Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies > Books: alternate-retelling‎ (31)

None of the girls was asleep, drugged, playing, waiting.
They were dead.
They had been killed here.
She wanted to be horrified. It seemed sick to be j

None of the girls was asleep, drugged, playing, waiting.
They were dead.
They had been killed here.
She wanted to be horrified. It seemed sick to be jealous, too, but she was. It hurt to know he’d loved so many other girls; that she was not special, not unique.

“I’m not allowed to ride in my friends’ cars. I’m not allowed to get my license until I’m eighteen. I’m not allowed to date. Not allowed to watch R-rated movies. Not allowed to go for walks after dark. Not allowed to play with sharp objects. The list goes on and on.”

It was one in the morning and she was alone in a strange city, with her duffel bag next to her, a play cracked open in front of her—and she had nowhere to go.
This was not the triumphant homecoming she’d imagined.

Casinos were open all night. She’d figured she could sit in the café, maybe doze off with her head on the table, and no one would care. But now that she’d been there three hours, Mira was starting to think her predicament was obvious. That some gambler would see a “helpless” girl in a frilly blouse and shorts and hit on her. Or some slot-playing grandma would spot a “runaway” and call the police. Or both.

She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth, and when she pulled it away, Mira saw that the cloth was full of sodden flowers: shiny-wet violets, tiny daisies, delicate pink bleeding hearts. All fresh and flecked with blood.

Mira’s forehead wrinkled with confusion. Sometimes this place was just too weird.

Her cheek burned like she’d been lying in the sun too long, and she stood perfectly still, not wanting to break the spell.

His hand grazed her breast, and her breath caught in her throat.

...the bolt on the door had been breached, and the door had been flung open and slammed hard against the wall. A slender, dark figure moved swiftly through the room—
And pounced on the bed.

Mira settled back and did her best to calm down. Maybe Felix would punch Blue for her later.

She wanted to do something, to show him she could be natural at this, but—she couldn’t. Her body had gone rigid with apprehension.

She wandered out into the empty suite, trying hard not to cry. Her embarrassment from last night came flooding back.

Mira pouted at him. It was obvious there was something he wasn’t telling her.

There are things I need to do here, and I intend to do them.”

“Um, little animals flock to him like he’s made of candy.”

“What’s all this curse talk?” Mira murmured to Freddie.
“Just a joke,” Freddie said, flashing an unconvincing smile.

“You know, you are the most...despicable person I’ve ever met.” Mira’s fingers tightened around the Cinderella’s Secret bag. “You don’t even know me, but you insist on being a jerk to me every chance you get.”

“I didn’t say he wants to like you. Just that he does. Maybe because you act like you don’t like him, so he feels a little safer."

“Would you like me to carry your bag?” Freddie asked. He looked a little guilty—but hopeful, too.
“No.”
“But I’d like to do you favors.”

She threw her arms around his neck, swayed toward him, off balance, and kissed him violently, possessively. Come back, she thought. Stay with me.
“I bought—a sexy nightgown,” she said. “Do you want to see it?”

But the one thing she hadn’t expected to find was a kiss that could destroy her. A kiss that—if it hadn’t ended in time—could have been her last.
She shivered all over at the memory. Both terrified and wanting it to happen again.

“Bugger off,” I snapped.

“Just because you kissed me don’t mean I’m your girl none,” I told him.

Did he think I were John’s bit of fun for the day? My belly twisted and I didn’t like the feeling.
And he weren’t Rob. But then, maybe that weren’t such an awful thing. Rob’s sort I could never deserve.

His eyes looked into mine in a way that made my breath suck out of my pipes. “You’re every kind of surprise, you know that?”

He looked at me, his eyes running over my face. He came closer, and I were against the wall, so my heart started to flutter-beat in my chest. I didn’t much like feeling trapped. He palmed my hat, pushing it back.
“What are you doing?” I asked, pulling away.
“I need to see your eyes when I ask you this.”
“Ask what?”
“Are you in love with Rob, Scar?”

