The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.

Words,words filled the night like the fragrance of invisible flowers.

So it's happened, I kept thinking, you're in the middle of a story exactly as you've always wanted, and it's horrible. Fear tastes quite different when you're not just reading about it, Meggie, and playing hero wasn't half as much fun as I'd expected.

Dustfinger closed his eyes and listened. He was home again.

Why could she remember nothing but stories of frightened people when Capricorn looked at her? She usually found it so easy to escape somewhere else, to get right inside the minds of people and animals who existed only on paper, so why not now? Because she was afraid. "Because fear kills everything," Mo had once told her. "Your mind, your heart, your imagination.

Why do grown-ups think it's easier for children to bear secrets than the truth? Don't they know about the horror stories we imagine to explain the secrets?

The spoken word is nothing. It hardly lives longer than an insect! Only the written word is eternal. - Balbulus