Arnold Castle

“When the boys come, instead of buying Barbie dolls, all of a sudden you’re into trucks and remote controls, cars and tanks. You buy building blocks and build castles and locomotives. You get into knives and later take them shooting with pistols, shotguns, and rifles. All of which made me very happy.””

“No one knew how the castle had come to be, and Emory did not care. He did not care why a sun hung in the sky; it did, and that was enough for him. As long as it warmed his back each day and disappeared each night, Emory had no desire to waste his time examining the whys and wherefores behind it’s existence, and that was how he felt about the castle and the cliffs, the sea and the sky. The world was made. That was all.””

“Time was lost to her and distance. With each turn they took, each step they paced, Ama felt her own heart constrict, as if the iron and the stone of the castle seized and squeezed it tight.””