283

The candlelight softened his weather-worn features and deep wrinkles until they were only suggestions.  Shadows still haunted his deep-set eyes.  "I am old enough to be your father," he whispered, his knobby, long-fingered hands curling into fists on the table.

"But you're not, Tam."  Cara moved her own hands, not particularly young, but made so in comparison to his own, towards his.  Tam stiffened and made to pull away, but hesitated.  Cara reached further, and he let her lay her hand upon his.  Tam's fist tightened and she felt him quiver in his seat.  The other patrons of the inn's tavern forgotten, Tam let her unfold his hand.

282

Empathy is the best part of humanity.  It prevents people from hurting each other physically, verbally, emotionally, sexually, or in any way.  If someone is hurt, empathy will soothe the pain.  Empathetic people will jump in and help wherever there is need.

Lack of empathy is the reason there is racism, homophobia, class warfare, man-hating and woman-bashing.  A person without empathy cannot think in terms of "other", so that person is afraid of the "other".  Lack of empathy is a selfish state and one without any imagination.

281

The cave was cool and dry in the front.  In the back, it began to get damp with water trickling down the stone wall and flowing away deeper, under and between to places only water could reach, but it only made the place more perfect as the water was drinkable.

It was a slight climb to get in, over tumbled boulders, but those provided shelter, too, especially since trees had rooted among them, their branches meeting to form a shield.  While in the woods, even a fire wouldn't be seen.  Only from further away might fire smoke be spotted, but the exact location would be difficult to pinpoint, and the tree branches helped dissipate a concentrated plume.

Water, shelter, warmth.  The forest itself could provide food, if you knew where to look, or even cultivate.

280

In a very normal town on a very normal street inside a very normal house was a very abnormal bedroom.  The bedroom was the sanctuary of a normally abnormal girl with a very normal name: Charlotte.

279

The sharp tang of cat urine assaulted them halfway up the stairs to the second floor apartment.  On the landing in front of the door, the urine scent was accented with garbage, sitting in loose bags along the wall.  The tenants treated the apartment the same way the landlord did, with disdain, and as a necessary evil.

278

"You'll want to watch out for Jess," the thin young man offered Marta.  "She's different than us."

Marta watched Jess loping away towards the town, heedless of the dangers of entering uncharted territories.  Frontier people weren't keen on newcomers, even those who were passing through, but there Jess went, straight down the middle of the road, streamers fluttering off her pack.  Marta thought Umberto would tell her Jess was born soft or was touched in the head, but she politely asked anyway.  "How's that?"

"She's dying."  Jess' tiny figure, far down the road, waved her broad-brimmed hat back at them, hurrying them to catch up.

"Aren't we all."  Marta twitched the reins, and thought about what it might mean for their future.

277

The search party's voices were ripped apart by the wind and smothered by the icy snow, but still they kept on for hours after dark.  Groups had already returned to the Inn Malcolm to report and defrost by the common room's enormous hearth.  None had good news.  The last group to return was the one lead on past sense by Fulcrum, Hannah's older brother.  Fulcrum had not wanted to return, but with the snows worsening, it was only a matter of time until search parties would be needed for them, and the group pleaded with the grieving brother's common sense.

276

The phone was getting hot against James' ear and he kept glancing at the clock.  This phone call to his mother was supposed to be short.  A quick question, a clear answer, and off to shopping, but these conversations were never short.  James closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe.

"I'm trying to convince your father to sell this place."

James' eyes flicked open.  "What?  Why?  I..."

"What would happen if one or both of us had to go to a nursing home?'

"Nursing home?  You..."

"They make you spend all your money and then the put you on Medicaid.  It would all disappear.  They'd take it all.  Plus, it's so much work for your father.  Ever since he had The Incident, he hasn't been quite right."

"What do you mean?  Is Dad..."

"He forgets things.  Your grandmother, God bless her, was showing symptoms of dementia for years; symptoms I didn't recognize at the time, but they were there."

James rubbed his forehead.  "Are you saying that Dad has demen..."

"He asked me what temperature to set the thermostat for bed, and he knows that."

"Well, that's not..."

"Whenever I mention selling, all I get is silence, anyway.  I'll keep working on him."

275

The Lewis family had lived on Bindle Place for all of Claire's life, plus some years before.  It had undergone many changes since Claire had been brought home twelve years before, but so had she.  She had even grown to complain when a new house was added to the end, eating away at the fields and trees that had been the neighborhood kids' playground.  Not that the kids were quite kids anymore, nor did they play in the fields as they had, though Claire still did.

274

People flooded in to the estate sale, not in search of deals, but rather to finally get a chance to look in the house.  It was a huge, old, brick mansion that had gone through many unfortunate hands after leaving the original owner's family and had fallen into shameful disrepair.  It had been mutilated into seven apartments and had a smell of old cigarette smoke, mothballs, and wet cat.  It was still, however, huge and old and surrounded by tales of former owners' misdeeds.  Current owner, too, in whose hands the house had been for less than a year.

273

"The House of Blaroch should find it uproariously funny to find me here, wallowing in the muck, should they come riding this way."  The youngest prince of the House of Karnin tried to free his foot from the mud swallowing his leather riding boot without removing only his stockinged foot.  Meanwhile, his squire tried not to cry.

