How hard a thing it is to say What was this forest savage, rough, and stern, Which in the very thought renews the fear. DANTE ALIGHIERI, Inferno, Canto I He stared down at me as if he suspected I was insane. Well, why would he be any different from anybody else? “What?” He still seemed pretty mad. A good sign of this was when his chest started to rise and fall as if he’d been running, which it was doing now. So I should have known better than to do what I did next, which was reach out and run a finger down the scar I’d just spied, snaking up the underside of his arm, then disappearing into his black sleeve. I should never have said, “That one’s new.” But I did anyway. He jerked his arm away as if my finger were a live wire and I’d just tried to electrocute him. “Stop that,” he said, glaring. “It’s nothing.” “It doesn’t look like nothing to me,” I said worriedly. I’d started to add a few things together in my head and didn’t like what I was coming up with.
