Henry David Thoreau and the Power of Non-Violent Resistance Essay

Thoreau contends that men have lost the free will to make individual decisions regarding war, slavery, and domestic issues because government imposes on its citizens only in its own self interests. (Thoreau 1706). He states government loses its integrity when willing to consider profit over the interests of its citizens, and basic human rights such as slavery and war. (Thoreau 1707). He considers slavery as a â€Å"hateful and stupid enterprise? (Eulau 119). Thoreau feels such deep disgrace being associated with a government who condones slavery, that he refuses to vote, pay taxes, and makes his only contact with this government the tax collector. (Eulau 121). Thoreau personally does not want to be bothered with the issues of government or slavery, but because of his writings he is sought out by Abolitionists to give speeches for them. He feels idealism, individualism and democracy are not achievable in a society willing to maintain slaves. (Eulau 123). He is obsessed with right, t ruth and justice for all citizens and encourages nonviolent resistance as the means to effectively abolish slavery. (Eulau 124). This position is different than most Abolitionists of the time. During this time most of his attention is directed at the southern slaves states. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 is the event that leads him to become detached from the State. The treatment of a runaway slave weighs heavily on his emotions. His anger leads him to encouragepeople to withdraw farther from the State ...

Single Parenting vs Nuclear Parenting

Although households are â€Å"supposed† to contain two parents there are ones that contain only one parent. A single parent is a parent who cares for one or more child without physical help of another parent in the house. Though people looked down upon single parenting before, it is now quite common in today’s world. According to the United States Census Bureau the amount of children who live with a single parent has increased to a little more than 30 percent.Single parenting is a problem to others since children raised under a household of a single parent are two times more likely to end up poor, to give birth outside of marriage, to not graduate from high school, and to have behavioral and psychological problems. It is also said that children living in single parent households are more likely to experience accidents, injuries, and poisonings. Since kids living in single parent homes are more likely to undergo these problems, many people argue that children who live in single parent homes will not grow up properly.Although kids are more likely to develop those problems, if single parents raise their children properly their children will be able to avoid those problems. Single parents and other non-traditional families are quite capable of raising healthy, well-adjusted children. Those who propose that single parents are not capable of rearing healthy and well-adjusted children have comprehensible reasons. They worry that the children will lack guidance and attention needed since there is only one parent for them to go to.They also worry that the children will lack gender influence and will need help with relationship problems in the future. At last, they worry that the children will grow up unable being independent and responsible due to their parent â€Å"babying† them too much. I believe the reasons why people are against single parent homes are not very reasonable. People propose that children raised by a single parent are not being rai sed properly. They believe that the child won’t be attended to as often since there is only one parent.That is where they are wrong, because what is family for, right? Many single parents are able to turn to their parents, siblings or extended family quite often for help. People also argue that the child of a single parent will suffer from lack of gender influence. This is basically saying a child will not understand the role of either a male or the role of a female because of deprivation of the other parent. This argument is invalid since the role models of a single parent child could be uncles, aunties, or friends of the parents.Children raised from a single parent are able to grow up with the same amount of guidance and attention as a child reared from two parents. Many people argue that children being raised by a single parent will lack those basic essentials. Many think this because single parents often work a full-time job. I believe this claim is invalid but to a certa in extent. As long as the parent has contact with family or friends, they, along with the single parent will help guide and support the child throughout their life as long as they are around.A life example would be a single parent that has to work. They will call their parents to watch their child. The child will then be taken care of by their grandparents. The grandparents will teach the child what is right from wrong (guidance); something the single parent may not have the time to do. They may also be there for the child when the single parent is not. Since many children crave attention, they like showing their parents their accomplishments from school they obtain. Since a single parent is usually too busy to take the time to notice.By having the grandparents there for the child, the child will more likely be able to receive the attention they wish to receive. Raising a child in a single parent household will not affect the child’s future relationships. Others argue against this because when children are young, they fall in love with their parent of the opposite sex. For the boys it is the Oedipus complex and for girls it is the Electra complex. Boys later on, end up looking for personality traits which their mother hold and choose a girl based upon those traits; for girls they undergo the same affair though they do so based off of their fathers traits.Some children unable to learn this develop relationship problems since they do not know what traits they are searching for in a partner. This task is extremely difficult for single parents to succeed in doing though it is not impossible. A parent can carry out this troublesome task by taking on both roles of the parents; as a father and as a mother. Single parenting holds the ability to teach independence and responsibility indirectly to their child. Others think differently, they assume these children won’t be ready for the real world due to the amount of â€Å"babying† while growing up.T his of course is incorrect because studies show that children of single parents are more independent that those with two parents. Being there only one parent, they are unable to do everything on their own; this moderately forces their child to learn to do tasks the parent has not the time to handle, on their own and at a younger age. An example, if a parent is running late for work, their child may have to make their own meal since their mother or their father does not have the time to do so.Individual parents and other non-traditional families are completely able to rear normal, balanced offspring. Single parent children are fully capable of having guidance and attention, learning roles of the opposite gender, and being independent as children with two parents. If you do not believe single parents are able to raise normal children, you are thinking wrong because this type of family makes up about 30 percent of the United States population; this number continues to escalate.

The Stupidest Angel Chapter 9

Chapter 9 THE LOCAL GUYS, THEY HAVE THEIR MOMENTS Thursday morning it became official: Dale Pearson, evil developer, was a missing person. Theo Crowe was going over the big red truck parked by the pounding Pacific at Lime Kiln Rock in the Big Sur wilderness area above Pine Cove. This was the area where half the world's car commercials were filmed – everything from Detroit minivans to German lux-o-cruisers was filmed snaking around the cliffs of Big Sur, as if all you needed to do was sign the lease papers and your life would be an open road of frothy waves beating on majestic seawalls, with nothing but leisure and prosperity ahead. Dale Pearson's big red truck did look carefree and prosperous, parked there by the sea, despite the crust of salt forming on the paint and the appearance that the owner had been washed away in the surf. Theo wanted that to be the case. The highway patrol, who had found the truck, had reported it as an accident. There was a surf-casting rod there on the rocks, conveniently monogrammed with Dale's initials. And the Santa hat he'd been wearing was found washed up nearby, and therein lay the problem. Betsy Butler, Dale's squeeze, had said that Dale had gone out two nights ago to play Santa at the Caribou Lodge and had never come home. Who went fishing in the middle of the night while wearing a Santa hat? Granted, according to the other Caribou, Dale had done â€Å"some drinking,† and he was a little wound up from his confrontation with his ex-wife the day before, but he hadn't lost his mind completely. Negotiating the cliffs by Lime Kiln Rock to get down to the water during the day was risky business; there's no way that Dale would have tried it in the middle of the night. (Theo had lost his footing and slid twenty feet before he caught himself, wrenching his back in the process. Sure he was a little stoned, but then, Dale would have been a little drunk.) The highway patrolman, who had a crew cut and looked to be about twelve – an escapee from one of the hygiene films Theo had seen in sixth-grade health class, Why Mary Won't Go in the Water – had Theo sign off on his report, then climbed in his cruiser and headed up the coast into Monterey County. Theo went back and looked through the truck again. All the things that should have been there – some tools, a black Mag flashlight, a couple of fast-food wrappers, another fishing rod, a tube of blueprints – were there. And all the things that shouldn't – bloody knives, shell casings, severed limbs, evidence of bleach from cleanup – were not. It was like the guy had just driven up here, climbed down the cliff, and washed away. But that just couldn't be the case. Dale could be mean-spirited, crude, and even violent, but he wasn't stupid. Unless he knew the exact topography of these cliffs, and had a good flashlight, he'd never have made it down in the dark. And his flashlight was still in the truck. Theo wished that he had better training in crime-scene investigation. He'd learned most of what he knew from television, not at the academy where he'd spent a miserable eight weeks fifteen years ago when the corrupt sheriff who had found his personal pot patch had railroaded him into becoming Pine Cove's constable. Since the academy, almost every crime scene he'd encountered had been turned over to the county sheriff or highway patrol almost immediately. He went over the truck cab again looking for something that might be a clue. The only thing remotely out of order was some dog hairs on the headrest. Theo couldn't remember if Dale had a dog. He put the dog hairs in a sandwich bag and dialed Betsy Butler on his cell phone. She didn't sound that broken up about Dale's disappearance. â€Å"No, Dale didn't like dogs. He didn't like cats either. He was kind of a cow man.