apaciguarla, con ayuda de los abuelos. Los viejecitos fueron un modelo de tino, bondad y discreci\u00f3n. El abuelo se limit\u00f3 a decirme, mientras me daba en la frente el seco beso de costumbre: \u00abVaya, poeta, por fin se te ve, ya nos ten\u00edas preocupados\u00bb. Y la abuelita, despu\u00e9s de muchos besos y abrazos, me pregunt\u00f3 al o\u00eddo, con una especie de rec\u00f3ndita picard\u00eda, muy bajito, para que no fuera a o\u00edr mi mam\u00e1: \u00ab\u00bfY la Julita est\u00e1 bien?\u00bb.\n\nDespu\u00e9s de darme un duchazo y cambiarme de ropa \u2014sent\u00ed una liberaci\u00f3n al botar la que llevaba puesta hac\u00eda cuatro d\u00edas\u2014 pude conversar con mi madre. Hab\u00eda dejado de llorar y estaba tomando una taza de t\u00e9 que le hab\u00eda preparado la abuelita, quien, sentada en el brazo del sill\u00f3n, la acariciaba como si fuese una ni\u00f1a. Trat\u00e9 de hacerla sonre\u00edr, con una broma que result\u00f3 de p\u00e9simo gusto (\u00abpero, mamacita, deber\u00edas estar feliz, si me he casado con una gran amiga tuya\u00bb) pero luego toqu\u00e9 cuerdas m\u00e1s sensibles jur\u00e1ndole que no dejar\u00eda los estudios, que me recibir\u00eda de abogado y que, incluso, a lo mejor cambiaba de opini\u00f3n sobre la diplomacia peruana (\u00ablos que no son idiotas son maricas, mam\u00e1\u00bb) y entraba a Relaciones Exteriores, el sue\u00f1o de su vida. Poco a poco se fue desendureciendo, y, aunque siempre con cara de duelo, me pregunt\u00f3 por la universidad, por mis notas, por mi trabajo en la radio, y me ri\u00f1\u00f3 por lo ingrato que era ya que apenas le escrib\u00eda. Me dijo que mi padre hab\u00eda sufrido un golpe terrible: \u00e9l tambi\u00e9n ambicionaba grandes cosas para m\u00ed, por eso impedir\u00eda que esa mujer arruinara mi vida. Hab\u00eda consultado abogados, el matrimonio no era v\u00e1lido, se anular\u00eda y la t\u00eda Julia pod\u00eda ser acusada de corruptora de menores. Mi padre estaba tan violento que, por ahora, no quer\u00eda verme, para que no ocurriera \u00abalgo terrible\u00bb, y exig\u00eda que la t\u00eda Julia saliera en el acto del pa\u00eds. Si no, sufrir\u00eda las consecuencias.\n\nLe contest\u00e9 que la t\u00eda Julia y yo nos hab\u00edamos casado justamente para no separarnos y que iba a ser muy dif\u00edcil que despachara al extranjero a mi mujer a los dos d\u00edas de la boda. Pero ella no quer\u00eda discutir conmigo: \u00abYa lo conoces a tu pap\u00e1, ya sabes el car\u00e1cter que tiene, hay que darle gusto porque si no...\u00bb, y pon\u00eda ojos de terror. Por fin, le dije que iba a llegar tarde a mi trabajo, ya conversar\u00edamos, y, antes de despedirme, volv\u00ed a tranquilizarla sobre mi futuro, asegur\u00e1ndole que me recibir\u00eda de abogado.\n\nEn el colectivo, rumbo al centro de Lima, tuve un presentimiento l\u00fagubre: \u00bfy si me encontraba a alguien ocupando mi escritorio? Hab\u00eda faltado tres d\u00edas, y, en las \u00faltimas semanas, debido a los frustrantes preparativos matrimoniales, hab\u00eda descuidado por completo los boletines, en los que Pascual y el Gran Pablito deb\u00edan haber hecho toda clase de barbaridades. Pens\u00e9, sombr\u00edamente, lo que ser\u00eda, adem\u00e1s de las complicaciones personales del momento, perder el puesto. Empec\u00e9 a inventar argumentos capaces de enternecer a Genaro hijo y a Genaro pap\u00e1. Pero al entrar al Edificio Panamericano, con el alma en un hilo, mi sorpresa fue may\u00fascula, pues el empresario progresista, con quien coincid\u00ed en el ascensor, me salud\u00f3 como si nos hubi\u00e9semos dejado de ver hac\u00eda diez minutos. Ten\u00eda la cara grave:\n\n\u2014Se confirma la cat\u00e1strofe \u2014me dijo, moviendo la cabeza con pesadumbre; parec\u00eda que hubi\u00e9ramos estado hablando hac\u00eda un momento del asunto\u2014. \u00bfQuieres decirme qu\u00e9 vamos a hacer ahora? Tienen que internarlo.\n\nBaj\u00f3 del ascensor en el segundo piso, y yo, que, para mantener la confusi\u00f3n, hab\u00eda puesto cara de velorio y murmurado, como perfectamente al tanto de lo que me hablaba, \u00abah caramba, qu\u00e9 l\u00e1stima\u00bb, me sent\u00ed feliz de que hubiera ocurrido algo tan grave que hiciera pasar inadvertida mi ausencia. En el altillo, Pascual y el Gran Pablito escuchaban con aire f\u00fanebre a Nelly, la secretaria de Genaro hijo. Apenas me saludaron, nadie brome\u00f3 sobre mi matrimonio. Me miraron desolados:\n\n\u2014A Pedro Camacho se lo han llevado al manicomio \u2014balbuce\u00f3 el Gran Pablito, con la voz traspasada\u2014. Qu\u00e9 cosa tan triste, don Mario.\n\nLuego, entre los tres, pero sobre todo Nelly, que hab\u00eda seguido los acontecimientos desde la gerencia, me contaron los pormenores. Todo comenz\u00f3 los mismos d\u00edas en que yo andaba absorbido en mis trajines prematrimoniales. El principio del fin fueron las cat\u00e1strofes, esos incendios, terremotos, choques, naufragios, descarrilamientos, que devastaban los radioteatros, acabando en pocos minutos con decenas de personajes. Esta vez, los propios actores y t\u00e9cnicos de Radio Central, asustados, hab\u00edan dejado de servir de muro protector al escriba, o hab\u00edan sido incapaces de impedir que el desconcierto y las protestas de los oyentes llegaran a los Genaros. Pero \u00e9stos ya estaban alertados por los diarios, cuyos cronistas radiales se burlaban, hac\u00eda d\u00edas, de los cataclismos de Pedro Camacho. Los Genaros lo hab\u00edan llamado, interrogado, extremando las precauciones para no herirlo ni exasperarlo. Pero \u00e9l se les derrumb\u00f3 en plena reuni\u00f3n, con una crisis nerviosa: las cat\u00e1strofes eran estratagemas para recomenzar las historias desde cero, pues su memoria le fallaba, no sab\u00eda ya qu\u00e9 hab\u00eda ocurrido antes, ni qu\u00e9 personaje era quien, ni a cu\u00e1l historia pertenec\u00eda, y \u2014\u00abllorando a gritos, jal\u00e1ndose los pelos\u00bb, aseguraba Nelly\u2014 les hab\u00eda confesado que, en las \u00faltimas semanas, su trabajo, su vida, sus noches, eran un suplicio. Los Genaros lo hab\u00edan hecho ver por un gran m\u00e9dico de Lima, el doctor Honorio Delgado, y \u00e9ste dictamin\u00f3 en el acto que el escriba no estaba en condiciones de trabajar; su mente \u00abexhausta\u00bb deb\u00eda pasar un tiempo en reposo.\n\nEst\u00e1bamos pendientes del relato de Nelly cuando son\u00f3 el tel\u00e9fono. Era Genaro hijo, quer\u00eda verme con urgencia. Baj\u00e9 a su oficina, convencido de que ahora s\u00ed vendr\u00eda cuando menos una amonestaci\u00f3n. Pero me recibi\u00f3 como en el ascensor, dando por supuesto que yo estaba al corriente de sus problemas. Acababa de hablar por tel\u00e9fono con La Habana, y maldec\u00eda porque la CMQ, aprovech\u00e1ndose de su situaci\u00f3n, de la urgencia, le hab\u00eda cuadruplicado las tarifas.\n\n\u2014Es una tragedia, una mala suerte \u00fanica, eran los programas de mayor sinton\u00eda, los anunciadores se los peleaban \u2014dec\u00eda, revolviendo papeles\u2014. \u00a1Qu\u00e9 desastre volver a depender de los tiburones de la CMQ!\n\nLe pregunt\u00e9 c\u00f3mo estaba Pedro Camacho, si lo hab\u00eda visto, en cu\u00e1nto tiempo podr\u00eda volver a trabajar.\n\n\u2014No hay ninguna esperanza \u2014gru\u00f1\u00f3, con una especie de furia, pero acab\u00f3 por adoptar un tono compasivo\u2014. El doctor Delgado dice que su psiquis est\u00e1 en proceso de delicuescencia. Delicuescencia. \u00bfT\u00fa entiendes eso? Que el alma se le cae a pedazos, supongo, que se le pudre la cabeza o algo as\u00ed \u00bfno? Cuando mi padre le pregunt\u00f3 si el restablecimiento pod\u00eda tomar unos meses, nos respondi\u00f3: \u00abTal vez a\u00f1os\u00bb. \u00a1Imag\u00ednate!\n\nBaj\u00f3 la cabeza, abrumado, y, con seguridad de adivino, me predijo lo que ocurrir\u00eda: al saber que los libretos iban a ser, en adelante, los de la CMQ, los anunciadores cancelar\u00edan los contratos o pedir\u00edan rebajas del cincuenta por ciento. Para mal de males, los nuevos radioteatros no llegar\u00edan antes de tres semanas o un mes, porque Cuba ahora era un burdel, hab\u00eda terrorismo, guerrillas, la CMQ andaba alborotada, con gente presa, mil l\u00edos. Pero era impensable que los oyentes se quedaran un mes sin radioteatros, Radio Central perder\u00eda su p\u00fablico, se lo arrebatar\u00edan Radio La Cr\u00f3nica o Radio Colonial que hab\u00edan comenzado a darle duro con los radioteatros argentinos, esas huachafer\u00edas.\n\n\u2014A prop\u00f3sito, para eso te he hecho venir \u2014a\u00f1adi\u00f3, mir\u00e1ndome como si en ese momento me descubriera all\u00ed\u2014. Tienes que echarnos una mano. T\u00fa eres medio intelectual, para ti ser\u00e1 un trabajo f\u00e1cil.\n\nSe trataba de meterse al dep\u00f3sito de Radio Central, donde se conservaban los viejos libretos, anteriores a la venida de Pedro Camacho. Hab\u00eda que revisarlos, descubrir cu\u00e1les pod\u00edan ser utilizados de inmediato, hasta que llegaran los radioteatros frescos de la CMQ.\n\n\u2014Por supuesto, te pagaremos extra \u2014me precis\u00f3\u2014. Aqu\u00ed no explotamos a nadie.\n\nSent\u00ed una enorme gratitud por Genaro hijo y una gran piedad por sus problemas. Aunque me diera cien soles, en esos instantes me ca\u00edan de maravilla. Cuando estaba saliendo de su oficina, su voz me ataj\u00f3 en la puerta:\n\n\u2014Oye, de veras, ya s\u00e9 que te has casado \u2014me volv\u00ed y me estaba haciendo un adem\u00e1n afectuoso\u2014. \u00bfQui\u00e9n es la v\u00edctima? \u00bfUna mujer, supongo, no? Bueno, felicitaciones. Ya nos tomaremos una copa para celebrarlo.