Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.

For it must be very lonely being dead.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.

Emmeline didn't call me anything. She didn't need, for I was always there. You only need names for the absent.

She could not read a book for fear of the feelings she might find in it.

All morning I struggled with the sensation of stray wisps of one world seeping through the cracks of another. Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes -- characters even -- caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.

Our clients' faces, with the customary outward paleness and inner glow of the book lover.