“Taggle was absorbed in the meat pie. ‘It’s covered in BREAD,’ he huffed. ‘What fool has covered MEAT with BREAD?”

“Taggle was absorbed in the meat pie. ‘It’s covered in BREAD,’ he huffed. ‘What fool has covered MEAT with BREAD?”

“She was dry. She was lying on something soft. She was wrapped in quilts. There was a star of light drifting above her, and a smell like a herb garden. Taggle was a long warmth stretched out at one side, his chin in her hand, his tail curled over her neck. She thought they might be in heaven.Taggle farted.Plain Kate coughed and sneezed. And then she really was awake.”

“I'm not a cruel man. I mean, technically I'm not a man at all.”

“They're gone. I let them chase me. I led them like a sunbeam and vanished like a shadow.”

“You made tools of us. Have you never considered: the thing of a tool is that anyone may use it.”

“I wished for impossible things. It was never going to have been a fairy tale for us. There are no fairy tales about two princesses.”

“Behjet eased the horse forward again. "The harvest is failing. There will be no crop at all if this rain doesn't stop - not even hay."The rain. The rain she'd been so grateful for, the rain that concealed the warping of her shadow. It was going to kill people.”

“Well. I am not afraid. But to protect you, Katerina, I will be discreet." Plain Kate considered a cat's idea of discretion, and was frightened.”

“And suddenly, in the place of the woman-shape made of shadow, there was something else. Something huge, something ugly. Linay flung up both hands. The thing screamed like a hawk and opened to wings: one white as a death cap, one clotted in shadow. The wings came together and the whole pond shuddered.Something hit Kate's ear and shoulder and smashed to the deck by her feet. It was a swallow, dead. She could hear them falling all over the pond.”

“At night the fog was thick and full of light, and sometimes voices.”

“Be brave. Things will find their shape.”