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The most dangerous and violent men are the ones who believe they have nothing to fear.
In the painting’s center, the vines and soldiers gave way to a bright clearing. Again appeared the lion, crow, and little blue rabbit that had guarded the house’s exterior. Beside them stood a cottage on chicken legs. The animals weren’t looking at the soldiers, but at one another, their heads once again bowed inward. And there in the heart of the discord, the four figures were dancing.
The feral season made his tremors feel less like a sickness and more like fuel. A currency to spend.
The highway, a cemetery for the lost and the restless. A memorial. A circulatory system running through a nation.
There was a lot of talk about the proper way to behave in the cemetery. Don’t step on a grave. Don’t talk too loud. Don’t eat or drink or climb on the stones. But you know what, Bell? All those people making all those rules—they got it wrong. That’s not respect. You know the only real way to respect people whose lives are over? Or those like me, whose lives never even began?” “How?” Bellatine breathed. She wanted to know. She wanted to learn everything. Somehow, she’d dismissed Winifred as ditzy, frivolous, airy. But she was wrong. This was an ancient being. She was a part of the planet
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“It’s wild, isn’t it,” Rummy said, “how there are all these stories that played out before we even existed. And their residue is all around us, all the time, but we don’t even know it. Sometimes I wonder how much of me is my own, you know?”
What happens when the walls we raise outlive the dangers they were built to keep out? At what point does a fort become a cage?
If a story does its job, it doesn’t ever end. Not really. But it can change. This is the nature of folktales. They shift to fit each teller. Take whatever form suits the bearer best. What begins as a story of sorrow can be acknowledged, held like a sweetheart to the chest, rocked and sung to. And then, it can be set down to sleep. It can become an offering. A lantern. An ember to lead you through the dark.
