tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-83966455719613650472024-03-19T05:23:05.738-07:00Bess HamiltonWriter. Mainly literary fiction with a Gothic twist.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-41273072249185760262017-05-02T19:38:00.000-07:002017-05-02T19:38:27.630-07:00Sneak peek<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While I'm waiting to start edits on my first novel <i>Like This You Keep Them Alive</i>, I've started working on the next one, tentatively titled <i>Echoes</i>. This new project is in the very early stages of the first draft, but I decided since I haven't posted on here in a while, I'd share what I have for the beginning. Enjoy!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chapter 1</span><br />
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her hands are red, as if she’s dipped them in paint. Not paint. Blood. She doesn’t know if it’s hers or someone else’s. Wind whips her hair around her face and whirls dead leaves into small twisters. Where is she? Lazelle doesn’t know this place. It’s dark, darker than night and the sky is black and heavy with storm clouds, but no rain falls. The air smells and tastes of ozone.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lightning turns the whole world bright and blinds her. It hits something. She hears the explosion. Thunder follows after. She opens her eyes. The tree in the meadow, the giant tree is on fire from the inside. Cracks reveal an interior flame. A man steps out of the woods on the other side of the meadow. His eyes glow like a cat’s eyes, like the lightning or the fire.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Welcome home,” he says. And she screams.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-ffc32c07-cc24-c344-72b8-dc45b324b450" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She woke up, almost sure she was still screaming, but all Lazelle heard was her own breath pushed hard out of her chest. She sat up. Sweat ran down her back, pooled between her breasts and gathered at the bends of her elbows, the backs of her knees. She could still taste the ozone from her dream. Her heart beat so fast, she was afraid she was having a heart attack. She put her hand to her sweaty chest to steady her heart.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Despite the sweat, she was cold. She shivered as she groped at the top of her dresser for the hoodie and sweatpants she had left there before bed. On the other side of the bed, Ethan slept undisturbed.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She pulled her duvet up to her chin and tried to fall asleep, but also tried not to think of the dream. Sometimes, on these nights, she would fall right back into the nightmare and wake up again, sweating and afraid. Tonight, she fell asleep and dreamed of nothing.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the morning, before work and after she’d eaten breakfast, Lazelle took out her sketchbook and fancy markers, the ones Ethan had chided her for spending so much money on and drew her dream. Or at least the final scene. She put herself in the foreground, a little to the left. Everything was black and purple and blue. The colours of night. Except for the tree’s cracks of flame and the man’s cat eyes. In ink, over the image, she scrawled “Welcome home.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What’s that?” Ethan leaned over her shoulder. He took a sip of his coffee and the slurp of it set her teeth on edge. She shut her sketchbook.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Nothing. I’ve got to get dressed.” Lazelle took the book with her and put it back in its home, hidden among the stack of novels and memoirs on her nightstand.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still, when they parted ways in the parking lot, she kissed him and told him to have a good day.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There are footprints in the snow outside the barn. The barn door bangs against the side of the barn in the wind, but the horses are safe in their stalls. Hugh wrestles against the wind to shut the doors and bring the heavy beam across to latch them. The horses whinny and he wishes he were with them, warm and safe. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He looks down at the footprints, holding the lantern close to light them. Blood fills the first few and then decorates the snow around the rest with drops. The wind cuts through him. An east wind. Never good. The sky has cleared and the snow reflects back the moon. Everything is clear in the cold night air. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hugh pulls his scarf up around his face. The woods are dark. It is light here in the yard between the barn and the woods. His cottage is just there and he could go inside, light a fire and go to bed. God forgive him. He could pretend he’d heard nothing, seen nothing. After all, he’s been doing it for years.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But he lifts his lantern and feels at his waist for his hunting knife. There may be a wolf in the woods, although they say the wolves were driven out years ago.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The trees groan and clack and screech as their branches rub against each other, pushed by the wind. The woods are silent otherwise. No animals. No people. Just him and his weak circle of light and the moon. He knows the way. Hasn’t he been walking this path his whole life? </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The tree stands alone in the meadow. The footprints he’s been tracking lead right up to it. But no one is there. He walks up to the tree and puts his hand to the crosses marked on it. The bark is rough against his forehead, but he leans into the tree. Something wet runs down his face and he wipes it away. He looks at his fingers, waxen with cold and his finger tips are red. Blood oozes from the crosses carved into the tree. Crosses he carved. He takes out his knife and carves one more, blood welling up as he cuts into the bark. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A wail from behind him. He turns to face it. There’s a woman in a cloak standing behind him. A laugh to his side. A man stands shadowed at the edge of the forest, but his smile reflects back the moonlight. “I’ve missed you,” the man says.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">And the woman steps forward. She wails again. It’s an unearthly sound and he remembers stories of the banshee. She takes down her hood and he flinches in anticipation. But it is not woman. It is a creature with a cat’s head and it lunges for him.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A cold nose touched his face and he flailed out with his arm, knocking the cat to the ground. It landed with a thump and a meow. But he heard it run off, so he knew it wasn’t hurt. He sat up and rubbed his face.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“God damn cats,” he said. Outside of the blankets, it was cold. It wasn’t winter. It wasn’t. It was the end of summer. But his dream hung on around him and made him cold. He remembered the crunch of snow under his feet. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hugh went to his bedroom window and looked out. The lawn stretched out to the cliff’s edge and the lake beyond. He couldn’t see the barn from this angle. And there were no horses there. There hadn’t been since before his grandfather’s time.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Honey?” she said in a slurred, sleepy voice. It was rare Jen stayed the night. Their arrangement was more casual than that, but sometimes it was too late or whatever and she stayed. It didn’t mean anything really. She would leave tomorrow and they wouldn’t talk again until one of them got lonely or horny or bored. And that was just fine. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Just getting a drink, go back to sleep,” he said and she mumbled something and was out again if she was ever really awake.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He went to the bathroom and rummaged through the medicine cabinet. He still had the sleeping pills the doctor gave him that long winter after Cheryl died. They hadn’t especially worked then, but maybe they’d work now. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For weeks now, he’d startled out of sleep, sometimes with a nightmare still clinging to him, other times with no memory of what had brought him up out of sleep. But he could never get back to sleep after and he was so tired. Exhausted. Beyond that. He would do anything to rest. So he took two pills and swallowed them down with a generous cup of water. Then he went back to bed. Jen threw her arm across him, pinning him so he stared up at the ceiling. But the pills must have worked because the next time Hugh opened his eyes it was mid-morning and Jen was long since gone.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the cats stretched beside him, yawning, opening its mouth wide in a silent roar. Fangs. Lunging. But this cat rubbed its face against his and then jumped down from the bed.</span></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-87711732056014570382017-03-17T09:18:00.003-07:002017-03-17T09:18:45.750-07:00From Ashes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cicadas sing in a rise and fall chorus of summer outside my
office window. Along with a slight breeze, the open window lets in the sound of
children laughing, shrieking, hollering from the park across the street and the
bright green smell of fresh cut grass.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My hands stick to everything on my desk. Humidity wilts the
pages in my notebook and a slick sheen of sweat covers my skin. I long to be
outside, running with those kids, hurtling between the grassy park and the cool
waters of the public pool.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Instead, I’m trying to make out the near indecipherable
cursive of long dead census takers on my laptop screen. My eyes ache with the
effort. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My little office, crowded with stacks of papers and books
left behind by others like me over decades, is not air conditioned. A fan creaks
back and forth, pushing hot air around, ruffling papers. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The café, two doors down, makes wonderful cold iced tea and
lemonade. The thought of a glass, beads of condensation sliding down, is almost
refreshing enough. I’ll go after five pages. Friday afternoon and I bribe
myself to finish my work like a recalcitrant child.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve been here since late spring. I’m part of a
multidisciplinary team studying the town. Our study has been going on since the
1960s. I’m a historian by trade, interested in the untold lives of women in
small rural communities. My colleagues are geneticists, sociologists,
anthropologists, fertility experts. We’re a strange mix of the sciences and
humanities. The last few years, we’ve experimented with adding artists to see
if they can, with their different eyes, find something we’re missing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All children born here are female. The pattern has held for
over a century, maybe longer. No one knows why. Careful, probing interviews
reveal none of the women are practicing sex selection. Genetic tests have been
unhelpful. Any men or boys in the community are brought in from outside.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s a strange world of its own. Rural enough that it’s
somewhat cut off from the larger trends and tides of the world, but large enough
that you almost never need to leave town to get anything.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I proposed joining the study, my advisor had looked at
me owlishly over his reading glasses. He has a sad, jowly face like a
bloodhound. People who don’t know him assume he’s a melancholy person. He’s
not. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But he did look melancholy that day. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Don’t you go falling in love and staying there,” he said. And
I laughed and asked him how, exactly, that would happen in a town full of
women, where the men, according to statistics, were all married, or at least cohabitating.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He shook his head and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Not
with a person. Although that happens. We lose some of the men and a few of the
women every year. I mean, don’t fall in love with the town.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’d grown up in a small town and spent my teen years beating
against its boundaries. I dreamed of living in a city, surrounded by people,
anonymous. Back in the winter, I couldn’t imagine staying in a town so small.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can see what he meant. I like it here. The girls are bold,
confident in a way I’ve never seen before. My roommate in university had gone
to an all-girls private school and the girls in this town remind me of her
stories. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what I really like is walking at night. I’m a night owl.