His lips pressed against mine, strong like the rest of him and a little wet, pushing my lips into a fair good kiss. He caught me up ’bout the waist and kissed me deeper. I shut my eyes, and Rob’s face popped into my head.

“About John,” he said at long last.
I blinked.
“I don’t want to know how you two are fooling about, but if it interferes with the band I’ll kick you out myself.”

Even more dismally she recalled the vehemence with which she had criticized and laughed at Mr. Darcy the previous autumn. How much she wished she had been more moderate in her expressions, more discreet in her opinions! Would there be a person among them who would doubt that she accepted him only for his wealth? In her mind’s eye she could see her neighbors’ knowing looks and half-hidden smirks. No one would blame her, of course. They would think her uncommonly clever to have made such a match, even while they pitied her for her proud and unpleasant husband.

"[The younger Bennet sisters] are spoiled, vain, and silly, with no sense of propriety and hardly even of common decency. Their mother positively encourages them, while their father has the sense to know better, yet chooses to mock them rather than make any attempt to restrain them.”

She sighed, sitting down on a fallen log. “It’s not just Sir William, you know. Mrs. Long, the lady you once sat next to for half an hour without speaking? She can seem like a foolish old woman when you first meet her, but she has a very tender heart. Nearly all of her free time she spends making clothes for local children."

“Even my mother has her moments,” she continued, a reminiscent tone taking over her voice. “One year we got news that one of our tenants had an infant son who was sick and going to die. Perhaps because it was a boy, and she had never been able to have one herself, but there was a look on her countenance I never saw before—or since—and before I knew it, she was out the door with Hill and blankets and hot soup and a bottle of Hill’s all-purpose remedy that she used to dose us all with regularly as children, and we did not see anything more of either of them for the rest of that day or the night. When morning came she returned, looking tired, and went straight to her room. She never talked of it—I think she thought a woman of her station should not be nursing the tenants’ children—and out of respect for her neither did Hill, but we heard afterwards that the little boy recovered, and his mother swore that my mother saved his life.”

“I was selfish!—because I thought only of how much I wanted her; I was arrogant because I was so certain that marriage to me would be an unalloyed good for her. She was poor; I would make her rich. She was unmarried; I would make her a wife. She was unappreciated and unequalled in her current company; I would take her and place her among society worthy of her. I would give all and be all, and never did I consider how little she truly desired anything I had to offer.”

Two girls.
One beautiful and strong.
One plain and powerless.
Only one shall be queen…
And the other shall serve her.

Marie was starting to be a bit of an embarrassment to the whole court. The princess, instead of acting like a girl on the cusp of a great romance—awaiting the appearance of her soon-to-be-beloved—was sulking around the palace, holed up in her room, eating sweets and not speaking to anyone.

The peace of the empire depended on her taking the Prussian prince as her bridegroom. The sooner she accepted her fate, the easier her life would be.

When she was a child, she’d always wanted what was the princess’s. Even at seventeen years old, it was a hard habit to break.

Ronan was nothing if not ambitious.She would be married at the end of the London Season—and she determined right then and there that she would make not just a good match, but the best match; perhaps even catch the eye of the Kronprinz of Prussia himself.
Ronan was nothing if not ambitious.

Unlike his vaunted older brother, he had no taste for womanizing, no desire to father a litter of bastards. He vowed that once he was married he would never take a mistress.
Wolf, the Beast of Berlin, was more Labrador than fox when it came to the ladies.

He had just proposed they play a game where they take their clothes off.

Leo leaned over and kissed her again, and now he was on top of her, kissing her again, and she wriggled underneath him, and found she was crying. She was crying without making a sound, the tears streaming down her face as he kissed her, just like the first time, when she had been unable to ask him to stop.