† â€Å"He liked cows? Did you guys have a pet cow?† Could it be cow hair? â€Å"No, he liked to eat them, Theo. Are you okay?† â€Å"No, sorry, Betsy.† He had been so sure that he didn't sound stoned. â€Å"So, do I get the truck? I mean, are you going to bring it here?† â€Å"I have no idea,† said Theo. â€Å"They'll tow it to the impound yard. I don't know if they'll release it to you. I'd better go, Betsy.† He snapped the phone shut. Maybe he was just tired. Molly had made him sleep on the couch last night – saying something about him having mutant tendencies. He hadn't even known that she liked the salad shooter. He was sure that she could tell that he'd been smoking pot. He flipped the phone back open and called Gabe Fenton. â€Å"Hey, Theo. I don't know what that stuff is you brought me, but it's not hair. It won't burn or melt, and it's damn hard to cut or break. Good thing it was torn out by the roots.† Theo cringed. He had almost forgotten about the crazed blond guy he'd run over. He shuddered now, thinking about it. â€Å"Gabe, I have some more hair I'd like you to look at.† â€Å"Oh my God, Theo, did you run over someone else?† â€Å"No, I didn't run over anybody. Jeez, Gabe.† â€Å"Okay. I'll be here all day. Actually, I'll be here all night, too. It's not like I have anywhere to go. Or anyone who cares whether I live or die. It's not like –  » â€Å"Okay. I'm coming over.† There were two men and three women, including Lena, in the offices of Properties in the Pines when Tucker Case came through the door. The women were immediately intrigued by him and the men immediately disliked him. It had always been that way with Tuck. Later, if they got to know him, the women would dismiss him and the men would still dislike him. Basically, he was a geek in a cool guy's body – one feature or the other worked against him. It was an open stable of desks and Tuck went directly to Lena's desk at the back. As he went he smiled and nodded to the realtors, who smiled back weakly, trying not to sneer. They were beat from showing properties to Christmas vacation be-backs who wouldn't move here even if they could find employment in this toy town. They'd just failed to plan any vacation activities and so decided to take the kids out for a rousing round of jerk off the realtor. Or so went the party line at the MLS meetings. Lena met Tuck's gaze and instinctively smiled, then frowned. â€Å"What are you doing here?† â€Å"Lunch? You. Me. Eating. Talking. I need to ask you something.† â€Å"I thought you were supposed to be flying.† Tuck hadn't seen Lena in her business clothes – a sensible skirt and blouse, just a little mascara and lipstick, her hair pinned up with lacquered chopsticks, a few strands escaping here and there to frame her face. He liked the look. â€Å"I flew all morning. There's weather. The edge of a storm coming.† He really wanted to pull the chopsticks out of her hair and throw her down there on the desk and tell her how he really felt, which was somewhat aroused. â€Å"We could get Chinese,† he added. Lena looked out the window. The sky was going dark gray over the shops across the street. â€Å"There's no Chinese place in Pine Cove. Besides, I'm really swamped here. I handle vacation rentals and it's Christmas Eve eve.† â€Å"We could go to your place for a quick lunch. You have no idea how quick I can be if I put my mind to it.† Lena looked past him to her coworkers, who, of course, were now staring. â€Å"Is that what you need to ask me?† â€Å"Oh, no, no, of course not. I wouldn't – that would be, well, yes – but there's something else.† Now Tuck was feeling the realtors watching him, listening to him. He leaned over Lena's desk so only she could hear. â€Å"You said this morning that that constable guy your friend is married to lives in a cabin at the edge of a ranch. It wouldn't be the big ranch north of town, would it?† Lena was still looking past him. â€Å"Yes, the Beer-Bar Ranch, belongs to Jim Beer.† â€Å"And there's an old single-wide trailer next to the cabin?† â€Å"Yes, that used to be Molly's, but now they live in the cabin. Why?† Tuck stood back and grinned. â€Å"Then white roses it is,† he said, a little too loudly for the benefit of the audience. â€Å"I just didn't know if they'd be appropriate for the holidays.† â€Å"Huh?† Lena said. â€Å"See you tonight,† Tuck said. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, then sauntered out of the office, smiling apologetically at the exhausted realtors as he went. â€Å"Merry Christmas, you guys,† he said, waving from the door. The first thing that Theo noticed when he entered Gabe Fenton's cabin was the aquariums with the dead rats. The female was scampering around the center cage, sniffing and crapping and looking rat-happy, but the others, the males, lay on their backs, feet shot to the sky, like plastic soldiers in a death diorama. â€Å"How did that happen?† â€Å"They wouldn't learn. Once they associated the shock with sex, they started liking it.† Theo thought about his relationship with Molly over the last few days. He pictured himself in the dead-rat display. â€Å"So you just kept shocking them until they died?† â€Å"I had to keep the parameters of the experiment constant.† Theo nodded gravely, as if he understood completely, which he didn't. Skinner came over and headbutted him in the thigh. Theo scratched his ears to comfort him. Skinner was worried about the Food Guy, and he was hoping that maybe the Emergency Backup Food Guy might give him one of the tasty-smelling white squirrels in the cages on the table, now that it appeared that the Food Guy was finished cooking them. This teasing was as bad as when that kid at the beach used to pretend to throw the ball, then not throw the ball. Then pretend to throw the ball, but not throw the ball. Skinner had to knock the kid down and sit on his face. Boy, had he been bad-dogged for that. Nothing hurt like being bad-dogged, but if the Food Guy kept teasing him with the white squirrels, Skinner knew he was going to have to knock him down and sit on his face, maybe even poop in his shoe. Oh, I am a bad, bad dog. No, wait, the Emergency Backup Food Guy was scratching his ears. Oh, that felt good. He was fine. Doggie Xanax. Never mind. Theo handed Gabe the sandwich bag with the hairs in it. â€Å"What's the oily substance in the bag?† Gabe said, examining the specimen. â€Å"Potato-chip flotsam. The bag is from my lunch yesterday.† Gabe nodded, then looked at Theo the way the coroner always looks at the cop on TV – like: You numbskull, don't you know that you're contaminating evidence just by continuing to draw breath and I'd be a lot more comfortable with you if you'd stop? He took the bag over to the microscope on the counter, removed a couple of the hairs, and put them on a slide with a cover, then fitted it into the microscope. â€Å"Please don't tell me it's polar bear,† Theo said. â€Å"No, but at least it's an animal. It seems to have a distinct sour-cream-and-onion signature.† Gabe pulled back from the microscope and grinned at Theo. â€Å"Just fucking with you.† He gave Theo a gentle punch to the arm and looked back into the microscope. â€Å"Wow, the medulla is absent and there's low birefringence.† â€Å"Wow,† echoed Theo, trying but not really feeling the low-birefringence stoke that Gabe was. â€Å"I have to check the hair database online, but I think it's from a bat.† â€Å"There's a database for that? What, Bat Hair Dot-Com?† â€Å"That was supposed to be the whole purpose of the Internet, you know. To share scientific information.† â€Å"Not a Viagra- and porn-delivery system?† Theo said. Maybe Gabe was going to be okay after all. Gabe moved to the computer at his desk and scrolled through screen after screen of microscope photos of mammal hair until he found one he liked, then went back to the microscope and checked it again. â€Å"Wow, Theo, you've got yourself an endangered species here.† â€Å"No way.† â€Å"Where the hell did you get this? Micronesian giant fruit bat.† â€Å"Out of a Dodge pickup truck.† â€Å"Hmm, that's not listed as their habitat. It wasn't parked in Guam, was it?† Theo fished his car keys out of his pocket. â€Å"Look, Gabe, I have to go. Meet at the Slug for a beer tonight, okay?† â€Å"We can have beer now, if you want. I have some in the fridge.† â€Å"You need to get out. I need to get out. Okay?† Theo was backing out the door. â€Å"Okay. I'll meet you at six. I have to go pick up some Super Glue solvent at the Thrifty-Mart.† â€Å"Bye.† Theo jumped off the porch and loped to the Volvo. Skinner barked at him in four-four time. Hello? Tasty white squirrels? Still in the little box? Hello? You forgot? When Theo pulled up to Lena Marquez's house, there was a generic white economy rental car (A Ford Mucus, he thought) parked out front. He looked for the bat he'd seen hanging from the porch ceiling, but it wasn't there. He hadn't even filed the experience of running over the apparently indestructible blond guy, and now he was facing the possibility that he might actually be about to confront a murderer. Just in case, he'd stopped at home and gotten his gun off the shelf in the closet and his handcuffs off the bedpost where Molly had last imprisoned him when they had still been speaking. (She'd been in the yard out behind the cabin, working out with a bamboo shinai kendo sword she'd been using since breaking her broadsword – he'd snuck in and out without confrontation.) He unsnapped the Glock's nylon holster that was clipped to the back of his jeans and rang the doorbell. The door opened. Theo screamed and drew his gun as he jumped back. On the other side of the threshold, Tucker Case screamed and dove backward also, shielding his face with his hands. His hat made a little yelping sound. â€Å"Hold it right there,† Theo said. He could feel his pulse beating in his neck. â€Å"I'm holding, I'm holding. Jesus, what the fuck is this about?† â€Å"You have a bat on your head!† â€Å"Yeah, and for that you're going to shoot me?† The bat, his huge black wings wrapped around the pilot's head, gave the impression of a large leather cap with a Mohawk crest of fur that culminated in a big-eared little dog face that was now barking at Theo. â€Å"Well, uh, no.