The Avalon Tower and Camelot
Tana hands me another cup of tea. “Almost there, love.”
“To Camelot?”
She nods. “It was once part of Cornwall, you know, until the king of
Wessex invaded. The rulers of Camelot used magic to hide it. Some say it
was Merlin himself, protecting Camelot from his oak tree. Some say he
doesn’t die.”
Goosebumps rise on my skin.
Around us, the river narrows. On either side, stone and timber frame
buildings crowd the riverbanks. A thin fog hangs over them, tinged by rosy
morning light. Gas lamps lend an ochre glow to the mist. This place really
feels like stepping back in time.
“How come no one knows about Camelot?” For some reason, I’m
whispering.
“It’s secret, of course.” She smiles at me. “That’s what makes it a
perfect place for spies. Only permitted ships can enter.” She sighs. “This
river is haunted, you know. I can feel it. A long time ago, the Fey used to
cut off people’s heads and throw them in the river, and now, I can hear their
spirits whispering.”
A shiver runs through me. “Oh.” I can almost hear their whispers
myself. “I didn’t know the Fey once lived close to humans.”
Tana smiles faintly. “Oh, yes, in peace for a while.” She cocks her ear at
the water, as if listening to something, then shrugs. “They named the tower
after the old Fey kingdom, Avalon.” Tana smiles wistfully. “In some parts of
Camelot, you can still find the roads and temples built by the Pendragon
kings long ago. The Pendragon walls encircle the city, hundreds of feet
high. A few hundred years ago, we stopped putting severed heads on the
city gates, you’ll be pleased to know. At least, I’m pretty sure we stopped.”
I clear my throat. “I’m glad to hear it.” That’s twice now she’s
mentioned severed heads.
“Our academy dates back to the Roman occupation of Britain. You’ll
learn all about it soon
As soon as possible
“Well, you gave an answer to that for Annwyn. Now, I think it’s time
you give an answer for you,” he finally says.
“Us,” I correct.
“Always us,” he agrees. “But I told you before, Goldfinch. I want
you to have whatever life you want,” he tells me, his voice dropping lower.
“Whether that’s to travel the world or hide away in a cabin in the woods…”
My breath catches in my chest as I recognize the words we spoke
before, inside the walls of a carriage. Right before we did very
inappropriate things right there along the street in Fourth Kingdom.
“If you want to climb a mountain or build something with your own
hands or sit in a pub or play music or spend all day making love…” His low
tone drags against my heated skin. “But I am yours and you are mine, and I
will always make sure that you get what you need.”
My heart skips, my cheeks warmed by far more than the sun. “So the
question isn’t what now. The question is…what do you want now?” he asks.
“I want…” I swallow hard.
Slade reaches forward to brush a lock of my hair away from my
face. “Tell me.”
My truth sits right there, so I let it spill out. “I want to take you to
Geisel. I want to introduce you to the fae there who helped me. Want to
show you the field of flowers where Saira Turley and I both fell.”
His lips curve, following the slow drag of his finger against my
neck, nearly touching my scale. “What else, Goldfinch?”
“I want to eat Estelia’s puff cakes. At least a dozen of them.”
He breaks out into a full grin. “At least,” he says with a nod. “What
else?”
“I want to…”
“Tell me,” he says again, urging me on.
“I want to go back to Bryol,” I admit quietly with a tremor in my
voice. “I want to see if there’s a way we can rebuild it. I hate that it’s just
left there in ruins. I know it will probably take a lot, and I’m
Reklam
A character development
“What are you doing?”
I don’t answer Dommik. All my focus is right here, on my hands. On the
gashes cut through each palm and the sharp shards of ice stuck to them.
And I beg.
On my knees in desperate prayer, I beg.
I don’t beg the gods, because what have powerful men ever done for me?
No, I beg the magic instead. The magic I shouldn’t have. I beg desperately
for it to do something, anything, to help me save the city I endangered.
Please…
The wind howls.
Snowfall starts to drizzle down from the sky.
And I beg and beseech and pray.
Dommik watches me. A kneeling queen and a silent assassin, the two of
us a seemingly unlikely pair. Except, we have more in common than most.
We’ve both brought on death. He’s just honest about it. He wields a blade
and spills others’ blood. I let someone spill my blood, and now the enemy
will wield their blades against my people.
What I’ve done is far, far worse.
Please…
My eyes are shut tight, my hands shaking, everything in me coiled with a
desperation that seems larger than life itself.
Because I regret.
I regret allowing my powerless life to mold me. I regret not standing up
to my father. I regret marrying Midas. I regret allowing him to keep a
woman in a cage. I regret looking down on the very people I was meant to
serve. I regret taking everything for granted.
I regret becoming this bitter, cold woman, and I want to let that cold out.
To make it do something good.
Please…
I keep praying to this power, keep begging this mercurial magic, and
Suehiro Tetchō published Setchūbai (Plum Blossoms in the Snow), a work often praised as the finest of the Meiji-period political novels. It is set in 2040, the 173rd year of the reign of Emperor Meiji, and opens with the sounds of cannons and bugles blowing to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the proclamation of the constitution. The accompanying illustrations depict the Tōkyō of the future. It is a city of grim rows of brick buildings from which innumerable tall chimneys emit black smoke.
A reader today may shudder at the thought of a city so devoid of amenities and so tainted by industrial pollution, but Tetchō undoubtedly believed that his readers would be delighted by a future rich with the progress represented by chimneys belching smoke; he seems to have thought that the more T ō ky ō resembled London, the greatest of the Western cities, the happier the Japanese would be.
Carthage: Reflections of a Martian
Thy expected alien
Am I.
Weird of shade
And doomfire face:
All thy senses
Cry to my
Mourning mysteries
Which yesterday
Were commonplace.
We sit at Sunday breakfast
And I smell the dust of Carthage.
It drowns the spang
Of our automatic toaster.
That strange woman across from me
Smiles, butters two slices.
Her smiles arouses a multitude in me!
Her smile...
Frightens us.
I must look away!
Out the window beside my arm,
Sunglow warms a brick walk.
Grass, a tree, a planting of forsythia.
It is spring.
In the spring...
The earth is covered with dust.
Plutonian Ode
I
What new element before us unborn in nature? Is there
a new thing under the Sun?
At last inquisitive Whitman a modern epic, detonative,
Scientific theme
First penned unmindful by Doctor Seaborg with poison-
ous hand, named for Death's planet through the
sea beyond Uranus
whose chthonic ore fathers this magma-teared Lord of
Hades, Sire of avenging Furies, billionaire Hell-
King worshipped once
with black sheep throats cut, priests's face averted from
underground mysteries in single temple at Eleusis,
Spring-green Persephone nuptialed to his inevitable
Shade, Demeter mother of asphodel weeping dew,
her daughter stored in salty caverns under white snow,
black hail, grey winter rain or Polar ice, immemor-
able seasons before
Fish flew in Heaven, before a Ram died by the starry
bush, before the Bull stamped sky and earth
or Twins inscribed their memories in clay or Crab'd
flood
washed memory from the skull, or Lion sniffed the
lilac breeze in Eden—
Before the Great Year began turning its twelve signs,
ere constellations wheeled for twenty-four thousand
sunny years
Reklam
Reklam