Sublime

Grace Macaulay, then: seventeen, small and plump, with skin that went brown by the end of May. Her hair was black and oily, and had the hot consoling scent of an animal in summer. She disliked books, and was by nature a thief if she found a thing to be beautiful, but not hers. She didn’t know she couldn’t sing. She was inclined to be cross.

Are they really so blind? she wonders. Sylvia, protecting her father, complicit in his scheme by virtue of her institutionalisation. Huib is reconciled, co-opted, too white of heart to suspect anything nefarious. She begins to feels sick. There is a conspiracy around the table, and they don’t even realise they are taking part. Even she is implicate

She looked defiant as well as lost,

she was “a wrinkled old fairy all the same.”

“I am Dulcinea Dearborn.” Morrigan swallowed a small sound of surprise.

She [Beatrice] alone was still real for him, still implied meaning in the world, and beauty. Her nature became his landmark – what Melville would call, with more sobriety than we can now muster, his Greenwich Standard

Sylvia D’Agostino Born 1958 in Leith, Scotland, the daughter of Eduardo D’Agostino, the poet.

Maggie had always taught her to stay away until she was summoned.