The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

by H.G. Parry

I don’t know. Sometimes I think my brain opened as far as it could go when I was about seventeen, and its doors have been just stuck there ever since. And now they’re ossifying and collecting cobwebs, and things are spilling in, swirling around for a bit, and then flying out again. And someday they’ll start to swing slowly shut, and I’ll be left in the dark with nothing but a few rustling fragments of thoughts that get thinner and weaker every time I use them. Like tea leaves.

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.

That’s how the story works, the way each sentence and metaphor and reference feeds into the other to illuminate something important. That explosion of discovery, of understanding, is the most intoxicating moment there is. Emotional, intellectual, aesthetic. Just for a moment, a perfect moment, a small piece of the world makes perfect sense. And it’s beautiful. It’s a moment of pure joy, the kind that brings pleasure like pain.

“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.

And… 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?”

They looked back at her: gentlemen and knights, witches and urchins, Victorian spinsters and powerful children. The keeper of a thousand and one stories.