His Juliet stood before him, or at least, the shape of her, frozen in blood, monochromatic crimson, but unmistakably her. Thick chains bound her across neck and waist; manacles clasped her wrists. Her eyes were the worst of all, open, bloody, blank and unseeing, yet somehow still accusing.

“You must go north. You will find the man who can help you there.”

“Farther. Farther than you have ever traveled. Over the mountains, to a castle by the sea. The seat of a murdered king.”

...the unearthly portal that divided the realm of the living and the dead.

But they were gone, the hillside, too. Romeo found himself in a strange, barren wasteland.
He was alone.

He plunged into the spectral river on the maggot’s back, and when it surfaced, screaming its rage from its horrible, rotting mouth, he saw through the portal.
And he knew Romeo would not save him.

“It’s me.”

“I don’t care!” Romeo could not hold back his anger any longer. “You’re mad, and I’m a fool for letting you lead me here.”

Hamlet groaned. “Oh, stop pitying yourself. You were desperate and unhappy at home, you’re desperate and unhappy now. Nothing has changed, except that now we’re closer to your goal.”

“Have you listened to a word you’ve said? You’re miserable without your true love, and you’ve come here to find her. You are closer to rescuing a loved one from death than any man has ever been, and now all you’re doing is complaining.”

“I thought you said it wasn’t terrifying!” Romeo shouted, his eyes wide with fear.
Hamlet shrugged. The bastard actually shrugged as he lay there on the stone. Romeo would have punched him, but there were more pressing matters at hand than the prince’s maddening attitudes.

“I don’t know. I never stepped completely through the corpseway.” Hamlet’s thought trailed off as he moved through the light, sliding his feet cautiously along the floor. “Seems safe enough. Come on.”

“I stuck my head in,” Hamlet argued. “It came out again. And my father’s ghost was able to traverse the corpseway. I see no reason that it might not work exactly as I’ve described.”

“Was there no way to find out, before you did this to me?” Juliet asked, her large brown eyes full of hurt. “The two of you never thought that a bit more preparation might have been required before tampering with the forces of life and death?”

Juliet proved tireless with her blade, to Hamlet’s surprise and delight. He could not imagine the ladies of his uncle’s court taking such bloodthirsty delight in defeating monsters.

But Romeo had seen this fire in her from the very instant they’d met, though it had been only a small spark then. Set among the tinder of conflict, she was now ablaze.

The cloth fell away from the thing’s face, revealing no eyes, no nose, just the sightless, round countenance of a maggot and a circular mouth full of teeth in endless rings.

Something in Juliet’s voice bothered Romeo. There was a smirk to her tone that was too comfortable with the prince. She spoke the way she had spoken to Romeo that night at her father’s party.

“Listen to me, Dinah,” he hissed. “Things are going to change for you, child, and you had better be made of stronger stuff than the whiny brat you

“Listen to me, Dinah,” he hissed. “Things are going to change for you, child, and you had better be made of stronger stuff than the whiny brat you seem to be now.”

Mostly her days were filled with mind-numbing croquet, etiquette, history, and dancing lessons.

“Then help me do this. Wardley, something is amiss. I can feel it. There is a lurking, a presence, a danger, something BAD is happening. And someone is trying to help us. I NEED to speak with Faina Baker, and I need your help to do it.”

He was never her ally; rather, he was a man who constantly whispered twisted secrets in her father’s ear. The rumors of his extracurricular activities ran rampant in the castle.

He grabbed her chin in his hands and held it close, the scent of wine washing over her face from his hot breath. He was shaking her violently now, and she felt her knees begin to buckle.

“Wardley, what are you doing? STOP it! I have to LEAVE!”

“I heard him, my father. I SAW HIM."

Dinah felt her entire body tremble. “NO, NO! I can’t. Absolutely not.”

“Why are you talking to me?” she snapped. “I HATE YOU! Don’t touch me!”

“It will all be alright, child. Trust me. Now put on your brave face. Let me see it.”
Dinah scowled.

“Why are you talking to me?” she snapped. “I HATE YOU! Don’t touch me!”

