We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers - thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the coloni… - Peter S. Beagle

He really would have done all that for her, you see, and done it believing he'd burn in hell forever for doing it. He hadn't done it, and wouldn't had made her his anyway, but you see why he'd have figured it did. Or maybe I saw it anyway, at the time. He was a maniac and a monster, but people don't love like that anymore. Or maybe it's only the maniacs and monsters who do. I don't know.

The Blue Jay's Lullaby —


Spiders and sowbugs and beetles and crickets,
Slugs from the roses and ticks from the thickets,
Grasshoppers, snails, and a quail's egg or two — All to be regurgitated for you.

Lullaby, lullaby, swindles and schemes,
Flying's not near as much fun as it seems.

I’m sure I’ll go to heaven. I’ve been dull enough.