Rath Roiben Rye!

Oh lord.

I've been falling all over myself trying to find and reread the books I love in a particular way for particular things, trying to inject my brainmeats with glamour, so to speak. Trying to cram my head full of the magic that lurks behind trees, in tin cans rusted and mixed with vines and dirt and snow on the hill by the train tracks, under the broken bricks in the backyard, in the hollow between the twin trunks of the cauldron tree next to the old grill, in the overgrown stream that leads under the road from the waterfall so often clogged with leaves and algae. Trying to find the talisman between the cracks in the pavement, the book in the library that tells my story, the faerie gold to pay for carbonated water in siphon bottles nicked from a strange house's pantry, the names of the stars and just the right intonation to use when reciting the Breastplate of St Patrick, the ghost who carved his name in the bed and hid the key to a cipher under the solid oak drawer in the dresser, the blue paint to make myself frightening and the red thread to embroider charms on the insides of my outside-in clothing.

I forgot that the good guys took over the YA fiction section and that it's full to brimming with raw, roiling beauty and danger and adventure and stories I haven't read yet.

I've just read through, staying up all night because I couldn't stop reading, Tithe by Holly Black. And I can't give a review, because it's so clever, so lovely, so twisting and dark and bright and true, that I can't bear to give any of it away.

You all should read it too.

dammit

so there were three wizards, calling me out. they were fucking calling me out, using the Clubhouse as their base of operations, thinking I was the one who'd done all this crap. one of them was stephen of the absolutely fierce sick club list at the comic shop, and one of them was the kid from the gas station with all the goddamn ayn rand, and one of them I knew from CCM's b-cafeteria gaming corner. and none of them had the right idea. I sat stewing in my car, thinking if they just would SHUT UP with the goddamn batsignal and blaring PA for one fucking minute, i would be able to *get out* of my car and start dealing with the fucking wild fae.

but no.

and they didn't even think it was /me/. i'm just a /girl/. granted, a /cool/ girl, that liked comics and games and believed in magic-- the nasty kinds and the pretty kinds alike-- but just a girl. they figured it was someone who lived around here, though. it *could* have been my shadow. i'll admit my shadow was a fair cop, but it wasn't my shadow. i knew who it was, and they weren't gonna get anywhere like this-- the thing doing the shit wasn't human, magic or no magic. (if you can believe in human people being able to do magic, how can you not believe in other people existing that do the magic human people can't manage? asshats.)

they were absolutely fucking terrified when i *did* get out of my car and haul out my crap and slam the door and start stomping across the horseshoe field, face like the apocalypse. they were on their way out by that point, and i bullied them all back in, and they cringed like the little dorks in over their heads that they were, just from me snarling. and i shoved them back in the clubhouse and made them explain just exactly what they thought they were doing, and then told them just exactly what was actually going on--

--and then the cops showed up (finally, jeez) because the neighbors had finally complained about the batsignal shit the asshats were pulling and saying there was a breakin at the clubhouse (which there was), and there was massive scrambling for the trapdoor in the clubhouse floor which led under the stilted part of the building, and thence out into the bushes and to the beach.

i wound up dragging them /all/ under sidhe mhor when the cops came. :P luckily it was the unsmoothed mound of sand on the beach *right there*, prepping for summer. AND NONE OF THEM DESERVED SANCTUARY.