Tears gathered at the corner of Vittiore’s eyes. Her unflinching blue gaze unnerved Dinah, who found a fury rising inside.

Hot rage boiled up inside of her, and Dinah’s mallet dropped from her hand.

She’s a bastard child, unworthy of a minute of his time. I hope she dies of wheezing fever."

"Vittiore—”
“Is a lovely, innocent girl,” finished Harris.
Dinah shot him a nasty look, “—is a venomous wench snake,” she replied. “The very sight of her makes me ill.

There were four divisions of the men called Cards, each serving their purpose to the kingdom. Heart Cards, handsome and skilled men uniformed in red and white, protected the royal family and the palace.

The gown was lovely in a severe way, with hundreds of gray fabrics mingling together in an elaborate tweed. A large red heart arched over her shoulders and down the back of the dress, its top folds meeting at her collarbone. White ribbons ran up and down the heart in delicate ruffles. Bright-raspberry hearts dotted the full hem of the dress.

“DINAH!” A loud voice bellowed from the throne, and Dinah felt a tiny trickle of urine roll down her leg under her dress. She had been lost in thought, standing midaisle. Dinah bowed her head. “Get up here. Now.”

Wardley was the King’s favorite of all his young Cards, and maybe someday, Dinah hoped, something much more. She longed to make Wardley her husband one day, which would make him the King of Hearts beside her.

Her lips trembled. “Wardley, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. . . .”
“No you didn’t,” Wardley snapped. “But I tried to tell you. No one can tell you anything, Dinah, not ever, because you’re the Princess and you do what you want. You’re not unlike your father that way.”

Poor girl. If Ember had spent less time studying magic and more time studying human nature, she might have guessed that a man who gets everything and everyone he wants will come to want the one woman he cannot have.

“May he be charming. May every eye find perfection in his face and form. May every man respect him and every woman desire him. May all who meet him love him and long to please him.”

“You’re cruel. Don’t you think it must be a peculiar sort of hell to live surrounded by sycophants? Like living in a dollhouse. No matter how perfect your playmates, they are cold porcelain. Soon enough, you would long for the heat, the softness, and the imperfections of living flesh. You would long to hear words and wishes other than your own.”

I dreamt he leaned over me crying; his hot tears fell upon my cold cheeks. “Oh, she was so pure,” he wailed. “She was so delicate and special. She has died for the love of me. I can love no other!”
I must pause here to tell you, I see the way your lips are twitching. Please, don’t be afraid to laugh. My dignity is not so rigid I can’t see the humor in those youthful imaginings.

“Oz has changed,” Gert said. “The trees don’t talk. The Pond of Truth tells lies, the Wandering Water stays put. The Land of Naught is on fire. People are starting to get old. People are forgetting how it used to be.”

Tornado or no tornado, I wasn’t Dorothy, and a stupid little storm wasn’t going to change anything for me.

My stomach dropped and kept dropping. I felt my body getting heavier, my back plastered to the cushions now, and suddenly—with a mix of horror and wonder—I knew that I was airborne.
The trailer was flying. I could feel it.

“Welcome to Oz,” the boy said, nodding, like he expected I’d figured that out already. It came out sounding almost apologetic, like, Hate to break the bad news.

A vast field of decaying grass stretched into the distance. It was gray and patchy and sickly, with the faintest tinge of blue. On the far side of the pit was a dark, sinister-looking forest, black and deep. The air, the clouds, even the sun, which was shining bright, all had a faded, washed-out quality to them. There was something dead about all of it.

I knew the answer already: what I was going to do next was the same thing I’d been doing my whole life.
I turned back. Just put one foot in front of the other. Nothing had changed except the color of the road.

Before I could even touch it, a black vine sprung up from the ground and curled around my arm like a whip, squeezing tight. It burned.

