I can't give you the moon,” the tinker said. “She doesn't belong to me. She belongs only to herself.

Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woefully small targets.

Auri," I asked slowly, "are you joking with me?" She looked up and grinned. "Yes I am," she said proudly. "Isn't it wonderful?

Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.

The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Then I felt something inside me break and music began to pour out into the quiet. My fingers danced; intricate and quick they spun something gossamer and tremulous into the circle of light our fire had made. The music moved like a spiderweb stirred by a gentle breath, it changed like a leaf twisting as it falls to the ground, and it felt like three years Waterside in Tarbean, with a hollowness inside you and hands that ached from the bitter cold.

Hespe's mouth went firm. She didn't scowl exactly, but it looked like she was getting all the pieces of a scowl together in one place, just in case she needed them in a hurry.