† Theo lowered the gun, feeling a little embarrassed now. He was still in his shooter's crouch, though, which now, with the gun lowered, made him look like he was posing as the world's skinniest sumo wrestler. â€Å"Can I get up?† Tuck asked. â€Å"Sure, I just wanted to talk to Lena.† Tucker Case was exasperated and his bat had fallen over one eye. â€Å"Well, she's at her office. Look, if you're going to get high, maybe you ought to leave the gun at home, huh?† â€Å"What?† Theo had been careful to use some Visine, and it had been hours since he'd hit his Sneaky Pete pot pipe. He said, â€Å"I'm not high. I haven't gotten high in years.† â€Å"Yeah, right. Constable, maybe you'd better come in.† Theo stood and tried to shake off the appearance that he'd just had about five years of life scared out of him by a guy with a bat on his head. He followed Tucker Case into Lena's kitchen, where the pilot offered him a seat at the table. â€Å"So, Constable, what can I do for you?† Theo wasn't sure. He'd planned on talking to Lena, or at least the two of them together. â€Å"Well, as you probably know, we found Lena's ex-husband's truck up in Big Sur.† â€Å"Of course, I saw it.† â€Å"You saw it?† â€Å"From the helicopter. Tucker Case, contract pilot for the DEA, remember? You can check me out if you want to. Anyway, we've been patrolling that area.† â€Å"You have?† The bat was looking at Theo and Theo was having trouble following his own thoughts. The bat was wearing tiny sunglasses. Ray-Bans, Theo could see by the trademark in the corner of one lens. â€Å"I'm sorry, Mr., uh – Case, could you take the bat off your head. It's very distracting.† â€Å"Him.† â€Å"Pardon?† â€Å"It's a him. Roberto. He no like the light.† â€Å"Pardon?† â€Å"Friend of mine used to say that. Sorry.† Tucker Case unwrapped the bat and put it on the floor, where it spidered away, walking on its wing tips into the living room. â€Å"God, that's creepy,† Theo said. â€Å"Yeah, you know, kids. What are you gonna do?† Tuck dazzled a perfect grin. â€Å"So, you found this guy's truck? Not him, though?† â€Å"No. It was made to look like he was washed into the ocean while fishing off the rocks.† â€Å"Made to look? So, you suspect foul play?† Tuck bounced his eyebrows. Theo thought the pilot should be taking this more seriously. It was time to drop the bomb. â€Å"Yes. First, he never came home after the Caribou Christmas party Tuesday night, where he played the joke Santa. No one goes surf-fishing in the middle of the night, wearing a Santa suit. We found the Santa hat still in the truck, and I found hairs from a Micronesian fruit bat on the headrest.† â€Å"Well, that's a coincidence. Jeez, that's got to make you suspicious, doesn't it?† Tucker Case got up and went over to the counter. â€Å"Coffee? I just made it.† Theo stood up, too, just because he didn't want the suspect to get away, or maybe to show that he was taller, because it seemed like the only advantage he had over the pilot. â€Å"Yes, it is suspicious. And I talked to a kid Tuesday night who said he saw a woman killing Santa Claus with a shovel. I didn't think anything of it then, but now I think the kid might have actually seen something.† Tucker Case was busying himself with getting cups out of the cupboard, milk out of the fridge. â€Å"So, you did tell the kid that there's no Santa, right?† â€Å"No, I didn't.† Now Tucker Case turned, coffeepot in hand, and regarded Theo. â€Å"You know that there is no Santa, don't you, Constable?† â€Å"This is not a joke,† Theo said. He hated this – hated being the MAN. He was supposed to be the smart-ass in the face of authority figures. â€Å"Cream?† Theo sighed. â€Å"Sure. And sugar, please.† Tuck finished preparing the coffee, brought the cups to the table, and sat down. â€Å"Look, I see where you're going with this, Theo. Can I call you Theo?† Theo nodded. â€Å"Thanks. Anyway, Lena was with me Tuesday night, all night.† â€Å"Really? I saw Lena on Monday. She didn't mention you. Where did you meet?† â€Å"At the Thrifty-Mart. She was a Salvation Army Santa. I thought she was attractive, so I asked her out. We hit it off.† â€Å"You make it a habit of hitting on the Salvation Army Santas?† â€Å"Lena said that you're married to a scream queen called Kendra, Warrior Babe of the Outland.† Theo nearly shot coffee out his nose. â€Å"That was a character she used to play.† â€Å"Yeah, Lena says sometimes that's not so clear to her. My point is: Love is where you find it.† Theo nodded. Yeah, that was true. Before he drifted into a wistful state of mind, Theo reminded himself that this guy was, in an offhand way, attacking the woman he loved. â€Å"Hey,† Theo said. â€Å"It's okay? Who am I to judge? I married an island girl who had never seen indoor plumbing until I brought her to the States. Didn't work out –  » â€Å"Fruit-bat hair in the truck,† Theo interrupted. â€Å"Yeah, I knew you'd come back to that. Well, who knows? Roberto goes out on his own from time to time. Maybe he met this Dale guy. Maybe they hit it off. You know, love is where you find it. I doubt it, though. I hear that this Dale guy was a real creep.† â€Å"Are you implying that your bat may have something to do with the disappearance of Dale Pearson?† â€Å"No, you nitwit, I'm saying that my bat may have had something to do with bat hair, which, even you, with your Sherlock Holmes-like powers of observation, may have noticed he is all covered with.† â€Å"I can't believe you're a cop,† Theo said, getting truly angry now. â€Å"I'm not a cop. I just fly the helicopter for the DEA. They hire me by the season, and this is close to the harvest season in Big Sur and surrounding areas, so here I am, flying around looking in the forest for dark green patches while the agents in the back look at it through infrared and record everything on GPS so they can get specific warrants. And man, do they pay well. ‘Vive la war on drugs, I say. But no, I'm not a cop.† â€Å"I didn't think so.† â€Å"Funny thing is, I have learned to spot the right color of green from the sky, and usually the infrared confirms my suspicions. This morning I spotted about a thousand-square-foot patch of marijuana growing just north of the Beer-Bar Ranch. You know where that is?† Theo felt a lump in his throat the size of one of Gabe's dead rats. â€Å"Yes.† â€Å"Man, that's a lot of pot, even by commercial growers' standards. Felony quantity. I turned the helicopter – steered away without calling it to the agent's attention, but weather permitting, we could go back. There's a storm coming in, you know? Roberto and I drove by there this afternoon just to make sure. I guess I can always show the agents tomorrow.† Tucker Case put down his coffee, leaned on his elbows, and turned his head sideways like he was a cute kid in a cereal commercial who was reaching sugar nirvana. â€Å"You're a very unlikable man, Mr. Case.† â€Å"Oh my God, you should have seen me before I had my epiphany. I used to really be an asshole. I'm actually very charming now. By the way, I saw your wife working out in the yard at your house – very nice. The whole sword thing is a little scary, but otherwise, very nice.† Theo got to his feet, feeling a little dizzy even as he stood, like he'd been hit with a sock full of sand. â€Å"I'd better be going.† Tucker Case put his hand on Theo's shoulder as he walked him to the door. â€Å"You probably don't believe this, Theo, but at another time, I'm sure we'd be friends. And you have to understand, I really, really want things to work out with Lena. It was like we met just at the precise moment, the exact second, that I got over my divorce and was ready to love again. And it's so nice to have someone to bone under the Christmas tree, don't you think? She's a great woman.† â€Å"I like Lena,† Theo said. â€Å"But you are a psychopath.† â€Å"You think?† Tuck said. â€Å"I've really been trying to be more helpful.†

Chalice Chapter 9

He was introduced to her with a tremendous flourish, although no reason was given for his presence; which, with the air and the flourish, was explanation enough, and her heart plummeted. By the time the Grand Seneschal informed her, stiffly, that this was the Overlord’s choice for the next Master’s Heir, she didn’t need to be told, and in her anger and frustration she said, â€Å"That is hasty,† before she remembered to whom she spoke, and she bit her lip, waiting for the rebuke. But none came. She was so surprised she looked into his face. He scowled at her at once, the familiar contemptuous, disapproving scowl, but when she ducked her head and then glanced back again a moment later, his face had relaxed into what looked a lot like sadness. The new man’s name was Horuld. She paid little attention to his breeding, that several of his forebears’ lines ran directly from Willowlands, and several more had crossed in the ensuing generations, and which Deager was very eager to tell out, over and over and over, even to such unworthies as the demesne’s shabby and erratic new Chalice, who was herself one of the indications (Deager didn’t say this but he didn’t have to) that the demesne was still in trouble, over a year after she had taken her place in the Circle. So far as she knew no Chalice had ever been deposed. But she had never seen any record of a Chalice chosen when there was no Master to hold the land steady while the Circle did its work either. It had very occasionally happened that an apprentice died with or before her Chalice; but then too there had always been an experienced Master. And there were stories of Chalices who had not been able to bear the work they were called on to do – even those who had had their proper apprenticeships – and broken under it. There were only a few of these stories, but one was too many, and there was more than one. She believed that one such Chalice was the Chalice she herself followed. She was surprised – even more surprised than she had been at the Grand Seneschal missing a chance to reprimand her – when Horuld seemed disposed to talk to her. There were other, more prepossessing and conversationally skilful members of the Circle he could address himself to; demesne hierarchy declared that Chalice was Second of the Circle, but that had to be remembered only when there was work to be done. Her Circle recollected it only when they had to, as did the Overlord’s agent – or they always had done previously. She was, as Chalice, compelled to be present for the agent’s visit, and – as Chalice – she would serve whatever Master fate set over Willowlands. That was enough. Perhaps the training she hadn’t had would have included how to hold superfluous discourse with people she would rather avoid. When she was standing Chalice or performing a ritual she did not have to chat; but Horuld’s first visit was informal. In other circumstances this would have seemed friendly and considerate; as it was it seemed ominous and coercive. Deager, having