Other than the twitching, [her lips] didn’t move. At all. Even when she talked.
“What’s with her mouth?” I asked Star under my breath.
I jumped when an actual voice answered in a hoarse whisper from behind me.
“(A) it’s PermaSmile, and (B) are you out of your dumbass mind?”

“Don’t mind those,” he explained, seeing the look of confusion on my face. “That’s just where my wings used to be. Before I cut them off.”

“They talk about Oz where I’m from. I’ve heard about it my whole life. But this is messed up. What happened here?”
Indigo’s impassive face twisted into a snarl. “Dorothy happened,” she said.

"That’s why you’re here. We need you to stop her.”
I sat up straight. I didn’t know the first thing about magic. I didn’t know the first thing about Dorothy. “Me? I just got here. How am I supposed to stop anyone from doing anything?”

“Simple. You’re going to kill her.” She looked right at me and said, “Dorothy must die.”

“It’s your choice,” he said. “It’s not magic that makes you who you are. It’s the choices that you make. Look at Dorothy.”
“What about Dorothy?”
“That’s exactly what makes Dorothy evil.”

His oversize jaw jutted out from the rest of his face in a nasty underbite, revealing a mess of little blades where his teeth should have been.

“You asked why they work for her,” she said. “You asked why the Munchkins don’t just tell Glinda to fuck off and take her machine somewhere else.”
“Yeah. I was wondering that. Maybe it was stupid of me.”
“It was,” Indigo said, shooting me an annoyed look. “Do you think they have a choice?"

“Did that tree just move?”
“They talk, too, but they’ve taken a vow of silence.”
“Voluntarily?”
“The princess felt that their conversation ruined the apple-eating experience and was therefore a violation of the Happiness Decree.”

Instead of farm-girl cotton it was silk and chiffon. The cut was somewhere between haute couture and French hooker. The bodice nipped, tucked, and lifted. There was cleavage.
Lots of cleavage.

Dorothy’s face was burning with aggrieved rage. “I am the only one. There can only be one.”
My gut twisted. I understood. We had the same story. It was like we were wearing the same dress to the prom. Dorothy thought her landing here was fate—that it made her special. Another girl from Kansas meant that it was just a regular occurrence and that she wasn’t special at all. Or—worse—that I was here to take her place.

Why did I hesitate? Was I that weak?
I told myself that I didn’t want to ruin the Order’s plans—they’d told me to wait—but I knew that wasn’t entirely it. I’d chickened out.

I sliced diagonally across his chest and then drew the knife out only to plunge it right back in, drawing an X along his left side with the blade.

I’m afraid I was wrong. Wrong about Mary, who never wanted to be better than anyone else; she just wanted to be herself.
I’m

I’m afraid I was wrong. Wrong about Mary, who never wanted to be better than anyone else; she just wanted to be herself.
I’m afraid all the things I’ve said and done will hunt me down and haunt me. Because the thing I’m afraid of is the same thing I told the king would make me happy. The thing I’ve been pursuing through the forest of my own life.
“Love.”

The red of his hair shone against his black velvet cap, echoed in a more subdued shade by his beard. He was dressed all in crimson and cloth of gold, with jewels at his throat and crossing his chest, on his cap and encrusting his fingers.
But it wasn’t the gold that dazzled me. And it wasn’t the jewels.
It was the way he wore them. The way they fit the body beneath. Broad chest. Narrow waist. The hard edge of the muscles in his leg beneath the stockings. And he towered above us, especially the lame and stocky Claude, who glowed round and sweet like a gilded pudding.

[Mary's] voice is round and delicate, though tuneless.
But Mary is beautiful.
Her skin is naturally pale with just a touch of pink. She has wide eyes, smooth hair the color of freshly cut oak, both of which she got from our mother. I once heard my father remark that I must be a changeling child, as all the beauty on both sides bypassed me.

“Don’t make yourself more than you are.” George stands and brushes his doublet. Checks his fingernails. “As a woman, you have no choice. You have to do what your father says. And eventually what your husband says. You can use your feminine wiles to encourage certain outcomes, but at the end of the day, their will is the only will that matters.”

