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Words on paper are quiet, and porous; in the right mood, I sink down between the gaps in the letters and they close over my head.
“Pasifika culture has a concept called the va,” I said, despite myself. It was something we’d learned about in law school. “The space between two people, or cultures. Sort of an imaginary landscape, made up of the social, personal, and spiritual bonds that comprise the relationship.”
History is every bit as much of a story as fiction. There’s no reason a reader can’t construct their own Duke of Wellington just as clearly as they might construct their own personal Uriah Heep. If you’re wanting some sort of theory about what we’re made of, old thing, that’s the best I can do. We’re half words, and half thought.”
you know when you read a book, sometimes, and you suddenly realize that you’ve been missing something your whole life, and you weren’t even aware, and all at once you’ve found it and are just a little bit more whole?”
Nothing stays hidden. Secrets are always found out, and the world is unforgiving.”
“That’s how all secrets are revealed, in the end. Either someone else betrays us, or we betray ourselves.”
He was too schooled in seeing other points of view to hold to his own.
That’s how happy endings work. For there to be a restoration of order, there has to be a sacrifice.”
“He says that feelings are a mind picking up on things it doesn’t always understand.”
Kind people don’t make things happen. They try to prevent bad things from happening, and they fail, and they live in fear of that failure. So do those under their protection.
She reached deep inside herself, and found the part that belonged to Jacqueline Blaine. She was acting it at the moment, but that would have to do for now. “All right there, everyone?” she said. “Because I think we’ve found ourselves in the middle of an adventure.”
The city was in a state of emergency.
It’s the truth of a single moment in time. It’s… it’s as if someone made a painting of you, based on a photograph. The photograph would be an accurate picture of you; the painting would be a valid interpretation of that photograph. Nobody’s lying. But that painting isn’t you, not all of you. It’s just a picture.” “Unless it’s the picture of Dorian Gray. Then it’s a picture of your soul.”
This is what happened on the day that Beth had pulled from Charley’s diary. It’s not that exciting, or that terrible. I tried to tell myself Charley had forgotten all about it. I suppose what I had hated most about Uriah Heep knowing about it is that it meant Charley remembered very well.
She came through the same door we had entered, silently flanked by teen Rob and ten-year-old Charley. By the window, twelve-year-old Charley took a step back. I don’t know what I had been expecting. I suppose, now that Beth had been revealed as the mysterious other summoner, I thought she would look a little more like a villain from a story.
single gunshot, short and sharp. Beth-Moriarty’s head whipped toward the window, as did mine. Footsteps and shouts were coming from the courtyard outside. Charley didn’t turn to look with us; he didn’t need to. His eyes widened. “Millie…” he whispered.
occupants of the Street had gathered in the public house as the world shifted. Outside, the cobbles spasmed; buildings creaked, and the sky grew dark. They clustered together for safety. Predictably, this meant they argued.
“Those with weapons share with those that don’t,” Millie added, “and if you have any bizarrely literal metaphorical traits that might come in handy, this would be an excellent time to use them.” The doors to the house opened as the gates came crumbling down.
The noise outside was getting louder. It sounded as though an army had arrived; knowing Millie, it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if one had.
Fagin stepped forward. His features blurred and melted, his red hair sprouted, and once again, I found myself looking at the face of Uriah Heep.
Master Charley,” Uriah said. Beth-Moriarty was on the floor, gasping and choking. The knife in Uriah’s hands glistened red with blood. “Or is it Master David? Do tell me which you prefer, won’t you, sir?” “Uriah,” Charley said, deliberately calm. “What are you doing?” “What am I doing?” he repeated. His limbs twitched. “What does it look like I’m doing? What am I always doing? Rising above my station. I’m Uriah Heep, Master Charley. A threat to the social order, and the truth at the heart of it. It’s what I do.”
“Education never ends, Sutherland,” he said. “It is a series of lessons, with the greatest for the last.”
The police rushed forward to us at once, to take us by the shoulders and usher us away from the wall of cloud.
I’m so sorry, Lydia. I entered the city again.
Usually, when Charley puts something back, it goes with a flash of light. Just one flash, between one heartbeat and the next, and it’s gone. But Dickens or Uriah Heep or the Cat in the Hat was a good deal smaller to hold in a thought than an entire world. This was a flash drawn out over minutes. And for once, I wasn’t watching it from the outside. I was inside the light.
We love Dickens because he tells us stories, and because he tells us that we are all stories.
For the next few days, everything was chaos. I think I had expected the shell-shocked calm that follows a major storm,
“We changed again, and yet again,” I read, “and it was now too late and too far to go back, and I went on. And the mists had all solemnly risen now, and the world lay spread before me.”