I don’t sleep well and I think better when I’m on the move. Instead of pounding
out miles, going nowhere on a treadmill or stationary bike, I wander all over
town, feeling completely safe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A knock on my office door interrupts my reverie. When I call
the person to come in, my visitor surprises me. She’s an elderly woman I’ve
seen around town, but I’ve never actually met. She’s wearing a tailored, white suit
in summer weight wool. It looks soft to the touch. Her soft, finely wrinkled
skin is made up, but not heavily as some old women do because they can’t see.
She can definitely see. Her sharp, bright eyes roam over the stacks of papers
and books in my office. She’s like a crow, sharp-eyed, searching for something
shiny. Her gaze lands on me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She approaches my desk, hand out. I shake her soft, cool
hand. She carefully moves a stack of papers off the spare chair and brushes the
upholstered seat with her hand. Her posture, seated, is excellent and I find
myself pulling my shoulders back and sucking in my stomach.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” she says. “I’m Elsie Donovan. I
used to be in charge of the museum before they retired me and replaced me with
a professional.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ah. Yes. Mrs. Donovan. The museum’s curator told me about
her. Mrs. Donovan is the grand dame of town, one of its oldest citizens and
involved in nearly everything. Her sharp eyes miss nothing and she has no
compunction about setting things to rights.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I introduce myself and she waves me off. Of course she knows
who I am. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I heard that you were going through the old census records
and I thought, well, I can probably save her hours of tedium. You’re trying to
see if a man has ever been born here, right?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I nod. Folk knowledge says the last man was born here in the
early 1800s, but there’s no proof.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The last male infant born here was Edward Cummings, in
1815. He died before his tenth birthday.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I scribble this into my notebook so I can verify it later. She’s
so confident, but I need to check her facts. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’m going to tell you why we only give birth to daughters
here,” Mrs. Donovan says. Her smile is wide, her teeth are white and strong,
but it’s not an especially warm smile. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Jacob Cumming and his brother Eben founded this town. They
were deeded the land as thanks for some service or other. That’s not important
to my story.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back then, the land around here was all forest. Eben was a
romantic and he hated that they were going to clear the land and bring in
farmers. He’d come to Canada to escape the boredom of his life. He saw himself
running through the forest, learning its ways. Jacob was more practical.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They say Jacob chose the town site to placate Eben’s soul.
Perhaps so. The river is beautiful, with its rushing waters. But Jacob likely
chose the spot for the power offered by the water. They cut down all the trees.
Eben convinced Jacob to leave a few.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You’ve seen the old oak in the park? That’s one of Eben’s
trees. Little did he know what would happen there.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eben died. Drowned in the river he so loved. Jacob had no
one to warm his heart after that. His pile of money grew higher. People came to
the town, attracted by his prosperity. I will say, he built a neat, orderly
town. His work is visible yet in our wide streets and beautiful old buildings.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But a man wants to leave a legacy and Jacob was no
different. He was a handsome man. No doubt you’ve seen his portrait at the
museum. Even though he was older, he had no difficulty in finding families
willing to give him their daughters. But before he married, he wanted to be
sure that any woman he took for a wife would give him sons. He had visions of a
large family of strong, intelligent sons. They’d grow the family’s wealth and
found other prosperous towns in this new land.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But how to be sure a woman will give you sons? Jacob didn’t
know. Because a family would have needed to have made one daughter in order for
him to have a wife. Immediately, he eliminated any potential wives who had
sisters. He took a mistress to test himself. She had three boys. But he couldn’t
marry her. She was not suited to building an empire. Those boys he apprenticed
off to far away towns and all traces of them have been lost.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eventually, he found a wife. Charlotte Gibbons was the
youngest of twelve children. The other eleven were all boys. Every single one
of her brothers was tall and strong and excelled in his studies. They were
perfect specimens and if Jacob could have married one of them, he likely would
have.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Charlotte was beautiful, they say. No one knows though
because Jacob destroyed all images of her. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She had a child almost one year after they married. A
daughter named Rebecca. Charlotte doted on that child. Everyone spoke of it.
Jacob never minded that child. It was as if she didn’t exist. He waited a
decent time, but before Rebecca was a year old, Charlotte was pregnant again.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That summer was hot and a pregnant woman can be so
uncomfortable in the heat. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Charlotte had
taken to lying in sleeping porch, keeping little Rebecca close by. One
afternoon, Charlotte had dozed off and when she woke up, little Rebecca was
gone.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Search parties scoured the town. Even Jacob joined them to
look for the child. They found her body in the woods several days later.
Charlotte was inconsolable. Her grief hastened her labour and her son was born
early. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The little boy survived though. Jacob hired nurses to care
for the child and sought medical advice from everywhere. Charles was never
strong, but he did live. When he was old enough to toddle around, his father
took him everywhere. What a loving father Jacob was! People said it was because
he’d lost the first and was not about to make the same mistake.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few years later, Charlotte gave birth to another son.
Again, Jacob doted on the child, hiring extra help. Charlotte was
still beautiful, but some joy had gone from her. She loved her little sons,
Charles and Edward, but she was not a happy woman.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If Jacob was disappointed that he did not get eleven sons
from his wife, no one ever heard him say it. He seemed content enough with the
two. Anything they wanted, they had. When it came time for the boys to go to
school, Jacob hired the best tutors and they had small classes at the Cummings
home with other sons of powerful men.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Life back then, even for the wealthy, could be a precarious
business. Charlotte had already lost a daughter. Jacob had lost a brother.
Others had losses too. When a fever swept through, no one was surprised, but
everyone prayed that their family would be spared.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Charles and Edward died. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the funeral, as the sexton lowered their double coffin
into the grave, Jacob tried to leap in. He was frenzied in his grief. But,
eventually, he began to speak of how he and his wife were still young. They
could have more sons.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Charlotte gave birth to a daughter, Ruth, the next year. The
joy came back to her, a little. She was not the same, but she took comfort in
this new baby. After all, so many women she knew had lost their children. Her
sorrows, while severe, were not unique.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ruth was taken from her cradle in the night. Again, a search
party was called. Again, the wee body was found days later. But this time,
there was a mark on the body. A bruise in the shape of a hand over the little
one’s face.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People began to whisper. How could it happen again, in
almost the same way? Both times, the child had been snatched while the mother slept.
