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Show 189 on nodding. "When's Sean getting home?" Todd asked, Hunt excused himself from the table. That night he moved back into the bedroom with Leah. And he dreamed. He dreamed he was listening to his friend and his friend was teaching or lecturing: incanting the growing name of a book, thereby bringing the whole book to life. It made Hunt cry. And he dreamed, too, that it was morning and that he was bringing mice and liver to the marten in his studio. The marten was there - alert, pleased, responsive. So Hunt opened the door - and the marten ran out. But the marten wasn't the marten, suddenly. She was something else. She was an organ. She was Hunt's heart! And the heart was wild: Hunt's heart was a wild, undomesticated creature in the room, running this way and that, trying to climb walls! And it terrified Hunt. He had to catch it. He had to grip ahold of it with all his strength. Wrestle it to the ground! Pin it! Subdue. Break its wild spirit, before he could feed it and return it to its cage. Hunt woke up in a sweat. Leah woke. "Cant' you sleep?" she asked. "My heart," Hunt said. "Are you having chest pains again?" Leah touched him. ". . . Just a dream," Hunt said, falling back on his pillow. "I'm fine. I'll be fine. --Sorry you woke." In the morning, before Leah left for work, Sean called from Omaha. He |