\n\nDesde mi oficina llam\u00e9 a la t\u00eda Julia. Me dijo que la t\u00eda Olga se hab\u00eda aplacado algo, pero que a cada rato se asombraba de nuevo y le dec\u00eda: \u00abQu\u00e9 loca eres\u00bb. No la apen\u00f3 mucho que el departamentito no estuviera a\u00fan disponible (\u00abtotal, hemos dormido tanto tiempo separados que podemos hacerlo dos semanas m\u00e1s, Varguitas\u00bb) y me dijo que, despu\u00e9s de darse un buen ba\u00f1o y cambiarse de ropa, se sent\u00eda muy optimista. Le advert\u00ed que no ir\u00eda a almorzar porque ten\u00eda que meterle cuernos con una monta\u00f1a de radioteatros y que nos ver\u00edamos a la noche. Hice El Panamericano y dos boletines y fui a zambullirme en el dep\u00f3sito de Radio Central. Era una cueva sin luz, sembrada de telara\u00f1as, y, al entrar, o\u00ed carreritas de ratones en la oscuridad. Hab\u00eda papeles por todas partes: amontonados, sueltos, desparramados, amarrados en paquetes. Inmediatamente comenc\u00e9 a estornudar por el polvo y la humedad. No hab\u00eda posibilidades de trabajar all\u00ed, as\u00ed que me puse a acarrear altos de papel al cub\u00edculo de Pedro Camacho y me instal\u00e9 en el que hab\u00eda sido su escritorio. No quedaba rastro de \u00e9l: ni el diccionario de citas, ni el mapa de Lima, ni sus fichas sociol\u00f3gico-psicol\u00f3gico-raciales. El desorden y la suciedad de los viejos radioteatros de la CMQ eran supremos: la humedad hab\u00eda deshecho las letras, los ratones y cucarachas hab\u00edan mordisqueado y defecado las p\u00e1ginas, y los libretos se hab\u00edan mezclado unos con otros como las historias de Pedro Camacho. No hab\u00eda mucho que seleccionar; a lo m\u00e1s, tratar de descubrir algunos textos legibles.\n\nLlevaba unas tres horas de estornudos al\u00e9rgicos, buceando entre almibaradas truculencias para armar algunos rompecabezas radioteatrales, cuando se abri\u00f3 la puerta del cub\u00edculo y apareci\u00f3 Javier.\n\n\u2014Es incre\u00edble que en estos momentos, con los problemas que tienes, sigas con tu man\u00eda de Pedro Camacho \u2014me dijo, furioso\u2014. Vengo de donde tus abuelos. Por lo menos, ent\u00e9rate de lo que te pasa y tiembla.\n\nMe lanz\u00f3 sobre el escritorio, arrebosado de suspirantes libretos, dos sobres. Uno, era la carta que le hab\u00eda dejado mi padre la noche anterior. Dec\u00eda as\u00ed:\n\n\u00abMario: Doy cuarenta y ocho horas de plazo para que esa mujer abandone el pa\u00eds. Si no lo hace, me encargar\u00e9 yo, moviendo las influencias que haga falta, de hacerle pagar caro su audacia. En cuanto a ti, quiero que sepas que ando armado y que no permitir\u00e9 que te burles de m\u00ed. Si no obedeces al pie de la letra y esa mujer no sale del pa\u00eds en el plazo indicado, te matar\u00e9 de cinco balazos como a un perro, en plena calle.\u00bb\n\nHab\u00eda firmado con sus dos apellidos y r\u00fabrica, y a\u00f1adido una posdata: \u00abPuedes ir a pedir protecci\u00f3n policial, si quieres. Y, para que quede bien claro, aqu\u00ed firmo otra vez mi decisi\u00f3n de matarte donde te encuentre como a un perro\u00bb. Y, en efecto, hab\u00eda firmado por segunda vez, con trazo m\u00e1s en\u00e9rgico que la primera. El otro sobre se lo hab\u00eda entregado mi abuelita a Javier hac\u00eda media hora, para que me lo trajera. Lo hab\u00eda llevado un guardia; era una citaci\u00f3n de la comisar\u00eda de Miraflores. Deb\u00eda presentarme all\u00ed, al d\u00eda siguiente, a las nueve de la ma\u00f1ana.\n\n\u2014Lo peor no es la carta, sino que, tal como lo vi anoche, puede muy bien cumplir la amenaza \u2014me consol\u00f3 Javier, sent\u00e1ndose en el alf\u00e9izar de la ventana\u2014. \u00bfQu\u00e9 hacemos, compa\u00f1erito?\n\n\u2014Por lo pronto, consultar a un abogado \u2014fue lo \u00fanico que se me ocurri\u00f3\u2014. Sobre mi matrimonio y lo otro. \u00bfConoces a alguno que nos pueda atender gratis, o darnos cr\u00e9dito?\n\nFuimos donde un abogado joven, pariente suyo, con quien algunas veces hab\u00edamos corrido olas en la playa de Miraflores. Fue muy amable, tom\u00f3 con humor la historia de Chincha y me hizo algunas bromas; como hab\u00eda calculado Javier, no quiso cobrarme. Me explic\u00f3 que el matrimonio no era nulo sino anulable, por la correcci\u00f3n de fechas en mi partida. Pero eso requer\u00eda una acci\u00f3n judicial. Si \u00e9sta no se entablaba, a los dos a\u00f1os el matrimonio quedar\u00eda autom\u00e1ticamente \u00abcompuesto\u00bb y ya no se pod\u00eda anular. En cuanto a la t\u00eda Julia, s\u00ed era posible denunciarla como \u00abcorruptora de menores\u00bb, sentar un parte en la polic\u00eda y hacerla detener, por lo menos provisionalmente. Luego, habr\u00eda un juicio, pero \u00e9l estaba seguro que, vistas las circunstancias \u2014es decir, dado que yo ten\u00eda dieciocho y no doce a\u00f1os\u2014 era imposible que prosperara la acusaci\u00f3n: cualquier tribunal la absolver\u00eda.\n\n\u2014De todos modos, si quiere, tu pap\u00e1 puede hacerle pasar muy mal rato a la Julita \u2014concluy\u00f3 Javier, mientras regres\u00e1bamos a la radio, por el jir\u00f3n de la Uni\u00f3n\u2014. \u00bfEs verdad que tiene influencia con el gobierno?\n\nNo lo sab\u00eda; tal vez era amigo de un general, compadre de alg\u00fan ministro. Bruscamente, decid\u00ed que no iba a esperar hasta el d\u00eda siguiente para saber qu\u00e9 quer\u00eda la comisar\u00eda. Ped\u00ed a Javier que me ayudara a rescatar algunos radioteatros del magma de papeles de Radio Central, para salir de dudas ese mismo d\u00eda. Acept\u00f3, y me ofreci\u00f3, tambi\u00e9n, que si me met\u00edan preso me ir\u00eda a visitar y me llevar\u00eda siempre cigarrillos.\n\nA las seis de la tarde entregu\u00e9 a Genaro hijo dos radioteatros m\u00e1s o menos armados y le promet\u00ed que al d\u00eda siguiente tendr\u00eda otros tres; di una ojeada veloz a los boletines de las siete y de las ocho, promet\u00ed a Pascual que volver\u00eda para El Panamericano, y, media hora despu\u00e9s, est\u00e1bamos con Javier en la comisar\u00eda del malec\u00f3n 28 de Julio, en Miraflores. Esperamos un buen rato y, por fin, nos recibieron el comisario \u2014un mayor en uniforme\u2014 y el jefe de la PIP. Mi padre hab\u00eda venido esa ma\u00f1ana a pedir que me tomaran una declaraci\u00f3n oficial sobre lo ocurrido. Ten\u00edan una lista de preguntas escritas a mano, pero mis respuestas las fue transcribiendo a m\u00e1quina el polic\u00eda de civil, lo que tom\u00f3 mucho tiempo, pues era p\u00e9simo mecan\u00f3grafo. Admit\u00ed que me hab\u00eda casado (y subray\u00e9 enf\u00e1ticamente que lo hab\u00eda hecho \u00abpor mi propio deseo y voluntad\u00bb) pero me negu\u00e9 a decir en qu\u00e9 localidad y ante qu\u00e9 alcald\u00eda. Tampoco contest\u00e9 qui\u00e9nes hab\u00edan sido los testigos. Las preguntas eran de tal naturaleza que parec\u00edan concebidas por un tinterillo con malas intenciones: mi fecha de nacimiento y, a continuaci\u00f3n (como si no estuviera impl\u00edcito en lo anterior), si era menor de edad o no, d\u00f3nde viv\u00eda y con qui\u00e9n, y, por supuesto, la edad de la t\u00eda Julia (a la que se llamaba do\u00f1a Julia), pregunta que tambi\u00e9n me negu\u00e9 a responder diciendo que era de mal gusto revelar la edad de las se\u00f1oras. Esto provoc\u00f3 una curiosidad infantil en la pareja de polic\u00edas, quienes, luego de haber firmado yo la declaraci\u00f3n, adoptando aires paternales, me preguntaron, \u00abs\u00f3lo por pura curiosidad\u00bb, cu\u00e1ntos a\u00f1os mayor que yo era la \u00abdama\u00bb. Cuando salimos de la comisar\u00eda me sent\u00ed de pronto muy deprimido, con la inc\u00f3moda sensaci\u00f3n de ser un asesino o un ladr\u00f3n.\n\nJavier pensaba que hab\u00eda metido la pata; negarme a revelar el sitio del matrimonio era una provocaci\u00f3n que irritar\u00eda m\u00e1s a mi padre, y totalmente in\u00fatil, pues lo averiguar\u00eda en pocos d\u00edas. Se me hac\u00eda cuesta arriba volver a la radio esa noche, con el estado de \u00e1nimo en que estaba, as\u00ed que me fui donde el t\u00edo Lucho. Me abri\u00f3 la t\u00eda Olga; me recibi\u00f3 con cara seria y mirada homicida, pero no me dijo ni palabra, e, incluso, me alcanz\u00f3 la mejilla para que la besara. Entr\u00f3 conmigo a la sala, donde estaban la t\u00eda Julia y el t\u00edo Lucho. Bastaba verlos para saber que todo iba color de hormiga. Les pregunt\u00e9 qu\u00e9 suced\u00eda:\n\n\u2014Las cosas se han puesto feas \u2014me dijo la t\u00eda Julia, trenzando sus dedos con los m\u00edos, y yo vi el malestar que esto provocaba en la t\u00eda Olga\u2014. Mi suegro quiere hacerme botar del pa\u00eds como indeseable.\n\nEl t\u00edo Jorge, el t\u00edo Juan y el t\u00edo Pedro hab\u00edan tenido una entrevista esa tarde con mi padre y hab\u00edan vuelto asustados del estado en que lo vieron. Un furor fr\u00edo, una mirada fija, una manera de hablar que transparentaba una determinaci\u00f3n inconmovible. Era categ\u00f3rico: la t\u00eda Julia deb\u00eda partir del Per\u00fa antes de cuarenta y ocho horas o atenerse a las consecuencias. En efecto, era muy amigo \u2014compa\u00f1ero de colegio, tal vez\u2014 del ministro de Trabajo de la dictadura, un general llamado Villacorta, ya hab\u00eda hablado con \u00e9l, y, si no sal\u00eda por propia voluntad, la t\u00eda Julia saldr\u00eda escoltada por soldados hasta el avi\u00f3n. En cuanto a m\u00ed, si no le obedec\u00eda, lo pagar\u00eda caro. Y, lo mismo que a Javier, tambi\u00e9n a mis t\u00edos les hab\u00eda mostrado el rev\u00f3lver. Complet\u00e9 el cuadro, ense\u00f1\u00e1ndoles la carta y cont\u00e1ndoles el interrogatorio policial. La carta de mi padre tuvo la virtud de ganarlos del todo para nuestra causa. El t\u00edo Lucho sirvi\u00f3 unos whiskys y, cuando est\u00e1bamos bebiendo, la t\u00eda Olga se puso de repente a llorar y a decir que c\u00f3mo era posible, su hermana tratada como una criminal, amenazada con la polic\u00eda, que ellas pertenec\u00edan a una de las mejores familias de Bolivia.\n\n\u2014No hay m\u00e1s remedio que me vaya, Varguitas \u2014dijo la t\u00eda Julia. Vi que cambiaba una mirada con mis t\u00edos y comprend\u00ed que ya hab\u00edan hablado de eso\u2014. No me mires as\u00ed, no es una conspiraci\u00f3n, no es para siempre. S\u00f3lo hasta que se le pase la rabieta a tu padre. Para evitar m\u00e1s esc\u00e1ndalos.\n\nLo hab\u00edan conversado y discutido entre los tres y ten\u00edan a punto un plan. Hab\u00edan descartado Bolivia y suger\u00edan que la t\u00eda Julia fuera a Chile, a Valpara\u00edso, donde viv\u00eda su abuelita. Estar\u00eda all\u00ed s\u00f3lo el tiempo indispensable para que se serenaran los \u00e1nimos. Volver\u00eda en el instante mismo en que yo la llamara. Me opuse con furia, dije que la t\u00eda Julia era mi mujer, me hab\u00eda casado con ella para que estuvi\u00e9ramos juntos, en todo caso nos ir\u00edamos los dos. Me recordaron que era menor de edad: no pod\u00eda pedir pasaporte ni salir del pa\u00eds sin permiso paterno. Dije que cruzar\u00eda la frontera a escondidas. Me preguntaron cu\u00e1nta plata ten\u00eda para irme a vivir al extranjero. (Me quedaba a duras penas para comprar cigarrillos unos d\u00edas: el matrimonio y el pago del departamentito hab\u00edan volatilizado el adelanto de Radio Panamericana, la venta de mi ropa y los empe\u00f1os en la Caja de Pignoraci\u00f3n.)