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June 13 - June 19, 2024
‘Nostalgia is the best and the worst feeling—complex—nothing has the ability to so delight and wound us simultaneously, except perhaps for love.’
“What does nostalgia mean to a child? An abstraction. A standing stone waiting for them in the mist. Walk a path across some decades, any path you like, and the word will gather weight. It will come to you trailing maybes and might-have-beens. Nostalgia is a drug, a knife. Against young skin it carries a dull edge, but time will teach you that nostalgia cuts—and that it’s a blade we cannot keep from applying to our own flesh.”
Popular literature is wont to make considerable song and dance concerning the weight of a crown being greater than the sum of its constituent materials. But this is true of rank in general, of medals in particular, of many words, and especially of names. The word “gift” carries its own weight. Take an item of even moderate value and wrap about it some fraction of an ounce of festival paper—the scales will hardly flutter. Set the word “gift” upon it, and the person who receives it may stagger beneath the added burden.
“You see, Malar,” Yute said. “I told you she was tenacious.” “Brothel-crabs are tenacious,” Malar grunted. “W—” “I feel you’re undervaluing her.” Yute cut off the first of Livira’s questions about brothels, crabs, and brothel-crabs.
MALAR DO YOU HAVE AN STD
In the lamplight he looked ghostly white, like something apart from the world, as if he weren’t part of humanity at all, something closer to an assistant than to a man like Malar.
Livira imagined them both assistants made flesh.
Wanderers stumbling through portals, falling into pools, borne there by magic rings or wizard’s spells—in one case even an enchanted button!—none
magic ring = Narnia
button = the magicians
A circle drawn with the blood of a white one will open the way to the wood.
Many objects are an inherent invitation. A sharp edge invites you to cut. A coin wishes to be spent. A sword begs for violence. A door requires that you try to open it.
And thirdly, my family had five dogs that I grew up with, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Jim.”
“Old dogs can teach us new tricks. An old dog shuffles on, relentlessly happy, still interested in the world. Even when they’re too worn out to run it’s still there—no bitterness, no regret, no looking back, just on to the next thing with amiable confusion. Dogs are nothing but good.”
Evar went to stand with her. “Why this one?” “There was a guinea pig cropping the grass at the edge when I came this way to find you,” Livira said. “A what?” “Like a rat, only fat and slow with no tail. A sausage on legs. I saw one in a book. This was the first real one.” Evar wasn’t sure about the “real” part. “So we’re choosing this one because of a lucky rat?”
Strangely, although he was clean-shaven, he had still seemed bristly against her skin.
“The whole city smells down here. Of lots of things. But there’s one thing in particular. A barbed kind of smell. Gets into your nose . . . You must have caught it too?”
Evar’s sense of smell seemed far more sensitive than hers.
Livira could smell the sharp chemical stench now, gathered in the room where the wind hadn’t yet fully cleared it. It reminded her strongly of the gas that the rogue alchemist had been paid to kill her with.
His mouth remembered her kiss. He felt her hand in his. She had taught him to fly.
“Livira?” Arpix opened the door in an unbuttoned nightshirt, blinking at her sleepily from his considerable height. “How is that a question?” She pushed past him. “Close the door.” Arpix followed her into his reception room where she’d already thrown herself down onto his threadbare couch. “All right. Allow me to rephrase: what do you want, Livira?”
“You told me that Evar said the assistants could see him when he was a ghost.” Arpix said it to her back. She turned towards him. “I did.” “And that two sets of children’s footprints led from pools of assistant blood right in front of where hundreds of them were watching over the city.”
“A whole turkey gone? A ham yesterday. I swear this kitchen is haunted!”
Truths cast many shadows, some of which are very different when the light shines from one direction than from another.
I expected you to have news, but I don’t think anything else you might have to say could surprise me more than Yamala agreeing to see you.” “I kissed a sabber.” “I stand corrected.”
You know what rich people are good at? Saving themselves.
Livira took a deep breath, stalked back to the crowd around the steps, and dived into its midst. Several moments later she tore free clutching a squalling baby. “Run!” she screeched and took to her heels after the distant Yute and Salamonda. True to Livira’s expectations, there was something about a stolen baby that made people act without pause for thought.
Nobody stood much chance against a sabber, but Yute had always given her the impression that a stubborn six-year-old could wrestle him to submission.
Many authorities declare the library to have been Irad’s work—but in truth it is the work of Irad and of Jaspeth and of neither of them. The structure that we are familiar with—or at least as familiar as a man may be with a possibly infinite building that reaches into many realities, many worlds, and many times—is something that neither brother would claim as their own. It is both far less than Irad’s vision, and far more than Jaspeth would have exist. It is, like every good compromise, displeasing to all parties concerned.
