Speaks the Nightbird

... some wounds refuse the remedy of time.

the paradox of Man was the fact that one might have been made in the image of God, yet it was often the most devilish of ideas that gave action and purpose to the human breed. He

Tell me. What is the point of life, if truth is not worth standing up for? If justice is a hollow shell? If beauty and grace are burnt to ashes, and evil rejoices in the flames? Shall I weep on that day, and lose my mind, or join the rejoicing and lose my soul? Shall I sit in my room? Should I go for a long walk, but where might I go so as not to smell the smoke? Should I just go on, Mrs. Nettles, like everyone else?

into the cell, put the basket down upon the magistrate’s

He lit a candle, as the morning was so caliginous,

There was a small noise—a snake’s hiss, perhaps—and the cup clamped tightly as the heated air within compressed itself. An instant after the hideous contact was made, Woodward cried out around the sassafras root and his body shivered in a spasm of pure, animal pain.