A year ago, I turned the final page of The Book of the Dead. I don't feel young any more.

I suppose you could call me...Soot," said the thing. "Yes...Soot. I have breathed it, lived in it, and eaten it for so long that it is a fitting name." "Eaten it?" asked Suzy. "Why eat soot?" "Boredom," said Soot.

For everyone and everything, there is a time to die. Some do not know it, or would delay it, but its truth cannot be denied. Not when you look into the stars of the ninth gate.

Yet when ancient forces stir, many things are woken.

A Kiss," said Mogget sleepily. "Actually, just a breath would do. But you have to start kissing someone sometime, I suppose." "A breath?" she asked. She didn't want to kiss just any wooden man. He looked nice enough, but he might not be like his looks. A kiss seemed too forward.

Since being a prisoner was a definite improvement over being dead, which was what she thought was going to happen when the Loundergs had attacked, Suzy was quite cheerful.

‎"It always seemed somehow less real here... a really detailed dream, but sort of washed out, like a thin watercolor. Softer, somehow, even with their electric light and engines and everything. I guess it was because there was hardly any magic.