Women said to each other they’d never sleep while a stranger was in their
homes. They’d know. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One night, while drinking with the other town leaders, Jacob
let his suspicions of his wife slip out. He wanted more children, but he was
afraid she was not right in her head. How was it his children could not
survive? Did the fever take his boys? Or was it their mother, jealous her
daughter was gone while his sons survived?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This would have been the time to bring in a magistrate or
coroner. But the town closed up on itself. The whispers grew louder. Charlotte
began to hear them and her heart broke. She’d wanted her babies more than anything
in the world. Long after she lost any affection for Jacob, she’d wanted her
little ones.</div>
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The fire was already burning. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
They said she was stealing the lives of her children. They
said they were protecting their own. The little ones said they saw her in the
night, standing over their cribs or leaning down, sucking the breath from their
bodies.</div>
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She let them tie her to the stake. Jacob came to her. He
whispered in her ear. No one heard what he said, but they saw the hate in her
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securely. “I didn’t take your sons,” she hissed, “But I will.”</div>
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What happened next, who’s to know if it’s true? But it’s how
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The flames grew higher. Charlotte was entirely consumed. The
fire roared up with a whooshing sound, like a fire in the hearth will when you
blow on it. The heat forced the people back and back. Yet Eben’s oak tree was
untouched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some say the flames changed
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fueled by the love for her children and her hatred of Jacob.</div>
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ashes into the river.</div>
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Many years later, when Jacob was an elderly man, he was in
church beside his new wife, praying that the baby she was carrying would be a
boy. No boys had been born since his Edward. While mouthing his prayer, Jacob
burst into flame, burning without heat until only his shoes and a greasy streak
on the pew remained.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Mrs. Donovan started speaking, I grabbed a pen. But at
some point in her story, I set the pen down.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can’t believe her. And yet the images are so vivid in my
mind. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Have you told anyone this before?” I ask.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She grins at me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
teeth bright against her deep red slash of lipstick. “Every few year, I tell one of
you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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“How is it I’ve never heard it before?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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She shrugs. “We townsfolk don’t like letting outsiders know
too much.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“But I’m not one of you.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She lifts a painted eyebrow. “Aren’t you?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mrs. Donovan stands. For a woman over ninety, she is
remarkably quick in her movements. She yanks on her jacket to straighten it and
puts a hand to her cloud of white curls. “This weather, murder on the hair.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the door, she pauses, “Welcome. You’ll love it here.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The door closes behind her. I stare down at my notes. The
cicadas begin another chorus in their summer song.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-89889984137565563132017-03-15T14:42:00.001-07:002017-03-15T14:42:15.593-07:00Women's Work<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We had enjoyed a cozy
chat over tea in her somewhat old-fashioned, but beautiful parlour. My editor
had warned me that the old woman was still sharp-witted despite her advanced
years and I found this to be true. We had whiled the afternoon away, talking
about her experiences as an emigrant to Canada more than sixty years before and
her subsequent literary career.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“In Europe, autumn and
winter evenings are for ghost stories,” she said in response to a passing
remark I made about the afternoon turning to evening quickly, a reminder of the
coming winter.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Well, then,” I
answered, “Perhaps you can tell me about the origins of the ghost on Lakeshore
Road, since you were one of the first settlers.” While researching Mrs. Parr’s
long life, I had come across a small note in an old edition of the newspaper
about sightings of a ghost.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">She seemed not to hear
my question. Instead, she turned away from me to instruct her maid to draw the
curtains and light the lamps. My editor had told me this was a famous trick
Mrs. Parr used to gather her thoughts or to avoid a question she did not care
to answer. He said the best method was to simply let the silence fall,
unremarked upon.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Finally, she set her
teacup on the table. “First, you must promise me that you will not publish any
of what I am about to tell you until I am dead. I’m an old woman. I’ve lived
almost a century. You won’t have long to wait.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I knew, then, that what
she was about to tell me was going to be a cracker of a story, whether it
proved to be true. I had long since learned in my journalistic career that the
best tidbits came off the record. I turned to a fresh page in my notebook and
took up a sharp pencil.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">****</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Late autumn was always
my favourite season when we were living in the bush. I gloried in the colours
of the trees, the crispness of the air. Nothing satisfied me more than taking
stock of everything I had preserved for the winter. And yet, there was always a
worry in the back of my mind. Had I done enough? Were we ready for the long,
cold nights? Even now, so many years later, I think of those days.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Strange to think, but
our little string of houses that clung to the old shore road, was a world of
women. My husband and my brother often left me and my sister-in-law Anna to
manage our joined farms as they pursued more fitting employment for two
gentlemen. Further down the road, there lived a woman whose husband left her
behind to pursue his game and drink. He had been briefly in my husband's
regiment and was the sort of wastrel whose family was all too eager to dispatch
to Canada.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anna and I would often
take baskets to this poor woman, Maude. Sometimes, I would feel a pang of guilt
as she eagerly took whatever scraps we could spare. While my sisters at home
would sneer at my rough hands, Maude let me feel superior. Anna and I would
spend hours talking over Maude's situation. Neither one of us would say aloud that
while Anna was pretty, young and accomplished, she had ruined her life by
marrying for love.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I knew little of
traditional accomplishments as my father had given me the classical education
he would have given a son. At thirty, I married to avoid spinsterhood and
escape the genteel poverty of home. Anna was the daughter of a local farmer. My
brother had decided a wife familiar with the land and the work required would
be a much better match than any impoverished gentlewoman he could have found in
England.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Were Anna and I truly
Maude's friends? It shames me to say that we were not at first. She was our
Christian duty, abandoned by a profligate man, left to starve with her
children. She couldn't afford any help and knew nothing of managing a
household, let alone a half-cleared farm on the edge of the wilderness.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But that day, helping my
little daughter string apple slices for drying, I didn't think of Maude. I was
spinning out schemes for leaving our farm for town life. I missed concerts and
teas and not fretting about preparing for winter. I wanted to meet with other
writers and read newspapers when they were new and not months old. The smell of
snow in the air put a chill in my heart.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I was surprised when
Maude came into view, bare-headed, without a shawl despite the coolness of the
day. She was practically dragging her oldest child behind her. The little boy
stumbled and staggered to keep pace with her. Her other child, she clutched
tight to her chest.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Maude? What a
surprise. Come inside and I'll get you a cup of chicory coffee,’ I said, hastily
putting my apple slices to the side.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maude's wild glance
frightened me. I whispered to my daughter, “Run and get your aunt. Tell her
Mrs. Thursby is here and is ill.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I put my arm around
Maude's shoulder and guided her inside. My servant girl took Maude's children
to another room to ply them with fruit preserves and bread and butter.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maude's hands shook as
she took a cup of coffee. “Oh, Jane. I need your help. Something terrible has
happened.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Are you ill,
Maude?” She began to shake and I covered her with one of my shawls.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Jane, is your
husband at home?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"No. He and Mr.
Stacey went to town to inquire after some government posts. You don't seem
yourself. Are you quite well?" My usual superior satisfaction with myself
evaporated in the face of her very real distress.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Good. Can you come
back to my house with me? Please. I need your help." She took my hands and
looked into my eyes with such naked earnestness that I was a bit ashamed for
her.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anna bustled in.
"Now, then, Maude. What is the trouble?"</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maude repeated the same
vague details that she had given me. Anna was relieved to find that Maude's
children were happily playing with my daughters. Anna pressed for more
information; she always had a more forthright manner than I. However, it was
futile. Maude would only say that something terrible had happened. Finally,
Anna proposed that we take the cart over to Maude's cabin.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The little cabin was the
last one before the road petered out into a trail. Maude's husband had been
able to host a bee to get it and the barn built because he had plied neighbours
with plenty of liquor. But it was all a slapdash job and nothing had been done
since the building to improve the cabin. It was painfully cold in winter.
Maude's upbringing had not prepared her properly. Nor had mine really. But she
had only learned to be ornamental and amusing. I, at least, was able to earn a
living with my pen and also had abundant common sense. Maude had none of these
and had chosen her husband poorly. She had no recourse but to rely on the
kindness of people such as Anna and me who looked down our noses at her.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">When we arrived, Maude
sprang from the cart and ran to the door of her cabin. She turned to us, "I
want you to help me, but I will not be judged. Can you promise me that?"</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anna cleared her throat.
