Seriously, a thirty-something woman shouldn't be daydreaming about a fictional character in a two-hundred-year-old world to the point where it interfered with her very real and much more important life and relationships. Of course she shouldn't.

The snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. And the strange spring snow fell only in that golden moment of dawn, the turning of the page between night and day.

Being a writer is a good, good thing.

I am not sure I am ready to know what I think about that, so I dare not write it out.

Her nightmare clung to her like the smell of smoke to cloth.

No matter that we could be beheaded for this,” said Esa. “Heads are overrated.” “Yes, they are so unfashionable,” said Miri, imitating an Aslandian accent. “This spring, ladies of style are wearing their feathers in their necks.

The three girls were sitting and lying beside her, holding one another, weeping, their arms and legs and hair tangled like the roots of close trees, sobs shaking them like leaves in a high wind.