retellings

Why did you wear heels? How are you supposed to fight a gargoyle in what you're wearing?

Well, can you tell her that?"He looked down at his feet. "I will. I will."Guy-speak for, "I plan to keep avoiding her until she gives up.

If I were to lock you up in a dungeon, I guarantee you would not be bored.

Vane grabbed me. __uLac, let__ ch

When one finds oneself in the kind of strange, unsettling circumstances as I presently find myself, it is only natural, after all, to have a few, unusual, vivid dreams.

Everyone knows: people who cross boarders do so for a reason.

Like Dinah says, __e can only play the cards we__e been dealt. It doesn__ do any good to wish about things you can__ change.

What you are about to read are based on true events. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and it will break your heart. Don't say I didn't warn you.

She started life with a number, not a name. Class: S, No. 13295. She has them memorized by rote, though nobody ever calls her that. The Scientists feel foolish addressing her in long, bewildering strings of alphanumerics. They have told her so themselves. To save time, they simply call her __now.

And, they would still be alive today...If they hadn't died, that is

OMG. He's a gift shop, a lamb kebab with mint,/a solar panel poetry machine with biceps. He's the path/through the dark woods, the light on the page, a postcard/from the castle and a one-way ticket there. He's the most/astounding arrangement of molecules ever!/Just look at those tights! An honest-to-God prince at last.

My reading and studying and retellings of old stories didn't do anything except help me think better. I was at least thoughtful. Too thoughtful, my friends said. And all I thought about was myths and old paintings that made me feel drunk on wine or struck my lightning but didn't matter to most people.

But the nightmare was a strange comfort to me; in it, I found a sense of escape, and were it possible to go live in that nightmare, I would have, bizzare though that may sound.

Either I'm changing very quickly, and everything is standing still, or I'm the one standing still and everything is changing around me. Either way, I'm out of joint with the world.

Almost immediately, I found the red door into the library. I opened it idly- and the breath stopped in my throat. It was the same room I remembered: the shelves, the lion-footed table, the white bass-relief of Clio. But now, tendrils of dark green ivy grew between the shelves, reaching toward the books as if they were hungry to read. White mist flowed along the floor, rippling and tumbling as if blown by wind. Across the ceiling wove a network of icy ropes like tree roots. They dripped- not little droplets like the ice melting off a tree but grape-sized drops of water, like giant tears, that splashed on the table, plopped to the floor.

Soft sun shone down on a misty cathedral at the opposite end of a football-field length courtyard. The cathedral had a long pointed tower with beautiful rose and ivory stained glass windows. Pink-petal flowers and deep green ivy climbed the stones from the ground to it__ roof. A large fountain stood in the middle of the courtyard with water falling from several lion__ heads. Between the misty air and rolling slope of the earth, the grounds reminded me of a long lost fairy tale.

My name is Arianna Morganna Brittany DuLac--you can imagine why I went by the name Ryan.

Marilynn...passed out black cases to everyone. I opened mine to find an iPad inside. Several candidates whistled. Despite my agitated state, it impressed me too. Maybe wizard school wasn__ going to be as lame as I had thought.__ll of your schedules and assignments will be done on these,_ Marilynn explained. __he whole school is on these. We__e had them for awhile now.