As for righting wrongs and fighting for civil liberties, that sort of thing, it wouldn’t be so bad... but then we have to sing those songs about wearing Lincoln green and aiding the oppressed. We don’t, Cully, we turn them in for the reward, and those songs are just embarrassing, that’s all, and there’s the truth of it.
I was born mortal, and I have been immortal for a long, foolish time, and one day I will be mortal again; so I know something that a unicorn cannot know. Whatever can die is beautiful – more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world.
You must remind me, little one. When I... when I lose myself – when I lose her – you must remind me that I am still searching, still waiting... that I have never forgotten her, never turned from all she taught me. I sit in this place... I sit... because a king has to sit, you see... but in my mind, in my poor mind, I am always away with her...
Her neck was long and slender, making her head seem smaller than it was, and the mane that fell almost to the middle of her back was as soft as dandelion fluff and as fine as cirrus. She had pointed ears and thin legs, with feathers of white hair at the ankles; and the long horn above her eyes shone and shivered with its own seashell light even in the deepest midnight.
The universe lies to our senses and they lie to us, and how can we ourselves be anything but liars? For myself, I trust neither message nor messenger; neither what I am told, nor what I see. There may be truth somewhere, but it never gets down to me.
Marriage isn’t like football, like bocce. One isn’t good at it, nobody has a special gift. You stumble along, and if there is enough love – ” she smiled at him – “you learn.
The long road hurried to nowhere and had no end.
I’ve had worse, and I’ll have better one day. This is not the end.
The spaciousness of it astounds me; this is the kind of country you dream of running away to when you are very young and innocently hungry, before you learn that all land is owned by somebody, that you can get arrested for swinging through trees in a loincloth, and that you were born either too late or too poor for everything you want to do.
This world, that world, doesn’t matter. You never make people to see what you see, hear, feel what you feel. Notes don’t do it, words don’t do it, paints, bronze, marble, nothing. All you can do, you maybe get it a little close, a little closer. But right, like you’re talking? No.
The king is always watching her out of his pale eyes, wondering what she is, and the king’s son wounds himself with loving her and wonders who she is. And every day she searches the sea and the sky, the castle and the courtyard, the keep and the king’s face, for something she cannot always remember. What is it, what is it that she is seeking in this strange place? She knew a moment ago, but she has forgotten.
Oh, more people than not have some magic, they just forget about it. Children use it all the time – what do you think jump rope rhymes are, or bouncing ball games, or cat’s cradles? Where do you think that girl, Aiffe, draws her power? Because she refuses to forget, that’s all it is.
He knew something of sorrow, remembered joy, and devoutly hoped – as much as he consciously hoped for anything other than proper allotments of sunshine and rainfall – never again to encounter either of those two old annoyances.
As to your first question, no cat out of its first fur can ever be deceived by appearances. Unlike human beings, who enjoy them.
It’s not you worries me. The king is a good man, and an old friend, but it has been a long time, and kings change. Even more than other people, kings change.
I think that we are often angry with each other without knowing it, and I know that we are angry with ourselves.
She has a newness,” he said. “Everything is for the first time. See how she moves, how she walks, how she turns her head – all for the first time, the first time anyone has ever done these things. See how she draws her breath and lets it go again, as though no one else in the world knew that air was good. It is all for her. If I learned that she had been born this very morning, I would only be surprised that she was so old.
I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me.” Before.
She is a rarer creature than you dare to dream. She is a myth, a memory, a will-o’-the-wish.
A dream that returns so often is like to be a messenger, come to warn you of the future or to remind you of things untimely forgotten.