Maybe I’m afraid of love,” Franny admitted. “It’s too powerful.” “You?” Isabelle scoffed. “Who chose courage? You’re stronger than you know. Which is why I’m leaving you what matters most. The book.
In her opinion, everything goes wrong if you give it enough time.
Things ended, and then they began again, only they would begin without Isabelle.
Love is trouble, and trouble is love.
When men were interested, they had a faraway look, as if they were trying to figure out their attraction. Was it a dream, or was it real? Did they want a woman, body and soul, or was it only the body that appealed to them? Sometimes it took them a while to figure it out, sometimes only minutes.
She was beautiful. That’s why her name was April.
In their estimation Gillian was young and stupid and would get herself pregnant in record time – all the prerequisites for a miserable and ordinary life.
It was the first of many marital disasters, but on the night she eloped anything seemed possible, even happiness.
A crow can recall every route it has ever taken, and Cadin had been this way before. Crows are messengers, spies, guides, companions, harbingers of luck, deliverers of trinkets and treasures, tireless in all ways, more loyal than any other man or beast.
Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure. As soon as you let go of it, pride shrinks to the size of a fly, but one that has no head, and no tail, and no wings with which to lift itself off the ground.
And then, when Kylie looks back at her house, she has the strangest feeling. The house seems lost to her in some way, as though she were looking at a memory, a place she used to live in and will never forget but one she can’t go back to, not anymore.
They’ve become sleepwalkers, wandering through their own nightmares, each avoiding the others for fear that a word, a conversation, a kiss will make them realize they aren’t dreaming.
The beauty of that meadow reminded Hannah of the reasons to live in the world, and the reasons to mistrust those who saw wickedness in others, but never in themselves.
In doing so, he understood who he was. In that moment, in his aunt’s greenhouse, he felt more alone than ever.
As he walked back to the neighbor’s he realized that the magic tricks he’d taught himself were childish foolishness. What mattered was the blood that ran through him, the same blood that had flowed through Maria Owens. Once, when he’d cut himself in a tangle of brambles on the way to the lake, drops of his blood had burned through the fabric of his shirt. This was what bloodline magic was. It was inside him.
Life was short, it was over in an instant, but some things lasted. Hate and love, kindness and cruelty, all lingered and, in their case, all had been passed on.
In the morning, she told everyone she was perfectly fine, even though she wasn’t, even though she wished she was still on that green hill where Levi had been buried, where the grass smelled so sweet, where there was no beginning and no end.
She raged at a world that would allow such injustice to occur. How could the rural, verdant beauty all around her be the domain of such cruelty, a place in which the larks chattered despite the dangers they faced, unable to keep silent as they sang the praises of the sky.
Love was never a mistake, even when it wasn’t returned. It was not unlike the phlox in Catherine Avery’s garden, untended, ignored, but there all the same.
She was so close to the sea that when Maria licked her lips she tasted salt. There were different kinds of birds here, gulls and terns that wheeled through the pink-tinged sky. Soon the water she walked through was brackish, and all along the shore small crabs burrowed in the mud. Maria climbed a tree in which to safely rest for the evening, and from that high vantage point she could see blue in the distance, the miraculous sea.