Имоджен и Марин – сестры, их отношения сложны, полны тайн и недосказанности, ужасных детских воспоминаний и надежд на будущее. Однажды обе они получают приглашение провести почти целый год в «Мелете» – кампусе для молодых представителей творческих профессий. Марин – балерина, ее танец покорял сердца зрителей, когда она была еще школьницей. Имоджен – начинающая писательница, которая с детства пишет сказки и хочет рассказать правду о том, как им с сестрой жилось в доме матери. Но сестры не...
It`s easy to think a choice looks simple when you`re not the one who has to make it.
For some people, the lie is so much easier to believe than the truth, that they`ll talk themself out of seeing what is right in front of them.
"For a while in college, I thought I wanted to study classics. I had this amazing mythology professor, and she read us the opening of The Iliad in ancient Greek, and I could feel my hair stand on end. I wanted to do that. I took enough classes to get the minor."
"What happened?"
"Latin verbs. And the fucking ablative."
This is the thing about fairy tales: You have to live through them, before you get to the happily ever after. That ever after has to be earned, and not everyone makes it that far. There are stories where you must wear out your iron shoes to right a wrong, where children are baked into pies, where jealousy cuts off hands and cuts out hearts.
We forget, because the stories end with those ritual words - happily ever after - all the darkness, all the pain all the effort that comes before. People say they want a fairy tale life, but what they really want is the part that happens off the page, after the oven has been escape, after the clock strikes midnight. They want the part that doesn`t come with glass slippers still stained with a stepsister`s blood, or a lover blinded by an angry mother`s thorns.
If you live through a fairy tale, you don`t make it through unscatched or unchanged. Hands of silver may be beautiful, but they don`t replace the hands of flesh and bone that were severed. The hazel tree may speak with your mother`s voice, but her bones are still buried beneath its roots. The dead are not always returned, and the dead do not always bloom from graves.
Not every princess climbs out of her coffin.
Happily ever after is the dropping of the curtain, a signal for applause. It is not a guarantee, and it always has a price.
Perhaps the only happily ever after is to survive to tell the story.
I never lived with my daughter`s father. He`s a perfectly lovely man whom I like a great deal, and we would have made each other misrable if we had ever resided under the same roof.
You think you get free when you grow up, when you get out of the house. Mostly, you do. Eventually, you stop only ever letting yourself half-sleep, because you`re bracing for footsteps and angry hands. You stop looking for hiding places to keep safe your most precious things, to make harder for someone to take them from you on a whim. You choose your clothing based on style, rather than on how well it hides bruises. You grow your hair out, and almost forget the metallic snick of scissors.
The muscles relax in your shoulders. You remember how to take a deep breath, how to unclench your hand, how to share a secret. Until.
There is always an until.
When it happens, everything goes back to the way it was, and you embrace your two best friends, loneliness and fear.
No story happens without some sort of evil, after all. No one leaves a house that`s warm and safe and comfortable to brave the terror and uncertainty of a forest without a reason. If you have an easy life, you don`t wake up and find yourself in a story.
Легкий ветерок покачивал кусты роз, мимо которых я уже проходила, и стебли, увенчанные тяжелыми головками цветов, изгибались, словно руки танцовщиц. За ними тянулись, причудливо извиваясь, длинные послеполуденные тени. Странный танец лепестков, листьев и шипов, игра света и тени, пьянящее благоухание. Не удержавшись, я сошла с дорожки и ступила в царство роз.
Голос ее был сладким, как мед, пьянящим, как виски.
Некоторым людям гораздо проще поверить в явную ложь, чем увидеть истину, и они предпочитают не верить глазам своим, хотя истина прямо перед ними.
Ненужные, пустые слова. Избитые фразы. Нам кажется, они могут нас утешить, но на поверку оказывается, что они мелки, невыразительны, весь их смысл теряется. Они слишком поверхностны, и не могут передать всей глубины эмоций, которые мы испытываем. Мы все это понимаем, и все равно каждый раз их произносим.
События прошлого всегда преследуют нас. Но воспоминания не всегда вызывают отторжение, принося с собой сладкие воспоминания с привкусом горечи.
Красота, которую я видела вокруг, призывала меня остаться, раствориться в ней без остатка.
Запахло розами, и стены комнаты вдруг покрыли сотни разноцветных бабочек - ярко-красных, оранжевых и пронзительно, почти невероятно синих, - превративших комнату в калейдоскоп. Их крылышки то складывались, то раскрывались все одновременно, словно в такт биению какого-то гигантского сердца.
А потом они вдруг сорвались с места - сотни звезд, переливающихся всеми цветами радуги - и улетели в поисках более ярких небес.
I don`t like the idea of signs and portents. People like to say fate is inescapable, but I believe there`s always an escape. We make our own luck, and we do that by bending our will and energy toward what we want. I think if you look for an omen, you`ll find one, and it will tell you exactly what you desire it to, for good or ill.
Time is never a dancer`s friend.
The world`s full of next big things, so it`s not enough to just be good. I have to be good and be the dancer they`re looking for.
As I walked, I could see fellows moving into their studios, carrying instrument cases and paint-splattered bags. Somewhere in the midst of them a piano crashed through a phrase, paused, and then repeated. I felt like I was walking through an opening montage of a movie - everything was just a shade brighter than real.
She and I had both worked as baristas, and shared the same contempt for people who ordered nonfat no-foam decaf like it was a sacrament. "Like, what is the actual point? Everything that is delicious in the drink is gone."