Tithe

Is contained in

Canonical title

Tithe

Original title

Tithe

Alternate titles*

Elfentochter

Original publication date

2002-10-01

People/Characters

Kaye Fierch; Rath Roiben Rye; Corny Stone; Janet Stone; Ellen Fierch; Spike (show all 14); Lutie-loo; Thistlewitch; Lady Nicnevin; Nephamel; Kenny; Doughboy; Skillywidden; Queen Silarial

Important places

New York, New York, USA; New Jersey, USA; Unseelie Court; Seelie Court

Epigraph

And pleasant is the faerie land
But an eerie tale to tell,
Ay at the end of seven years
We pay a tithe to Hell;
I am sae fair and fu o flesh,
I'm feard it be mysel.
— YOUNG TAM LIN

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And malt does note than Milton can
To justify God's Ways to man.
— A. E. HOUSEMAN,
"Terence, This is Stupid Stuff"

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Coercive as coma, frail as bloom
innuendoes of your inverse dawn
suffuse the self;
our every corpuscle becomes an elf.
— MINA LOY, "Moreover, the Moon,"
The Lost Lunar Baedeker

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The stones were sharp,
The wind came at my back;
Walking along the highway,
Mincing like a cat.
— THEODORE ROETHKE, "Praise to the End!"

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A cigarette is the perfect type of perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?"
— OSCAR WILDE, The Picture of Dorian Gray

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All day and all night
my desire for you
unwinds like a poisonous snake.
— SAMAR SEN, "Love" (show all 17)

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I ate the Mythology & dreamt.
— YUSEF KOMUNYKAA, "Blackberries"

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Down the hill I went, and then,
I forgot the ways of men
For night-scents, heady, and damp and cool
Wakened ecstasy in me.
— SARA TEASDALE, "August Moonrise,"
Flame and Shadow

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Listening to the prisoned cricket
Shake its terrible dissembling
Music in the granite hill
— LOUISE BOGAN, "Men Loved Wholly Beyond Wisdom"

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For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror we can just barely endure,
and we admire it so because it calmly disdains to destroy us.
— RAINER MARIA RILKE, "The First Elegy,"
Duino Elegies

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You whom I could not save
Listen to me.
— CZESLAW MILOSZ, "Dedication"

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A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
— EMILY DICKINSON, "VI. A Word"

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But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire.
Oh no my dear, let all that be;
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?
— YEATS, "The Mask"

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And for those masks who linger on
To feast at night upon the pure sea!
— ARTHUR RIMBAUD, "Does She Dance"

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For I have sworn thee fair, and through thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
— WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Sonnet CXLVII

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In the hills giant oaks
fall upon their knees
You can touch parts
You have no right to—
—KAY RYAN, "Crown"

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Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heav'n.— MILTON, Paradise Lost (Book I)

Dedication

For my little sister Heidi

First words

Prologue: Kaye took another drag on her cigarette and dropped it into her mother's beer bottle.

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Ch. 1: Kaye spun down the worn, gray planks of the boardwalk. The air was heavy and stank of drying mussels and the crust of salt on the jetties.

Quotations

She knew what her grandmother was going to say when she got back, stinking of liquor with a torn shirt. True things.

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)"I am your servant," the King of the Unseelie Court said, his lips a moment from her own. "Consider it done."

Blurbers

Klause, Annette Curtis

Original language

American English