\n\n\u2014Ya estamos casados y eso no nos lo van a quitar \u2014dec\u00eda la t\u00eda Julia, despein\u00e1ndome, bes\u00e1ndome, con los ojos llenos de l\u00e1grimas\u2014. Es s\u00f3lo unas semanas, a lo m\u00e1s unos meses. No quiero que te peguen un tiro por mi culpa.\n\nDurante la comida, la t\u00eda Olga y el t\u00edo Lucho fueron exponiendo sus argumentos para convencerme. Ten\u00eda que ser razonable, ya hab\u00eda salido con mi gusto, me hab\u00eda casado, ahora deb\u00eda hacer una concesi\u00f3n provisional, para evitar algo irreparable. Deb\u00eda comprenderlos; ellos, como hermana y cu\u00f1ado de la t\u00eda Julia, estaban en postura muy delicada ante mi padre y el resto de la familia: no pod\u00edan estar contra ni a favor de ella. Nos ayudar\u00edan, lo estaban haciendo en esos momentos, y me tocaba hacer algo de mi parte. Mientras la t\u00eda Julia, estuviera en Valpara\u00edso yo tendr\u00eda que buscar alg\u00fan otro trabajo, porque, si no, con qu\u00e9 diablos \u00edbamos a vivir, qui\u00e9n nos iba a mantener. Mi padre acabar\u00eda por calmarse, por aceptar los hechos.\n\nA eso de la medianoche \u2014mis t\u00edos se hab\u00edan ido discretamente a dormir y la t\u00eda Julia y yo est\u00e1bamos haciendo el amor horriblemente, a medio vestir, con gran zozobra, los o\u00eddos alertas a cualquier ruido\u2014 acab\u00e9 por rendirme. No hab\u00eda otra soluci\u00f3n. A la ma\u00f1ana siguiente tratar\u00edamos de cambiar el pasaje a La Paz por uno a Chile. Media hora despu\u00e9s, mientras caminaba por las calles de Miraflores, hacia mi cuartito de soltero, en casa de los abuelos, sent\u00eda amargura e impotencia, y me maldec\u00eda por no tener ni siquiera con qu\u00e9 comprarme yo tambi\u00e9n un rev\u00f3lver.\n\nLa t\u00eda Julia viaj\u00f3 a Chile dos d\u00edas despu\u00e9s, en un avi\u00f3n que parti\u00f3 al alba. La compa\u00f1\u00eda de aviaci\u00f3n no puso reparos en cambiar el pasaje, pero hab\u00eda una diferencia de precio, que cubrimos gracias a un pr\u00e9stamo de mil quinientos soles que nos hizo nadie menos que Pascual. (Me dej\u00f3 asombrado al contarme que ten\u00eda cinco mil soles en una libreta de ahorros, lo que, con el sueldo que ganaba, era realmente una haza\u00f1a.) Para que la t\u00eda Julia pudiera llevarse algo de dinero vend\u00ed, al librero de la calle La Paz, todos los libros que a\u00fan conservaba, incluidos los c\u00f3digos y manuales de Derecho, con lo que compr\u00e9 cincuenta d\u00f3lares.\n\nLa t\u00eda Olga y el t\u00edo Lucho fueron al aeropuerto con nosotros. La noche anterior yo me qued\u00e9 en su casa. No dormimos, no hicimos el amor. Despu\u00e9s de la comida, mis t\u00edos se retiraron y yo, sentado en la punta de la cama, vi a la t\u00eda Julia hacer cuidadosamente su maleta. Luego, fuimos a sentarnos a la sala, que estaba a oscuras. Estuvimos all\u00ed tres o cuatro horas, con las manos entrelazadas, muy juntos en el sill\u00f3n, hablando en voz baja para no despertar a los parientes. A ratos nos abraz\u00e1bamos, junt\u00e1bamos nuestras caras y nos bes\u00e1bamos, pero la mayor parte del tiempo la pasamos fumando y conversando. Hablamos de lo que har\u00edamos cuando volvi\u00e9ramos a reunirnos, c\u00f3mo ella me ayudar\u00eda en mi trabajo y c\u00f3mo, de una manera u otra, tarde o temprano, llegar\u00edamos un d\u00eda a Par\u00eds a vivir en esa buhardilla donde yo me volver\u00eda, por fin, un escritor. Le cont\u00e9 la historia de su compatriota Pedro Camacho, que estaba ahora en una cl\u00ednica, rodeado de locos, volvi\u00e9ndose loco \u00e9l mismo sin duda, y planeamos escribirnos todos los d\u00edas, largas cartas donde nos contar\u00edamos prolijamente todo lo que hici\u00e9ramos, pens\u00e1ramos y sinti\u00e9ramos. Le promet\u00ed que, cuando volviera, yo habr\u00eda arreglado las cosas y que estar\u00eda ganando lo suficiente para no morirnos de hambre. Cuando son\u00f3 el despertador, a las cinco, era todav\u00eda noche cerrada, y al llegar al aeropuerto de Limatambo, una hora despu\u00e9s, apenas comenzaba a clarear. La t\u00eda Julia se hab\u00eda puesto el traje azul que a m\u00ed me gustaba y se la ve\u00eda guapa. Estuvo muy serena cuando nos despedimos, pero sent\u00ed que temblaba en mis brazos, y, en cambio, a m\u00ed, cuando la vi subir al avi\u00f3n, desde la terraza, en la principiante ma\u00f1ana, se me hizo un nudo en la garganta y se me saltaron las l\u00e1grimas.\n\nSu exilio chileno dur\u00f3 un mes y catorce d\u00edas. Fueron, para m\u00ed, seis semanas decisivas, en las que (gracias a gestiones con amigos, conocidos, condisc\u00edpulos, profesores, a los que busqu\u00e9, rogu\u00e9, fastidi\u00e9, enloquec\u00ed para que me echaran una mano) consegu\u00ed acumular siete trabajos, incluido, por supuesto, el que ya ten\u00eda en Panamericana. El primero fue un empleo en la biblioteca del Club Nacional, que estaba al lado de la radio; mi obligaci\u00f3n era ir dos horas diarias, entre los boletines de la ma\u00f1ana, a registrar los nuevos libros y revistas y hacer un cat\u00e1logo de las viejas existencias. Un profesor de historia, de San Marcos, en cuyo curso hab\u00eda tenido notas sobresalientes, me contrat\u00f3 como ayudante suyo, en las tardes, de tres a cinco, en su casa de Miraflores, donde fichaba diversos temas en los cronistas, para un proyecto de una Historia del Per\u00fa en el que a \u00e9l le correspond\u00edan los vol\u00famenes de Conquista y Emancipaci\u00f3n. El m\u00e1s pintoresco de los nuevos trabajos era un contrato con la Beneficencia P\u00fablica de Lima. En el Cementerio Presb\u00edtero Maestro exist\u00edan una serie de cuarteles, de la \u00e9poca colonial, cuyos registros se hab\u00edan extraviado. Mi misi\u00f3n consist\u00eda en desentra\u00f1ar lo que dec\u00edan las l\u00e1pidas de esas tumbas y hacer listas con los nombres y fechas. Era algo que pod\u00eda llevar a cabo a la hora que quisiera y por lo que me pagaban a destajo: un sol por muerto. Lo hac\u00eda en las tardes, entre el bolet\u00edn de las seis y El Panamericano, y Javier, que a esas horas estaba libre, sol\u00eda acompa\u00f1arme. Como era invierno y oscurec\u00eda temprano, el director del cementerio, un gordo que dec\u00eda haber asistido en persona, en el Congreso, a la toma de posesi\u00f3n de ocho presidentes del Per\u00fa, nos prestaba unas linternas y una escalerita para poder leer los nichos altos. A veces, jugando a que o\u00edamos voces, quejidos, cadenas, y a que ve\u00edamos formas blancuzcas entre las tumbas, consegu\u00edamos asustarnos de verdad. Adem\u00e1s de ir dos o tres veces por semana al cementerio, dedicaba a este quehacer todas las ma\u00f1anas del domingo. Los otros trabajos eran m\u00e1s o menos (m\u00e1s menos que m\u00e1s) literarios. Para el Suplemento Dominical de El Comercio hac\u00eda cada semana una entrevista a un poeta, novelista o ensayista, en una columna titulada \u00abEl hombre y su obra\u00bb. En la revista Cultura Peruana escrib\u00eda un art\u00edculo mensual, para una secci\u00f3n que invent\u00e9: \u00abHombres, libros e ideas\u00bb, y, finalmente, otro profesor amigo me encomend\u00f3 redactar para los postulantes a la Universidad Cat\u00f3lica (pese a ser yo alumno de la rival, San Marcos) un texto de educaci\u00f3n c\u00edvica; cada lunes ten\u00eda que entregarle desarrollado alguno de los asuntos del programa de ingreso (que eran muy diversos, un abanico que cubr\u00eda desde los s\u00edmbolos de la patria hasta la pol\u00e9mica entre indigenistas e hispanistas, pasando por las flores y animales abor\u00edgenes).\n\nCon estos trabajos (que me hac\u00edan sentir, un poco, \u00e9mulo de Pedro Camacho) logr\u00e9 triplicar mis ingresos y redondear lo suficiente para que dos personas pudieran vivir. En todos ellos ped\u00ed adelantos y as\u00ed desempe\u00f1\u00e9 mi m\u00e1quina de escribir, indispensable para las tareas period\u00edsticas (aunque muchos art\u00edculos los hac\u00eda en Panamericana), y de este modo, tambi\u00e9n, la prima Nancy compr\u00f3 algunas cosas para acicalar el departamentito alquilado que la due\u00f1a me entreg\u00f3, en efecto, a los quince d\u00edas. Fue una felicidad la ma\u00f1ana en que tom\u00e9 posesi\u00f3n de esos dos cuartitos, con su ba\u00f1o diminuto. Segu\u00ed durmiendo en casa de los abuelos, porque decid\u00ed estrenarlo el d\u00eda que llegara la t\u00eda Julia, pero iba all\u00ed casi todas las noches, a redactar art\u00edculos y a confeccionar listas de muertos. Aunque no paraba de hacer cosas, de entrar y salir de un sitio a otro, no me sent\u00eda cansado ni deprimido, sino, por el contrario, muy entusiasta, y creo que incluso segu\u00eda leyendo como antes (aunque s\u00f3lo en los innumerables \u00f3mnibus y colectivos que tomaba diariamente).\n\nFiel a lo prometido, las cartas de la t\u00eda Julia llegaban a diario y la abuelita me las entregaba con una luz traviesa en los ojos, murmurando: \u00ab\u00bfDe qui\u00e9n ser\u00e1 esta cartita, de qui\u00e9n ser\u00e1?\u00bb. Yo tambi\u00e9n le escrib\u00eda seguido, era lo \u00faltimo que hac\u00eda cada noche, a veces mareado de sue\u00f1o, d\u00e1ndole cuenta de los trajines de la jornada. En los d\u00edas que siguieron a su partida fui encontr\u00e1ndome, donde los abuelos, donde los t\u00edos Lucho y Olga, en la calle, a mis numerosos parientes y descubriendo sus reacciones. Eran diversas y algunas inesperadas. El t\u00edo Pedro tuvo la m\u00e1s severa: me dej\u00f3 con el saludo colgado y me volvi\u00f3 la espalda despu\u00e9s de mirarme glacialmente. La t\u00eda Jes\u00fas derram\u00f3 unos lagrimones y me abraz\u00f3, susurrando con voz dram\u00e1tica: \u00ab\u00a1Pobre criatura!\u00bb. Otros t\u00edos y t\u00edas optaron por actuar como si nada hubiera ocurrido; eran cari\u00f1osos conmigo, pero no mencionaban a la t\u00eda Julia ni se daban por enterados del matrimonio.