The Collectors: List 5

You love Cs because they have no hard edges, and to you, hard edges have the potential to make boxes. And you don’t do boxes. They either preserve or they imprison, and I want neither. Let me wither away freely, you’d say.

He’s twelve now, which makes him exactly the same age as you in human years. So the running in circles, though it still happens, has slowed down some. It’s more like a saunter.

But the excitement to be with you hasn’t dwindled at all. His tail still whips anything sad out of the way and clears a path for slobbery kisses.

Shortly after the Fall of the Angels clattering down from Heaven to the lake of fire, or maybe after the Churning of the Sea of Milk, back when the world was just a soup of acids, humankind was created and immediately the demon Flaëlphagor hated them.

He hated the shrieking noises they made when they were little, larval, screaming maggots—and he hated the honking noises they made when they were older and furry and wanted to declare love or war.

And as this filthy little race began to build their mud cities and dream they were kings of the world, the demon Flaëlphagor began a ghastly collection: His spirit drifted through history and picked through the humans as they lived their tiny lives and died; he sorted like a child browsing through a box of pretty rocks, and every time he came across a human who thought to themself, I wish this moment would last forever, the demon snatched them up right then, froze them in time...

She’s got to notice I’m, like, having a fit or a seizure or something, he thought, but then he saw there was a look in her eyes, some panic, and he realized she was feeling it too.

It was mostly sand and pebbles, maybe a couple bottle caps with their sharp, serrated edges making rings in his back.

Raff has tried to tell himself stories to mitigate the boredom.

When I look at them gleaming before me—young love, preserved forever—I touch the meniscus of time that encases them, and out of frozen silence, I hear the screaming of their thoughts.

It was illegal to shed the blood of a Seljuq prince—high sacrilege.

Now, as the crowds called for him outside, the new sultan checked the flare of his mustache and the lay of his robes of shining silk brocade.

Pigeons were startled from the minarets of mosques and spun through the sky and their shadows wheeled across the crowd like the motions of history and the sultan greeted his people for the first time, planning wars and invasions and expansions into new kingdoms; the sound of their acclamation was not simply a noise, it was a force in the air, a sensation all along his arms; it was the joy of rulership itself, solid and tangible.

Pigeons were startled from the minarets of mosques and spun through the sky and their shadows wheeled across the crowd like the motions of history and the sultan greeted his people for the first time, planning wars and invasions and expansions into new kingdoms; the sound of their acclamation was not simply a noise, it was a force in the air, a sensation all along his arms; it was the joy of rulership itself, solid and tangible.

He thought of all the battles, all the executions, his transformation from sweaty shepherd boy to ruler of half the world, and he almost laughed at the people below him, he almost laughed with giddy shock at their subjugation—and as he raised his hand again and they roared up to him, his heart lifted like one of those pigeons above the square and he thought, I wish this moment could last forever.

He was aware only that the sound of screaming no longer had contours or syllables. It was one massive, crashing drone that went on and on, a thousand notes all sung together.

What is this, then? he thought imperiously, as if whatever stroke had frozen him would answer to his kingship.

I am stricken! he thought, and struggled to breathe, but could not.

If this is going to be my stance until the angels release me, he thought, then I shall stand here before my people like a true sultan!

The mosque on the other side of the square was illuminated with Arabic calligraphy interwound with ornate designs on tile and it would maybe stem the boredom if he could read the holy words of wisdom there.

When he looked at some faces, he saw that the mouths of humans could be brutal and animal, the tension in their throats, the dark holes of their gullets looking more like the maws of desert lions ready to tear him apart.

When he looked at some faces, he saw that the mouths of humans could be brutal and animal, the tension in their throats, the dark holes of their gullets looking more like the maws of desert lions ready to tear him apart.

How many would it take to attempt a coup?

For weeks, he scrutinized his people: methodically, in rows and columns, right to left, as scholars read the sacred texts.

Perhaps the whole crowd hated him. He looked out at some grim hour (still surrounded by the constant chord of their applause), and he discovered that he actually feared the thousand thoughts he saw in different eyes.

This mob of the conquered, the humiliated, the toadies, the lackeys, the lickspittles, the slaves—and they despised him, the sultan of the Great Seljuqs, monarch over half the known world?

This mob of the conquered, the humiliated, the toadies, the lackeys, the lickspittles, the slaves—and they despised him, the sultan of the Great Seljuqs, monarch over half the known world?

For several weeks after that he concentrated on projecting his hatred back out toward them, showing them he held them in complete contempt.

There were probably some princelings out there, some Persian scholars, some Arabic emirs, some imams out there who knew more than him about palaces and rituals and the history of kings.

He was set before them, dressed like an idiot, a rustic fool they made parade in front of them on a little stage so they could howl.

But two hours later, people had gone back to their businesses and were throwing pots or selling sheep or counting amphoras of olive oil, saying, “You wouldn’t believe it. He vanished, right in front of us. Snatched up by the angels.”

After an hour of that moment, the exhilaration turned pretty quickly to vertigo. She will never be at rest, because she will always feel the need to balance. She’ll never stop falling forward.

...he looked suave in the silk frock coat and the crisp little wig he’d saved up for...

Remember the lesson of his awful collection of cameos: they show us how precious decay is, and loss, and the end of things sometimes.

This is what makes our joy so poignant, because we cannot grasp forever the wrist we love, the streetlight’s beam, the applause of friends, the air of summer, the speed of spoked wheels down a hill.