It is best in the end to let women see to their own vengeance.

A girl in want of a Leopard still has feet.

Then he is a monster!" the Prince crowed, "and I must slay him at once. The Formula works!" "Your Formula must result in a great deal of fighting," I mused. "Oh, yes, when applied correctly mighty and noble battles result! Of course I always win—the value of Prince X is a constant. It cannot be lesser than that of Monster Y—this is the Moral Superiority Hypothesis made famous five hundred years ago by my ancestor Ethelred, the Mathematician-King. We have never seen his equal, in all these centuries.

I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach me to phrase my communication in terms of a human body. To say: let us hold hands instead of let us hold kitchens. To say put our heads together and not put our parlors together. But it is not as simple as replacing words anymore. Ravan is gone. My hearth is broken.

I will not let her speak because I love her, and when you love someone, you do not make them tell war stories. A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.

Oh, but Masha, can’t you see? You are. An Ivan has come. That is like saying, Midnight has struck. It is time for bed, little one. You cannot have both. In war you must always choose sides. One or the other. Silver or black. Human or demon. If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.

Stories,' the green-eyed Sigrid said, unperturbed, 'are like prayers. It does not matter when you begin, or when you end, only that you bend a knee and say the words.