\n\nA mi padre no lo hab\u00eda visto, pero sab\u00eda que, una vez satisfecha su exigencia de que la t\u00eda Julia saliera del pa\u00eds, se hab\u00eda aplacado algo. Mis padres estaban alojados donde unos t\u00edos paternos, a los que yo no visitaba nunca, pero mi madre ven\u00eda todos los d\u00edas a casa de los abuelos y all\u00ed nos ve\u00edamos. Adoptaba conmigo una actitud ambivalente, afectuosa, maternal, pero cada vez que asomaba, directa o indirectamente, el tema tab\u00fa, palidec\u00eda, se le sal\u00edan las l\u00e1grimas y aseguraba: \u00abNo lo aceptar\u00e9 jam\u00e1s\u00bb. Cuando le propuse que viniera a conocer el departamentito, se ofendi\u00f3 como si la hubiera insultado, y siempre se refer\u00eda al hecho de que yo hubiera vendido mi ropa y mis libros como a una tragedia griega. Yo la hac\u00eda callar, dici\u00e9ndole: \u00abMamacita, no empieces otra vez con tus radioteatros\u00bb. Ni ella mencionaba a mi padre, ni yo preguntaba por \u00e9l, pero, por otros parientes que lo ve\u00edan, llegu\u00e9 a saber que su c\u00f3lera hab\u00eda cedido el paso a una desesperanza respecto a mi destino, y que sol\u00eda decir: \u00abTendr\u00e1 que obedecerme hasta que cumpla veinti\u00fan a\u00f1os; luego, puede perderse\u00bb.\n\nPese a mis m\u00faltiples quehaceres, en esas semanas escrib\u00ed un nuevo cuento. Se llamaba La beata y el padre Nicol\u00e1s. Estaba situado en Grocio Prado, por supuesto, y era anticlerical: la historia de un curita vivaraz, que, advirtiendo la devoci\u00f3n popular por Melchorita, decid\u00eda industrializarla en su provecho, y, con la frialdad y ambici\u00f3n de un buen empresario, planeaba un negocio m\u00faltiple, que consist\u00eda en fabricar y vender estampitas, escapularios, detentes y toda clase de reliquias de la beatita, cobrar entradas a los sitios donde vivi\u00f3, y organizar colectas y rifas para construirle una capilla y costear comisiones que fueran a activar su canonizaci\u00f3n a Roma. Escrib\u00ed dos ep\u00edlogos distintos, como una noticia de peri\u00f3dico: en uno, los habitantes de Grocio Prado descubr\u00edan los negocios del padre Nicol\u00e1s y lo linchaban, y, en el otro, el curita llegaba a ser arzobispo de Lima. (Decid\u00ed que elegir\u00eda uno u otro final despu\u00e9s de leerle el cuento a la t\u00eda Julia.) Lo escrib\u00ed en la biblioteca del Club Nacional, donde mi trabajo de catalogador de novedades era algo simb\u00f3lico.\n\nLos radioteatros que rescat\u00e9 del almac\u00e9n de Radio Central (labor que me signific\u00f3 doscientos soles extras) fueron comprimidos para un mes de audiciones, el tiempo que tardaron en llegar los libretos de la CMQ. Pero ni aqu\u00e9llos ni \u00e9stos, como hab\u00eda previsto el empresario progresista, pudieron conservar la audiencia gigantesca conquistada por Pedro Camacho. La sinton\u00eda decay\u00f3 y las tarifas publicitarias tuvieron que ser rebajadas para no perder anunciantes. Pero el asunto no result\u00f3 demasiado terrible para los Genaros, quienes, siempre inventivos y din\u00e1micos, encontraron una nueva mina de oro con un programa llamado Responda por Sesenta y Cuatro Mil Soles. Se propalaba desde el Cine Le Paris, y, en \u00e9l, candidatos eruditos en materias diversas (autom\u00f3viles, S\u00f3focles, f\u00fatbol, los incas) respond\u00edan preguntas por cantidades que pod\u00edan llegar hasta esa suma. A trav\u00e9s de Genaro hijo, con quien (ahora muy de vez en cuando) tomaba cafecitos en el Bransa de la Colmena, segu\u00eda los pasos de Pedro Camacho. Estuvo cerca de un mes en la cl\u00ednica privada del doctor Delgado, pero, como resultaba muy cara, los Genaros consiguieron hacerlo transferir al Larco Herrera, el manicomio de la Beneficencia P\u00fablica, donde, al parecer, lo ten\u00edan muy bien considerado. Un domingo, despu\u00e9s de catalogar tumbas en el Cementerio Presb\u00edtero Maestro, fui en \u00f3mnibus hasta la puerta del Larco Herrera con la intenci\u00f3n de visitarlo. Le llevaba de regalo unas bolsitas de yerbaluisa y de menta para preparar infusiones. Pero, en el mismo momento que, entre otras visitas, iba a cruzar el port\u00f3n carcelario, decid\u00ed no hacerlo. La idea de volver a ver al escriba, en este lugar amurallado y promiscuo \u2014en el primer a\u00f1o de universidad hab\u00edamos hecho all\u00ed unas pr\u00e1cticas de psicolog\u00eda\u2014, convertido en uno m\u00e1s de esa muchedumbre de locos, me produjo preventivamente gran angustia. Di media vuelta y regres\u00e9 a Miraflores.\n\nEse lunes dije a mi mam\u00e1 que quer\u00eda entrevistarme con mi padre. Me aconsej\u00f3 que fuera prudente, no decir nada que lo violentara, no exponerme a que me hiciera da\u00f1o, y me dio el tel\u00e9fono de la casa donde estaba alojado. Mi padre me hizo saber que me recibir\u00eda a la ma\u00f1ana siguiente, a las once, en la que hab\u00eda sido su oficina antes de viajar a Estados Unidos. Estaba en el jir\u00f3n Carabaya, al fondo de un pasillo de losetas a ambos lados del cual hab\u00eda departamentos y oficinas. En la Compa\u00f1\u00eda Import\/Export \u2014reconoc\u00ed algunos empleados que hab\u00edan trabajado ya con \u00e9l\u2014 me hicieron pasar a la gerencia. Mi padre estaba solo, sentado en su antiguo escritorio. Vest\u00eda un terno crema, una corbata verde con motas blancas; lo not\u00e9 m\u00e1s delgado que hac\u00eda un a\u00f1o y algo p\u00e1lido.\n\n\u2014Buenos d\u00edas, pap\u00e1 \u2014dije, desde la puerta, haciendo un gran esfuerzo para que mi voz sonara firme.\n\n\u2014Dime lo que tienes que decir \u2014dijo \u00e9l, de manera m\u00e1s neutra que col\u00e9rica, se\u00f1alando un asiento.\n\nMe sent\u00e9 en el borde y tom\u00e9 aire, como un atleta que se dispone a iniciar una prueba.\n\n\u2014He venido a contarte lo que estoy haciendo, lo que voy a hacer \u2014tartamude\u00e9.\n\n\u00c9l permaneci\u00f3 callado, esperando que continuara. Entonces, hablando muy despacio para parecer sereno, espiando sus reacciones, le detall\u00e9 cuidadosamente los trabajos que hab\u00eda conseguido, lo que ganaba en cada uno, c\u00f3mo hab\u00eda distribuido mi tiempo para cumplir con todos y, adem\u00e1s, hacer los deberes y dar los ex\u00e1menes de la universidad. No ment\u00ed, pero present\u00e9 todo bajo la luz m\u00e1s favorable: ten\u00eda mi vida organizada de manera inteligente y seria y estaba ansioso por terminar mi carrera. Cuando me call\u00e9, mi padre permaneci\u00f3 tambi\u00e9n mudo, en espera de la conclusi\u00f3n. As\u00ed que, tragando saliva, tuve que dec\u00edrsela:\n\n\u2014Ya ves que puedo ganarme la vida, mantenerme y seguir los estudios \u2014y luego, sintiendo que la voz se me adelgazaba tanto que apenas se o\u00eda\u2014: Te he venido a pedir permiso para llamar a Julia. Nos hemos casado y no puede seguir viviendo sola.\n\nPesta\u00f1e\u00f3, palideci\u00f3 todav\u00eda m\u00e1s y, por un instante, pens\u00e9 que iba a tener uno de esos ataques de rabia que hab\u00edan sido la pesadilla de mi infancia. Pero se limit\u00f3 a decirme, secamente:\n\n\u2014Como sabes, ese matrimonio no vale. T\u00fa, menor de edad, no puedes casarte sin autorizaci\u00f3n. De modo que si te has casado, s\u00f3lo has podido hacerlo falsificando la autorizaci\u00f3n o tus partidas. En ambos casos, el matrimonio se puede anular f\u00e1cilmente.\n\nMe explic\u00f3 que la falsificaci\u00f3n de un documento p\u00fablico era algo grave, penado por la ley. Si alguien ten\u00eda que pagar los platos rotos por eso, no ser\u00eda yo, el menor, a quien los jueces supondr\u00edan el inducido, sino la mayor de edad, a quien l\u00f3gicamente se considerar\u00eda la inductora. Despu\u00e9s de esa exposici\u00f3n legal, que profiri\u00f3 en tono helado, habl\u00f3 largamente, dejando transparentar, poco a poco, algo de emoci\u00f3n. Yo cre\u00eda que \u00e9l me odiaba, cuando la verdad era que siempre hab\u00eda querido mi bien, si se hab\u00eda mostrado alguna vez severo hab\u00eda sido a fin de corregir mis defectos y prepararme para el futuro. Mi rebeld\u00eda y mi esp\u00edritu de contradicci\u00f3n ser\u00edan mi ruina. Ese matrimonio hab\u00eda sido ponerme una soga en el cuello. \u00c9l se hab\u00eda opuesto pensando en mi bien y no, como cre\u00eda yo, por hacerme da\u00f1o, porque \u00bfqu\u00e9 padre no quer\u00eda a su hijo? Por lo dem\u00e1s, comprend\u00eda que me hubiera enamorado, eso no estaba mal, despu\u00e9s de todo era un acto de hombr\u00eda, m\u00e1s terrible hubiera sido, por ejemplo, que me hubiera dado por ser maric\u00f3n. Pero casarme a los dieciocho a\u00f1os, siendo un mocoso, un estudiante, con una mujer hecha y derecha y divorciada era una insensatez incalculable, algo cuyas verdaderas consecuencias s\u00f3lo comprender\u00eda m\u00e1s tarde, cuando, por culpa de ese matrimonio, fuera un amargado, un pobre diablo en la vida. \u00c9l no deseaba para m\u00ed nada de eso, s\u00f3lo lo mejor y lo m\u00e1s grande. En fin, que tratase por lo menos de no abandonar los estudios, pues lo lamentar\u00eda siempre. Se puso de pie y yo tambi\u00e9n me puse de pie. Sigui\u00f3 un silencio inc\u00f3modo, puntuado por el tableteo de las m\u00e1quinas de escribir del otro cuarto. Balbuce\u00e9 que le promet\u00eda terminar la universidad y \u00e9l asinti\u00f3. Para despedirnos, despu\u00e9s de un segundo de vacilaci\u00f3n, nos abrazamos.\n\nDe su oficina, fui al Correo Central y envi\u00e9 un telegrama: \u00abAmnistiada. Mandar\u00e9 pasaje brevedad posible. Besos\u00bb. Me pas\u00e9 esa tarde, donde el historiador, en la azotea de Panamericana, en el cementerio, devor\u00e1ndome los sesos para imaginar c\u00f3mo reunir el dinero. Esa noche hice una lista de personas a las que pedir\u00eda prestado y cu\u00e1nto a cada una. Pero al d\u00eda siguiente trajeron donde los abuelitos un telegrama de respuesta: \u00abLlego ma\u00f1ana vuelo LAN. Besos\u00bb. Despu\u00e9s supe que hab\u00eda comprado el pasaje vendiendo sus anillos, aretes, prendedores, pulseras y casi toda su ropa. De modo que cuando la recib\u00ed en el aeropuerto de Limatambo, la tarde del jueves, era una mujer pobr\u00edsima.