The idea that what was needed lay before us the whole time is almost as old as the concept of need. The greenest grass may hide beneath your feet.
“Both your races lived in harmony. The chemical attack came from members of a third race seeking their own justice.
“You’re going to kill him?” Evar barked. “He’s you, Clovis. Those are your words coming out of his mouth.
“Do what you will with him then. But hear me on this one thing. You understand me—so you must understand that I will burn everything down before I let you hurt her.”
I need another note color bc godDAMN EVAR
The last words a person speaks are given additional weight. Some legal systems codify that gravitas into the statutes, allowing evidence from the deathbed greater import. But, often as not, the last words to pass our lips do so without the burden of knowing no more will follow. They are a random line from a random page in a novel that believes it will be completed. Just imagine what . . .
Evar glanced back at his sister. He wanted to say that she had trained for war her whole life, but her greatest fight might be not to use the weapon she had become.
“Not idiot. Save life. Many times.” “Not an idiot. I’m sorry. But the reason I’m carrying this very heavy genius who thought he could stop my sister is because he matters to you.”
Malar raised his head and glared at Evar, spitting out more words. “He says he doesn’t like you,” Livira supplied. “And that if you so much as look at me sideways he’ll end you.” She paused while Malar said something else. “And he says thank you for saving his life.”
Tell that fucking sabber to eat shit,” Malar spat. “And if he lays a hand on you, I’m going to cut it off.” Livira stretched her sabbertine around Malar’s instructions. Malar had more to say. “Tell him if I see that red-maned cunt again I’ll cut her heart out.” Livira growled and rumbled. “And he says thank you for saving his life.”
Livira remembered that the corrupted assistant had given Yamala’s assistant a wound down across its eyebrow and cheek. A wound that had allowed it too to be corrupted.
It is often said that there’s always a bigger fish. The universe, however, prefers cycles to stretches. There is in fact a biggest fish. What is true is that there is always something that will feast upon the feaster. The biggest of fish are ultimately devoured by many small ones.
“As Master Yute is explaining to my sister that you are not the humans who murdered her family,
“That one is perhaps the strangest of all of them for its story is woven through the Exchange, a place where creatures in time’s flow were never intended to tread. Guard it well, Livira.” He paused then squeezed her hands in a most un-Yute-like gesture. “It has been an honour.”
“How’s your rowing?” Livira grinned at him. “Uh . . . I’ve seen an illustration—” “Oarful, then.” “Was that a joke?” “Hush. I’ll row.”
There is a wood that stands between all worlds and all whens. A woodcutter walks its rows. Time is the echo of his axe. Once one has mastered the navigation of this place, there is no destination beyond reach, be it Chorley or Charn. Similarly, any date upon the calendar and beyond is yours for the taking. Simply remember that you cannot go back, and you need never fear the woodcutter.
I’ve lost her. I’ve lost myself . . . And then the threat, the only time the Soldier had ever spoken with true passion: Know this . . . if you hurt her, no army will save you from me.
Now, though, Yute was in the process of ushering the refugees through a portal that lay between Livira’s time and Evar’s.
irony or paradox? To truly understand something you must see it whole. You must step outside the thing, outside the world that holds it, outside the time that counts its measure. Only when you stand outside the object of your interrogation and set God’s eye upon it will you understand that to know it properly you should never have left.
“Gods can’t pick up towers without breaking them?” Evar eyed her doubtfully, kicking at the ocean around his ankles. “Don’t do that either! You’ll drown some sailors or squash a whale or something.”
“So, this is what it’s like to be you?” Livira elbowed him. “I’m not this small.”
“He’s the knight who climbs up her hair every night and . . . you know . . . gets to know her.”
“Looks like he’s got a really big sword.”
“What are you telling me?” Evar looked ashen now, as if this fairy tale had suddenly become the whole of his heart. “I don’t arrive too late. I’m not going to. You’ve seen how fast I am.” But Livira, who had no more than her fingertips still touching time’s flow, knew better than that. She saw the future stamped upon the face of the past, two sides of an ever-spinning coin. She understood the gift of purpose, the distraction it provided from the awful completeness of the circle. She knew the knight would find her broken no matter how fast he rode. She squeezed his hand, blinded by tears.
...more
I WILL NOT CRY I WILL NOT CRY I WILL NOT CRY I WILL NOT CRY I WILL NOT CRY I WILL NOT
The Assistant blinked and looked down at the book in her hand. She glanced up briefly at the Soldier. He held his silence but nodded. The Assistant opened the book and wrote with her finger across the middle of the sheet. Evar! Don’t turn the page. I’m in the Exchange. Find me at the bottom