I blushed. We promised not to judge.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Trembling, I followed
Maude into her small home. Anna gasped and gripped my hand so hard I felt as if
my bones would break.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Lying in a pool of blood
was Maude's husband. A clothes iron was on the floor beside him. I won't
describe what else I saw. It was too horrible. Anna ran back into the yard and
sat down heavily on the grass. Her face was pale and sweaty.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maude, strangely, was
much calmer now that she had shared her trouble with us. "Do you think
they will hang me for this? I did not mean to kill him. I only wanted him to
stop. You see, he was trying to choke me." I had not noticed before, but
she had a muffler around her neck. She pulled it away to show me the bruises.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Maude, dear, what
happened?"</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"He came back,
looking for money. He always believed that I had hidden some of my fortune from
him. My uncle had tried to write into the marriage settlement that I should
have my own income, safe from Roger. But Roger had refused to sign and I was
too stupid to know better. But Roger suspected my uncle sent me money."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Did he? Send you
money, I mean?"</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"No! Do you think I
would let my children nearly starve on what meagre handouts you brought us? No.
The only thing I had was my mother's pearl set that I had hidden from him. I so
wanted Julia to have it to wear when she married," Maude began to cry.
"He was so angry that I didn't have any money to give him. He flew into a
rage."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I looked about and saw
her furniture was tossed around and even broken. She had so little left for
that brute to take. "And he told me that he had another wife. In
America!" She began to sob in earnest. "He told her that he was a
widower. I thought a thousand times of pretending he was dead and moving away
from here to start again as a widow. But I had no money! And I couldn't profane
the vows I made before God."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I sighed and avoided
looking at the terrible corpse. "You were defending yourself? Did your
children see?"</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"No. I sent them
out as soon as he came in. They don't even know him."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anna came back in,
restored to her usual brusqueness. "We must go to the magistrate. Tell him
exactly what happened. Perhaps he'll be merciful," she said.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"And if I go to
jail or even hang, will you care for my children?" Maude asked.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"Yes, of
course." Anna said.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"But does it have
to come to that?" I asked. "No one but us knows he was even here. He
won't be missed. He's nothing but gaming debts and liquor."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"And if we're
caught? Then we may hang too," Anna said.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"We won't be
caught. Think. What do we need to do? We need to dispose of Roger. And then get
rid of all this blood. What if we set fire to the cabin? Remember when the fire
came through two summers ago? The Smiths’ cabin burned to the ground. Nothing
was left. Fires happen all the time."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Anna shook her head.
"No. Bones don't burn like that. There would still be something left of
Roger. I remember a fire when I was a little girl. Nothing was left of the
house, but they found the bones of the people still inside." She paced
about for a while. It was her habit when thinking. I had always thought it a
shame that she had no schooling beyond learning enough to keep her household
accounts.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"The lake. It's
vast. We could take him out there in the rowboat and sink him. There's a huge
pile of stones at my farm from the when the masons built the new stone house.
We can use some of those. Then we burn the cabin," Ann said.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"And in a few
months, Maude, we can tell people that you had received word from America that
your husband has died. Then you're free," I said.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Maude clapped her hands.
"Thank you. I knew you'd be able to help. Do you really think I'm still
pretty enough to get married again?"</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I felt a chill in my
heart, but I brought myself to say, "Yes. You'll find yourself a rich
widower within the year, I should think."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We carried out our plan
just as we had described it and were back to our farms before our husbands
returned. Maude concocted a story of her flight from the fire and her children
were small enough that she was able to tell them the story enough that they believed
it.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Yet, it weighed on me.
We had helped a murder go unpunished. Was it the right thing to do? </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For many nights after, I
couldn't sleep. One day, my husband asked me what I had on my mind.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"I am happy that
we've made a success of our bit of land here in the bush," I said,
"But I would like to put my education to use and found a girls' school.
It's a new country. I'd like girls to be able to earn their own way in life
rather than rely on marriage to protect them."</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My husband, bless him,
kissed my cheek and said, "A wonderful project. Not too many people have
our luck, do they? Such a pity." </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">******</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Was his body ever
found?” I asked at the end of Mrs. Parr’s tale.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Oh yes. But it washed
up so far down the shore that the no one ever thought it came from our area. I
only saw the notice in the paper because I had published a story in the same
edition. It was a ghost story, naturally.” She laughed.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">She and Anna had founded
their school. It had been part of my research for this story. I had talked to
former students who spoke of the well-rounded education they had received.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“And what about Maude?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“She regained her
health. She was still quite a young lady. And men were always so plentiful out
here. Very few women were brave enough to emigrate in those days. I was wrong,
though. She did not marry an old widower. Instead, she found herself a nice
young bachelor. He was a merchant and they lived quite well. She died quite a
long time ago. Her children still write me.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“And you never told anyone
about Roger?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“Oh, well, I’m a
terrible liar,” Mrs. Parr answered. “My husband knew almost immediately that
something had happened. I confessed it all eventually. He said it wasn’t right
that anyone should hang for relieving the world of Roger. I married a good man.
It was always a true partnership.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mrs. Parr died several
weeks later. On the way back from the memorial service, I thought of how she
had seen this part of the country change.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I decided not to publish
her story. But I did take a trip down Lakeshore Road in the late autumn.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-10089175883986548402017-02-28T19:05:00.004-08:002017-02-28T19:11:52.854-08:00Bedtime Story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixuJRs0X3GUN7avoFSq24x5iNX_GFzz_RVYNU5ir9wFCEuZyoVG0AHIKxBayCWmIBATc5I0RlH0OQCZ4is4190Tn4NFJhLMtZ9kRI6naitvxPZI62_HsFiYHy69TMoApWTjDgbh8lQCr4/s1600/street-lights.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixuJRs0X3GUN7avoFSq24x5iNX_GFzz_RVYNU5ir9wFCEuZyoVG0AHIKxBayCWmIBATc5I0RlH0OQCZ4is4190Tn4NFJhLMtZ9kRI6naitvxPZI62_HsFiYHy69TMoApWTjDgbh8lQCr4/s320/street-lights.jpg" width="228" />
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<b id="docs-internal-guid-c28a4c9f-87d3-36db-de1f-492f416aed81" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">FADE IN:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">EXTERIOR. DEAD-END STREET. LATE NIGHT.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A street in an older neighbourhood. The houses are all over hundred years old. Many of the houses have large front porches. The street lights are on, casting orange light. No cars are on the road and no people are walking on the street. Only one house has an exterior light on.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A young MAN, in his mid-twenties, sits in an old ARMCHAIR on the lit PORCH. He is drinking a BEER and listening to the RADIO.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As we move closer, we see that he sits slumped in the CHAIR. He is attractive, but his face is pale and he has dark circles under his eyes. His skin glistens with sweat. He wears a faded t-shirt and shorts.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">RADIO ANNOUNCER (V.O.)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another record-breaking day on the way. The daytime high will be thirty-five degrees, but with the humidity it will feel more like 50. We’re over 30 days into this heat wave and no relief in sight. Right now, it’s 25.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN shuts off the RADIO and sips his BEER. We hear CRICKETS and FROGS in the background. As MAN speaks, we begin to hear birds singing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN (V.O.)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hadn’t slept in weeks. All I could get were a few restless hours of not awake, not all the way asleep.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life got strange. Out of focus and lacking all colour. All I could think about was sleep. The one thing I couldn’t get.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I spent my nights watching the street and listening to the sounds of the river at the end of the street.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN (V.O.) (CONT)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I learned what the sky looked like as night lightens towards day, that the birds sing loudest just before sunrise.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I waited for sleep or sunrise. Whichever came first.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN looks up the street. He sees a young WOMAN, also in her mid-twenties, walking slowly down the street.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She walks very slowly, with her body held very straight, like a dancer. She is beautiful. Between the orange glow of the STREETLIGHTS, she fades out of view. She wears pyjamas in a bright printed fabric. Her feet are bare. Her face is blank and her gaze is fixed forward. The MAN watches the WOMAN walk by.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN stands up and walks to the bottom step of the porch. He watches the WOMAN walk to the end of the street. As he watches, we see his face change from confusion to understanding. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN runs out into the street and past the WOMAN. He stands in front of her and places his hands on her shoulders. She stops walking, but her face remains blank and somewhat slack.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(quietly)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 108pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hey. Wake up.