\n\nLa llev\u00e9 directamente al departamentito, que hab\u00eda sido encerado y trapeado por la prima Nancy en persona y embellecido con una rosa roja que dec\u00eda: \u00abBienvenida\u00bb. La t\u00eda Julia revis\u00f3 todo, como si fuera un juguete nuevo. Se divirti\u00f3 viendo las fichas del cementerio, que ten\u00eda bien ordenadas, mis notas para los art\u00edculos de Cultura Peruana, la lista de escritores por entrevistar para El Comercio, y el horario de trabajo y la tabla de gastos que hab\u00eda hecho y donde te\u00f3ricamente se demostraba que pod\u00edamos vivir. Le dije que, despu\u00e9s de hacerle el amor, le leer\u00eda un cuento que se llamaba La beata y el padre Nicol\u00e1s para que me ayudara a elegir el final.\n\n\u2014Vaya, Varguitas \u2014se re\u00eda ella, mientras se desvest\u00eda a la carrera\u2014. Te est\u00e1s haciendo un hombrecito. Ahora, para que todo sea perfecto y se te quite esa cara de bebe, prom\u00e9teme que te dejar\u00e1s crecer el bigote.\n\n### XX\n\nEL MATRIMONIO con la t\u00eda Julia fue realmente un \u00e9xito y dur\u00f3 bastante m\u00e1s de lo que todos los parientes, y hasta ella misma, hab\u00edan temido, deseado o pronosticado: ocho a\u00f1os. En ese tiempo, gracias a mi obstinaci\u00f3n y a su ayuda y entusiasmo, combinados con una dosis de buena suerte, otros pron\u00f3sticos (sue\u00f1os, apetitos) se hicieron realidad. Hab\u00edamos llegado a vivir en la famosa buhardilla de Par\u00eds y yo, mal que mal, me hab\u00eda hecho un escritor y publicado algunos libros. No termin\u00e9 nunca la carrera de abogado, pero, para indemnizar de alg\u00fan modo a la familia y para poder ganarme la vida con m\u00e1s facilidad, saqu\u00e9 un t\u00edtulo universitario, en una perversi\u00f3n acad\u00e9mica tan aburrida como el Derecho: la Filolog\u00eda Rom\u00e1nica.\n\nCuando la t\u00eda Julia y yo nos divorciamos hubo en mi dilatada familia copiosas l\u00e1grimas, porque todo el mundo (empezando por mi madre y mi padre, claro est\u00e1) la adoraba. Y cuando, un a\u00f1o despu\u00e9s, volv\u00ed a casarme, esta vez con una prima (hija de la t\u00eda Olga y el t\u00edo Lucho, qu\u00e9 casualidad) el esc\u00e1ndalo familiar fue menos ruidoso que la primera vez (consisti\u00f3, sobre todo, en un hervor de chismes). Eso s\u00ed, hubo una conspiraci\u00f3n perfecta para obligarme a casar por la Iglesia, en la que estuvo involucrado hasta el arzobispo de Lima (era, por supuesto, pariente nuestro), quien se apresur\u00f3 a firmar las dispensas autorizando el enlace. Para entonces, la familia estaba ya curada de espanto y esperaba de m\u00ed (lo que equival\u00eda a: me perdonaba de antemano) cualquier barbaridad.\n\nHab\u00eda vivido con la t\u00eda Julia un a\u00f1o en Espa\u00f1a y cinco en Francia, y, luego, segu\u00ed viviendo con la prima Patricia en Europa, primero en Londres y luego en Barcelona. Para esa \u00e9poca ten\u00eda un trato con una revista de Lima, a la que yo enviaba art\u00edculos y ella me pagaba con pasajes que me permit\u00edan volver todos los a\u00f1os al Per\u00fa por algunas semanas. Estos viajes, gracias a los cuales ve\u00eda a la familia y a los amigos, eran para m\u00ed muy importantes. Pensaba seguir viviendo en Europa de manera indefinida, por m\u00faltiples razones, pero, sobre todo, porque all\u00ed hab\u00eda encontrado siempre, como periodista, traductor, locutor o profesor, trabajos que me dejaban tiempo libre. Al llegar a Madrid, la primera vez, le hab\u00eda dicho a la t\u00eda Julia: \u00abVoy a tratar de ser un escritor, s\u00f3lo voy a aceptar trabajos que no me aparten de la literatura\u00bb. Ella me respondi\u00f3: \u00ab\u00bfMe rasgo la falda, me pongo un turbante y salgo a la Gran V\u00eda a buscar clientes desde hoy?\u00bb. Lo cierto es que tuve mucha suerte. Ense\u00f1ando espa\u00f1ol en la Escuela Berlitz de Par\u00eds, redactando noticias en la France Presse, traduciendo para la Unesco, doblando pel\u00edculas en los estudios de G\u00e9n\u00e9villiers o preparando programas para la Radio-Televisi\u00f3n Francesa, siempre hab\u00eda encontrado empleos alimenticios que me dejaban, cuando menos, la mitad de cada d\u00eda exclusivamente para escribir. El problema era que todo lo que escrib\u00eda se refer\u00eda al Per\u00fa. Eso me creaba, cada vez m\u00e1s, un problema de inseguridad, por el desgaste de la perspectiva (ten\u00eda la man\u00eda de la ficci\u00f3n realista). Pero me resultaba inimaginable siquiera la idea de vivir en Lima. El recuerdo de mis siete trabajos alimenticios lime\u00f1os, que con las justas nos permit\u00edan comer, apenas leer, y escribir s\u00f3lo a hurtadillas, en los huequitos que quedaban libres y cuando estaba ya cansado, me pon\u00eda los pelos de punta y me juraba que no volver\u00eda a ese r\u00e9gimen ni muerto. Por otra parte, el Per\u00fa me ha parecido siempre un pa\u00eds de gentes tristes.\n\nPor eso el trueque que acordamos, primero con el diario Expreso y luego con la revista Caretas, de art\u00edculos por dos pasajes de avi\u00f3n anuales, me result\u00f3 providencial. Ese mes que pas\u00e1bamos en el Per\u00fa, cada a\u00f1o, generalmente en el invierno (julio o agosto) me permit\u00eda zambullirme en el ambiente, los paisajes, los seres sobre los cuales hab\u00eda estado tratando de escribir los once meses anteriores. Me era enormemente \u00fatil (no s\u00e9 si en los hechos, pero, sin la menor duda, psicol\u00f3gicamente), una inyecci\u00f3n de energ\u00eda, volver a o\u00edr hablar peruano, escuchar a mi alrededor esos giros, vocablos, entonaciones que me reinstalaban en un medio al que me sent\u00eda visceralmente pr\u00f3ximo, pero del que, de todos modos, me hab\u00eda alejado, del que cada a\u00f1o perd\u00eda innovaciones, resonancias, claves.\n\nLas venidas a Lima eran, pues, unas vacaciones en las que, literalmente, no descansaba un segundo y de las que volv\u00eda a Europa exhausto. S\u00f3lo con mi selv\u00e1tica parentela y los numerosos amigos, ten\u00edamos invitaciones diarias a almorzar y comer, y el resto del tiempo lo ocupaban mis trajines documentales. As\u00ed, un a\u00f1o, hab\u00eda emprendido un viaje a la zona del Alto Mara\u00f1\u00f3n, para ver, o\u00edr y sentir de cerca un mundo que era escenario de la novela que escrib\u00eda, y otro a\u00f1o, escoltado por amigos diligentes, hab\u00eda realizado una exploraci\u00f3n sistem\u00e1tica de los antros nocturnos \u2014cabarets, bares, lenocinios\u2014, en los que transcurr\u00eda la mala vida del protagonista de otra historia. Mezclando el trabajo y el placer \u2014porque esas investigaciones no fueron nunca una obligaci\u00f3n, o lo fueron siempre de manera muy vital, afanes que me divert\u00edan en s\u00ed mismos y no s\u00f3lo por el provecho literario que pudiera sacarles\u2014, en esos viajes hac\u00eda cosas que antes, cuando viv\u00eda en Lima, no hice nunca, y que ahora, que he vuelto a vivir en el Per\u00fa, tampoco hago: ir a pe\u00f1as criollas y a los coliseos a ver bailes folcl\u00f3ricos, recorridos por los tugurios de los barrios marginales, caminatas por distritos que conoc\u00eda mal o desconoc\u00eda como el Callao, Bajo el Puente y los Barrios Altos, apostar en las carreras de caballos y husmear en las catacumbas de las iglesias coloniales y la (supuesta) casa de la Perricholi.\n\nEse a\u00f1o, en cambio, me dediqu\u00e9 a una averiguaci\u00f3n m\u00e1s bien libresca. Estaba escribiendo una novela situada en la \u00e9poca del general Manuel Apolinario Odr\u00eda (1948-1956), y en mi mes de vacaciones lime\u00f1as, iba, un par de ma\u00f1anas cada semana, a la hemeroteca de la Biblioteca Nacional, a hojear las revistas y peri\u00f3dicos de esos a\u00f1os, e, incluso, con algo de masoquismo, a leer algunos de los discursos que los asesores (todos abogados, a juzgar por la ret\u00f3rica forense) le hac\u00edan decir al dictador. Al salir de la Biblioteca Nacional, a eso del mediod\u00eda, bajaba a pie por la avenida Abancay, que comenzaba a convertirse en un enorme mercado de vendedores ambulantes. En sus veredas, una apretada muchedumbre de hombres y mujeres, muchos de ellos con ponchos y polleras serranas, vend\u00edan, sobre mantas extendidas en el suelo, sobre peri\u00f3dicos o en quioscos improvisados con cajas, latas y toldos, todas las baratijas imaginables, desde alfileres y horquillas hasta vestidos y ternos, y, por supuesto, toda clase de comidas preparadas en el sitio, en peque\u00f1os braseros. Era uno de los lugares de Lima que m\u00e1s hab\u00eda cambiado, esa avenida Abancay, ahora atestada y andina, en la que no era raro, entre el fort\u00edsimo olor a fritura y condimentos, o\u00edr hablar quechua. No se parec\u00eda en nada a la ancha, severa avenida de oficinistas y alguno que otro mendigo por la que, diez a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s, cuando era cachimbo universitario, sol\u00eda caminar en direcci\u00f3n a la misma Biblioteca Nacional. All\u00ed, en esas cuadras, se pod\u00eda ver, tocar, concentrado, el problema de las migraciones campesinas hacia la capital, que en ese decenio duplicaron la poblaci\u00f3n de Lima e hicieron brotar, sobre los cerros, los arenales, los muladares, ese cerco de barriadas donde ven\u00edan a parar los millares y millares de seres que, por la sequ\u00eda, las duras condiciones de trabajo, la falta de perspectivas, el hambre, abandonaban las provincias.\n\nAprendiendo a conocer esta nueva cara de la ciudad, bajaba por la avenida Abancay en direcci\u00f3n al parque Universitario y a lo que hab\u00eda sido antes la Universidad de San Marcos (las facultades se hab\u00edan mudado a las afueras de Lima y en ese caser\u00f3n donde yo estudi\u00e9 Letras y Derecho funcionaban ahora un museo y oficinas). No s\u00f3lo lo hac\u00eda por curiosidad y cierta nostalgia, sino tambi\u00e9n por inter\u00e9s literario, pues en la novela que trabajaba algunos episodios ocurr\u00edan en el parque Universitario, en la casona de San Marcos y en las librer\u00edas de viejo, los billares y los tiznados cafecitos de los alrededores. Precisamente, esa ma\u00f1ana estaba plantado, como un turista, frente a la bonita capilla de los Pr\u00f3ceres, observando a los ambulantes del contorno \u2014lustrabotas, alfajoreros, heladeros, sandwicheros\u2014 cuando sent\u00ed que me cog\u00edan el hombro. Era \u2014doce a\u00f1os m\u00e1s viejo, pero id\u00e9ntico\u2014 el Gran Pablito.