Author: dove

I grew up in a small island nation in the Pacific – not one of the tiniest islands, or even...

On Tuesday, at dusk, the eagles flew from the Coroner’s Court. Unfurling their wings of stone, they launched themselves into the deep blue beyond. Commuters, impatiently awaiting their buses, did not believe their eyes.

On Wednesday it was the turn of the women. One calmly led a lion, against whose back she had reclined for the past century, out over the railings onto the roof, coaxing it as one might a reluctant cat. They disappeared from sight, though not from memory.

They are there a couple of days a month, outside the local shopping mall. Maybe it’s more like a day a week. Conspicuous in their camouflage gear and close-cropped hair. With their ridiculous little tank, their tents, their guns and their glossy recruiting literature. All terribly neat and tidy.  

Let me tell you a story.

Once, in a time and place that now seems as remote and unfathomable as any long-lost Atlantis, I trained as a medieval musicologist. A rigorous and thorough preparation for a life very different than mine. That’s not the story. But that distant far-off place is where I learned this story, by reading the lines and what lies between them.

Imagine you’re looking at the side of a milk bottle over your morning cereal. Missing...