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN shakes WOMAN gently. Her expression changes as she wakes up. She looks around as if unsure of where she is, but she is not afraid or startled.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 108pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I – uh – I, where am I?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, you’re on Knox Street. Almost at the river, actually. You were sleepwalking, I think. You just about went for a swim in the river.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I do that. Sleepwalk, I mean.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She smiles at MAN. Her smile is open and friendly.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thanks for stopping me. Although, you know, a swim would be kind of nice in this heat. Don’t you think?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I guess, but not in there. Smell that? That dead smell? That’s the river. It stinks a bit more every day. I think it’s drying up. You’d end up more dirty than clean in that water.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They say nothing for a few beats. They stand on the street looking at each other. It is not an awkward pause. MAN appears to be sleepwalking now.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN becomes alert again and takes his hands from her shoulders.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Can I give you a ride home? Where do you live?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m over on Leslie. Usually, I don’t leave the yard, but sometimes – I walk a little farther. But I think this is the farthest I’ve ever gone.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let me take you home.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">INTERIOR. CAR. EARLY MORNING.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The car is stopped. WOMAN is asleep with her head against the window. MAN watches her sleep for a few moments and then wakes her. She stretches and yawns.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We hear BIRDS singing loudly.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sorry! Since the heat wave started, all I do is sleep. As soon as I sit still, I’m out.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She snaps her fingers.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like that. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wish I slept like that. Ever since it started, I’ve had the worst insomnia. Pills, booze, herbal teas, counting sheep, nothing works. Every night, I sleep less.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN takes his face in her hands and looks into his eyes. They are very close. They look as if they are about to kiss.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You’re the most exhausted person I’ve ever met. I feel sleepy just breathing the same air as you.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She sits back and pats his cheek. She undoes her seatbelt and gets out of the car. She leans in the door.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Good morning! Thanks for saving me from the river.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN watches as she walks away. We only see him watching her. We do not see her. He leans his head against the steering wheel. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">EXTERIOR. PORCH. DAY LIGHT.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN sits on porch in an armchair. He is looking at the street.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We hear CICADAS buzzing in the background. MAN is tired and sweaty.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN comes in from off frame. She moves quickly, bounding up the stairs. She carries a PILLOW. She is smiling. She is wearing different pyjamas, but these are also brightly coloured.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hello, sleepy-head! Or should I say, sleepless-head?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hi! How are you? Did you sleep OK once you got home?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(He is more energetic as he speaks to her.)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He stands up to greet her.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 108pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes. But you didn’t.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 108pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 108pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I’m here to sleep with you.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN hesitates. He looks surprised. WOMAN walks past him and into the house.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN (OFF SCREEN)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Literally, I mean! Where’s your room?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN is confused. He pauses to think about what she means, but he’s too tired to understand. He shrugs his shoulders and follows her inside.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">INTERIOR. BEDROOM. DAY</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN makes the bed. She tucks sheets in and smooths the surface. She closes blinds so the room is dim. MAN watches her. Her PILLOW is on the bed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There. The bed is very important. You should feel secure when you’re sleeping. It should feel like the safest place in the world. You should be able to slide into the sheets like a letter into an envelope.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m not sleeping because I don’t make my bed?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well, it doesn’t help.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now get in.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She past the bed firmly. MAN gets into the bed. WOMAN gets in beside him. She lies on her side, facing the wall. He lies on his back. His posture is stiff. He does not touch her. As she speaks, he follows her directions. She is relaxed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Come closer. I want you to feel me breathing.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s right.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, put your arm around me. There.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now, close your eyes.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Breathe in deeply.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exhale slowly.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Relax your muscles. One at a time. Let it go. Feel how relaxed I am? How loose? Melt into the bed. Let it hold you up.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now what?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pay attention to how I breathe. Breathe with me.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her voice is slowing her words are harder to hear.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">WOMAN</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Breathe slowly and relax.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We hear them both breathing together. Their breathing slows as they sleep. We watch them sleep for several moments.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">INTERIOR. BEDROOM. EARLY EVENING.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We hear RAIN outside. LIGHTNING lights the room bright blue intermittently. THUNDER rumbles in the distance.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN is alone in the bed. His eyes open. He sees that she is gone. Her PILLOW is also gone. For a moment, he lies still, looking at where she was. He appears lost for a moment.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He sits up, yawns and stretches. As he gets out of bed, we see the change in his appearance. He looks relaxed, but awake. He lays his hand on the place in the bed where she was and smiles.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">EXTERIOR. PORCH. EARLY EVENING.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The RAIN continues. MAN is standing on the porch looking at the street. He holds his hand to catch rain. He is smiling.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We hear the RADIO faintly:</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">RADIO ANNOUNCER (VOICE OVER)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As a cold front moves in, we’ll have rain and thunder for most of the evening.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tomorrow’s high is 23 degrees. Right now, outside our studio, it’s 20 and rain.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We hear faint music on the RADIO.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MAN (VOICE OVER)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the first time in weeks, I could sleep.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(pause)</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the first time, I was awake.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">THE END</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-56980728994749157872017-02-20T17:53:00.002-08:002017-02-28T19:15:18.140-08:00A Brighter Green<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQzaR1h4NPBvt3ymsO7xfaUMaeap2M0LB6ZFYaMCjJBLy2mFEVL45biHaI3vCu4hZ4wcc40qtjjcuSmfymRIQxos6vQeX5ceK92henEISx3GYgY4c7DMwgnv_yB6BeGzHbXPp-0Zlp2q8/s1600/11114089564_32e46e9ae6_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQzaR1h4NPBvt3ymsO7xfaUMaeap2M0LB6ZFYaMCjJBLy2mFEVL45biHaI3vCu4hZ4wcc40qtjjcuSmfymRIQxos6vQeX5ceK92henEISx3GYgY4c7DMwgnv_yB6BeGzHbXPp-0Zlp2q8/s320/11114089564_32e46e9ae6_z.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I heard people like stories like mine. Do you think you’ll be able to sell it? Remember what we agreed on. I get half because I’m giving you the words. You are my amanuensis; I am your muse. Sure, you’ll stretch it out. You’ll add colour. After all, you get paid by the word.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-5c8d22a2-5e5d-5e9b-3d8c-275461ad6df0" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My story has an ordinary enough beginning. Once there was a little girl who was very happy. She had everything her heart desired. It is true. I only had to say, “I want that” and my doting mother and father would be sure to get it for me. My mother was a great beauty. My father was a great industrialist. They had conflicting ideas about what my fate would be. My mother wanted me to grow up to purchase them nearness to the aristocracy through a titled marriage. My father, realizing he wasn’t destined to have sons, wanted me to be equipped to take over the family business.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My father died when I was twelve years old. My mother remarried quickly, although not so quickly that it was unseemly. She was young enough and very beautiful. My father’s will had left his factories and works to me with an uncle acting in my stead until I was of age. So my mother had no access to our family’s former fortune. Did my father suspect she’d shut down his beloved industries? Very likely.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At any rate, my mother married a man who seemed to make money from air. My stepfather was not titled, but was a gentleman. He had properties from which he drew an income. He had nothing to do but go back and forth from country to city as the season required with intervals of travelling. He was not unkind to me, but he was very often not there.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He too had a daughter and no sons. My stepsister, Charlotte, was very beautiful. She was two years older than me and was well schooled in all the necessary talents for a woman of her station. She had a quick mind that had not been developed with any sort of learning, but she had not wasted it. Rather, she put her considerable intelligence into making use of the people around her. I was of no use to her, so she ignored me.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My mother saw Charlotte and realized right away that in the marriage game, she’d be better to back Charlotte than me.They shared a common view of the world.