Altan Trengsin was not invincible after all.
He had been so good at following orders. They told him to jump and he flew. They told him to fight and get destroyed.
But here at the end, without a purpose and without a ruler, Altan Trengsin was broken.
The Albatross
Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew
Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds
That indolently follow a ship
As it glides over the deep, briny sea.
Scarcely have they placed them on the deck
Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed,
Pathetically let their great white wings
Drag beside them like oars.
That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is,
So beautiful before, now comic and ugly!
One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe;
Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew!
The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky
Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman;
When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.
Henry bit his lip. He went to the window and looked out the corner of the shade.
Then he turned around. He still had the pistol. 'Come here,' he said to Camilla.
She looked at him in horror. So did Francis and I.
He beckoned to her with his gun arm. 'Come here, he said.
'Quick.'
I felt faint. What's he doing? I thought, bewildered.
Camilla took a step away from him. Her gaze was terrified.
No, Henry,' she said, 'don't.
To my surprise, he smiled at her. 'You think I'd hurt you?' he said. 'Come here.'
She went to him. He kissed her between the eyes, then whispered something - what, I've always wondered - in her ear.
I've got a key, the innkeeper yelled, pounding away at the door. TIl use it.'
The room was swimming. Idiot, I thought wildly, just try the knob.
Henry kissed Camilla again. 'I love you,' he said. Then he said, out loud: 'Come in.'
The door flew open. Henry raised the arm with the gun. He's going to shoot them, I thought, dazed; the innkeeper and his wife, behind him, thought the same thing, because they froze about three steps into the room - but then I heard Camilla scream, 'No, Henry!' and, too late, I realized what he was going to do.
He put the pistol to his temple and fired, twice. Two flat cracks. They slammed his head to the left. It was the kick of the gun, I think, that triggered the second shot.
His mouth fell open. A draft, created by the open door, sucked the curtains into the gap of the open window.
Sayfa 605Kitabı okudu
Lot’s Wife
They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot’s neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn’t so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of
They had loved. like brutes, with hot passion, entirely sanguineous. Then, amidst the enervation of their crime, their love had turned to fright, and their kisses had produced a sort of physical terror. At present, amid the suffering which marriage, which life in common imposed on them, they revolted and flew into anger.
Sayfa 282 - PergaminoKitabı okudu
The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away.
The region now entered by the police was one of traditionally evil repute, substantially unknown and untraversed by white men. There were legends of a hidden lake unglimpsed by mortal sight, in which dwelt a huge, formless white polypous thing with luminous eyes; and squatters whispered that bat-winged devils flew up out of caverns in inner earth to worship it at midnight. They said it had been there before D’Iberville, before La Salle, before the Indians, and before even the wholesome beasts and birds of the woods. It was nightmare itself, and to see it was to die. But it made men dream, and so they knew enough to keep away.
HP Lovecraft ArchiveKitabı okudu
"On the last day of her life, she and her crew successfully repelled a Dalek fleet from the feeding hives of the Vantross, but then, as they flew to safety, found themselves under attack from one of the Time Lord battle cruisers, now as indscriminate in their slaughter as the Daleks themselves. They were blasted from the stars for no better reason, Cass realised, than that they were blocking the view of the retreating Daleks."
Sayfa 2 - The Night of the DoctorKitabı okudu
The host of evil beings, once set free, could never again be shut up in their narrow prison; but wherever they flew- even to the remotest corner of the earth- Hope followed them and brought healing in her wings; and when the world grew wicked, as it did in the days that came after, so that men neglected the altars of the gods, Hope was stil remembered with votive offerings and her shrines kept garlaned with flowers.
Mother, the night sky was incredible. Freeing. In any other circumstance, I would have wanted to live up here forever. Vincent rarely flew, which now seemed unthinkable. Why would anyone choose not to do this? Why would anyone do anything else, when they could be here?
The bees were investigated by the famous ‘bee-man’, Karl von Frisch. He noted that worker bees normally give information about the horizontal distance and direction of a source of nectar. If bee communication is in any sense ‘open’, then a worker bee should be able to inform the other bees about vertical distance and direction if necessary.
He tested this idea by placing a hive of bees at the foot of a radio beacon, and a supply of sugar water at the top. But the bees who were shown the sugar water were unable to tell the other bees where to find it. They duly performed a ‘round dance’, indicating that a source of nectar was in the vicinity of the hive – and then for several hours their comrades flew in all directions except upwards looking for the honey source. Eventually, they gave up the search. As von Frisch noted, ‘The bees have no words for “up” in their language.
Maybe it had nothing to do with what they saw or how I looked. Perhaps it only had to do with what they felt. What we shared. Either way, they were…
Good gods.
“Always so curious,” Casteel murmured.
My gaze flew up, my face heating.
One side of Casteel’s lips curled upward, and I saw the hint of a dimple appearing in his right cheek.
“Shut up,” I rasped.
Of offKitabı okudu
Film gibi bir suikast girişimi...
On the chilly Tuesday morning of March 23, 1976, Mitsuyasu Maeno, a twenty-nine-year-old film actor, arrived with three friends at Chofu Airport on the western outskirts of Tokyo. All were dressed in the style of kamikaze pilots. Maeno, a qualified pilot, told flying club officials that he wanted to rent two aircraft to film a sequence on kamikaze fliers.
Maeno had once idolized Kodama. He was part of a select band of ultranationalists gathered to hear the premiere recital of a proposed new national anthem, "Song of the Race." The anthem, called for "a kamikaze coup d'etat to restore the glories of Imperial Japan." The composer of the song was Yoshio Kodama.
Maeno flew off, followed by his friends, and they proceeded to circle Tokyo in formation for about an hour. Maeno then changed course, telling his cohorts he had some business in Setagaya- a Tokyo suburb and home to Yoshio Kodama. Maeno approached Kodama's house at low altitude and circled twice, shouting the war cry over his radio. Aiming his aircraft nose first, he dove into Kodama's house, smashing into a veranda and dying instantly- but missing his intended victim, who lay in bed in another part of the house.
Those heated amber eyes met mine. “How do I look at you, Princess?”
“You look at me like...” I cleared my throat. “Like you want to eat me.” Casteel’s eyes narrowed into thin slits as his gaze return to Emil.
“Exactly,” he snarled.
I stared at him and then laughed. His gaze flew to mine, his eyes bright and wide like they always were when I laughed. “You’re actually jealous.”
“Of course, I am. At least I can acknowledge that.”
And he was jealous. I could feel it, an ashy coating in the back of my throat. “You are...”
“Devilishly handsome? Wickedly clever?” He turned back to the western sky, where it still carried the haze of fire. “Stunningly charismatic?” “That wasn’t what I was going for,” I told him. “More like ridiculous.” “Endearingly ridiculous,” he corrected.
WINTER IN EAST EVANSBURG, and just after dusk, five people in a beat-up old Subaru peeled out of town in a snowstorm. Snow and road salt flew up from their tires as they got on the highway heading north. The five were nearly the only people on the road. “A major winter storm is blanketing parts of northern Vermont with eight inches overnight . . .” said the radio, crackling. “Be advised that the roads are dangerous.”
The Subaru kept going. In front were two adults. In the back were three kids.
