But this isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen, or imagined, or even dreamed: This is like music or dancing but better than both.

Something must die so that others can live.

The alchemist was dazed and dumbfounded, as the true meaning of the magic was revealed: *The dead will rise from glade to glen and ancient will be young again*. The dead had, after all, risen. From dead and dry things there was growth, and new life everywhere. And the endlessly long winter had at last turned to spring. From life to death and back again to life. It was indeed the greatest magic in the world.

There are more of us than you think.

But maybe happiness isn't in the choosing. Maybe it's in the fiction, in the pretending: that wherever we have ended up is where we intended to be all along.

That’s what you do for family. Anything.

I vowed after that day that I would be your hero too, no matter how long it took