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s not that I am ill-looking. I know that I am not. After all, if I were ugly, your readers would have no interest in my story, would they? </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My mother transferred all of her attentions, all of her affections to my stepsister. My stepfather drifted the periphery of our lives, supplying money, but little else. I was very lonely. My mother refused to send me to school. After all, why waste any resources on the ill-favoured child? If she had any plans for me, I believe it was to care for her and my stepfather once my stepsister had made her glorious match.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yet, I kept up my studies as best I could. I corresponded with my uncle to keep informed about my business interests. I fully intended to take them over the moment I turned twenty-one.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I built a laboratory in one of the outbuildings on the property. My father’s main business had been in creating synthetic dyes. I wanted to keep up his work and see if I could develop a greater variety of colours. Only, I wanted to make ones that were not poisonous to both the wearer and the worker. One of the virtues of being unwanted and ignored is freedom.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To occupy my hands during the times I was forced to sit with my mother and stepsister, I learned to sew. After all, constructing a garment is no different than engineering. It is all about fitting pieces together.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My stepsister was enormously proud of her green eyes. She despaired of ever finding a dress that would exactly match her eyes. I saw my opportunity to reach out to my stepsister, to do something for her.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One day, while she was complaining of this, I happened to mention that I had developed a green dye that might suit her. I showed her a silk handkerchief I had dyed with it. She clapped her hands and said that was exactly what she wanted for her ball gown. For once, she was interested in my work. She followed me out to my shed to see what other colours I could create for her.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I dressed her in bright greens, vivid blues, blood reds. I designed dresses for my stepsister that put Parisian dressmakers to shame. I hired children from the village to stir my dye pots and girls to sew my creations. I wouldn’t let anyone enter our workplace. My mother, seeing how my work would set her favoured child off to advantage, permitted this work.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Everything Charlotte wore, from her stockings to her gowns to the artificial flowers in her hair and the gloves on her hands passed through my little factory.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She had so many proposals. That season, she shone like a butterfly, a tropical bird, a rare flower.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All those men who didn’t see that her beauty was only on her surface. She had no heart. She thought only of herself. And my mother thought only of her and they both thought only of the status of the sir or lord or duke they’d catch in their web.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She landed a duke. But you know this. Your paper covered the preparations for her wedding quite extensively if I recall.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course I made her wedding dress and her trousseau. I laced her into her corset with my own hands, pulling the laces so tightly that Charlotte could span her waist with her tiny hands. I helped her shove her feet into her tiny silk shoes. I hung the veil over her face.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The vows were read. The groom kissed his bride, the bishop announced them as man and wife, the bells rang.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We all retired to the wedding breakfast where the guests, were shocked to see the bride, the beautiful new duchess, collapse. She was dead before she hit the ground. The bride’s lovely stepmother who treated the bride as her own daughter also collapsed and died. Her beautiful purple dress ruined when she spilled her wine down her front.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would’ve been a medical mystery except for one particularly sharp young doctor who read the paper, saw our names and remembered treating a child who worked on our property for a nasty chemical burn. The child had made me out as some kind of witch, with boiling cauldrons of terrible poisons.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She wanted colours that didn’t exist in nature. I gave them to her. They wanted her to catch a title. She did. It’s too bad the experimental dyes I created were poisonous.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I hear your readers are angry that I’m being transported rather than hanged. But after all, I was found guilty of manslaughter.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What the papers did not report is that I married several weeks before my stepsister. I married one of my father’s former employees. My uncle transferred the company to him. He’s coming with me to Australia. A new world is full of new possibilities.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-14120903956427967992017-02-18T19:22:00.003-08:002017-02-18T19:24:13.048-08:00In From the Cold<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-83819553082263153742017-02-18T11:32:00.003-08:002017-02-28T19:15:45.465-08:00Heart's desire<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The coming here was hard. He said it will be worth it, Mary. Don’t fret on it. Because what was there behind us? Nothing, he said. Just rocks and land that don’t belong to us. And I would add, under my breath, nothing but home. Nothing but our families. Nothing but our hearts.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-1064e85c-52b5-b8d9-d719-fb58b9ac832f" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When our youngest girl died of dysentery on the way over, I learned that I’d brought pieces of my heart with me from Scotland. And I would be strewing them along my path to this new land. Like the children in the story do to mark their path to home.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first year was hard. The lord’s big words amounted to not much. We did not come to a utopia. We got the land he promised. But what of it? What wasn’t marsh was full of trees we had to clear ourselves. Our first months were spent in tents and then shivering in log huts when the winter came. So many died. I would look to the east and think of home, all through that long winter. Perhaps it wasn’t Christian of me to sorrow so. But I did.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He said, Mary, don’t take on so. This is our home now. Our children will be free. They won’t see their labour go to fill a lord’s pockets, to be wasted on sport and women. And that was true. But it wasn’t enough for me.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He said, Mary, you should be happy with the new bairn. She is the spit of her sister, the one we lost. She was beautiful and so like her sister. So very like, indeed.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I never said much in reply. The women in our settlement thought I was a bit unfriendly, but I never turned a stranger from our door. Nor did I refuse a neighbour any help. It was just the pieces of my heart were in the way of my voice. If I spoke, my anguish threatened to come out and I would never get it back inside again.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Life got better. Everyone worked together to clear the trees, drain the marsh, plant the crops. Our house grew a little more comfortable with every harvest. My children, the ones who survived the coming and the ones born here, thought of this place as home. He said, look at these fine Canadians we’re raising. And they were so fine. They were strong and handsome and smart.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My husband brought me seeds from the city. For flowers, he said. So I could have something beautiful of my own. My daughters and I sowed the seeds so that in the summer, I would see flowers from my kitchen window. He said, they are to gladden your heart. Tell me how to gladden your heart. But I couldn’t say, take me home because that would be impossible. He loved it here as did my children.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The flowers were lovely. When another of my babies died, the flowers looked beautiful in his coffin. A piece of my heart went into this Canadian ground with him.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still, I liked my flowers. The flowers of home mixed with the flowers of here mixed with the flowers that fine ladies would grow. The colours cheered me and the girls pressed them so that we could enjoy them through the long, dark winters.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The old woman from the cottage down the lane would come begging for a few flowers every summer. I never asked what she did with them. They were poor, her family. The boys, men, really did not work as hard as other men here. And she was a strange one, always muttering to herself. It was said she walked into the long woods to talk to the Devil.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One day, she looked at me with her one sharp eye. The other eye was white and blinded. But her sharp eye was young and like a bird’s eye, always roving, dark and glittering.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She said, I can get you what you desire most. My tattered heart stopped in my chest. But what is the cost? I asked her. Because I knew, under that dark eye, the stories were true and she did have powers and secrets.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She said, it would only cost your husband’s joy. And one of your fair daughters. I said, yes. Even though I had thought she meant to kill one of my daughters. She laughed at my firm yes and she said, I only mean for one of my sons to marry one of your daughters. She said, you were ready to give one up entirely. I replied, I have already given two. One to the sea. One to this land. What is another?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My husband’s trials began that very day. Indeed, our whole family was bedeviled.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bullets came through the windows at all times. Yet none ever pierced a person. Still, my eldest daughter said, I cannot live here, always waiting to be killed. When the old lady’s son came and asked to marry her, my daughter said yes and was gone.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Soon after, the fires started. Little fires everywhere. He said, we need to leave this cursed place. My heart leapt. But he only meant to go to another home. My eldest son married and left us to our troubles.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fires followed us. Tables jumped, dishes flew, animals died. But my husband had enough of moving. And he stayed. Although our barn burned. Then our house so that we were reduced to tents.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The old woman would see me on my way to prayer meetings and she would wink and tap her nose. Soon, she would whisper to me as she handed me a basket of eggs or fruit. Soon, you will have your heart’s desire.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Men, though, love to solve a problem when the best solution would be to leave, to quit. No. They want to stay. They want to win. So the men of the settlement put their brains to it. Although we were shivering in tents and only the littlest children remained with us because they could not marry or work in other households.