A Dangerous Place

Solitude was her soul's hermitage.

Memories come out of nowhere, sometimes, don’t they? Like a splinter long in the finger finally rises to the surface. Pluck it out, and the pain goes—and you realize there has been discomfort all along, but you have lived with it.

We must bring light to the darkened room, Maisie. Maurice’s voice echoed down the years, and it was as if he were with her. Knowledge is the light. Information is the light. Come out of the darkness one lamp at a time. Paint your picture of what came to pass question by question—and remember, some are never meant to be answered because the response closes the door to knowledge you most want and need.

...broken buildings like jagged teeth in the mouth of a mad dog...

Bombers were the dark crows of death, sent out to lay their eggs on an unsuspecting world.

There are many oppressed people across the border, people who are dirt poor and have little chance in life. Then there are those who don’t want them anywhere near the table, let alone sitting at the feast. In 1931 the people of Spain voted in their first free election in sixty years. Until that point the country had been controlled by the rich—the landed aristocracy, the church, and the industrialists. But the new Republic had its problems, though the poor saw more in the way of education and public money. So if you are looking for the roots of the war, they lie in discontent—and discontent always rises up like froth on beer. Look at Russia. The revolution is a fine example of what might happen in such a society.

I see how the gaping abyss between those who have much and those who have nothing can cause dangerous fractures in society. I see how power corrupts, how the people are manipulated and kept in their place. I

So if you are looking for the roots of the war, they lie in discontent—and discontent always rises up like froth on beer. Look

Sometimes she thought she could see that good heart beating, and realized that more often now she looked for goodness in a person, sought it out and found it comforting.

Now she could feel herself slipping back, as if she had managed to climb almost to the top of grief's dark void, only to lose her strength, her fingernails ceasing to hold.

A loud, relentless mechanical moaning filled the air, as if a giant hound constructed by the gods of iron and steel were baying at the moon. The air raid warning started, and then other sounds came - the whine of aircraft engines followed by the crump, crump, crump of bombs falling.

It's interesting to observe how clearly one can see through a difficult situation in darkness, when there is no distraction - it is equally important to understand that the blackest hours before dawn are also when the mind can shift and, like a moon off-kilter, throw light in the wrong places, which in turn allows fear to take center stage.

It was as if the young man and the old resided within one body; the old had seen far too much in a short, young life

There was medicine to pay for, toward the end, medicine that took her mother into a netherworld, as if she were standing at a station in gauzy light, waiting to pass into another life, free from pain.

Though all faith had left her during the war, she half staggered into St. Andrew's Church. She wanted to feel the touch of prayers fanning around her like butterfly wings, and she wanted to be held safe in the still coolness of the familiar building

Communism is the anger of the people - but if not tempered, it is an anger that turns on itself. It must be managed with care, or it can result in an oppression that could be as bad as the all-powerful rich pushing those who have nothing into the ground.

After Miriam left the cellar, Maisie stood for a moment, listening to the woman's footfall ascend the stone staircase, as if each step were a mark of her bitterness. It was the resigned march of the put-upon, to a theme of one deep sigh.

She wanted to be woken by daylight, to hear the gulls above the rooftops; she wanted to know as soon as her eyelids lifted that she was not back in the past. She hated waking only to experience the jolt of remembering why her heart felt so heavy in her chest. The light might allow the ache of recollection to enfold her gently.

Maisie was restless, waking every hour or so, then slipping into a half-sleep before she began to dream again, as if she had fallen through a fissure in consciousness and was aware of herself sleeping.

She was not ready to face a familiar world in which something so precious was missing.

The years softened the hard edges of my anger - for I was angry at my loss, there is no other way to describe the utter pain

If I am on the move and not in one place, then I can perhaps outrun myself. If I linger, then like dark flies on a dead deer, the memories and thoughts land and terror seems to fester and pull me in. I cannot bear to be at [home], where too many people will be watching me, waiting for something to happen, waiting for me to sink or swim, when all I want to do is float, as I did in hospital when the present was held at bay.

coincidence was a shadow cast by truth.

Solitude was her soul’s hermitage.

Watch the image, and let it go. Take note of it, know that it is there, and allow it to move away, across the landscape of your mind’s eye. Allow yourself to see connections, Maisie. Then go to the case map, and plan your next move.

Maurice had always cautioned against reaching out to assuage grief, arguing that such sadness needed room to emerge and be rendered powerless by the elements of light and understanding.

But there was something there in her eyes, something she recognized, as if it were an old friend to be welcomed. It was a certain resolve, a knowledge that the only way she could fight her way out of the abyss was to prove something to herself—that she could be brave, that she could survive and be strong.

five minutes. Then open your eyes—and your heart—and consider what needs to be done.