“Returning to bed, Rachel strokes Zachariah's black curls as he drifts into sleep and appreciates the shape and fractal geometry there, the self-similarity and infinity of scale. She breathes in at his scalp, then presses her ear to his, listening for the clamour of voices within, to the long line of fighting men who made him, his head a seashell. There is a template for the fighting man. Rachel listens across three times nine countries, as the fairy-tale saying goes, across three times nine countries in the thirtieth tsardom . . .”
Book:Be My Wolff