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And pleasant is the faerie land But an eerie tale to tell, Ay at the end of seven years We pay a tithe to Hell; I am sae fair and fu o flesh, I’m feard it be mysel. —“YOUNG TAM LIN”
Coercive as coma, frail as bloom innuendoes of your inverse dawn suffuse the self; our every corpuscle become an elf. —MINA LOY, “MOREOVER, THE MOON,” THE LOST LUNAR BAEDEKER
It was so good to be able to breathe, Kaye thought. She loved the serene brutality of the ocean, loved the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.
She was giddy with night air, burning like the white-hot moon. Everything smelled wet and feral like it did before a thunderstorm, and she wanted to run, swift and eager, beyond the edge of what she could see.
And now she was sixteen and felt like she had no imagination left.
“Were I you, I would stay clear of the Folk in the future. We are a capricious people, with little regard for mortals.”
A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? —OSCAR WILDE, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
A grown-up, fucked-up Alice suited her.
She was on fire too, aflame in a way she was not sure she understood. Adrenaline turned her fingers to ice, drawing her heat inward to dance in her head, anger and a strange sense of possibility thrumming through her veins.
I ate the mythology & dreamt. —YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA, “BLACKBERRIES”
“So much focus on the egg—it is life, it is food, it is answer to a hundred riddles—but look at its shell. Secrets are writ on its walls. Secrets lie in the entrails, in the dregs, at the edges.”
If you think on it, I’m sure that you’ll admit there’s something passing strange about you. A strangeness, not just of manner, but of something else. The scent of it, the spoor of it, warns Ironsiders off, makes them wary and draws them in all the same.”
It felt true, unbalancing and rebalancing her world so neatly that she wondered how she didn’t think of it before now.
You have sought chaos and now chaos seeks you.”
The ground was cold, the dew dusted with frost. She rolled dizzily, holding her arms above her head. She had to laugh as she did it—the whole thing was absurd and it was making her damp and really, really cold, but there was something in the smell of the earth and the touch of the grass that enervated her. Her laughter spun up out of her mouth in warm gusts of breath.
She didn’t feel changed, but she did feel better. She was grinning like a fool, anxiety put to rest by silliness.
Why did she never listen? Why had she never met a bad idea she didn’t like?
Down the hill I went, and then, I forgot the ways of men For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool Wakened ecstasy in me. —SARA TEASDALE, “AUGUST MOONRISE,” FLAME AND SHADOW
The moon was, if anything, fuller and fatter than it had been when she last saw it. It seemed unnatural; the thing looked bloated in the sky, and she thought again about the sun bleeding to death while the moon grew tumescent with devoured light.
Ugly, strange, or lovely as the moon, none were plain.
She felt stupid again, as though a few words from him were some kind of benediction of which she was unworthy.
“Never mind,” she said, angry without being sure of why. Angry and ashamed. She was the one being cruel.
He was becoming less clear to himself—a string of actions held together by nothing, with no sequence he could understand.
The twilight holds as many truths as the dawn, perhaps more, since they are less easily perceived.
Think on Milton’s angels. Was not his God wise in giving them a devil to fight?”
He swallowed the emotion he felt without even bothering to identify it.
A word is dead When it is said Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day. —EMILY DICKINSON, “VI. A WORD.”
“Green,” he said, his eyes like mist, like smoke, like all insubstantial things.
He was a spell she was going to break by sheer accident.
Words echoed on the edges of her thoughts, phrases she had heard but not heard.
There was no reason to go after him, unless you could count the odd, soft touch of his hand on her cheek or the gentle acceptance of yet another kiss. And what did those things mean anyway? Less than nothing.
“Everything is always easier when considered black and white, isn’t it? Your friends are, after all, good and wise, so all solitary fey must be good and wise. Your friends have some respect and fear and knowledge of humans, so all the solitary fey will follow in that example.”
She wondered if she looked inhuman too. Was there something about her that warned people off? Kaye had always assumed that she was just weird, no more explanation necessary. Looking at him, she wondered.
And in that moment it seemed that the whole world had gone cold and that she would never be warm again.
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, Who art as black as hell, as dark as night. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, SONNET CXLVII
Dead. The word echoed in her head as though its repetition held some clue to its reversal.
He spoke as one who was afraid to speak too loudly, lest some fragile thing—too dear to pay for—shatter.
Better to reign in Hell, then to serve in Heav’n. —JOHN MILTON, PARADISE LOST (BOOK I)
She laughed and so did he, a weird, desperate sound that spiraled up into the night sky.
