Uprooted

You intolerable lunatic," he snarled at me, and then he caught my face between his hands and kissed me.

If you don't want a man dead, don't bludgeon him over the head repeatedly.

truth didn’t mean anything without someone to share it with; you could shout truth into the air forever, and spend your life doing it, if someone didn’t come and listen.

And I wasn't old enough to be wise, so I loved her more, not less, because I knew she would be taken from me soon.

What an unequaled gift for disaster you have.

Listen, you impossible creature," he said, "I'm a century and more older than--" "Oh, be quiet," I said impatiently.

I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn't care: I didn't feel I owed him beauty.

We're meant to go. We're not meant to stay forever.

I don't want more sense!" I said loudly, beating against the silence of the room. "Not if sense means I'll stop loving anyone. What is there besides people that's worth holding on to?

It comes, I suppose,” I said thoughtfully, speaking to the air, “of spending too much time alone indoors, and forgetting that living things don’t always stay where you put them.

But she hadn't been able to take root. She'd remembered the wrong things, and forgotten too much. She'd remembered how to kill and how to hate, and she'd forgotten how to grow.

I leaned against his side, his irritation oddly comforting. After a moment he grudgingly put his arm around me. The deep quiet was already settling back upon the grove, as if all the fire and rage we'd brought could make only a brief interruption in its peace.

He darted a look at the uncovered basket behind me, saw what I was eating, and glared at me. "That's appalling," he said. "They're wonderful!" I said. "They're all coming ripe." "All the better to turn you into a tree," he said. "I don't want to be a tree yet," I said.

There was a song in this forest, too, but it was a savage song, whispering of madness and tearing and rage.

Magic was singing in me, through me; I felt the murmur of his power singing back that same song.

I wanted to rub handprints through his dust

They all had stories. They had mothers or fathers, sisters or lovers. They weren't alone in the world, mattering to no one but themselves. It seemed utterly wrong to treat them like pennies in a purse. I felt the soldiers understood perfectly well that we were making sums out of them-- this many safe to spend, this number too high, as if each one wasn't a whole man.

I don't think I can do it alone," I said. I had a feeling the Summoning wasn't really meant to be cast alone: as if truth didn't mean anything without someone to share it with.

The Dragon hissed under his breath with annoyance: how dare a chimaera inconvenience him, coming out of season.

I’m not stupid, nor a liar,” I said, “and if I can’t do any good, I can at least do something

You’ve been inexpressibly lucky,” he said finally. “And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing

I'm glad," I said, with an effort, refusing to let my mouth close up with jealousy. It wasn't that I wanted a husband and a baby; I didn't, or rather, I only wanted them the way I wanted to live to a hundred someday, far off, never thinking about the particulars. But they meant life: she was living, and I wasn't.

His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales. He eyed me and said stiffly, "Don't land yourself into a boiling-pot, and as difficult as you may find it, try and present a respectable appearance.

His name tasted of fire and wings, of curling smoke, of subtlety and strength and the rasping whisper of scales.

I had forgotten to fear him, from too much time spent too close.

He snorted. “He thinks killing a day-old hydra has made him a hero.” None of the songs had ever mentioned the Vandalus Hydra being one day old: it diminished the story more than a little.

He wasn’t a person, he was a lord and a wizard, a strange creature on another plane entirely, as far removed as storms and pestilence.

Those the walkers carried into the Wood were less lucky. We didn't know what happened to them, but they came back out sometimes, corrupted in the worst way: smiling and cheerful, unharmed. They seemed almost themselves to anyone who didn't know them well, and you might spend half a day talking with one of them and never realize anything was wrong, until you found yourself taking up a knife and cutting off your own hand, putting out your own eyes, your own tongue, while they kept talking all the while, smiling, horrible. And then they would take the knife and go inside your house, to your children, while you lay outside blind and choking and helpless even to scream. If someone we loved was taken by the walkers, the only thing we knew to hope for them was death, and it could only be a hope.

He roared at me furiously for ten minutes after he finally managed to put out the sulky and determined fire, calling me a witless muttonheaded spawn of pig farmers-"My father's a wood-cutter," I said- "adOf axe-swinging lummocks!" he snarled.