proved to his own satisfaction, if not all of his audience’s, that Horuld’s bloodlines were an excellent choice, wished to make it clear – he said – that the Overlord was merely anxious that an unambiguous Heir should be in place, after the recent disaster. If such an accident should happen again, the demesne might fall apart entirely. It had been without a Master for seven months; it could not survive this a second time. She tried to tell herself that a declared Heir was a sensible precaution; their present Master was the end of his family. The previous Master should have declared an Heir when he sent his only brother to Fire. She wondered why the Overlord had not obliged him to do so; she had only been a small woodskeeper then, and small woodskeepers heard little about Overlords’ decisions. The demesne gossip said merely that the Master was a young man, and hale, and he would produce Heirs – had probably produced a few already, the uneasy joke went. But they would be bastards, and prohibited. By the time the ordinary folk of the demesne had begun to realise that their young Master seemed to have no intention of marrying and producing a proper Heir, especially in combination with his increasingly alarming general behaviour, the fear of what this meant also meant that no one wanted to talk about it. And then the worst had happened. Perhaps she should try to believe that the Overlord was merely doing the responsible thing – the responsible thing he had failed to do before – but again she wondered. It was too soon to tie an Heir to the present Circle; Willowlands was still too precarious. However necessary an Heir was, forcing him upon them now would unbalance it further. Would the next thing be that she was obliged to take an apprentice? She had no energy for the binding that would entail. Leaving aside that she had nothing to teach one. Perhaps it was only her dislike of both Deager and Horuld that made her feel the agent was making it clear that Horuld was being introduced to Willowlands as the Heir only after he had made something else even more clear, if not in so many words: that the Overlord would like to see Horuld taking up this inheritance soon. She was too quick to feel she needed to defend the Master, she told herself. But what she had taken from the agent’s description of Horuld’s bloodlines was that if he was the best that could be done for her poor demesne, the Overlord should be straining every muscle to support the present Master. Did the Overlord want to break Willowlands entirely? Surely not. The disruption would damage the Overlord’s grip too†¦no. He would be counting on riding it out; might he, more, be betting on the huge increase of his own power the successful changeover would produce? She knew almost nothing of the politics among Overlords. Demesne folk did not travel to the crown city nor visit the court of the king; and as practising Chalice she was furthermore indissolubly tied to her land. But whatever else she knew or thought of the Grand Seneschal, he would not have kept such a piece of news as a visit from the Heir from the rest of the Circle; and Deager glossed, or slithered, over the question of why Willowlands had not known who was coming with him, which made it plain that there had been no message that had gone awry. She had mixed the cup she would offer to the company before she came. She had mixed it for the visit from the Overlord’s agent, and that was all. That was how it was done; that was why it was important that a Chalice know in advance who would drink from her cup, and for what reasons. Last-minute changes were destabilising, which was why battlefield cups, which were perforce rare, were also notoriously volatile. It should not have been a good omen, that a Master’s Heir should be left out of the first cup he received from the Chalice. Perhaps the Overlord, or some other of his plotters, had decided that being left out was better than a Chalice throwing her weight against him, which a loyal Chalice might be suspected of doing upon the presentation of any outblood Heir. Chalices were parochial by definition; of all the Circle, only the Chalice could not set foot across her demesne’s boundaries. Some of the oldest records called the Chalice the Landtied – and because of this literal overidentification, the Chalice’s response to outbloodedness in any member of the Circle was considered crucial. This perhaps explained why Horuld was interested – indeed eager – to talk to her. Perhaps she could be disposed to include him kindly in her mixture for his next visit, after he had been careful to make a good first impression. She would not need to be disloyal. An y Master’s Heir was an important part in the demesne structure; most accepted Heirs attended at least some Circle gatherings; and under the present circumstances the only possible Heir was an outblood. A Chalice must at least punctiliously include her Master’s Heir in any cup he was present for; of course it would be better if she felt at least benign toward him, or even generous. But she did not feel benign or generous. She listened, smooth-faced, when the agent pronounced some blather about how the surprise of presenting Horuld unannounced would create â€Å"clarity† in an awkward situation; that he would be more able to see where he would best fit into difficult circumstances if no one was trying to soften the truth. She knew that a properly schooled Chalice would have some matching blather to offer in return, but she was not a properly schooled Chalice, and it gave her a little meagre pleasure that her silence discomfited the agent, and by his discomfiture he exposed that he knew his action had been dishonourable. Did she loathe Horuld because Deager was a toad? No. Sunbrightener was a toad, and his antics merely made her feel tired and sad. Or because the Chalice was repelled by outbloodedness? She looked at Horuld and every particle of her recoiled. No. She bore the Chalice, she was not engulfed by it. Mirasol had arrived a little late at the House for the meeting with Deager. Just as she was leaving her cottage a young mother had burst into the meadow carrying a wildly weeping child. Mirasol knew them, Kenti and her daughter Tis; they were neighbours. Tis had pulled a kettle of boiling water over. Fortunately it had only been half full, but the child still had a badly burned arm; and the local herbswoman, Catu, was gone to a lying-in, Kenti did not know where. Mirasol hadn’t spoken to Kenti or her husband Danel properly since she had become Chalice, in spite of the fact that Danel and she had grown up together; she had been jealous when he had been apprenticed to a ploughman, for the horses. Kenti said breathlessly, â€Å"Can you do anything? Can you help?† Her eyes went to the back of Mirasol’s right hand, which was holding the edges of her cloak together over the cup of congruence in her left hand, and then hastily rose to Mirasol’s face. But she couldn’t meet the Chalice’s eyes the way she had many times met Mirasol’s, and they dropped away again. Poor Tis was weeping in a miserable, exhausted way that was painful to hear. Mirasol brought them into the cottage and took down a small pot of the honey especially good for burns and smeared it carefully over Tis’ arm. The little girl cried out at the first touch but by the time Mirasol had finished she had fallen silent, and leant back against her mother’s body staring at Mirasol with huge still-wet eyes. Even as Mirasol looked back at her the eyelids drooped, and Tis was asleep. And then Kenti burst into tears. Mirasol led her to the big soft chair by the fireplace where Mirasol did much of her reading and let her collapse. â€Å"It was my own carelessness – I know what she’s like – I let myself be distracted – it was only a moment – and then I heard her scream – and I knew Catu was away – I didn’t know what to do – it was awful† and then she couldn’t say anything for a while. Mirasol made a tisane – a spoonful of her soothing honey with a spoonful of the calming herbs she’d had from Catu herself; in the early months of her Chalicehood she’d drunk it by the bucketful. When she brought a cup to Kenti, Kenti laid Tis tenderly down beside her on the chair, sticky arm uppermost, and took it. She breathed in the steam and gave a little half laugh: she recognised Catu’s mixture. â€Å"I’ve used honey for littler wounds – your mother taught me that when I wasn’t much older than Tis – but this one was so dreadful. And then I remembered – I remembered your hand. I thought, if your – if the Chalice’s honey can cure what a Fire-priest can do, then perhaps it can cure Tis’ arm.† Mirasol said gently, â€Å"The Master cured my hand.† â€Å"He – ?† said Kenti unbelievingly, and Mirasol saw the fear in her face, the same fear she saw in the Housemen’s faces before they bent nearer their Master to slide the chair under him as he sat down; the fear she saw in the faces of most of the others of the Circle when their part in a rite brought them too close to him – the fear of him that made the Master leave the burnt grove before any of his people saw him there. â€Å"Yes. He.† She wanted to say, Tell Danel. Tell your mother. Tell all your friends. But she watched Kenti’s face and knew that she would tell the story – if she believed it. Kenti’s face said that she wanted to believe it – she wanted that hope, not only for herself, but for her demesne. Kenti sat looking at her daughter for a long moment and then said wonderingly, â€Å"Look – the mark is already fading. Your mother’s honey could not have done so much so quickly. It is the Chalice in you, I know, but perhaps – perhaps – perhaps it is also that we have a Fire-priest for Master†¦.