Why - do they shut me out of Heaven?
Did I sing - too loud?
But - I can say a little “Minor”
Timid as Bird!
I have gone marking the atlas of your body with crosses of fire.
My mouth went across: a spider, trying to hide.
In you, behind you, timid, driven by thirst
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The timid girl was a woman now; beautiful, it was said; decked out in fine clothes; surrounded by admirers. How could you recognize in me one whom you had known as a shy girl in the subdued light of your bedroom?
Slade then?
And then...nothing.
No sounds at all.
My heart races and my stomach roils, while fear squeezes me in its
nefarious grasp.
Then, the doorknob jiggles. Just once. Like someone tested to see if it
was locked. A second later, I see the handle fall away completely,
disintegrated into grains of golden sand.
I tense as the door swings open, and a silhouette appears in the
threshold like a demon stepping out of hell.
The dim light of the room shouldn’t be enough for me to recognize
who it is, but I know. I think even in the pitch black, I’d know.
Because I can feel it.
Just like when I was on that hill, his power seems to travel from the
ground and soak into my feet. Another wave of nausea roils through me,
making my fingers curl tighter around the bars as King Ravinger himself
steps into the room.
All the air in my lungs dissolves like that doorknob did, and my body
freezes in fear. He steps in almost boredly, without even squinting in the
dim light, as if his eyes don’t need to adjust to the dark.
Maybe that’s because darkness lurks within him already.
Walking forward, he scans the room methodically. He’s wearing neat
black leathers with a high collar shirt, and a barbed crown of branches sits
proudly on his head. They look withered, petrified, like they died long ago
and then hardened in a molded polish.
He stops in the shadows, a few feet away from my cage, but I don’t
need him closer to see how his gaze hooks onto me.
His are deep green eyes, like rich moss right before it’s about to turn
brown. Life, right before death. Richness, right before rot.
But it’s the markings on his face that I can’t stop staring at. They rise
out of his collar, trailing up his neck, curling over his jaw, like roots
"His name was Gaudissart; and his renown, his vogue, the flatteries showered upon him, were such as to win for him the surname of Illustrious. Wherever the fellow went,—behind a counter or before a bar, into a salon or to the top of a stage-coach, up to a garret or to dine with a banker,—every one said, the moment they saw him, 'Ah! here comes the illustrious Gaudissart!' No name was ever so in keeping with the style, the manners, the countenance, the voice, the language, of any man. All things smiled upon our traveller, and the traveller smiled back in return. 'Similia similibus,'—he believed in homoeopathy. Puns, horse-laugh, monkish face, skin of a friar, true Rabelaisian exterior, clothing, body, mind, and features, all pulled together to put a devil-may-care jollity into every inch of his person. Free-handed and easy-going, he might be recognized at once as the favorite of grisettes, the man who jumps lightly to the top of a stage-coach, gives a hand to the timid lady who fears to step down, jokes with the postillion about his neckerchief and contrives to sell him a cap, smiles at the maid and catches her round the waist or by the heart; gurgles at dinner like a bottle of wine and pretends to draw the cork by sounding a filip on his distended cheek; plays a tune with his knife on the champagne glasses without breaking them, and says to the company, 'Let me see you do that'; chaffs the timid traveller, contradicts the knowing one, lords it over a dinner-table and manages to get the titbits for himself. A strong fellow, nevertheless, he can throw aside all this nonsense and mean business when he flings away the stump of his cigar and says, with a glance at some town, 'I’ll go and see what those people have got in their stomachs.'"
Lines Written in Dejection
When have I last looked on
The round green eyes and the long wavering bodies
Of the dark leopards of the moon?
All the wild witches, those most noble ladies,
For all their broom-sticks and their tears,
Their angry tears, are gone.
The holy centaurs of the hills are vanished;
I have nothing but the embittered sun;
Banished heroic mother moon and vanished,
And now that I have come to fifty years
I must endure the timid sun.