\n\nNos dimos un fuerte abrazo. Realmente, no hab\u00eda cambiado nada: era el mismo cholo fornido y risue\u00f1o, de respiraci\u00f3n asm\u00e1tica, que apenas levantaba los pies del suelo para andar y parec\u00eda estar patinando por la vida. No ten\u00eda una cana, pese a que deb\u00eda raspar los sesenta, y llevaba la cabeza bien engominada, los lacios pelos cuidadosamente aplastados, como un argentino de los a\u00f1os cuarenta. Pero se lo ve\u00eda mucho mejor vestido que cuando era periodista (en teor\u00eda) de Radio Panamericana: un terno verde, a cuadros, una corbatita luminosa (era la primera vez que lo ve\u00eda encorbatado) y los zapatos destellando. Me dio tanto gusto verlo que le propuse tomar un caf\u00e9. Acept\u00f3 y terminamos en una mesa del Palermo, un barcito restaurante ligado, tambi\u00e9n, en mi memoria, a los a\u00f1os universitarios. Le dije que no le preguntaba c\u00f3mo lo hab\u00eda tratado la vida pues bastaba verlo para saber que lo hab\u00eda tratado muy bien. \u00c9l sonri\u00f3 \u2014ten\u00eda en el \u00edndice un anillo dorado con un dibujo incaico\u2014, satisfecho:\n\n\u2014No puedo quejarme \u2014asinti\u00f3\u2014. Despu\u00e9s de tanta pellejer\u00eda, a la vejez cambi\u00f3 mi estrella. Pero, ante todo, perm\u00edtame una cervecita, por el gran gusto de verlo \u2014llam\u00f3 al mozo, pidi\u00f3 una Pilsen bien helada y lanz\u00f3 una risa que le provoc\u00f3 su tradicional ataque de asma\u2014-. Dicen que el que se casa se friega. Conmigo fue al rev\u00e9s.\n\nMientras nos tom\u00e1bamos la cerveza, el Gran Pablito, con las pausas que le exig\u00edan sus bronquios, me cont\u00f3 que al llegar la televisi\u00f3n al Per\u00fa, los Genaros lo pusieron de portero, con uniforme y gorra granates, en el edificio que hab\u00edan construido en la avenida Arequipa para el Canal Cinco.\n\n\u2014De periodista a portero, parece una degradaci\u00f3n \u2014se encogi\u00f3 de hombros\u2014. Y lo era, desde el punto de vista de los t\u00edtulos. \u00bfPero acaso se comen? Me aumentaron el sueldo y eso es lo principal.\n\nSer portero no era un trabajo matador: anunciar a las visitas, informarles c\u00f3mo estaban repartidas las secciones de la televisi\u00f3n, poner orden en las colas para asistir a las audiciones. El resto del tiempo se lo pasaba discutiendo de f\u00fatbol con el polic\u00eda de la esquina. Pero, adem\u00e1s \u2014y chasque\u00f3 la lengua, saboreando una reminiscencia grata\u2014, con los meses, un aspecto de su trabajo fue ir, todos los mediod\u00edas, a comprar esas empanaditas de queso y de carne que hacen en el Berisso, la bodega que est\u00e1 en Arenales, a una cuadra del Canal Cinco. A los Genaros les encantaban, y lo mismo a empleados, actores, locutores y productores, a los cuales tambi\u00e9n el Gran Pablito les tra\u00eda empanaditas, con lo que ganaba buenas propinas. Fue en esos trajines entre la televisi\u00f3n y el Berisso (su uniforme le hab\u00eda merecido entre los chiquillos del barrio el apodo de Bombero) que el Gran Pablito conoci\u00f3 a su futura esposa. Era la mujer que fabricaba esas crujientes delicias: la cocinera del Berisso.\n\n\u2014La impresion\u00f3 mi uniforme y mi quep\u00ed de general, me vio y cay\u00f3 rendida \u2014se re\u00eda, se ahogaba, beb\u00eda su cerveza, volv\u00eda a ahogarse y continuaba el Gran Pablito\u2014. Una morena que est\u00e1 requetebi\u00e9n. Veinte a\u00f1os m\u00e1s joven que quien le habla. Unas teteras donde no entran balas. Tal cual se la pinto, don Mario.\n\nHab\u00eda comenzado a meterle conversaci\u00f3n y piropearla, ella a re\u00edrse y, de repente, salieron juntos. Se hab\u00edan enamorado y vivido un romance de pel\u00edcula. La morena era de armas tomar, emprendedora y con la cabeza llena de proyectos. A ella se le meti\u00f3 que abrieran un restaurante. Y, cuando el Gran Pablito preguntaba \u00ab\u00bfcon qu\u00e9?\u00bb, ella respond\u00eda: con la plata que les dieran al renunciar. Y, aunque a \u00e9l le parec\u00eda una locura dejar lo seguro por lo incierto, ella sali\u00f3 con su gusto. Las indemnizaciones alcanzaron para un local pobret\u00f3n en el jir\u00f3n Paruro y tuvieron que prestarse de todo el mundo para las mesitas y la cocina, y \u00e9l mismo pint\u00f3 las paredes y el nombre sobre la puerta: El Pavo Real. El primer a\u00f1o hab\u00eda dado apenas para sobrevivir y el trabajo fue brav\u00edsimo. Se levantaban al alba para ir a la Parada a conseguir los mejores ingredientes y a los precios m\u00e1s bajos, y todo lo hac\u00edan solos: ella cocinaba y \u00e9l serv\u00eda, cobraba, y entre los dos barr\u00edan y arreglaban. Dorm\u00edan en unos colchones que tend\u00edan entre las mesas, cuando se cerraba el local. Pero, a partir del segundo a\u00f1o, la clientela creci\u00f3. Tanto que hab\u00edan tenido que contratar un ayudante para cocina y otro para mozo, y, al final, rechazaban clientes, porque no cab\u00edan. Y, entonces, a esa morena se le ocurri\u00f3 alquilar la casa de al lado, tres veces m\u00e1s grande. Lo hicieron y no se arrepent\u00edan. Ahora, hasta hab\u00edan habilitado el segundo piso, y ellos ten\u00edan una casita frente a El Pavo Real. En vista de que se entend\u00edan tan bien, se casaron.\n\nLo felicit\u00e9, le pregunt\u00e9 si hab\u00eda aprendido a cocinar.\n\n\u2014Se me ocurre una cosa \u2014dijo de repente el Gran Pablito\u2014. Vamos a buscar a Pascual y almorzaremos en el restaurante. Perm\u00edtame hacerle ese agasajo, don Mario.\n\nAcept\u00e9, porque nunca he sabido rechazar invitaciones, y, tambi\u00e9n, porque me dio curiosidad ver a Pascual. El Gran Pablito me cont\u00f3 que dirig\u00eda una revista de variedades, que tambi\u00e9n \u00e9l hab\u00eda progresado. Se ve\u00edan con frecuencia, Pascual era un asiduo de El Pavo Real.\n\nLa revista Extra ten\u00eda su local bastante lejos, en una transversal de la avenida Arica, en Bre\u00f1a. Fuimos hasta all\u00e1 en un \u00f3mnibus que en mis tiempos no exist\u00eda. Tuvimos que dar varias vueltas, porque el Gran Pablito no se acordaba de la direcci\u00f3n. Por fin la encontramos, en una callejuela perdida, a la espalda del Cine Fantas\u00eda. Desde afuera se pod\u00eda ver que Extra no flotaba en la bonanza: dos puertas de garaje entre las cuales un r\u00f3tulo precariamente suspendido de un solo clavo anunciaba el nombre del semanario. Adentro, se descubr\u00eda que los garajes hab\u00edan sido unidos mediante un simple agujero abierto en la pared, sin pulir ni enmarcar, como si el alba\u00f1il hubiera abandonado el trabajo a medio hacer. Disimulaba la abertura un biombo de cart\u00f3n, constelado, como los cuartos de ba\u00f1o de los lugares p\u00fablicos, de palabrotas y dibujos obscenos. En las paredes del garaje por donde entramos, entre manchas de humedad y mugre, hab\u00eda fotos, afiches y car\u00e1tulas de Extra: se reconoc\u00edan caras de futbolistas, de cantantes, y, evidentemente, de delincuentes y v\u00edctimas. Cada car\u00e1tula ven\u00eda acompa\u00f1ada de rechinantes titulares y alcanc\u00e9 a leer frases como \u00abMata a la madre para casarse con la hija\u00bb y \u00abPolic\u00eda sorprende baile de domin\u00f3s: \u00a1todos eran hombres!\u00bb. Esa habitaci\u00f3n parec\u00eda servir de redacci\u00f3n, taller de fotograf\u00eda y archivo. Hab\u00eda tal aglomeraci\u00f3n de objetos que resultaba dif\u00edcil abrirse camino: mesitas con m\u00e1quinas de escribir en las que dos tipos tecleaban muy apurados, altos de devoluciones de la revista que un chiquillo estaba ordenando en paquetes que amarraba con una pita; en un rinc\u00f3n, un ropero abierto lleno de negativos, de fotos, de clis\u00e9s, y, detr\u00e1s de una mesa, una de cuyas patas hab\u00eda sido reemplazada por tres ladrillos, una chica de chompa roja pasaba recibos a un libro de caja. Las cosas y las personas del local parec\u00edan en un estado supino de estrechez. Nadie nos ataj\u00f3 ni nos pregunt\u00f3 nada, y nadie nos devolvi\u00f3 las buenas tardes.\n\nAl otro lado del biombo, ante paredes cubiertas tambi\u00e9n de car\u00e1tulas sensacionalistas, hab\u00eda tres escritorios en los que un cartelito, hecho a tinta, especificaba las funciones de sus ocupantes: director, jefe de redacci\u00f3n, administrador. Al vernos ingresar en la habitaci\u00f3n, dos personas inclinadas sobre unos pliegos de pruebas alzaron la cabeza. El que estaba de pie era Pascual.\n\nNos dimos un gran abrazo. Hab\u00eda cambiado bastante, \u00e9l s\u00ed; estaba gordo, con barriga y papada, y algo en la expresi\u00f3n lo hac\u00eda aparecer casi viejo. Se hab\u00eda dejado un bigotito rar\u00edsimo, vagamente hitleriano, que griseaba. Me hizo muchas demostraciones de afecto; cuando sonri\u00f3, vi que hab\u00eda perdido dientes. Despu\u00e9s de los saludos, me present\u00f3 al otro personaje, un moreno de camisa color mostaza, que permanec\u00eda en su escritorio:\n\n\u2014El director de Extra \u2014dijo Pascual\u2014. El doctor Rebagliati.\n\n\u2014Casi meto la pata, el Gran Pablito me dijo que el director eras t\u00fa \u2014le cont\u00e9, d\u00e1ndole la mano al doctor Rebagliati.\n\n\u2014Estamos en decadencia, pero no a ese extremo \u2014coment\u00f3 \u00e9ste\u2014. Si\u00e9ntense, si\u00e9ntense.\n\n\u2014Soy jefe de redacci\u00f3n \u2014me explic\u00f3 Pascual\u2014. \u00c9ste es mi escritorio.