The Night Country

Are all these books doors?' 'A book is always a door.

Falling for someone makes you say shit that would've made you vomit, back before you were toast.

Like all good bookshops, Edgar's was a pocket universe, where time moved slow as clouds.

That sounds good," I told him. "Which part?" "The part where you're with me." Falling for someone makes you say shit that would've made you vomit, back before you were toast.

Love rose up like a noose and circled my throat.

You are not a victim, or a damsel. Or a girl who runs. [...] You're Alice-Three-Times.

The Hinterland was a clock, perfectly weighted and balanced and spinning in time. The refugees lived tucked among the cogs, learning when to duck and what parts of their borrowed world to avoid.

A book is always a door.

The air smelled like a fairy tail, glitter and green things and blood.

His eyes weren't soft anymore. They were focused and steady and they held me in their light. In them I could see all the Finches I had known. The fanboy and the wanderer and the traitor and the hero.

This story is called 'The Night Country.' And it is not a fairy tale.

The train was full of teenagers with good shoes and too much confidence. I wanted to put sunglasses on to block out their light. I'd felt younger than them once, and older than them now, but we'd never really been the same age. I didn't know what age I was.

We aren't like the creatures who were made in this world. We aren't meant to debase ourselves with then. To live a human life is to forget who we are. To forget who we are is to be an enemy to ourselves. To each other.

My heart settled as I walked in, breathing coffee and paper and sunburnt dust. Like all good bookshops, Edgar's was a pocket universe, where time moved slow as clouds.

If you have a chance to bear witness to a dying world, don't,

Like what? What else have you found in a book?" "Well..." he looked around, like the walls might have ears and reopened the cigar box, faced it towards him so I couldn't see the contents. "Things like this." He showed me a pressed blue flower as big as my fist, it's stamens flattened in all directions like a firework display. A cookie fortune that read simply 'woe betide you'. A neatly clipped page of personal ads dated September 1, 1970 from a paper called the East Village Chronicler. "Funny stuff right?" It was. I liked it. The thought that you could find harmless, interesting things tucked inside books. A reminder that the world contained mysteries.

There was a night when we were down by the water. Across the way we could see the geometric glitter of the Financial District, and I was staring at all the little pin prick windows, reminding myself that every light might have a person under it, and every person had a story, and the city was full of people whose lives were nothing like mine. It was supposed to make me feel less alone, I guess, but instead I was thinking that none of those people, not one, could understand what I was.

If you touch me in anger again, I will fucking touch you back.

Do you really think that's how it works? The Hinterland was never a place, it was always us. Wherever you go, that's the Hinterland.