† Her voice had sunk to a whisper. Mirasol was still thinking about the hope in Kenti’s face when she walked up to the House. She knew she was late, but it was only Deager, the agent, coming for a – snoop, she thought uncharitably. Overlords’ agents were supposed to visit their Overlords’ demesnes, but she didn’t like the way Deager’s nose twitched, the way his eyes darted around, as if he were hoping to smell something rotten, to see someone doing something illicit or disgraceful. And then she arrived, and there was a surprising number of people churning around in the big hall behind the front doors, and a youngish, weaselly-faced man she had never seen before standing a little too close to Deager’s elbow. The situation was uncomfortable enough to begin with, when it was only Deager and Horuld, herself and the Grand Seneschal and the Seneschal’s apprentice Bringad, and four of the minor Circle (the others were hastily sent for when Horuld was revealed as the Heir) plus the attendants the visitors brought and their own Housefolk. As the word spread about Horuld, more and more people streamed in, and both the noise and the tension level, it seemed to Mirasol, rose, and the ever-worried Bringad looked more worried than she had ever seen him. But when the Master arrived†¦she did not know how to understand it, explain it, even to herself. It was as if the level ground tipped a little in one direction and the high curving sky changed its arc just a little in some other direction. A Master was not expected to greet a mere agent on his arrival; the Grand Seneschal did that. But as the representative of his Overlord, a Master would be churlish as well as foolish not to see him at some point during his visit. She assumed the Grand Seneschal had despatched a message to the Master about Deager’s unexpected companion; it was impossible to read any trace of surprise or disquiet on the Master’s shadowy black and strangely mutable face when he made his entrance. Mirasol heard with what was beginning to be a familiar sinking of the heart the conversation falter and then stop as he was noticed, before the head Houseman announced him. Perhaps all Masters are greeted with a respectful hush, but she doubted that most demesne folk drew together as if for protection when their Master appeared. When Deager (his voice positively quavering as he addressed the Master) described Horuld as the Overlord’s candidate for Heir, the Master merely bowed his head. There was a disagreeable pause, and then the agent rushed to begin telling Horuld’s bloodlines over again, speaking too loudly and too quickly, and at first forgetting his flourishes. But when a Master has no son nor other suitable close relative, the meeting between the Master and the Master’s newly declared Heir was as laboriously and ponderously formal as centuries of tradition could make it, including, in this case, the tradition that an unexpected situation should be treated even more formally than the same situation when everyone knew what was happening. The Grand Seneschal managed to insert an orotund phrase or two (rather like a pole through the spokes of a wheel, Mirasol thought) into the agent’s barrage of genealogy, which had a steadying effect. When Deager finally fell silent, his concl uding bow was as elaborate as if he were being presented to the king. But Mirasol found herself thinking that the Master had bowed his head so very ceremoniously indeed that perhaps he had somehow known of Horuld’s coming before the message from the Grand Seneschal. Most of the initial gestures among any group that required the presence of the Chalice were stylised, just as her offering of the cup was, but during Horuld’s first visit to Willowlands they all seemed to move as if they were puppets in a puppet show, their limbs made of wood, the pulling of their strings performed by a puppeteer. If there had been an audience Mirasol felt they would not have found the performance convincing. Although Deager had insisted in a manner that was obviously meant to be magnificent but came over as merely presumptuous, that this first informal meeting with the Heir should proceed as it would have if Horuld had not been there, this was not possible, as Deager would have known it was not possible. Furthermore any meeting involving the Circle to which the Chalice stood should be precise about the number of people present, the number of people who would be offered the Chalice’s cup – which Deager would also know. And the Willowlands folk were doubtless awkward with surprise. They had known an Heir would be chosen, and Mirasol had held Chalice during the gathering when the Master had acceded to the Overlord’s wish, as presented by Deager, that the Overlord do the choosing. But that had only been a few weeks ago, and they had heard nothing of the progress of the search. She had begun reading about the meeting of a Master with an unknown Heir, so she knew that if it had been a proper meeting she should offer her cup first to the Master and second to the Heir. After a moment’s invisible dithering behind the face she tried hard to keep in an expressionless Chalice mask she did so anyway: let Deager assume this was a manifestation of magnanimity and support; she considered it buying time. The contrast between the Master and an ordinary human had never been so marked, she thought, as between the Master and his Heir when she took the cup from one and offered it to the other. She had directed them to stand on either side of her – which would also have been the correct form for a planned first meeting between the two of them: she could see Deager smiling with satisfaction, but she ignored him. The Master seemed to tower over her, and his natural heat, as she stood close enough to him to hold a cup to his lips, wrapped itself around her as if claiming her – and briefly and disconcertingly she remembered riding home with him after the fire in the Onora Grove. Horuld, who was no more than average size, seemed puny and frail in comparison; and the fact that he was obviously struggling not to flinch away from the Master added to this impression of weakness. She might have helped him, as she often helped the Circle members who were still reluctant to approach the Master, by stepping toward him, by allowing him to maintain a greater distance; but she did not. She offered the cup to the Master with a bent arm, and then turned and offered the cup to Horuld, again with a bent arm, and waited, forcing him to step close, not only to her, but to the Master. He did not try to take the cup from her, but he did raise a hand to grasp it, and she could feel him trembling. There were beads of sweat on his upper lip which she doubted were only from the heat. Before she took the cup on to Deager and the rest of the Circle, she bowed, to the Master, and then to Horuld. The Master must receive the deeper bow, of course, but the Heir might have had one nearly as deep; her bow to the Heir was only enough more than perfunctory not to be offensive. She let her gaze pass as if carelessly over Deager, and saw that he had stopped smiling. She could feel, before she had got halfway round the Circle, that it was not a good binding. When she made her final bow it was almost difficult to stand upright again, and she was exhausted. She had to make a great effort to meet the eyes of Horuld and Deager; the Grand Seneschal’s eyes looked glassy and unfocused, and the Master’s were as unfathomable as they had been the first day, when his hand had slipped and burnt her, and his face was only blurred shadows. She tried to remember the sudden surprising joy of his healing of her hand, of talking to him about what he saw, about her bees being tiny golden sparks in his strange vision – of the night that she had helped him put out the fire in Onora Grove, and the ride home after. But she remembered these things as she might remember something out of a book, a story told of someone else. Even if, by some extraordinary accident, the Chalice had not known beforehand all those who would drink, a well-mixed cup should have had a more positive effect than this. Perhaps she had mixed it injudiciously; that was likeliest. Even without his bringing an unannounced Heir, her dislike of Deager made it onerous for her to mix a cup that she would have to offer to him. But even if a more experienced Chalice might have done better, it was still true that introducing an Heir without proper advance warning was like throwing a boulder on one side of a delicate scales and expecting them still to balance. But perhaps the lack of binding and balance in this gathering was because Horuld was wrong†¦wrong for the demesne, wrong as Heir, wrong even to be here. It had been known in the past that an outblood Heir was rejected by the demesne, however carefully the humans had tried to make the best choice. Perhaps the Overlord had overplayed his game by giving the Master and his Chalice no forewarning that the Overlord’s choice was coming to be introduced to his hoped-for inheritance. By the end of the day, when she could leave the House and make her way back to her cottage, she was shaking and sick. She pulled her hood over her head and held it bunched round her throat with her hands, feeling that what she really wanted to do was disappear: if she wrapped the ends of her cloak around her tightly enough and then tighter still, eventually there would be no one left inside†¦. Usually the gentle thumping of the empty Chalice cup against her hip was comforting: another ritual got through. Today it was not; she felt that she – they – Willowlands had indeed not got through the ritual of the introduction of the Heir. She concentrated on the thought of sitting in the last of the daylight in the clearing by the cottage, listening to her bees. She was still ten minutes’ walk from the cottage when some of her bees came to meet her. She stretched out her arms to them and they landed on her hands and forearms, stroking her skin as if the tiny hairs were sepals they expected to secrete nectar for them. She shook her hood back, and several landed on her face and neck; out of the corners of her eyes she could see more landing on her shoulders. As she walked the last few minutes to the cottage she found herself thinking that her head felt strangely heavy, and that the hum of the bees was unusually loud; and then when she came out of the tree-shadowed path into the sunny clearing around the cottage she saw a great cloud of bees lifting away from her and dispersing, and she realised that she had been wearing a hood and cloak of bees. She watched them scatter about their proper bee business, and wondered. Horuld came twice more in the next few weeks with Deager, and then a third time he came alone. When he came with Deager their visits were announced in advance; but now as the acknowledged Heir, he might come as he pleased – and stay as he pleased. She was in the House library when he came that third time, and the first warning she had was a shadow falling across the open door; she was deep into her research and would not have noticed, except that a half-familiar voice said, â€Å"Chalice,† and her body had recoiled before her mind had recognised who it was. She turned the recoil, she hoped, into a mere startle, and stood up at once to make a ceremonial sign of greeting, saying, â€Å"Forgive me, my mind was lost in what I was doing.† He said smoothly, â€Å"And I have interrupted you; forgive me.