“I was born on the night of Samhain, when the barrier between the worlds is whisper-thin and when magic, old magic, sings its heady and sweet song to anyone who cares to hear it.”
“Please!" I stop my pacing, glare at him. "Is that all you can think about at a time like this?"
Gabriel rolls up on one elbow and smiles at me. "I'm a guy. It's what I think about all the time.”
“Okay," I gasp. "I can't really breathe, but other than that, okay."
"Breathing's overrated," Gabriel advises me."I'm discovering that right about now with this damn tie.”
“There. What do you think?" he takes half a step back and i look at myself in the mirror again. Somehow, he has managed where i failed to roll my hair an pin it low on my neck. The curl that keeps escaping has now been positioned behind my ear.
"Not bad," i say. "You know if the musician thing doesn't work out, you could always be a-"
Behind me Gabriel makes a stabbing motion over his heart.”
“Your father and I will deal with him.”
“What are you going to do?” I say.
“We will talk to him.”
I snort.
“Yeah, that's going to work.”
“You and I are more alike than you think,” Alistair says.
“I don't see that at all,” I say.
“Besides the fact that we both lied about our names,” I add.”
“Then one last thought tugs at me, so I turn back.
"So why did you name me Tamsin?" I ask. "You always promised to tell me later. Even though, technically, it's earlier."
My grandmother's smile flickers, deepens.
"It's how you introduced yourself to me tonight. I just assumed that's what you wanted to be named.”
“He’d told her how orphaned birds would sometimes accept the most pathetic substitutes for their mothers—a pullover, a hot-water bottle, an armpit, or even a paper airplane—anything rather than nothing, but preferably something that moved.”
“I suppose those mist-shrouded mountains could easily stir the imagination,” she murmured, but felt the rousing of a keen curiosity she had never been able to conquer. “Tis certain that many people fear such places, fear what might lurk in such a dark forest or in those clouded hills. But, this time, ’twas some foolish tale they heard in that village we stopped at for the night.” “Ye heard it, too?” “Nay. The men told it to me. Some tale about a creature from those hills, one who disguised himself as a mon. A mon who ne’er showed himself when the sun rose, only ventured out at night. A mon with eyes like a wolf and teeth like one, as weel. A mon so strong it took near a dozen villagers to subdue him, many of them suffering grievous injuries. A mon who could bewitch any lass into offering him her chastity.” The scorn in Nan’s voice made it very clear that she did not believe the tale at all. Bridget was pleased that that scorn did not stop the woman from repeating the tale, however. “Why did they feel the need to attack him, to subdue him? And, what did they do with him after they captured him?” “They caught him sinfully fornicating with another mon’s wife. They dragged him before the priest. Tis then that they realized what they had—a devil, a demon, one of Hell’s foul creatures. The priest had the mon tortured, but that mon didnae confess his sins or repent them. They said his wounds healed as if by magic. The priest then declared him a demon, or a witch. I am nay quite sure. They garroted him, burned him, and scattered his bones far and wide o’er the moors so that he couldnae come back to life.” “How cruel. He may have been innocent.” “I certainly doubt he was all they claim he was, but he wasnae innocent. If there was a mon executed, it was probably for the sins of fornication and adultery. He showed the villagers that their women lacked morals.” Bridget”
“It is time to effect a revolution in female manners - time to restore to them their lost dignity - and make them, as a part of the human species, labour by reforming themselves to reform the world. It is time to separate unchangeable morals from local manners.”
“This kind of war was full of fascinating thrills. It was not like the Great War. Nobody expected to be killed. Here and there in every regiment or battalion, half a dozen, a score, at the worst thirty or forty, would pay forfeit; but to the great mass of those who took part in the little wars of Britain in those vanished and light-hearted days, this was only a sporting element in a splendid game. Most of us were fated to se a war where the hazards were reversed, where death was the general expectation and severe wounds were counted as lucky escapes, where whole brigades were shorn away under the steel flail of artillery and machine-guns, where the survivors of one tornado knew that they would certainly be consumed in the next or the next after that.
Everything depends upon the scale of events. We young men who lay down to sleep that night within three miles of 60,000 well-armed fanatical Dervishes, expecting every moment their violent onset or inrush and sure of fighting at latest with the dawn – we may perhaps be pardoned if we thought we were at grips with real war.”
“the doctrine of anamnesis: that all learning-that is, all learning of eternal truths-is really a remembering,”
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