And as he recalls the old soldier's wisdom regarding bullets and fate, how pointless evasion is when each shot has a man's name on it, he lurches upright, to the waist, a roaring sound in his ears.

Go home, Rachel. She so likes to to be there for his return. Zachariah is coming, Zachariah is coming! Rachel is all gravity now, nudged from dreams, a swift transition. Rachel dreams much and often. She is not hunted.

I need to tell you a story, a tale of fate and emergence.

His mother, Zach explained, taught the Romantics and named her sons accordingly, extravagantly, tempting fate. She plays a terrible game of names. Thomas Love survives his beloved elder brother Percy Bysshe who died in a sailing accident. Percy Bysshe, buried at sea. The name and the man, a strange attractor. Everything is true.

The older she grows, the farther she walks. It is a good thing the world is round and she is fond of walking in circles or else she might disappear across three times nine countries in the thirtieth tsardom!

Everything is connected,' stated Rachel. 'Patterns everywhere.