† She bowed her head and waited, hoping his appearance was a formal signal only and that he had no business with her. The demesne’s folk were growing used to their new Chalice, and they were now coming to her more and more; this was a relief in some ways, and she knew she must be grateful for the good this was doing Willowlands, but she often had to put aside what other work she had planned on doing. She had fled to the House library today and was hastily reading up on the behaviour toward and reception of outblood Heirs. Part of her problem, she thought, as she had thought many times since the Chalice had come to her, was that she was not by nature a formal sort of person; she found that side of the duties of the Chalice so difficult as sometimes to feel incompatible with her private self. She wondered if this was anything like trying to live in the human world when you were a priest of Fire. Chalice Chapter 9 He was introduced to her with a tremendous flourish, although no reason was given for his presence; which, with the air and the flourish, was explanation enough, and her heart plummeted. By the time the Grand Seneschal informed her, stiffly, that this was the Overlord’s choice for the next Master’s Heir, she didn’t need to be told, and in her anger and frustration she said, â€Å"That is hasty,† before she remembered to whom she spoke, and she bit her lip, waiting for the rebuke. But none came. She was so surprised she looked into his face. He scowled at her at once, the familiar contemptuous, disapproving scowl, but when she ducked her head and then glanced back again a moment later, his face had relaxed into what looked a lot like sadness. The new man’s name was Horuld. She paid little attention to his breeding, that several of his forebears’ lines ran directly from Willowlands, and several more had crossed in the ensuing generations, and which Deager was very eager to tell out, over and over and over, even to such unworthies as the demesne’s shabby and erratic new Chalice, who was herself one of the indications (Deager didn’t say this but he didn’t have to) that the demesne was still in trouble, over a year after she had taken her place in the Circle. So far as she knew no Chalice had ever been deposed. But she had never seen any record of a Chalice chosen when there was no Master to hold the land steady while the Circle did its work either. It had very occasionally happened that an apprentice died with or before her Chalice; but then too there had always been an experienced Master. And there were stories of Chalices who had not been able to bear the work they were called on to do – even those who had had their proper apprenticeships – and broken under it. There were only a few of these stories, but one was too many, and there was more than one. She believed that one such Chalice was the Chalice she herself followed. She was surprised – even more surprised than she had been at the Grand Seneschal missing a chance to reprimand her – when Horuld seemed disposed to talk to her. There were other, more prepossessing and conversationally skilful members of the Circle he could address himself to; demesne hierarchy declared that Chalice was Second of the Circle, but that had to be remembered only when there was work to be done. Her Circle recollected it only when they had to, as did the Overlord’s agent – or they always had done previously. She was, as Chalice, compelled to be present for the agent’s visit, and – as Chalice – she would serve whatever Master fate set over Willowlands. That was enough. Perhaps the training she hadn’t had would have included how to hold superfluous discourse with people she would rather avoid. When she was standing Chalice or performing a ritual she did not have to chat; but Horuld’s first visit was informal. In other circumstances this would have seemed friendly and considerate; as it was it seemed ominous and coercive. Deager, having proved to his own satisfaction, if not all of his audience’s, that Horuld’s bloodlines were an excellent choice, wished to make it clear – he said – that the Overlord was merely anxious that an unambiguous Heir should be in place, after the recent disaster. If such an accident should happen again, the demesne might fall apart entirely. It had been without a Master for seven months; it could not survive this a second time. She tried to tell herself that a declared Heir was a sensible precaution; their present Master was the end of his family. The previous Master should have declared an Heir when he sent his only brother to Fire. She wondered why the Overlord had not obliged him to do so; she had only been a small woodskeeper then, and small woodskeepers heard little about Overlords’ decisions. The demesne gossip said merely that the Master was a young man, and hale, and he would produce Heirs – had probably produced a few already, the uneasy joke went. But they would be bastards, and prohibited. By the time the ordinary folk of the demesne had begun to realise that their young Master seemed to have no intention of marrying and producing a proper Heir, especially in combination with his increasingly alarming general behaviour, the fear of what this meant also meant that no one wanted to talk about it. And then the worst had happened. Perhaps she should try to believe that the Overlord was merely doing the responsible thing – the responsible thing he had failed to do before – but again she wondered. It was too soon to tie an Heir to the present Circle; Willowlands was still too precarious. However necessary an Heir was, forcing him upon them now would unbalance it further. Would the next thing be that she was obliged to take an apprentice? She had no energy for the binding that would entail. Leaving aside that she had nothing to teach one. Perhaps it was only her dislike of both Deager and Horuld that made her feel the agent was making it clear that Horuld was being introduced to Willowlands as the Heir only after he had made something else even more clear, if not in so many words: that the Overlord would like to see Horuld taking up this inheritance soon. She was too quick to feel she needed to defend the Master, she told herself. But what she had taken from the agent’s description of Horuld’s bloodlines was that if he was the best that could be done for her poor demesne, the Overlord should be straining every muscle to support the present Master. Did the Overlord want to break Willowlands entirely? Surely not. The disruption would damage the Overlord’s grip too†¦no. He would be counting on riding it out; might he, more, be betting on the huge increase of his own power the successful changeover would produce? She knew almost nothing of the politics among Overlords. Demesne folk did not travel to the crown city nor visit the court of the king; and as practising Chalice she was furthermore indissolubly tied to her land. But whatever else she knew or thought of the Grand Seneschal, he would not have kept such a piece of news as a visit from the Heir from the rest of the Circle; and Deager glossed, or slithered, over the question of why Willowlands had not known who was coming with him, which made it plain that there had been no message that had gone awry. She had mixed the cup she would offer to the company before she came. She had mixed it for the visit from the Overlord’s agent, and that was all. That was how it was done; that was why it was important that a Chalice know in advance who would drink from her cup, and for what reasons. Last-minute changes were destabilising, which was why battlefield cups, which were perforce rare, were also notoriously volatile. It should not have been a good omen, that a Master’s Heir should be left out of the first cup he received from the Chalice. Perhaps the Overlord, or some other of his plotters, had decided that being left out was better than a Chalice throwing her weight against him, which a loyal Chalice might be suspected of doing upon the presentation of any outblood Heir. Chalices were parochial by definition; of all the Circle, only the Chalice could not set foot across her demesne’s boundaries. Some of the oldest records called the Chalice the Landtied – and because of this literal overidentification, the Chalice’s response to outbloodedness in any member of the Circle was considered crucial. This perhaps explained why Horuld was interested – indeed eager – to talk to her. Perhaps she could be disposed to include him kindly in her mixture for his next visit, after he had been careful to make a good first impression. She would not need to be disloyal. An y Master’s Heir was an important part in the demesne structure; most accepted Heirs attended at least some Circle gatherings; and under the present circumstances the only possible Heir was an outblood. A Chalice must at least punctiliously include her Master’s Heir in any cup he was present for; of course it would be better if she felt at least benign toward him, or even generous. But she did not feel benign or generous. She listened, smooth-faced, when the agent pronounced some blather about how the surprise of presenting Horuld unannounced would create â€Å"clarity† in an awkward situation; that he would be more able to see where he would best fit into difficult circumstances if no one was trying to soften the truth. She knew that a properly schooled Chalice would have some matching blather to offer in return, but she was not a properly schooled Chalice, and it gave her a little meagre pleasure that her silence discomfited the agent, and by his discomfiture he exposed that he knew his action had been dishonourable. Did she loathe Horuld because Deager was a toad? No. Sunbrightener was a toad, and his antics merely made her feel tired and sad. Or because the Chalice was repelled by outbloodedness? She looked at Horuld and every particle of her recoiled. No. She bore the Chalice, she was not engulfed by it. Mirasol had arrived a little late at the House for the meeting with Deager. Just as she was leaving her cottage a young mother had burst into the meadow carrying a wildly weeping child. Mirasol knew them, Kenti and her daughter Tis; they were neighbours. Tis had pulled a kettle of boiling water over. Fortunately it had only been half full, but the child still had a badly burned arm; and the local herbswoman, Catu, was gone to a lying-in, Kenti did not know where. Mirasol hadn’t spoken to Kenti or her husband Danel properly since she had become Chalice, in spite of the fact that Danel and she had grown up together; she had been jealous when he had been apprenticed to a ploughman, for the horses. Kenti said breathlessly, â€Å"Can you do anything? Can you help?