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A safe place to step. She can’t leave her own mark, but if she’s careful, she can give the mark to someone else.
It is the only thing Addie refused to leave behind and feed to the flames in New Orleans, though the smell of him clung to it like smoke, his stain forever on everything. She does not care. She loves the jacket.
Adeline wears it like a talisman,
Estele’s face darkens. “The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price.” She leans over Adeline, casting her in shadow. “And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.
She traces the curve with her free hand, resists the urge to slip the band onto her finger. She has thought of it, of course, in darker moments, tired moments, but she will not be the one to break.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.
One room over, she finds it, where it always is. It sits in a glass case along one wall, framed on either side by pieces made of iron, or silver. It is not large, as far as sculptures go, the length of her arm, from elbow to fingertips. A marble plinth with five wooden birds perched atop it, each about to fly away. It is the fifth that holds her gaze: the lift of its beak, the angle of its wings, the soft down of its feathers captured once in wood, and now again. Revenir, it’s called. To come back.
Adeline would pull his body down on hers, drawing him deeper and deeper until the storm broke, and thunder rolled through her.
That is the madness of it. Every day is amber, and she is the fly trapped inside. No way to think in days or weeks when she lives in moments. Time begins to lose its meaning—and yet, she has not lost track of time.
It is a lonely education.
carry her away from those three words. I remember you. Three hundred years.
To find a way, or make your own
“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”
Open to Love was designed as “an homage to the exhaustions of serial
monogamy and a testament to the dangers of unbalanced affection.”
but the truth is, you have no desire to practice, you see the holy texts as stories, sweeping epics, and the more you study, the less you believe in any of it.
I remember seeing that picture and realizing that photographs weren’t real. There’s no context, just the illusion that you’re showing a snapshot of a life, but life isn’t snapshots, it’s fluid. So photos are like fictions. I loved that about them. Everyone thinks photography is truth, but it’s just a very convincing lie.”
This is like putting a girl with a pearl earring in a Warhol, and a Degas, without ever seeing the Vermeer.
Henry shakes his head. “I thought you couldn’t leave a mark.” “I can’t,” she says, looking up. “I can’t hold a pen. I can’t tell a story. I can’t wield a weapon, or make someone remember. But art,” she says with a quieter smile, “art is about ideas. And ideas are wilder than memories. They’re like weeds, always finding their way up.”
little pink pills. Umbrellas.
You want to be whatever they want.
This time, the picture comes out.
History is a thing designed in retrospect.
