Unit 6: Selection Vocabulary 1

He had lingered at the Navajo reservation for too long, in thrall to his uncle’s tales, and now he hurried back home, to the Pueblo, the crisp April air invigorating his every step.

The tracks weaved between the sand ridges and circumvented the patches of cacti.

He knew that the Trickster and the company he kept were not friends of the people; on the other hand, if one encountered any malevolent forces, he should do his best to appease them—that was simple common sense.

He knew that the Trickster and the company he kept were not friends of the people; on the other hand, if one encountered any malevolent forces, he should do his best to appease them—that was simple common sense.

She must had seen the mistrust and apprehension on his face; she smiled, showing her white, small teeth.

His disgust at himself was supplanted by fear.

It beckoned him, lilting and insistent; delicate music, played by delicate instruments that he could not identify, with one rippling, bell-like phrase running through it in a gold thread of delight.

Will was looking over a great white forest: a forest of massive trees, sturdy as towers and ancient as rock.

They were bare of leaves, clad only in the deep snow that lay untouched along every branch, each smallest twig.

It was the way that he and James had taken to Dawsons' Farm, the same road that he had trodden almost every day of his life, but it was very different now.

He realised that the sun had risen at last out of the sullen bank of grey cloud.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

The dirty dishes were dropped into a hot washer and emerged twinkling dry.

The house stood alone in a city of rubble and ashes.

Martinis manifested on an oaken bench with egg salad sandwiches.

Over this ran aluminum roaches and iron crickets, and in the hot still air butterflies of delicate red tissue wavered among the sharp aroma of animal spoors!

The dinner dishes manipulated like magic tricks, and in the study a click.

The fire crackled up the stairs. It fed upon Picassos and Matisses in the upper halls, like delicacies, baking off the oily flesh, tenderly crisping the canvases into black shavings.

And one voice, with sublime disregard for the situation, read poetry aloud all in the fiery study, until all the film spools burned, until all the wires withered and the circuits cracked.