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310 pages, Hardcover
First published March 24, 2016
All the villagers look worried and that is the worst thing. Before it was just poverty, pestilence, terrorists, pedophiles, drugs, eating disorders, online grooming, meteors skimming a bit too close for comfort. Now every single person in this hall looks like they are terrified they're all about to become frozen corpses. For the first time since the news broke, Stella gets this stabbing feeling in her heart that must be some new kind of fear. [Stella]
Something in him comes from this rock, these mountains, this landscape, something older than time and generational -- all those links to people who survived this place and thrived and lived, all those suicidal monks and one lone sunlight pilgrim, butt-naked and tough as hell. [Dylan]
All their robot children like their knobs and buttons shiny and silver and none of them understand what a real robot has to withstand, if they are to have so much rust but still be able to run as fast as the others on sports day or sing as loud at Christmas. The carols! 'Little Donkey', the verse about Mary carrying the heavy load, it always makes her cry. [Stella]
Stella is like the wind outside and Constance is the fire. The wind is gentle, blowing lightly to brighten the flames, to stop the fire going out. [Dylan]
Stella tugs the wolf-head until the ears sit perfectly; two long furry arms snake down on either side of her braids and the fur is white, like the wolf walked right out of the snow -- like winter herself created it from particles of ice and dust and sent it out to find a mortal girl who isn't afraid of the big bad wolf, who knows how to use an axe and stir her own porridge, who knows that worth isn't something you let another person set for you, it is something you set for yourself. [Stella]
All those little lies, left unsaid, in families; all the things that then become unsayable.
The selfish dead fuck off and leave us with half-truths and questions and random relations and bankruptcy and debt and bad hearts and questionable genetics and stupid habits and DNA codes for diseases and they never mention all the things that are coming -- like a fight at a wedding, it just breaks out one day. [Dylan]
Stella holds the clear tusk out in front of her -- puts it up to her head as if she is the unicorn -- she spins around, holding the icicle out in front of her as a spear- - jabbing it into air to show the spirit plane that she is her mother's daughter -- that the child of a wolf may not feel like she has fangs until she finds herself facing the moon, but they are still there the whole time regardless.
I met someone once who told me you can drink energy from the sun, store it in your cells so you grow strong. She said we should all do it. It’s like a back-up store of it in your cells; she said there were sunlight pilgrims doing it all the time – it’s how they get through the dark, by stashing up as much light as they can.
She dries herself with a blue towel and looks in the mirror. She has no breasts. That’s okay. That’s fine. A beard is less good. A deep voice is a terrifying thought. Sometimes, in quiet moments like this, she has to fight not to hate her body for threatening her with a baritone. She won’t do that, though, she won’t let herself hate it, because her body is a good one. It is strong. A girl is a girl is a girl.
Stella is like the wind outside and Constance is the fire. The wind is gentle, blowing lightly to brighten the flames, to stop the fire from going out.
“...the child of a wolf may not feel like she has fangs until she finds herself facing the moon, but they are still there the whole time regardless.”