I learned early on that my virginity is the only treasure I carry in a royal court. Everything else about me is worthless. Or belongs to my father.

“When you walk away—and every time you walk away from me—don’t look back.”
Like Orpheus. Like Lot’s wife. Looking back would break the spell.

"Without her having to use her hands, the cows began to splash steamy streams of milk inside the buckets she had placed beneath their teats.
Eggs lifted from the hay inside the chicken coop, flying into her basket as the hens let out surprised clucks.
Next came the blackberries. Rather than getting nicked and bloody hands from the thorns, the berries plucked themselves off the brambles, falling into the girls’ baskets."

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I whispered, in the faint light of the fire, after I’d calmed down and let my rage melt into sorrow. “Who is the fai

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I whispered, in the faint light of the fire, after I’d calmed down and let my rage melt into sorrow. “Who is the fairest of them all?”
I wiped tears from my face, and peered in to see. I blinked and saw my own tear-stained face, my eyes huge and full of pain, fury.
“Rapunzel is the fairest,” the voice said.
I focused all my desire, my pain and rage, my humiliation, down into a point of light, but now there was nowhere to go. What else was there, beyond this?

I focused on my beauty, which was easier to control. I rarely ate, so that my waist would be more narrow. I used every spell I knew to make my skin smoother and my hair more lustrous, my eyes brighter. I had Clareta brush oils through my hair to make it shine.
I was not unaware of the irony, that I was starving myself and surrounded by riches when people were going hungry because they had no other choice, outside the castle walls.
But I was a queen.

The boys went off to fight with swords while girls had to learn dog barks and owl hoots. No wonder princesses were so impotent in fairy tales, she

The boys went off to fight with swords while girls had to learn dog barks and owl hoots. No wonder princesses were so impotent in fairy tales, she thought. If all they could do was smile, stand straight, and speak to squirrels, then what choice did they have but to wait for a boy to rescue them?

She was Evil, always Evil, and there would never be happiness or peace. As her heart shattered with sadness, she yielded to darkness without a fight, only to hear a dying echo, somewhere deeper than soul.
It’s not what we are.
It’s what we do.

Her waist-long hair, the color of spun gold, didn’t have its usual sheen. Her jade-green eyes looked faded, her luscious red lips a touch dry. Even the glow of her creamy peach skin had dulled. But still a princess, she thought.

As for the rest of Sophie’s beauty routine, it could fill a dozen storybooks (suffice it to say it included goose feathers, pickled potatoes, horse hooves, cream of cashews, and a vial of cow’s blood).

Her hideous dome of black hair looked like it was coated in oil. Her hulking black dress, shapeless as a potato sack, couldn’t hide freakishly pale skin and jutting bones. Ladybug eyes bulged from her sunken face.

Sophie’s eyes flashed. “You’re lucky that someone would come see you when no one else will. You’re lucky that someone like me would be your friend. You’re lucky that someone like me is such a good person.”
“I knew it!” Agatha flared. “I’m your Good Deed! Just a pawn in your stupid fantasy!”

Stunned, Sophie watched Agatha plummet into pink cotton-candy mist. “Wait—no—”
The bird swooped savagely towards the Towers of Evil, its jaws reaching up for new prey.
“No! I’m Good! It’s the wrong one!” Sophie screamed—
And without a beat, she was dropped into hellish darkness.

Here was a mass of the miserable, with misshapen bodies, repulsive faces, and the cruelest expressions she’d ever seen, as if looking for something to hate. One by one their eyes fell on Sophie and they found what they were looking for. The petrified princess in glass slippers and golden curls.
The red rose among thorns.

She ran for her life.

Agatha did the only thing she knew how to do when faced with expectations.
Up the blue Honor staircase, through sea-green halls, she ran.

