Running Close to the Wind

by Alexandra Rowland

Some may ask if it is better to be loved or feared, and I say: Neither. It is better to be pitied. Then people don’t expect anything of you.”

“Because I am a revolutionary!” Julian said, spreading his hands. “I don’t know what to tell you! I don’t believe in monarchies! Why would I accept a pardon from a man that my companions and I once sincerely considered assassinating? Why would I accept a pardon from a man who had those companions executed?”

“With a scale of one to ten, you don’t make it past twenty unless it’s the thing you love most in all the world.”

For everything else, people just knew someone (or knew someone who knew someone) who was growing eggplant or tomatoes and showed up at their house to ask if they had any to spare, and people who were growing zucchini snuck around in the dead of night and left unsolicited bags of them on people’s doorsteps.

Cat was good to tell stories to. He made all the right astonished and delighted noises at all the right moments,

The crowd, which by now had been entirely shattered and was slowly crumpling to the ground, yelled in a mixture of delight and the particular existential dismay unique to hearing one’s grandparent imply the existence of a sexual history.

“But having too much money does too. It sucks your soul dry, eventually. Even a sweet-natured and well-intentioned person starts making decisions based on protecting the money rather than helping other people. It becomes a burden—a god that you’re shackled to, one that’s even more difficult to abandon than the others you’ve already turned away from.”