Read an Excerpt
Up this far north the sun rarely leaves the sky. Rather it looms. Even through the long dark nights, the memory of the sun is a hint glintering over the horizon, looming like the eye of a blind burning god.
The sun will shine forever.
That is its fate.
I'm staring at your hands. What used to be your hands. What you might think of as your hands.
It's all in our hands. Our fate. Everything we do. We wear the memory upon our skin. We create the trail of destiny with each step we take.
Trying to change it is as futile as trying to hang on to a handful of smoke.
A part of me remembers visiting a gypsy once. I'm not sure which part it is, but it remembers having an old gypsy read its palm.
Just a story, really. I don't actually remember anything. I just think I do.
That's my fate.
I think I remember the lightning. I think I remember the graveyard. And I think I remember what the gypsy said. The tale the old Romany wired together, hung by a handful of half finished lines.
It's just fate, the old gypsy said. We shine a light and we see what will be if you change nothing.
Add nothing.
Alter nothing
Fate's like that. Like a song. Change a single line, a single part, and you change everything.
For instance, if that gypsy had looked upon my hand and if he had said that I would never marry, I would be perfectly free to carry off a woman and make her my bride. Just as easy as that, we can change our fate.
I did that once. Carried off a woman. Several of them, actually.
Perhaps that was my fate.
But they weren't all living women.
Most of them were dead.
I'm not a monster, you know. I have hands. And handsare made for making. And I just wanted to make ... what was I trying to make?
A bride?
A son?
I couldn't do it. Oh I read your journal. The Secrets Of Life and Death, as if there were any secret to it. I watched you work, I remembered watching. I think I remember watching.
