Nemonus

There was a lightning strike in the middle of a corn field. The corn had been harvested, leaving only the neat rows vomited up under the tractor, rocks and chaff, browning stalks. The gatekeeper walks carefully to the middle of the field and finds the lightning scar. There it places the white stone, and then another, and then another. The process becomes increasingly slow, since the gatekeeper must venture farther and farther to find its stones, although there is not a shortage of white stones when one also considers grey-white and crystal and dirty white and tan. It finds the stones on the sides of roads and in quarries and junkyards, an

The dragon pressed its head against the glass. The paddle-feet were visible somewhere back in the blue-green water, but Jacob could only see them as moving black shapes in the lesser murk. Georgia giggled and pulled away from the tank. “It’s watching you.” Jacob wanted to have some kind of retort, but it was - the dragon was interested in him as food or entertainment, and one green paw swiped lazily in the direction of the glass, stirring up tiny bubbles in the water. “Maybe you’re right,” he said, and backed away. They looked at all the other animals in the zoo: the smaller dragons in their cages,

We had a problem when she liked season three and I didn’t, but our friendship survived it. The first time I met her I saw the book she was reading and asked her whether it represented her core philosophy. She said she didn’t have one. We played pretend after that; we invented causes. After the season two finale we drove together in my car (it was the first time I had driven anyone who wasn’t family) to the other side of town and talked about how the universe began.

She stood on the ladder as the train started moving, smoke eking out from under the wheels, the thick drive arm chugging a few feet from her bare legs. The people at the other end of the platform had started to run, men and women wafting toward her like leaves. Later she would feel that they were unreal, like the storied, summers of 1921, like jazz itself was trumpeting toward her. But the great drumbeat of the train kept on, and she pulled herself up the ladder. The bundle inside the suitcase shifted.

Once, he waited. He waited for a long time. On the wharf and in his house and on the porch, staring at the brown walls. He wore shabby trench coats and cut his hair so that he did not have to wash it as often, or so he figured, and he waited. On the other side of the ocean, she explored jungles and drove Jeeps down dirt roads. She combed leaves and bugs out of her long, blonde hair. She thought of her thoughts and she dreamed of her dreams. One day, she came back across the sea carrying a heavy envelope. She found the porch and the house with the brown walls. The man was sitting on the stoop. She let the envelope slip into his hands and h

You took everything away. You took my land, my servants. My towns and their cattle. The prophetic fog swirls, seeps into the cracks in the old castle walls. I walk here safe, comfortable, looking forward to the blue quilt on my bed. The prophecy stays with me, though. It has to, as much as a map of the battlefield stays with a general. I will take care of this. And you, the hero. Your face in that cloud somewhere, your body wreathed in smoke. I saw suggestions of armor, of thick leather plates and knots, of the horns of a deer. You took everything away from me. You just don’t know it yet.

“You take this, and you don’t let it go.” “Why us?” I asked. The swathed bundle settled into my arms like something liquid, threatening to spill over the sides of my hands, heavy and soft. “We aren’t good at keeping secrets.” “You aren’t known for breaking your word, either.” She had short, blonde hair that almost curled, strong cheekbones,  a square face and square shoulders. Brightly-colored clothes, although I supposed that to some they might appear military and drab. “The best way to keep a secret is to forget that you know it’s there. Keep this away from us.&

Darth Sidious has emerged from Senator Palpatine like a soul stepping out of a body, and put on Emperor Palpatine as a cloak. It is delicious to have his identity revealed: in ridding the galaxy of the Jedi he is also ridding it of a particular blind brand of stupidity. The Jedi had proven their own uselessness, day after day that they had not found him, and now everyone in the galaxy will know their mistake except the Jedi themselves. Sidious looks down at the last Jedi. Darth Vader, his name so new on Sidious’ and Anakin’s tongues although it has waited in Sidious’ mind for long, dark years, stewing in the dusty corners