Each of us wore our memories of what might have been.
She said, a child born at midwinter comes into the world on the shortest day of the year. From that point on, the days stretch out. And so a child born at midwinter walks always toward the light, all his life.
There is the darkness of a moonless night out of doors, and there is the darkness of a house with its shutters closed and the lamps quenched. There is the darkness of sleep, relieved by the bright images of dreams. But no darkness is as complete, as blanketing, as terrifying as the utter darkness of underground.
His touch warmed my whole body. I was longing to throw my arms around him and hold him close, but the magic of this moment was like a single, lovely strand of cobweb, fragile and delicate. One wrong move and it would snap beyond mending.
All the same, our eyes spoke of something good, something deep, something that could grow and flower if the world we lived in would allow it. Something too precious to put into words. Something I would not dare let out into the light of day, not yet.
There were those whose love spilled over into their every gesture, and so was shared by all who knew them. But they were rare folk indeed.
But then, if you forget what’s bad, cruel, unjust, you might not care anymore about setting things to rights. You might stop standing up against the folk who do evil deeds. And someone’s got to.
About happy endings. Folk like a story to finish well. Doesn’t matter if that’s true to life or not. Helps to hear about folk being content. About good folk getting what they deserve. While you’re listening you can believe, for a bit, that you’re good too. Worth a happy ending.
How could you live without human touch? Wasn’t that the first thing you knew, when you came into the world and they laid you on your mother’s belly? Her hand would come across and stroke your back, and cup your head, and she would smile through tears of exhaustion and wonderment. That touch of love would be the very first thing for you.
Look forward, not back,” the Hag said. “All is change. Do not regret. Instead, learn.
But if you remove a tyrant in anything other than an open and visible way, another tyrant soon stands up to replace him.
Part of me has turned wild, and another part’s turned dark as endless night, and I’m not going to change back just because someone says I must.
Human memory is a strange thing,” he observed. “How it comes and goes. How sometimes folk tuck the past away so deep they forget it’s there at all. The human mind is full of byways, dead ends, locked chambers. Strongboxes guarding matters too painful to be brought into the light; dusty corners where items considered too trivial are tossed away. You’ll remember one day. And if you do not, perhaps it is no matter.
Can this be love that twists and tears the heart so? Does love give nothing but the power to hurt each other? Is this what makes the simplest touch blend longing and terror in equal measure? Whatever this is, it feels like a mortal wound.
I did not want to cry any more. Instead I felt hollow, empty, as if all the meaning had been sucked out of me and I was drifting, light as a skeleton leaf, at the mercy of the four winds. I was drained of tears.
It is frightening, how one lie is just the first strand in an ever increasing fabric of untruth. And once this fabric is woven, it is very hard to unravel.
You are a child no longer, whatever you might wish. You are a woman with a woman’s body, and you do not think or feel as you did back there at Sevenwaters, when you ran wild in the forest and the trees spread their canopy to shelter you. Men will look at you. Come to terms with it, Sorcha. You cannot hide forever. They will look at you with desire in their eyes. You were taken against your will, and it damaged you. But life goes on.
His heart and mine added a rhythm all their own. We turned and turned, and with every turning we breathed a little more quickly and held on a little more tightly, and when we came back to the place we started, we stopped dancing and stood with our arms around each other, holding on as if we would never let go, not if the sky fell and the whole world came to an end.
Seven years of this and I’ll have lost whatever edge I once had,” I said. “I’ll have turned into one of those well-fed countrywomen who pride themselves on making better preserves then their neighbors, and give all their chickens names.
The day before you died was the longest, slowest day ever. It gave you more time than you could possibly want to contemplate all the things you’d got wrong, the chances you’d missed, the errors you’d made. It was long enough to convince the most hopeful person that there was no point in anything.