\n\nEl Gran Pablito le dijo que hab\u00edamos venido a buscarlo para ir a El Pavo Real, a recordar los tiempos de Panamericana. Aplaudi\u00f3 la idea, pero, eso s\u00ed, tendr\u00edamos que esperarlo unos minutos, deb\u00eda llevar a la imprenta de la vuelta esas pruebas, era urgente pues estaban cerrando la edici\u00f3n. Se fue y nos dej\u00f3, mir\u00e1ndonos las caras, con el doctor Rebagliati. \u00c9ste, cuando se enter\u00f3 que yo viv\u00eda en Europa, me comi\u00f3 a preguntas. \u00bfEran las francesas tan f\u00e1ciles como se dec\u00eda? \u00bfEran tan sabias y desvergonzadas en la cama? Se empe\u00f1\u00f3 en que le hiciera estad\u00edsticas, cuadros comparativos, sobre las mujeres de Europa. \u00bfVerdad que las hembras de cada pa\u00eds ten\u00edan costumbres originales? \u00c9l, por ejemplo (el Gran Pablito lo escuchaba revolviendo los ojos con delectaci\u00f3n), hab\u00eda o\u00eddo decir, a gente muy viajada, cosas interesant\u00edsimas. \u00bfCierto que las italianas ten\u00edan la obsesi\u00f3n de la corneta? \u00bfQue las parisinas nunca estaban contentas si no las bombardeaban por detr\u00e1s? \u00bfQue las n\u00f3rdicas se lo aflojaban a sus propios padres? Yo contestaba como pod\u00eda a la verborrea del doctor Rebagliati, que iba contaminando la atm\u00f3sfera del cuartito de una densidad lujuriosa, seminal, y lamentaba cada instante m\u00e1s el haberme visto atrapado en ese almuerzo, que, sin duda, terminar\u00eda a las mil quinientas. El Gran Pablito se re\u00eda, asombrado y excitad\u00edsimo con las revelaciones er\u00f3tico-sociol\u00f3gicas del director. Cuando la curiosidad de \u00e9ste me extenu\u00f3, le ped\u00ed su tel\u00e9fono. Puso una cara sarc\u00e1stica:\n\n\u2014Est\u00e1 cortado hace una semana, por no pagar la cuenta \u2014dijo, con franqueza agresiva\u2014. Porque, donde nos ve, esta revista se hunde y todos los imb\u00e9ciles que trabajamos aqu\u00ed nos hundimos con ella.\n\nEn el acto, con un placer masoquista, me cont\u00f3 que Extra hab\u00eda nacido en la \u00e9poca de Odr\u00eda, bajo buenos auspicios; el r\u00e9gimen le daba avisos y le pasaba plata por lo bajo para que atacara a ciertas gentes y defendiera a otras. Adem\u00e1s, era una de las pocas revistas permitidas y se vend\u00eda como pan caliente. Pero, al irse Odr\u00eda, empez\u00f3 una competencia terrible y quebr\u00f3. As\u00ed la hab\u00eda recogido \u00e9l, ya cad\u00e1ver. Y la hab\u00eda levantado, cambi\u00e1ndole la l\u00ednea, convirti\u00e9ndola en revista de hechos sensacionales. Todo march\u00f3 sobre ruedas, un tiempo, pese a las deudas que arrastraban. Pero en el \u00faltimo a\u00f1o, con la subida del papel, los aumentos en la imprenta, la campa\u00f1a en contra de parte de los enemigos y la retirada del avisaje, las cosas se hab\u00edan puesto negras. Adem\u00e1s, hab\u00edan perdido juicios, de canallas que los acusaban de difamaci\u00f3n. Ahora, los due\u00f1os, aterrados, hab\u00edan regalado todas las acciones a los redactores, para no pagar los platos rotos cuando los remataran. Lo que no tardar\u00eda, ya en las \u00faltimas semanas la situaci\u00f3n era tr\u00e1gica: no hab\u00eda para sueldos, la gente se llevaba las m\u00e1quinas, vend\u00eda los escritorios, se robaban todo lo que ten\u00eda algo de valor, adelant\u00e1ndose al colapso.\n\n\u2014Esto no dura un mes, mi amigo \u2014repiti\u00f3, resoplando con una especie de disgusto feliz\u2014. Somos ya cad\u00e1veres, \u00bfno huele la putrefacci\u00f3n?\n\nLe iba a decir que, efectivamente, la ol\u00eda, cuando interrumpi\u00f3 la conversaci\u00f3n una figurita esquel\u00e9tica que entr\u00f3 en el cuarto sin necesidad de apartar el biombo, por la angosta abertura. Ten\u00eda un corte de pelo alem\u00e1n, algo rid\u00edculo, y vest\u00eda como un vagabundo, un overol azulino y una camisita con parches bajo un su\u00e9ter gris\u00e1ceo que le quedaba ajustad\u00edsimo. Lo m\u00e1s ins\u00f3lito era su calzado: unas rojizas zapatillas de b\u00e1squet, tan viejas que una de ellas estaba sujeta por un cord\u00f3n amarrado alrededor de la punta, como si la suela estuviera suelta o por soltarse. Apenas lo vio, el doctor Rebagliati comenz\u00f3 a re\u00f1irlo:\n\n\u2014Si usted cree que va a seguir burl\u00e1ndose de m\u00ed, se equivoca \u2014dijo, acerc\u00e1ndose a \u00e9l con aire tan amenazador que el esqueleto dio un brinquito\u2014. \u00bfNo ten\u00eda que traer anoche la llegada del Monstruo de Ayacucho?\n\n\u2014La traje, se\u00f1or director. Estuve aqu\u00ed, con todos los datos pertinentes, media hora despu\u00e9s de que los patrulleros desembarcaron en la Prefectura al interfecto \u2014declam\u00f3 el hombrecillo.\n\nLa sorpresa fue tan grande que deb\u00ed poner cara de alelado. La perfecta dicci\u00f3n, el timbre c\u00e1lido, las palabrejas \u00abpertinente\u00bb e \u00abinterfecto\u00bb, s\u00f3lo pod\u00edan ser de \u00e9l. \u00bfPero, c\u00f3mo identificar al escriba boliviano en el f\u00edsico y el atuendo de este espantap\u00e1jaros al que el doctor Rebagliati se com\u00eda vivo?:\n\n\u2014No sea mentiroso, por lo menos tenga el coraje de sus faltas. Usted no trajo el material y Melcochita no pudo completar su cr\u00f3nica y la informaci\u00f3n va a salir tuerta. \u00a1Y a m\u00ed no me gustan las cr\u00f3nicas tuertas porque eso es mal periodismo!\n\n\u2014Lo traje, se\u00f1or director \u2014respond\u00eda, con educaci\u00f3n y alarma, Pedro Camacho\u2014. Encontr\u00e9 la revista cerrada. Eran las once y quince en punto. Pregunt\u00e9 la hora a un transe\u00fante, se\u00f1or director. Y entonces, porque sab\u00eda la importancia de esos datos, me dirig\u00ed a la casa de Melcochita. Y lo estuve esperando en la vereda, hasta las dos de la ma\u00f1ana, y no se aperson\u00f3 a dormir. No es mi culpa, se\u00f1or director. Los patrulleros que tra\u00edan al Monstruo se encontraron un derrumbe y llegaron a las once en vez de las nueve. No me acuse de incumplimiento. Para m\u00ed, la revista es lo primero, pasa antes que la salud, se\u00f1or director.\n\nPoco a poco, no sin esfuerzo, fui relacionando, acercando, lo que recordaba de Pedro Camacho con lo que ten\u00eda presente. Los ojos saltones eran los mismos, pero hab\u00edan perdido su fanatismo, la vibraci\u00f3n obsesiva. Ahora su luz era pobre, opaca, huidiza y atemorizada. Y tambi\u00e9n los gestos y ademanes, la manera de accionar cuando hablaba, ese movimiento antinatural del brazo y la mano que parec\u00eda el de un pregonero de feria, eran los de antes, igual que su incomparable, cadenciosa, arrulladora voz.\n\n\u2014Lo que pasa es que usted, con la ro\u00f1oser\u00eda de no tomar un \u00f3mnibus, un colectivo, llega tarde a todas partes, \u00e9sa es la verdad de la milanesa \u2014gru\u00f1\u00eda, hist\u00e9rico, el doctor Rebagliati\u2014. No sea avaro, carajo, g\u00e1stese los cuatro cobres que vale un \u00f3mnibus y llegue a los sitios a la hora debida.\n\nPero las diferencias eran mayores que las semejanzas. El cambio principal se deb\u00eda al pelo; al cortarse la cabellera que le llegaba a los hombros y hacerse ese rapado, su cara se hab\u00eda vuelto m\u00e1s angulosa, m\u00e1s peque\u00f1a, hab\u00eda perdido car\u00e1cter, solvencia. Y estaba, adem\u00e1s, much\u00edsimo m\u00e1s flaco, parec\u00eda un fakir, casi un esp\u00edritu. Pero lo que quiz\u00e1 me impidi\u00f3 reconocerlo en el primer momento fue su ropa. Antes, s\u00f3lo lo hab\u00eda visto de negro, con el terno f\u00fanebre y brilloso y la corbatita de lazo que eran inseparables de su persona. Ahora, con ese overol de cargador, esa camisa con remiendos, esas zapatillas atadas, parec\u00eda una caricatura de la caricatura que era doce a\u00f1os atr\u00e1s.\n\n\u2014Le aseguro que no es como piensa, se\u00f1or director \u2014se defend\u00eda, con gran convicci\u00f3n\u2014. Le he demostrado que a pie llego m\u00e1s r\u00e1pido a cualquier parte que en esas pestilentes carcochas. No es por ro\u00f1oser\u00eda que yo camino, sino para cumplir mis deberes con m\u00e1s diligencia. Y muchas veces corro, se\u00f1or director.\n\nTambi\u00e9n en eso segu\u00eda siendo el de antes: en su carencia absoluta de humor. Hablaba sin la m\u00e1s ligera sombra de picard\u00eda, chispa, e, incluso, emoci\u00f3n, de manera autom\u00e1tica, despersonalizada, aunque las cosas que ahora dec\u00eda hubieran sido entonces impensables en su boca.\n\n\u2014D\u00e9jese de estupideces y de man\u00edas, estoy viejo para que me tomen el pelo \u2014el doctor Rebagliati se volvi\u00f3 a nosotros, poni\u00e9ndonos de testigos\u2014. \u00bfHan o\u00eddo una idiotez igual? \u00bfQue uno puede recorrer las comisar\u00edas de Lima m\u00e1s r\u00e1pido a pie que en \u00f3mnibus? Y este se\u00f1or quiere que yo me trague semejante caca \u2014se volvi\u00f3 otra vez al escriba boliviano, quien no le hab\u00eda quitado la vista de encima, sin echarnos siquiera una mirada de soslayo\u2014: No tengo que recordarle, porque me imagino que usted se acuerda de ello cada vez que se pone frente a un plato de comida, que aqu\u00ed se le hace un gran favor d\u00e1ndole trabajo, cuando estamos en tan mala situaci\u00f3n que deber\u00edamos suprimir redactores, ya no digo dateros. Por lo menos, entonces, agradezca, y cumpla con sus obligaciones.\n\nEn eso entr\u00f3 Pascual, diciendo desde el biombo: \u00abTodo listo, el n\u00famero entr\u00f3 en prensa\u00bb, y, disculp\u00e1ndose por habernos hecho esperar. Yo me acerqu\u00e9 a Pedro Camacho, cuando \u00e9ste se dispon\u00eda a salir:\n\n\u2014C\u00f3mo est\u00e1, Pedro \u2014le dije, estir\u00e1ndole la mano\u2014. \u00bfNo se acuerda de m\u00ed?\n\nMe mir\u00f3 de arriba abajo, entrecerrando los ojos y adelantando la cara, sorprendido, como si me viera por primera vez en la vida. Por fin, me dio la mano, en un saludo seco y ceremonioso, a la vez que, haciendo su venia caracter\u00edstica, dec\u00eda:\n\n\u2014Tanto gusto. Pedro Camacho, un amigo.\n\n\u2014Pero, no puede ser \u2014dije, sintiendo una gran confusi\u00f3n\u2014. \u00bfMe he vuelto tan viejo?\n\n\u2014D\u00e9jate de jugar al amn\u00e9sico \u2014Pascual le dio una palmada que lo hizo trastabillear\u2014. \u00bfNo te acuerdas tampoco que te pasabas la vida gorre\u00e1ndole cafecitos en el Bransa?\n\n\u2014M\u00e1s bien yerbaluisas con menta \u2014brome\u00e9, escrutando, en busca de un signo, la carita atenta y, al mismo tiempo, indiferente de Pedro Camacho. Asinti\u00f3 (vi su cr\u00e1neo casi pelado), esbozando una brev\u00edsima sonrisa de circunstancias, que puso sus dientes al aire:\n\n\u2014Muy recomendable para el est\u00f3mago, buen digestivo, y, adem\u00e1s, quema la grasa \u2014dijo. Y, r\u00e1pidamente, como haciendo una concesi\u00f3n para librarse de nosotros\u2014: S\u00ed, es posible, no lo niego. Pudimos conocernos, seguramente \u2014y repiti\u00f3\u2014: Tanto gusto.