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First came the schoolmaster. He nailed up a sign asking evil to be gone from our place. He had read it in a book, he said. The minister did not like it, nor did the law. A magistrate came down from the city and arrested the schoolmaster for taking pay to hunt witches. After several months in jail, he was set free because my son wrote to say the schoolmaster had done it on his own, for no money. The sign caught fire in the night.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The fires burned through the summer. Every time my husband attempted to rebuild, a fire would consume his work. He said, we must have done something to earn God’s wrath. I would say nothing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then the French sent their priest to us. He said words in Latin and wrestled mightily with something, but to no purpose. Stones still fell from the sky behind my children, bullets ripped through the tents, although there was no gun and the fires yet burned.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Be patient, the old woman said. You will get your desire.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then a doctor said he knew of a girl who could see into the next world. My husband agreed to go with him. He said, I will be back soon. I don’t want to deal with witches, but something must be done or we will have to leave this place. I said nothing, but I smiled as he walked away.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He was gone a week. In my dreams, I saw him in the woods, beset by wolves. He was devoured by them, ripped apart. And when I woke, I said, if he doesn’t return, I will go home.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He returned.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He said, I need a silver bullet. Have you not seen the great dark bird that watches us? The children see it. I said, this is foolishness. A silver bullet. How will you get such a thing?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He took my silver cup and had the blacksmith melt it down and form it into a ball. The cup had been my mother’s and it had belonged to her mother and so on back through the years. It was to have been my oldest daughter’s.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When he left with his gun, a great fire came and took our tent and our cart and our fields. All but my flowers were devoured.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pain ripped through my chest. I have shot it, he said. Come see, he cried. Come see the great bird I’ve shot. Right through the breast, he cried. But I stood in our neighbour’s home, bleeding onto the floor, a great red puddle spreading around my feet, soaking the hem of my dress.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Come see, he said, rushing through the door as if he were a young man again. He stopped in the doorway, his face white. He dropped the gun, little caring if it should fire by accident. What happened, he said.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m going home, I said to him. I laughed and laughed. I had never told the witch what I had wanted. I thought I had wanted to go home. But then I knew. I had wanted my heart to stop being ripped away piece by piece. So she made it that my heart would go all at once. </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-80357851608226842862017-02-15T14:27:00.003-08:002017-02-28T19:16:25.360-08:00My Love Has Gone to Sea<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Once upon a time, in a
faraway kingdom, a young king married a young queen. While their parents had
arranged their marriage, the king and queen soon fell deeply in love. At court,
all the lords and ladies were charmed by the love the two beautiful young people
felt for each other. The two were never apart and were usually within arms’
reach of each other.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Then one day, a young
woman arrived at court. She performed magic tricks, she danced, she sang, she
charmed everyone around her. Never had the lords and ladies been so
entertained. All except the young queen. Something about the sorceress bothered
her.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“It is not real magic,
though,” the young king said to his queen when she questioned the wisdom of
allowing a sorceress to live with them. “It’s all tricks. But she does them so
cleverly.” But the young queen was not so sure. She would often notice the sorceress
staring at her with a strange, hungry smile. And whenever she came close to the
other woman, all the young queen could smell was salt air.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">While the sorceress was
not especially beautiful, nor was she kind at all, many of the men and some of
the women, were in her thrall. Everywhere she went, she was surrounded. They
gave her gifts of jewels and fine clothes until she looked quite the lady and
not at all the vagabond entertainer who had first come to court.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Gradually, the young
king joined the throng of admirers. He was no longer always sure to be within
arms’ reach of his young wife. At first, the queen did not like this and she
would try to stay near him. But she did not like to spend her days following
her husband following the sorceress. So, gradually, the young queen found other
things to do with her days. She read books. She learned how to fence and how to
ride astride a horse instead of side saddle. She spoke with her husband’s
advisors since someone had to manage the kingdom. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The sorceress left one
night. Her rooms were empty. All of the fine goods she’d been given were gone.
It would have taken a cart to haul all her possessions away, but none of the
horses or carts was missing.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">For weeks after, many of
the lords and some of the ladies were laid low with grief. No one dressed
brightly. No one smiled or laughed or sang. The young queen was surrounded by
sad faces.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The young king would sit
on the parapets, sighing. “Don’t you find life here very dull?” he would ask
his queen.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“No. I’m so busy,” the
young queen would say. And she would tell her husband about how she passed her
days. But he was not interested. He would look at the horizon and sigh.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Finally, the young queen
was able to convince the young king to go riding with his brothers along the
coast. She spoke of the beauty of the sea and how much he would enjoy the ride.
He agreed to go.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">She hoped her husband
would come back to her.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The brothers returned
several weeks later. The king was not with them. They told the young queen that
they had taken their brother to the highest cliff along the seashore so he
could admire the view of the ocean and sky meeting each other in the distance.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">He had smiled at them.
And then he had dove into the sea. A great fish had come up out of the water
and had swallowed him whole. “A pike. With huge teeth. After, it rose up out of
the water and opened its mouth. We could see our brother, so far down. And he
looked so happy.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The king’s advisors
wrung their hands and said nothing could be done. They passed the crown to the
next brother. But he was very young and inexperienced. He had never expected to
be king and so had not prepared himself. He often asked the young queen for
help.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Late one night, the
young queen disguised herself as a maid and left the court. She went to an old
witch in the woods. None of the king’s men knew what to do. So she would ask a
woman.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“You can get him back.
If you want,” the old woman said to the young queen.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“Of course, I want to
bring him back. I love him!” the young queen cried.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The old woman snorted.
“They always say that. But does he love you? You can’t steal what someone gives
willingly.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“He loves me! He was
enchanted. They all were!”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The young queen begged
the old woman to tell her how to rescue her husband. She promised to pay the
old woman any price. The old woman asked for five years of the young
queen’s life. The young queen gave it. She was young. She could live a long
time. Five years were as nothing to the absence of her husband.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">She returned to the
court and told the new king she was going to rescue his brother. The new king
asked her not to go. But she would not listen. She dressed herself as soldier
and took the best horse from the stables. With her sword at her side, she was
ready for battle.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">When she reached the
highest cliff at the seashore, the young queen got down from her horse and she
waited for the tide to come in. She waited a long time.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Close to night, the
water finally came as close as it would to the cliff’s edge. The young queen
walked to the edge and she whistled the tune the old witch taught her. She
waited. In the distance, she thought she could see a darker shape moving among
the waves. The shape came closer.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">It was a large pike. It
smiled at the young queen and showed its pointed teeth. Then it leaped onto the
cliff’s edge beside the young queen.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The fish became the
sorceress so quickly, the young queen hardly knew how the transformation had
happened. But when the sorceress smiled, she still had her pike teeth.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The young queen took her
sword from its sheath and rested the blade’s edge against the sorceress’s
throat. The sorceress laughed.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“Why are you here girl?”
the sorceress asked.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“Give me back my love,”
the young queen said. “Or I will cut your throat.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The sorceress smiled
even wider. Water streamed from her hair and her dress shimmered like fish
scales.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“You won’t. Threats
won’t work. You know this. What did you bring me?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The young queen let her
sword fall to the ground. She looked at the ground. She wanted to hurt the
sorceress, but she was afraid that would hurt her husband. She called the horse
over and reached into the saddle bag.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“I give you every jewel
he ever gave me,” she said. “Each one, a token of his love for me.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The sorceress took the
jewels from the young queen and put them on. Her neck was covered with
necklaces, bracelets ran up her arms to her elbows, every finger wore several
rings. She lifted a crown onto her wet hair.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“And?” the sorceress
asked.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The queen bit her lip.
Finally, she slipped her wedding ring off and handed it to the sorceress.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“Where is he?” the queen
asked.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The sorceress smiled and
opened her mouth wide. Far down the sorceress’s throat, past her pointed teeth,
the queen could see her husband. He was smiling.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“I’m here to bring you
home,” the queen shouted to her husband. He frowned.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“But I don’t want to go.