Prince Karn saw the fear gripping his squire.  "Here, Marro, give me a hand, would you?  The horses won't run away, now they've found some nibbles."  It was the high-strung horse Karn shouldn't have ridden so fast in unfamiliar territory that had given him this trouble to start.  Marro dutifully lent Karn his arm, bracing as best as his skinny legs would let him on the driest patch of ground nearby.

272

The wind picked up, blowing with it the scent of snow.  Rolling clouds tumbled across the sky, steel blue and gray and suddenly stuck by sun, reminding the world that it still shone, no matter perspective.  Dried leaves rattled in the trees and the weakest tumbled to join their brethren on the ground.  Dark would come fast this day, but not before a fleeting, blazing show of a sunset.

271

If you ask yourself what you want in life, you probably think in terms of things.  I want a house.  I want a car.  I want a good job.  I want to travel.  But what you should ask yourself are what feelings you want to cultivate.  You may have misplaced desires for certain items, when you really want a feeling you think the item will give you.  My example is that I want (in no particular order): mystery, adventure, comfort, security.  There are physical manifestations that may induce those feelings, but until I understand what feelings I want, I cannot truly direct my life.

Step 1: make a list of the feelings you want to cultivate in your life.

The next question to ask yourself is why?  The answer lies in your childhood.  Ever wonder why people cannot get out of ruts?  Why some people cannot seem to escape the lives in which they were raised?  Why some people live the same, tragic lives as their parents?  It is because they are trying to re-create their feelings from childhood.  What was your life growing up?  What memories keep coming back to you?  Think of both the good and the bad.

Step 2: brainstorm a list of ten memories from your childhood that pop into your mind (even if they seem silly, irrelevant or disturbing.)

Don't believe that you are influenced by what happened first in your life?  Consider what toys you think are awesome.  Do you still get excited when you see one in a thrift store, garage sale, online auction or when they re-release those toys today?  Heck, yeah!  What furniture do you think is awesome?  I want a sofa with low, flat arms and removable cushions because that's what we had when I was growing up.  Eventually, we got a new sofa, but the black, nubby sofa was the first, and that's what I want.  Not in black, and not necessarily nubby, but one that elicits the feelings I had when my family had that sofa.  The first thing I'll do is make a fort with the cushions.

Review your list from Step 2.  Do any of your memories elicit the feelings you listed in Step 1?  If "yes" all the way down, great!  If the feelings you get from your memory list are not on your feelings list, you will have some work to do, but you are already on your way.

270

It was the folded pieces of washed tinfoil in her dead grandmother's kitchen pantry that put Samantha over the edge.  Picturing how her grandmother had used, rinsed and carefully put away the tinfoil for a future time she would never see caused Sam to burst into tears.  Even the word "tinfoil" was her grandmother's; her own mother teased her for using such an old-fashioned word for "aluminum foil".  Sunk to the floor holding the folded pieces, Sam cried and, in an oddly detached way, thought about why it made her so sad.  Missing her grandmother?  Certainly.  There were always loving words and compliments unsaid, questions unasked.  She cried for herself.  No, she thought, she cried for humans.  Humans who lived as if they would continue to live forever.  Humans who set aside for the future.  Humans who had plans in the calendar.  Humans who had saved candles because they were too nice to burn for any "regular" occasion and waited, unburned, perhaps forever.

269

Most of the beach by the city's waterfront was disgusting.  You first notice the human debris, like plastic and broken glass and ripped shopping bags tangled in weeds.  The larger human debris is completely disheartening, like tires and bicycle parts and dumped appliances.  The industrial debris is more disturbing and harder to pinpoint, usually, but in most locations, it has been causing algae blooms, petroleum smells, and even black goo to wash repeatedly up on the shore and muck up the water.  The natural debris, while natural, still assaults the senses, especially the dead fish, rats, and sometimes even larger animals.  You could argue that it is not really natural debris because they were killed by the industrial debris, but, still, they break down eventually.

There is, however, a secret beach, where the currents seem to circulate independently of the polluted water from the city.  No smell, no garbage, no black goo.  Occasionally a dead fish, but not often.  The sand is soft and still safe to walk on with bare feet.  The water is very shallow and warms up faster than most other parts along the lake shore.  It is as perfect as it can get along this particular body of water.

268

Georgina missed the part of her life where she had been good-looking.  Granted, it hadn't been for long, but she didn't realize it until a decade past; that was the way it went with her.  Realizations came suddenly and far too late.  At least, she thought at her reflection, they came eventually.  She patted her graying hair, which was also thinning and thickening at the same time, before another realization: it didn't matter.  Georgina felt that realization release a weight which dropped to the floor with a clunk.  It didn't matter.  She was light-headed with relief.  A narrow tunnel she had been traveling down that ended in darkness now opened up into a rotunda with exits on all sides pointing to sunlight.  It didn't matter.  Hair, face, skin, shape, color, clothes, breakfast, likes, dislikes, opinions: none of it mattered.  Better late than never, she thought, leaving her house and pointedly not taking her phone or brushing her hair.