The fight escalated to a ludicrous climax, with Sophie beating Agatha with a blue squash, Agatha sitting on Sophie’s head, and the class gleefully making bets as to who was who—
“Go rot in Gavaldon alone!” Sophie screamed.
“Better alone than with a phony!” Agatha shouted.
“Get out of my life!”
“You came into mine!”

“But the boys train for war in class,” a girl moaned.
“We haven’t even learned to fight!” said another.
“Would you like to be a slave to villains?” Beatrix fired back. “Made to cook children and eat princess hearts and drink horse blood—”
“And wear black?” Reena cried.
Evergirls gulped.
“Then learn quickly,” Beatrix said.

Tedros was used to girls watching him. But when would he find one who saw more than his looks? Who saw more than King Arthur’s son? Who cared about his thoughts, his hopes, his fears? And yet here he was, pivoted purposely as he toweled so the girls could have a perfect view.

Princess Uma looked far too young to be a teacher. Nestled in prim grass, backlit by lake shimmer, she sat very still, hands folded in her pink dress, with black hair to her waist, olive skin, almond-shaped eyes, and crimson lips pursed in a tight O. When she did speak, it was in a giggly whisper, but she couldn’t make it through a full sentence. Every few words, she’d stop to listen to a distant fox or dove and respond with her own giddy howl or chirp.

“Oops!” she tee-heed. “I have too many friends!”

Agatha couldn’t tell if she was nervous or just an idiot.

Sophie was crouched over a puddle of water on the floor, singing as she applied blush in her reflection.

“I’m a pretty princess, sweet as a pea,
Waiting for my prince to marry me...”

Three bunk mates and three rats watched from across the room, mouths open in shock.

All these years she had tried to be someone else. She had made so many mistakes along the way. But at last, she had come home.

Agatha prickled with shame. In this School for Good, where everyone was supposed to be kind and loving, she had still ended up alone and despised. She was a villain, no matter where she went.

Agatha felt familiar shame rise. Everything in her body told her to shut the door again and hide. But this time instead of thinking of all the friends she didn’t have, Agatha thought about the one she did.
Agatha slipped into the pink parade, put on a smile...and tried to blend.

The girls collapsed in tormented heaps.
“Ready to go home?” Agatha panted.
Sophie looked up, ghost white.
“Thought you’d never ask.”

I saw crushed cars stacked on top of one another and the street in front of my house split in two, exposing the innards of the earth. Nothing grew and not a soul roamed. The trees had fallen and the ground was barren of any life, the world as far as I could see, deserted.

The doors are all open and people are inside sleeping or hooking up, survivors like us. Broken bottles and clothing litter the hallways. A girl is crunched up into a ball, hugging her knees and whistling, pointing at the blank wall. Another is crushing red flowers so the juice drips into her mouth; some spills down her neck in rivulets.
“I love you,” my new friend says. “What’s your name?”

Hex tells me that back Then, when he was twelve, he started drinking and using, doing whatever it took to get his supply. “Good times.” At thirteen he was a full-blown addict and it got worse when he started DJing five years later because he could get into all the clubs and everyone was always giving him free alcohol and drugs. “I was like this mini–pill machine, downing them with whiskey. Could drink a dude twice my size under the table.”

"But none of them is so well loved as Baldur the Beautiful.
He’s the god of light, and is handsome and golden, strong and funny. At the end of every summer, he dies and his body is consumed in a great bonfire, only to rise again at winter’s end. He gives himself to Hel for six months of every year, but lives harder and more brightly in the time he has with us on earth.
He is the only god who dies at all.
And that makes him the one most like us."

"I think my heart stops beating.
There are stories of old heroes being born and reborn to discover loves from past lives, to suffer and struggle for them again and again. Sigurd Dragonslayer and the Valkyrie Brynhild, Ivar and Ohther, Starwolf Berserk and Lady Kate.
In that moment on the roof of the Spark, I imagine ages and lifetimes pile atop us, spinning us into the pull of destiny."