American Gods-The Tenth Anniversary Edition by Neil Gaiman

American Gods-The Tenth Anniversary Edition by Neil Gaiman

Author:Neil Gaiman [Gaiman, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Contemporary, Fairy Tales; Folk Tales; Legends & Mythology, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 0755322819
Google: XpYXARD6BjYC
Amazon: B004YW4L5K
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2011-06-20T18:30:00+00:00


That evening Shadow sat at the kitchen table trying to figure out how to transform a silver dollar into a penny. It was a trick he had found in Perplexing Parlour Illusions but the instructions were infuriating, unhelpful, and vague. Phrases like “then vanish the penny in the usual way” occurred every sentence or so. In this context, Shadow wondered, what was “the usual way”? A French drop? Sleeving it? Shouting “Oh my god, look out—a mountain lion!” and dropping the coin into his side pocket while the audience’s attention was diverted?

He tossed his silver dollar into the air, caught it, remembering the moon and the woman who gave it to him, then he attempted the illusion. It didn’t seem to work. He walked into the bathroom and tried it in front of the mirror, and confirmed that he was right. The trick as written simply didn’t work. He sighed, dropped the coins in his pocket and sat down on the couch. He spread the cheap throw rug over his legs and flipped open the Minutes of the Lakeside Council 1872–1884. The type, in two columns, was so small as to be almost unreadable. He flipped through the book, looking at the reproductions of the photographs of the period, at the several incarnations of the Lakeside city council therein: long side-whiskers and clay pipes and battered hats and shiny hats, worn with faces which were, many of them, peculiarly familiar. He was unsurprised to see that the portly secretary of the 1882 city council was a Patrick Mulligan: shave him, make him lose twenty pounds and he’d be a dead ringer for Chad Mulligan, his—what, great-great-grandson? He wondered if Hinzelmann’s pioneer grandfather was in the photographs, but it did not appear that he had been city council material. Shadow thought he had seen a reference to a Hinzelmann in the text, while flipping from photograph to photograph, but it eluded him when he leafed back for it, and the tiny type made Shadow’s eyes ache.

He put the book down on his chest and realized his head was nodding. It would be foolish to fall asleep on the couch, he decided, soberly. The bedroom was only a few feet away. On the other hand, the bedroom and the bed would still be there in five minutes, and anyway, he was not going to go to sleep, only to close his eyes for a moment…

Darkness roared.

He stood on an open plain. Beside him was the place from which he had once emerged, from which the earth had squeezed him. Stars were still falling from the sky and each star that touched the red earth became a man or a woman. The men had long black hair and high cheekbones. The women all looked like Marguerite Olsen. These were the star people.

They looked at him with dark, proud eyes.

“Tell me about the thunderbirds,” said Shadow. “Please. It’s not for me. It’s for my wife.”

One by one they turned their backs on him, and as he lost their faces they were gone, one with the landscape.



Download



Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.