† Her eyes went to the back of Mirasol’s right hand, which was holding the edges of her cloak together over the cup of congruence in her left hand, and then hastily rose to Mirasol’s face. But she couldn’t meet the Chalice’s eyes the way she had many times met Mirasol’s, and they dropped away again. Poor Tis was weeping in a miserable, exhausted way that was painful to hear. Mirasol brought them into the cottage and took down a small pot of the honey especially good for burns and smeared it carefully over Tis’ arm. The little girl cried out at the first touch but by the time Mirasol had finished she had fallen silent, and leant back against her mother’s body staring at Mirasol with huge still-wet eyes. Even as Mirasol looked back at her the eyelids drooped, and Tis was asleep. And then Kenti burst into tears. Mirasol led her to the big soft chair by the fireplace where Mirasol did much of her reading and let her collapse. â€Å"It was my own carelessness – I know what she’s like – I let myself be distracted – it was only a moment – and then I heard her scream – and I knew Catu was away – I didn’t know what to do – it was awful† and then she couldn’t say anything for a while. Mirasol made a tisane – a spoonful of her soothing honey with a spoonful of the calming herbs she’d had from Catu herself; in the early months of her Chalicehood she’d drunk it by the bucketful. When she brought a cup to Kenti, Kenti laid Tis tenderly down beside her on the chair, sticky arm uppermost, and took it. She breathed in the steam and gave a little half laugh: she recognised Catu’s mixture. â€Å"I’ve used honey for littler wounds – your mother taught me that when I wasn’t much older than Tis – but this one was so dreadful. And then I remembered – I remembered your hand. I thought, if your – if the Chalice’s honey can cure what a Fire-priest can do, then perhaps it can cure Tis’ arm.† Mirasol said gently, â€Å"The Master cured my hand.† â€Å"He – ?† said Kenti unbelievingly, and Mirasol saw the fear in her face, the same fear she saw in the Housemen’s faces before they bent nearer their Master to slide the chair under him as he sat down; the fear she saw in the faces of most of the others of the Circle when their part in a rite brought them too close to him – the fear of him that made the Master leave the burnt grove before any of his people saw him there. â€Å"Yes. He.† She wanted to say, Tell Danel. Tell your mother. Tell all your friends. But she watched Kenti’s face and knew that she would tell the story – if she believed it. Kenti’s face said that she wanted to believe it – she wanted that hope, not only for herself, but for her demesne. Kenti sat looking at her daughter for a long moment and then said wonderingly, â€Å"Look – the mark is already fading. Your mother’s honey could not have done so much so quickly. It is the Chalice in you, I know, but perhaps – perhaps – perhaps it is also that we have a Fire-priest for Master†¦.† Her voice had sunk to a whisper. Mirasol was still thinking about the hope in Kenti’s face when she walked up to the House. She knew she was late, but it was only Deager, the agent, coming for a – snoop, she thought uncharitably. Overlords’ agents were supposed to visit their Overlords’ demesnes, but she didn’t like the way Deager’s nose twitched, the way his eyes darted around, as if he were hoping to smell something rotten, to see someone doing something illicit or disgraceful. And then she arrived, and there was a surprising number of people churning around in the big hall behind the front doors, and a youngish, weaselly-faced man she had never seen before standing a little too close to Deager’s elbow. The situation was uncomfortable enough to begin with, when it was only Deager and Horuld, herself and the Grand Seneschal and the Seneschal’s apprentice Bringad, and four of the minor Circle (the others were hastily sent for when Horuld was revealed as the Heir) plus the attendants the visitors brought and their own Housefolk. As the word spread about Horuld, more and more people streamed in, and both the noise and the tension level, it seemed to Mirasol, rose, and the ever-worried Bringad looked more worried than she had ever seen him. But when the Master arrived†¦she did not know how to understand it, explain it, even to herself. It was as if the level ground tipped a little in one direction and the high curving sky changed its arc just a little in some other direction. A Master was not expected to greet a mere agent on his arrival; the Grand Seneschal did that. But as the representative of his Overlord, a Master would be churlish as well as foolish not to see him at some point during his visit. She assumed the Grand Seneschal had despatched a message to the Master about Deager’s unexpected companion; it was impossible to read any trace of surprise or disquiet on the Master’s shadowy black and strangely mutable face when he made his entrance. Mirasol heard with what was beginning to be a familiar sinking of the heart the conversation falter and then stop as he was noticed, before the head Houseman announced him. Perhaps all Masters are greeted with a respectful hush, but she doubted that most demesne folk drew together as if for protection when their Master appeared. When Deager (his voice positively quavering as he addressed the Master) described Horuld as the Overlord’s candidate for Heir, the Master merely bowed his head. There was a disagreeable pause, and then the agent rushed to begin telling Horuld’s bloodlines over again, speaking too loudly and too quickly, and at first forgetting his flourishes. But when a Master has no son nor other suitable close relative, the meeting between the Master and the Master’s newly declared Heir was as laboriously and ponderously formal as centuries of tradition could make it, including, in this case, the tradition that an unexpected situation should be treated even more formally than the same situation when everyone knew what was happening. The Grand Seneschal managed to insert an orotund phrase or two (rather like a pole through the spokes of a wheel, Mirasol thought) into the agent’s barrage of genealogy, which had a steadying effect. When Deager finally fell silent, his concl uding bow was as elaborate as if he were being presented to the king. But Mirasol found herself thinking that the Master had bowed his head so very ceremoniously indeed that perhaps he had somehow known of Horuld’s coming before the message from the Grand Seneschal. Most of the initial gestures among any group that required the presence of the Chalice were stylised, just as her offering of the cup was, but during Horuld’s first visit to Willowlands they all seemed to move as if they were puppets in a puppet show, their limbs made of wood, the pulling of their strings performed by a puppeteer. If there had been an audience Mirasol felt they would not have found the performance convincing. Although Deager had insisted in a manner that was obviously meant to be magnificent but came over as merely presumptuous, that this first informal meeting with the Heir should proceed as it would have if Horuld had not been there, this was not possible, as Deager would have known it was not possible. Furthermore any meeting involving the Circle to which the Chalice stood should be precise about the number of people present, the number of people who would be offered the Chalice’s cup – which Deager would also know. And the Willowlands folk were doubtless awkward with surprise. They had known an Heir would be chosen, and Mirasol had held Chalice during the gathering when the Master had acceded to the Overlord’s wish, as presented by Deager, that the Overlord do the choosing. But that had only been a few weeks ago, and they had heard nothing of the progress of the search. She had begun reading about the meeting of a Master with an unknown Heir, so she knew that if it had been a proper meeting she should offer her cup first to the Master and second to the Heir. After a moment’s invisible dithering behind the face she tried hard to keep in an expressionless Chalice mask she did so anyway: let Deager assume this was a manifestation of magnanimity and support; she considered it buying time. The contrast between the Master and an ordinary human had never been so marked, she thought, as between the Master and his Heir when she took the cup from one and offered it to the other. She had directed them to stand on either side of her – which would also have been the correct form for a planned first meeting between the two of them: she could see Deager smiling with satisfaction, but she ignored him. The Master seemed to tower over her, and his natural heat, as she stood close enough to him to hold a cup to his lips, wrapped itself around her as if claiming her – and briefly and disconcertingly she remembered riding home with him after the fire in the Onora Grove. Horuld, who was no more than average size, seemed puny and frail in comparison; and the fact that he was obviously struggling not to flinch away from the Master added to this impression of weakness. She might have helped him, as she often helped the Circle members who were still reluctant to approach the Master, by stepping toward him, by allowing him to maintain a greater distance; but she did not. She offered the cup to the Master with a bent arm, and then turned and offered the cup to Horuld, again with a bent arm, and waited, forcing him to step close, not only to her, but to the Master. He did not try to take the cup from her, but he did raise a hand to grasp it, and she could feel him trembling. There were beads of sweat on his upper lip which she doubted were only from the heat. Before she took the cup on to Deager and the rest of the Circle, she bowed, to the Master, and then to Horuld. The Master must receive the deeper bow, of course, but the Heir might have had one nearly as deep; her bow to the Heir was only enough more than perfunctory not to be offensive. She let her gaze pass as if carelessly over Deager, and saw that he had stopped smiling. She could feel, before she had got halfway round the Circle, that it was not a good binding. When she made her final bow it was almost difficult to stand upright again, and she was exhausted. She had to make a great effort to meet the eyes of Horuld and Deager; the Grand Seneschal’s eyes looked glassy and unfocused, and the Master’s were as unfathomable as they had been the first day, when his hand had slipped and burnt her, and his face was only blurred shadows. She tried to remember the sudden surprising joy of his healing of her hand, of talking to him about what he saw, about her bees being tiny golden sparks in his strange vision – of the night that she had helped him put out the fire in Onora Grove, and the ride home after. But she remembered these things as she might remember something out of a book, a story told of someone else. Even if, by some extraordinary accident, the Chalice had not known beforehand all those who would drink, a well-mixed cup should have had a more positive effect than this. Perhaps she had mixed it injudiciously; that was likeliest. Even without his bringing an unannounced Heir, her dislike of Deager made it onerous for her to mix a cup that she would have to offer to him. But even if a more experienced