About Fred

Sunday

Not really a busy day. I saw The Wolverine — it’s quite enjoyable — and wrote this:

The Raven tortured the black box, turned it over in her hands, worrying the edges until the wood splintered in her palms, drawing blood and a wince of pain as it dug into her skin. They should have built it better, she thought, as the screws that held the clasp loosened and then fell away. She threw the useless metal to the dungeon floor. If they’d meant to trap me here, they should have built a stronger prison; they should have bound me like the others, burnt a ward into the ground, cut my throat and let it bleed. They never should have left me here alone, unguarded but for the boy already dozing outside. They never should have left me here with the means of my escape. But they had thought to torture her, to leave her weeping in the darkness, bloodied and beaten, with the power that she needed so close at hand and yet under lock and key. They’d warded the box, oh yes, as if such commoner’s magic wasn’t easily broken, as if she didn’t have the strength in her to break a small wooden box and spill out its contents, whatever glyphs had been hastily scratched into its surface. She had felled armies, nearly felled their own until they’d sent that damn mage to meet her on the field. He would not have made this same mistake. He would have recognized the battle as still only half won. She was beaten, yes, but never broken. She was the Raven.

The box was empty. She stared, turned it over in her hands, shook out nothing but air. This couldn’t be. She had seen the soldier place her locket in the box, seen him lock it and place the key inside the front pocket of his vest. She didn’t count these men incapable of subterfuge, but she had seen it — and moreover had seen it still, with was left to her of the second sight, when they’d placed the box before her, laughing, and left the room. That all of that had been a ruse…it made no sense, defied what she knew of magic, and should have been impossible even with that dark mage’s help. They could not have tricked her, tricked the sight, unless…

She turned the box back over in her hands. Oh yes, she thought, there it was, a glyph she had not seen, not scratched but deeply burnt into the hard finish inside the box. Not a ward but a trap. Not an escape but a deeper prison.

And that was when she felt the burning pain in her hands.

And now it’s raining. That’s about it.

Saturday

A pretty ordinary day, really. I finished reading The Last Kashmiri Rose by Barbara Cleverly, but despite a promising start and some nice detail, I can’t claim to have quite enjoyed the book. Characters act in ways that aren’t always believable — for the time period of the British Raj, but also just for human beings — and the ending solves the mystery in what’s maybe the least interesting of the most predictable ways. Though maybe we’re at a point in mystery novels at which not confounding your expectations itself counts as a twist? Either way, I found the book ultimately a disappointment.

Moving on the Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, just for a complete change of pace.

I also finished watching Fringe, finally. I’ve had the fifth season saved up since it first aired this fall, and I’ve been watching an episode (occasionally two) every evening this week. It’s not a perfect ending, for a show that was never perfect — started out as pretty lousy, actually, before figuring out how to frequently be terrific — but a satisfying one all the same.

I wish I could say the same for Insidious, which I watched last night. It was a lot less scary than I expected, and doesn’t have a whole lot going for it beyond scares.

Finally, this evening I had dinner out with my parents. I had frog legs for the first time — also unimpressive, but maybe more from the way they were prepared — and a decent if unremarkable duck confit. Then my parents went off to see Mary Chapin Carpenter and Marc Cohn in concert and I came home (to watch Fringe and walk the dog). My mom’s a long-time fan of Carpenter, and I bought her tickets this past Mother’s Day.

And that was Saturday, with a little bit of Friday tossed in.