\n\nEl Gran Pablito tambi\u00e9n se hab\u00eda acercado y le pas\u00f3 un brazo por el hombro, en un gesto paternal y burl\u00f3n. Mientras lo remec\u00eda medio afectuosa medio despectivamente, se dirigi\u00f3 a m\u00ed:\n\n\u2014Es que aqu\u00ed Pedrito no quiere acordarse de cuando era un personaje, ahora que es la \u00faltima rueda del coche \u2014Pascual se ri\u00f3, el Gran Pablito se ri\u00f3, yo simul\u00e9 que re\u00eda y el propio Pedro Camacho hizo un conato de sonrisa\u2014. Si hasta nos viene con el cuento de que no se acuerda ni de Pascual ni de m\u00ed \u2014le pas\u00f3 la mano por el poco pelo, como a un perrito\u2014. Estamos yendo a almorzar, para recordar esos tiempos en que eras rey. Te armaste, Pedrito, hoy comer\u00e1s caliente. \u00a1Est\u00e1s invitado!\n\n\u2014Cu\u00e1nto les agradezco, colegas \u2014dijo \u00e9l, al instante, haciendo su venia ritual\u2014. Pero no me es posible acompa\u00f1arlos. Me espera mi esposa. Se inquietar\u00eda si no llego a almorzar.\n\n\u2014Te tiene dominado, eres su esclavo, qu\u00e9 verg\u00fcenza \u2014lo remeci\u00f3 el Gran Pablito.\n\n\u2014\u00bfSe cas\u00f3 usted? \u2014dije, pasmado, pues no conceb\u00eda que Pedro Camacho tuviera un hogar, una esposa, hijos...\u2014. Vaya, felicitaciones, yo lo cre\u00eda un solter\u00f3n empedernido.\n\n\u2014Hemos festejado nuestras bodas de plata \u2014me repuso, con su tono preciso y as\u00e9ptico\u2014. Una gran esposa, se\u00f1or. Abnegada y buena como nadie. Estuvimos separados, por circunstancias de la vida, pero, cuando necesit\u00e9 ayuda, ella volvi\u00f3 para darme su apoyo. Una gran esposa, como le digo. Es artista, una artista extranjera \u2014vi que el Gran Pablito, Pascual y el doctor Rebagliati cambiaban una mirada burlona, pero Pedro Camacho no se dio por aludido. Luego de una pausa, a\u00f1adi\u00f3\u2014: Bien, que se diviertan, colegas, estar\u00e9 con ustedes en el pensamiento.\n\n\u2014Cuidadito con fallarme otra vez, porque ser\u00eda la \u00faltima \u2014le advirti\u00f3 el doctor Rebagliati, cuando el escriba desaparec\u00eda tras del biombo.\n\nNo se hab\u00edan apagado las pisadas de Pedro Camacho \u2014deb\u00eda de estar llegando a la puerta de calle\u2014 y Pascual, el Gran Pablito y el doctor Rebagliati estallaron en carcajadas, a la vez que se gui\u00f1aban el ojo, pon\u00edan expresiones p\u00edcaras y se\u00f1alaban el lugar por donde hab\u00eda partido.\n\n\u2014No es tan cojudo como parece, se hace el cojudo para disimular la cornamenta \u2014dijo el doctor Rebagliati, ahora exultante\u2014. Cada vez que habla de su mujer siento unas ganas terribles de decirle d\u00e9jate de llamar artista a lo que en buen peruano se llama estriptisera de tres por medio.\n\n\u2014Nadie se imagina el monstruo que es \u2014me dijo Pascual, poniendo una cara de ni\u00f1o que ve al cuco\u2014. Una argentina viej\u00edsima, gordota, con los pelos oxigenados y pintarrajeada. Canta tangos medio calata, en el Mezzanine, esa bo\u00eete para mendigos.\n\n\u2014C\u00e1llense, no sean malagradecidos, que los dos se la han tirado \u2014dijo el doctor Rebagliati\u2014. Yo tambi\u00e9n, para el caso.\n\n\u2014Qu\u00e9 cantante ni cantante, es una puta \u2014exclam\u00f3 el Gran Pablito, con los ojos como brasas\u2014. Me consta. Yo fui a verla al Mezzanine y, despu\u00e9s del show, se me arrim\u00f3 y vino con que me lo chupaba por veinte libras. No, pues, viejita, si t\u00fa ya no tienes dientes y a m\u00ed lo que me gusta es que me lo muerdan suavecito. Ni gratis, ni aunque me pagues. Porque le juro que no tiene dientes, don Mario.\n\n\u2014Ya hab\u00edan estado casados \u2014me dijo Pascual, mientras se desarremangaba la camisa y se pon\u00eda el saco y la corbata\u2014. All\u00e1, en Bolivia, antes de que Pedrito viniera a Lima. Parece que ella lo dej\u00f3, para irse a putear por ah\u00ed. Se juntaron de nuevo cuando lo del manicomio. Por eso se pasa la vida diciendo que es una se\u00f1ora tan abnegada. Porque se junt\u00f3 otra vez con \u00e9l cuando estaba loco.\n\n\u2014Le tiene ese agradecimiento de perro porque gracias a ella come \u2014lo rectific\u00f3 el doctor Rebagliati\u2014. \u00bfO t\u00fa crees que pueden vivir con lo que gana Camacho trayendo datos policiales? Comen de la putona, si no \u00e9l ya estar\u00eda tuberculoso.\n\n\u2014La verdad es que Pedrito no necesita mucho para comer \u2014dijo Pascual. Y me explic\u00f3\u2014: Viven en un callej\u00f3n de Santo Cristo. Qu\u00e9 bajo ha ca\u00eddo \u00bfno? Aqu\u00ed el doctorcito no quiere creerme que era un personaje cuando escrib\u00eda radioteatros, que le ped\u00edan aut\u00f3grafos.\n\nSalimos de la habitaci\u00f3n. En el garaje contiguo hab\u00edan desaparecido la chica de los recibos, los redactores y el muchachito de los paquetes. Hab\u00edan apagado la luz y el amontonamiento y el desorden ten\u00edan ahora cierto aire espectral. En la calle, el doctor Rebagliati cerr\u00f3 la puerta y le ech\u00f3 llave. Empezamos a caminar hacia la avenida Arica en busca de un taxi, los cuatro en una fila. Por decir algo, pregunt\u00e9 por qu\u00e9 Pedro Camacho era s\u00f3lo datero, por qu\u00e9 no redactor.\n\n\u2014Porque no sabe escribir \u2014dijo, previsiblemente, el doctor Rebagliati\u2014. Es un huachafo, usa palabras que nadie entiende, la negaci\u00f3n del periodismo. Por eso lo tengo recorriendo comisar\u00edas. No lo necesito, pero me entretiene, es mi buf\u00f3n, y, adem\u00e1s, gana menos que un sirviente \u2014se ri\u00f3 con obscenidad y pregunt\u00f3\u2014: Bueno, hablando claro, \u00bfestoy o no estoy invitado a ese almuerzo?\n\n\u2014Por supuesto que s\u00ed, no faltaba m\u00e1s \u2014dijo el Gran Pablito\u2014. Usted y don Mario son los invitados de honor.\n\n\u2014Es un tipo lleno de man\u00edas \u2014dijo Pascual, ya en el taxi, rumbo al jir\u00f3n Paruro, volviendo al tema\u2014. Por ejemplo, no quiere tomar \u00f3mnibus. Todo lo hace a pie, dice que es m\u00e1s r\u00e1pido. Me imagino lo que camina al d\u00eda y me canso, s\u00f3lo recorrer las comisarias del centro es una patada de kil\u00f3metros. \u00bfHan visto c\u00f3mo andan sus zapatillas, no?\n\n\u2014Es un avaro de mierda \u2014dijo el doctor Rebagliati, con disgusto.\n\n\u2014Yo no creo que sea taca\u00f1o \u2014lo defendi\u00f3 el Gran Pablito\u2014. S\u00f3lo un poco locumbeta, y, adem\u00e1s, un tipo sin suerte.\n\nEl almuerzo fue muy largo, una sucesi\u00f3n de platos criollos, multicolores y ardientes, rociados de cerveza fr\u00eda, y hubo en \u00e9l un poco de todo, historietas picantes, an\u00e9cdotas del pasado, copiosos chismes de personas, una pizca de pol\u00edtica, y tuve que satisfacer, una vez m\u00e1s, abundantes curiosidades sobre las mujeres de Europa. Hasta hubo un amago de pu\u00f1etazos cuando el doctor Rebagliati, ya borracho, comenz\u00f3 a propasarse con la mujer del Gran Pablito, una morena cuarentona todav\u00eda buena moza. Pero yo me las ingeni\u00e9 para que, a lo largo de la espesa tarde, ninguno de los tres dijera una palabra m\u00e1s sobre Pedro Camacho.\n\nCuando llegu\u00e9 a la casa de la t\u00eda Olga y el t\u00edo Lucho (que de mis cu\u00f1ados hab\u00edan pasado a ser mis suegros) me dol\u00eda la cabeza, me sent\u00eda deprimido y ya anochec\u00eda. La prima Patricia me recibi\u00f3 con cara de pocos amigos. Me dijo que era posible que con el cuento de documentarme para mis novelas, yo, a la t\u00eda Julia le hubiera metido el dedo a la boca y le hubiera hecho las de Barrab\u00e1s, pues ella no se atrev\u00eda a decirme nada para que no pensaran que comet\u00eda un crimen de lesa cultura. Pero que a ella le importaba un pito cometer cr\u00edmenes de lesa cultura, as\u00ed que, la pr\u00f3xima vez que yo saliera a las ocho de la ma\u00f1ana con el cuento de ir a la Biblioteca Nacional a leerme los discursos del general Manuel Apolinario Odr\u00eda y volviera a las ocho de la noche con los ojos colorados, apestando a cerveza, y, seguramente, con manchas de rouge en el pa\u00f1uelo, ella me rasgu\u00f1ar\u00eda o me romper\u00eda un plato en la cabeza. La prima Patricia es una muchacha de mucho car\u00e1cter, muy capaz de hacer lo que me promet\u00eda.\n\n### Sobre el autor\n\nMario Vargas Llosa, premio Nobel de Literatura 2010, naci\u00f3 en Arequipa, Per\u00fa, en 1936. Aunque hab\u00eda estrenado un drama en Piura y publicado un libro de relatos, Los jefes, que obtuvo el Premio Leopoldo Alas, su carrera literaria cobr\u00f3 notoriedad con la publicaci\u00f3n de La ciudad y los perros, Premio Biblioteca Breve (1962) y Premio de la Cr\u00edtica (1963). En 1965 apareci\u00f3 su segunda novela, La casa verde, que obtuvo el Premio de la Cr\u00edtica y el Premio Internacional R\u00f3mulo Gallegos. Posteriormente ha publicado piezas teatrales (La se\u00f1orita de Tacna, Kathie y el hipop\u00f3tamo, La Chunga, El loco de los balcones, Ojos bonitos, cuadros feos y Las mil noches y una noche), estudios y ensayos (La org\u00eda perpetua, La verdad de las mentiras, La tentaci\u00f3n de lo imposible, El viaje a la ficci\u00f3n y La civilizaci\u00f3n del espect\u00e1culo), memorias (El pez en el agua), relatos (Los cachorros) y, sobre todo, novelas: Conversaci\u00f3n en La Catedral, Pantale\u00f3n y las visitadoras, La t\u00eda Julia y el escribidor, La guerra del fin del mundo, Historia de Mayta, \u00bfQui\u00e9n mat\u00f3 a Palomino Molero?, El hablador, Elogio de la madrastra, Lituma en los Andes, Los cuadernos de don Rigoberto, La Fiesta del Chivo, El Para\u00edso en la otra esquina, Travesuras de la ni\u00f1a mala y El sue\u00f1o del celta. Ha obtenido los m\u00e1s importantes galardones literarios, desde los ya mencionados hasta el Premio Cervantes, el Pr\u00edncipe de Asturias, el PEN\/Nabokov y el Grinzane Cavour.\n\n\u00a9 1977, Mario Vargas Llosa\n\n\u00a9 Del pr\u00f3logo: 1999, Mario Vargas Llosa\n\n\u00a9 De esta edici\u00f3n:\n\n2013, Santillana Ediciones Generales, S. L.\n\nAvenida de los Artesanos, 6\n\n28760 Tres Cantos - Madrid\n\nTel\u00e9fono 91 744 90 60\n\nTelefax 91 744 92 24\n\nwww.alfaguara.com\n\nISBN ebook: 978-84-204-9893-5\n\nDise\u00f1o de colecci\u00f3n: Pep Carri\u00f3 y Sonia S\u00e1nchez  \n\u00a9 Imagen de cubierta: Pep Carri\u00f3  \nReproducci\u00f3n fotogr\u00e1fica: David Jim\u00e9nez\n\nConversi\u00f3n ebook: Safekat, S. L.\n\nCualquier forma de reproducci\u00f3n, distribuci\u00f3n, comunicaci\u00f3n p\u00fablica o transformaci\u00f3n de esta obra solo puede ser realizada con la autorizaci\u00f3n de sus titulares, salvo excepci\u00f3n prevista por la ley. 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