In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.

Perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.

He is a weapon, a killer. Do not forget it. You can use a spear as a walking stick, but that will not change its nature.

I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.

I lay back and tried not to think of the minutes passing. Just yesterday we had a wealth of them. Now each was a drop of heartsblood lost.

She wants you to be a god," I told him. "I know." His face twisted with embarrassment, and in spite of itself my heart lightened. It was such a boyish response. And so human. Parents, everywhere.

Chiron had said once that nations were the most foolish of mortal inventions. "No man is worth more than another, wherever he is from.