Chalice might have done better, it was still true that introducing an Heir without proper advance warning was like throwing a boulder on one side of a delicate scales and expecting them still to balance. But perhaps the lack of binding and balance in this gathering was because Horuld was wrong†¦wrong for the demesne, wrong as Heir, wrong even to be here. It had been known in the past that an outblood Heir was rejected by the demesne, however carefully the humans had tried to make the best choice. Perhaps the Overlord had overplayed his game by giving the Master and his Chalice no forewarning that the Overlord’s choice was coming to be introduced to his hoped-for inheritance. By the end of the day, when she could leave the House and make her way back to her cottage, she was shaking and sick. She pulled her hood over her head and held it bunched round her throat with her hands, feeling that what she really wanted to do was disappear: if she wrapped the ends of her cloak around her tightly enough and then tighter still, eventually there would be no one left inside†¦. Usually the gentle thumping of the empty Chalice cup against her hip was comforting: another ritual got through. Today it was not; she felt that she – they – Willowlands had indeed not got through the ritual of the introduction of the Heir. She concentrated on the thought of sitting in the last of the daylight in the clearing by the cottage, listening to her bees. She was still ten minutes’ walk from the cottage when some of her bees came to meet her. She stretched out her arms to them and they landed on her hands and forearms, stroking her skin as if the tiny hairs were sepals they expected to secrete nectar for them. She shook her hood back, and several landed on her face and neck; out of the corners of her eyes she could see more landing on her shoulders. As she walked the last few minutes to the cottage she found herself thinking that her head felt strangely heavy, and that the hum of the bees was unusually loud; and then when she came out of the tree-shadowed path into the sunny clearing around the cottage she saw a great cloud of bees lifting away from her and dispersing, and she realised that she had been wearing a hood and cloak of bees. She watched them scatter about their proper bee business, and wondered. Horuld came twice more in the next few weeks with Deager, and then a third time he came alone. When he came with Deager their visits were announced in advance; but now as the acknowledged Heir, he might come as he pleased – and stay as he pleased. She was in the House library when he came that third time, and the first warning she had was a shadow falling across the open door; she was deep into her research and would not have noticed, except that a half-familiar voice said, â€Å"Chalice,† and her body had recoiled before her mind had recognised who it was. She turned the recoil, she hoped, into a mere startle, and stood up at once to make a ceremonial sign of greeting, saying, â€Å"Forgive me, my mind was lost in what I was doing.† He said smoothly, â€Å"And I have interrupted you; forgive me.† She bowed her head and waited, hoping his appearance was a formal signal only and that he had no business with her. The demesne’s folk were growing used to their new Chalice, and they were now coming to her more and more; this was a relief in some ways, and she knew she must be grateful for the good this was doing Willowlands, but she often had to put aside what other work she had planned on doing. She had fled to the House library today and was hastily reading up on the behaviour toward and reception of outblood Heirs. Part of her problem, she thought, as she had thought many times since the Chalice had come to her, was that she was not by nature a formal sort of person; she found that side of the duties of the Chalice so difficult as sometimes to feel incompatible with her private self. She wondered if this was anything like trying to live in the human world when you were a priest of Fire.

Sainsbury's Financial reporting Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

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American Perspective Short Stories Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

American Perspective Short Stories - Essay Example To analyze the cost of Vietnam War effectively, the two warring nations need to be treated as separate entities. This is because the costs incurred by the America were not similar to those incurred by the Vietnam. During the war, American suffered heavy losses that had long-lasting effect on its citizens and economy. Firstly, America lost nearly 58,000 people to the war. The dead included American combatants and service members serving at different battalions that were deployed in Vietnam (Bennett 162). The heavy casualty suffered by American servicemen and combatants in Vietnam caused the Americans to condemn the government for its decision to send troops to Vietnam. This shows that people were feeling the pinch of the war through the death of their relatives. The US also had to sustain the war by supplying equipment and ammunition to the service men and this contributed to the cost incurred by the country. In addition, Vietnam veteran suffered adverse health effects some that resul ted from Agent Orange that was used to eliminate Vietnam forest cover. This caused massive protests from war veterans that America had to deal with as long-term effects of the war. ... Between 1969 and 1973 nearly 107, 504 Vietnamese lost their lives. These figures may be slightly lower since most of Vietnamese deaths went on unreported. These deaths include those that occurred in the frontline and those that resulted from bombs dropped in Indochina. The civilian deaths resulting from the war were estimated to be 200,000 most of who died from starvation (Bennett 92). These figures are slightly lower since most civilian deaths were not recorded. After the war, Vietnam had to cope with the aftermath, which resulted from the devastating effects of the war. The bombs used by America on Vietnam fighters had long-lasting effects on the civilian population and environment. In addition, the country lost most of its infrastructures such as bridges to the war. This is because American bombers targeted such infrastructures as part of their combat strategy. In order to defeat the Vietnamese the American divided the country into portions or territories that later became indepen dent states. This political strategy was applied by the Americans to gain advantage over Vietnamese. The resultant states included Cambodia North and South Vietnam. This segregation partly resulted due to Soviet invasion and American strategy to win the war. The modern day radical movements such as al-Qaida and Taliban that have cost the US millions of dollars also have their roots in the Vietnam War. 2. What was the Bonus Army and what were the reasons and goals behind the movement? Was it successful? The World War I had a long-lasting effect on Americans and the country’s policy makers. The bonus army was a demonstration of the effects that the war had caused on the

Assessing & Analyzing the Impact of the British Petroleum (BP) Essay

Assessing & Analyzing the Impact of the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico - Essay Example is a petroleum manufacturing company which was founded in the year 1889. It is a London based company and is one of the largest companies in the world. It is engaged in the business of exploration of oil and petroleum and manufacturing of various petroleum products. BP is vertically integrated and is engaged in all allied business activities related to the oil and gas industry (Yahoo Finance, 2012). It is a multinational company and its shares are traded in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and London Stock Exchange (LSE) with the ticker symbol â€Å"BP†. BP is associated with a rich history and has achieved numerous landmarks on its way to become a large multinational company as it stands today. BP is committed towards becoming the industry leader and maximising the wealth of its shareholders through energy supply to its customers in a responsible and safe manner. The business segments of BP are primarily two, namely a) the oil exploration and manufacturing unit, and b) the marketing and refining business unit. Recently BP has engaged itself in exploring sources of renewable energies as well. The recent tragic incident involving the Gulf of Mexico oil spill had a significant negative impact on BP and the company has taken several strategic initiatives to restore its reputation in the market. Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill The Gulf of Mexico oil spill incident took place on April 20, 2012. It is regarded as one of the largest disastrous event corresponding to the petroleum industry history. The incident took place at Deepwater Horizon, which is a semi-submersible rig meant for oil drilling and situated offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. An explosion occurred which set the oil rig on fire and 11 crewmen were found dead. Several other workers working there were injured. The explosion took place while the oil drilling was on at a water depth of around 1500 m and BP was the principle operator of this project. The explosion occurred because of the ignition of methane gas in the drilling rig which expanded into the rig due to high pressure exerted by the methane gas. Later on after this mishap, oil leak was found which began to spread at a fast rate. According to the reports of Flow Rate Technical Group, the leak resulted in spilling out of oil amounting to around 4,900,000 barrels of oil. The resulting oil spill quickly spread over a large area of water covering around 1,500 square kilometres. After considerable efforts the wellhead was successfully capped on July 15, 2010. A commission was set up by the US government to investigate on the reasons behind the explosion and oil spill which released its final report on January 5, 2011. According to this report several faults were identified on the part of BP which led to the occurrence of this disastrous event. They were mainly accused of making an attempt to work on the project at cheap rate that resulted in the explosion and oil leakage. One of such fault detected was that BP did not make use of any diagnostic tool which could have the ability to test for the tensile strength of the cement used to build the rig. Another major fault in the part of BP was that it ignored the pressure test which indicated negative results. In addition to this BP did not make any effort to plug the pipe with the help of cement. Hence all these facts suggest that BP was primarily responsible for the oil spill at Deepwater Hori