I am happy here,” he said.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“No. You’ve been
enchanted. The old witch in the woods told me how to break the spell. I’ve
given the sorceress every token of your love you’ve ever given me. You’re free
now.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“But I haven’t been
enchanted. I chose to go to her,” he said.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The sorceress snapped
her teeth shut. “I cannot take what is not willingly given,” she said. “But I
can give him back to you. You have made a fair exchange.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The young queen picked
up her sword. She looked at her hand, now free of the ring she had worn.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">She sheathed the sword
and mounted her horse.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“Keep him. He no longer
has my love,” she said and rode away. The sorceress laughed and laughed and
when the young queen looked over her shoulder, she saw the sorceress dive into
the water.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The young queen returned
to court and became the new king’s most valued advisor and strongest warrior.
No one saw the young king or the sorceress again.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8396645571961365047.post-43888968134331904102017-02-11T14:45:00.004-08:002017-02-18T19:14:50.287-08:00Swans at night<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6PgLn00_-G1oGrqmi5Y0r3DegSJtRuxZqcWBrrWFJ47uwJmZBskHph75VfYC0VAAeWn-8PSzSAMVvyd8RSpB9AUPRUGi23YCttJMYW3BmlTr2VZmhziHdGa5F51i3rxP6NF6pNHtQK8Q/s1600/11306569784_e684208e19_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6PgLn00_-G1oGrqmi5Y0r3DegSJtRuxZqcWBrrWFJ47uwJmZBskHph75VfYC0VAAeWn-8PSzSAMVvyd8RSpB9AUPRUGi23YCttJMYW3BmlTr2VZmhziHdGa5F51i3rxP6NF6pNHtQK8Q/s320/11306569784_e684208e19_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<h2 style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 6pt; margin-top: 20pt;">
<br /></h2>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last night he heard the swans, hooting as they flew in the night. He knew if he went to the window, he would see them, lit up by the moon, bright against the night sky. Winter chased them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last night he heard the swans and his heart called out to them. He flexed his wing and felt the night air against each barb. Winter was on its way and he needed to stay here and let the snow fall.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It’s cold. Come back to bed,” she said. He turned from the window. She held open the quilt, showing him the empty place beside her. Her body, in the dark room, was lit up by the moon. It was cold. The hair on his body stood up. The feathers on his wing stood out. He slid under the quilt. His movements let out puffs of dry feather smell. The quilt was filled with down. The smell reminded him of home.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She put her warm body against his cold skin. He wrapped his wing around her because he knew that’s what she wanted. That’s what any of them wanted.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last night he heard the swans.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next night, he went to the roof. The moon was full now. He scanned the dark purple sky for swans. The guards on the parapets recognized him by his wing and let him be. Either people were attracted to his difference or they were afraid of it. He was a half-magic thing. The sight of him a constant reminder of the days magic twisted things.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His brother was already there. They were the two youngest. So much younger than the other four. Franz scanned the sky with a small telescope. “It smells like snow,” he said as Hans sat beside him. They dangled their feet over the edge. Hans looked down. Being this high up was close to flying. It didn’t scare him.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Did you hear them? Last night?” Hans asked.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Franz nodded.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After hours of waiting, hours in which even their young joints grew stiff with cold, they heard the faint hoots. Stars stood out, a scattering of glitter against the sky. “Here,” Franz said and handed the telescope to Hans. The eyepiece was cold against his skin.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He could see their eyes, their wings. His heart beat in time with each flap. His heart broke as they left the two men on the roof behind.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I can’t stay here,” Franz whispered.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“But what about your wife?” All the brothers, except Hans, had found wives. The king, their sister’s husband, had given them their choice of the finest daughters of his nobles. They were handsome young men with the allure of their story as an added attraction. None would agree to marry Hans. What if his children were born with wings? Or worse a beak?</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Franz smiled. His face must have been stiffened by the chilly air because it was a small smile. A bitter smile.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“She’s gone. Went back to her mother’s.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Oh.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They didn’t speak. They looked up at the sky which was beginning to lighten at its eastern edge. The guards changed. The boys sat and watched for more swans. None came.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Do you miss it?” Franz asked.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hans couldn’t speak. His throat closed. He swallowed down the tears that rose up. But he couldn’t speak. It was as if he had forgotten how.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I miss it,” Franz said. “I wish she’d never changed us back.” He looked down at his hands. He flexed his fingers. They were blue at the tips. “I don’t understand this body. I don’t want it anymore. I want to fly.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hans nodded. He wrapped his wing around his brother’s shoulders.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They’d been the youngest. When they’d been changed, they hadn’t been boys very long. They were so small. They’d been swans for so long, they’d forgotten they’d ever been boys. Every year, when their sister would meet them in the woods to speak with them for the fifteen minutes they were human again, they would be surprised at the changes in themselves.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The oldest four had remembered what it was to be human. They missed it. They had wanted back. They never spoke of their time as swans. The oldest, Wilhelm, had proposed that Hans let a surgeon remove his wing.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the first snow, Franz climbed to the top of the highest parapet and leapt off.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hans stood over his brother’s grave and after the others left their flowers, throwing them down on the coffin at the bottom of the hole, he plucked out one of his feathers. The pain cut bright and sharp through his grief. He watched the feather float down until it rested on top of all the roses.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Through the winter, nothing changed in Hans’s life. He thought often of his night on the roof with Franz. But he never went up on the roof to look at the moon and feel the night air ruffle the feathers of his wing.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All through the winter, the court was kept busy with dinners and dances and lavish spectacles. The king wanted everyone to be happy. He filled their days with a kind of manic joy to make up for the years he’d let his mother bring them all so much sorrow. As if they’d forget the sight of the queen, standing on her funeral pyre, throwing silk shirts to her brothers. Maybe people did forget. But Hans didn’t.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Still, when a woman, or a man for that matter, came up beside him and whispered in his ear and led him away from the party, he followed. They didn’t love him. They only wanted to know what it was like to be held in that wing. Was it like sleeping with an angel? They wanted a little taste of magic in their lives. He wanted to forget. He wanted to live in this body and not wish he was still in another.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last night, he heard the swans as they flew back for the summer. He stood at his window and watched them pass by the light of the moon. His heart beat in time to their wings.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Come back to bed,” the man in his bed said. And Hans ignored him.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“I’m leaving,” he said. He wasn’t speaking to the man. He spoke to himself. Maybe to Franz. The floor was cold under his feet. There was still snow in shaded spots and ditches, but he heard the swans and the air smelled like spring.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Leave in the morning,” the man said. And Hans turned from the window. Why not? One last time before he left.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He remembered where the witch lived. Hans told no one that he was leaving. They all seemed to have forgotten that Franz existed. At least, his brother’s name was never spoken among them and his brother’s wife was gone. Their rooms had been emptied out and locked. It wasn’t happy to think of them.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“You heard them, didn’t you?” the witch said. She had not changed. It had been more than twenty years since he’d seen her last. She wasn’t young, but she wasn’t old. She was herself. He couldn’t decide if she was beautiful. Sometimes, he thought yes. Beautiful like a crow in the sun. Sometimes, he thought no. The sweetish smell of death hung about her small castle.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He nodded.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“And you’ve come to ask me to change you back,” she said. She smiled. A chill blew through him. Again, he was on the roof with Franz, smelling snow in the wind. She ran a finger along his cheek. He closed his eyes. Her touch was warm. Warmer than he had expected.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Please,” he whispered.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She ran her hand along his wing. She stretched it out to its full span and he shivered. “So beautiful,” she said. “Are you sure? Being different. Being a little bit frightening. That can be a powerful thing. But you know this. I bet your bed is never empty. I bet you can go wherever you want in your sister’s house.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Please,” he whispered.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She kissed him. He could feel her smile against his mouth. He kept his eyes closed. He couldn’t look into her eyes. If he did, he’d be lost in their black depths and he’d forget he’d ever known how to fly.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Please,” he whispered.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“If I do this, I can’t turn you back you again,” she said. Her voice was dark. “And, you’ll always return here in the spring. You’ll swim in my moat. Maybe, I’ll give you a jeweled collar. And you’ll live as long as I will.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Please,” he whispered. He opened his eyes. She smiled at him.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Yes,” she said. She ran her fingertips over his eyelids as if closing the eyes on a corpse. “Yes.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She towered over him. He stretched out his wings and beat them against the air.</span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He was home.</span></div>
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