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Rumors about how Olivia’s bones had broken and reknit themselves in bizarre configurations, how her flesh had run in rivulets across her wasted muscles, then solidified again in peaks and troughs, scales and horns.
We are not bandits, nor rapists, nor murderers, and I swear we mean you no harm. Well, at least Moses and me don’t mean any harm. I ain’t going to vouch for old Tom here, since we don’t know him too well. If you want to shoot somebody, you might wanna start with him.” “Hey!” Tom shouted.
Moses had looked up as they entered the clearing, hoping for a glimpse of sunlight, but instead he saw people in every direction, hanging from the trees by their necks, twisting and swaying in the brackish gloom of the deep woods.
It was clear to him now that the fence had been constructed to keep people afflicted with hopelessness out of the forest. But the fence that Moses had crawled under, and Rose had taken apart, and Ned had chopped through was powerless to stop a single man, woman, or child from taking their final journey.
“Well, there’s the law and then there’s justice. They ain’t always the same thing.”
’Cause I’d be willing to bet twenty dollars and my left nut them two ain’t US Marshals.” “I’m not taking that bet,” Moses said.
He was dismayed to see how uneven the lines were, curving away in all directions, and for a brief moment he began to make plans to re-till it all, before he remembered he was dead. It was actually a bit of a relief.
“Whore,” he said. She bent and picked up the rock again.
“I wished I knew for sure if I was going crazy,” he said. “That might be a comfort.”
He had heard of such places, where sadness had leeched into the soil and evil had sprouted from it.
“I was not judging. Only saying what I think.” “That’s judging.”
And all those bibles … Moses, every bit of that stuff was took off of dead children.”
“We in this town believe we are fallen, too. We may once have been good or pure, or our ancestors may have been, but we were born here, and are descended from the fallen, so we are fallen ourselves. And we continue to fall. In another life, perhaps we will be lifted up once more, but while we are on this earth, and in this town, we fall as if into a deep dark well, without ever touching the bottom of it.”
The Huntsman smiled, and it was the most frightening thing Charlie had ever seen.
He felt a flush of embarrassment. He could imagine how his reputation would suffer, now that he had been killed by ghouls in a Kansas rooming house.
Fairness and justice had no place in the system of cogs and levers that kept the moon in the sky and the fish in the sea.
Matt thought he might be able to find a Mexican wife, but Johnny had a large wart on the side of his nose with thick white hairs growing from it. Matt didn’t think most women, Mexican or not, could overlook that wart long enough to marry Johnny Barth.
“We don’t got a woman or a little girl with us!” His voice was loud and clear. Moses peered around the corner and saw his friend standing in the middle of the street. Ned was making himself a target, giving Moses the time and opportunity to get the drop on the shooters, but it wasn’t the distraction Moses had intended, and concern for his friend muddled his thinking. “We didn’t specify it was a little girl!” the first man shouted. He was barely five yards from Moses, in the next alley over. “Neither did I,” Ned said. “Yes, you did,” the second gunman yelled out. “You said you didn’t have a
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“I had worshippers then, and I did many terrible deeds, Mr Cassidy. I laid with beautiful women and they gave birth to horrors. I laid with beautiful men and planted the seeds of war. A king displeased me, and I marched against him. I conjured a plague of insects that consumed his army. I took his harem for myself, and I ate the children of his courtiers. There are still statues of me, you know, buried under stones deep in the sand, put there to ward off death and bad luck. Oh, I miss those days, Mr Cassidy. So few people pay me the proper respect now.”
“But that wasn’t magic,” Rabbit said. “That was the wind.” “What do you think magic is?”
“I always did want a big family.”
