I felt that the world itself had changed and that it would never be steady under my feet again. I felt I understood nothing of people and had no way to learn. I felt fear. Until you have felt fear, yo...
There could be no home for the Tillermans. Home free — Dicey would settle for a place to stay. Stay free.
Oriel didn’t move. But inside of his head, all was movement, like a river running over rapids, searching for the way through, trying routes around rocks and over shallows, a turbulence of thought more...
If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first...
He felt — washed clean, healed. He felt if he could just live here he would be all right. He felt as if he had never been alive before. He felt at ease with himself and as if he had come home to a pla...
Griff couldn't, as Oriel could, gather men to him at a glance, seal them to him with a word. He had himself been the first gathered, the first sealed.
Fear lay down on top of her like a black cloud, trying to get into her mouth through her clenched teeth. There was nothing she could do but wait, and hope that the danger – a danger she couldn’t even...
Beriel shone with it, like a sun, the Queen in her Kingdom. It was as if each breath she drew increased her pleasure, breathing that air. It was as if each hoof the chestnut planted onto the earth inc...
And so I was. I can put on the cloak of the world I find myself in, however I happen to find myself in it. I can sing any man’s tune, and you’d believe me. That’s my gift. Birle knew this wasn’t a gif...
I persist in examining Mumma from all of the angles available to me I will learn. Not learn how to be a good mother to Sarah, who abandoned me on the sidewalk in front of the school building on the fi...
Jeff had made himself a place, inside himself, a kind of tower room, round, without any windows. In that room, he had locked his memory of the beach on the island, all the memories from the day hours...
If I was sure, I'd say. For your Momma, maybe. For all of us, maybe, but I don't think so. I think, maybe, it's reaching out for that school. Somehow. I'm not saying that's what you thought you were d...
He held the whip that and made those marks, and drawn that blood, and he was ashamed. He held the whip that could make more marks on the flesh of Nikol’s back. While Nikol begged.
Griff had the guarded face of a man who had much to lose by the wrong choice, although he had never had anything to lose. Griff's smile visited his face like a stranger who was only asking directions...
Evil would be done, that was the nature of the world; that was bearable if good could also be done.
Elske screamed, too. But when Elske screamed, it was the war cry of the Volkaric that came out of her mouth, a howling like the voice of a wolf. The cry wound around the narrow streets as if they were...
All she knew was that his smile lit up the morning as the rising sun does. For a moment, looking at his face, it was as if her ribs were empty, hollow, as if the world had stopped forever while she lo...
When she asked him to play a song while she finished, he had to strum chords for a while and pretend to be tuning up until he settled down. He didn’t want her to see how unsettled he’d been by the who...
They wouldn't know that grief had come down up on him unbearably, and he must be alone to put his arms around her, and feel her arms around him, to take enough comfort from grieving so that he could r...
There was something that hurt him in the way the hills rose so gently from the broad, rich southern plain. Something painful in the lazy curves of the river, golden under a sinking sun, shadowed by th...