Franny Billingsley

“I should hate to be a regular girl with a sugar-plum voice. I should hate to have swan-like lashes, and a thick, sooty neck. I sound as though I’m joking, I know, but I should truly hate to be like Leanne, so charming and ordinary and stuffed with clichéd feelings. I’m glad I’m the ice maiden. Who wants to be crying over every stray dog? Not I. Scratch my surface and what do you see? More surface.”

“Let’s hope she’s like the others, who look only at the surface. Let’s hope she’d never think that a girl with black-velvet eyes and cut-glass cheekbones could be a witch.”

“How true, lamentably true. I’m sorry, Father. I do not love my neighbor as myself.”

“You don’t mind when he stares at you.” Cecil jerked his head toward Eldric. "He doesn’t stare,” I said. “He looks.”

“My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.”

“Father sighed. “Please spare me these arguments of yours.” “Whose arguments should I use?”

“Pressure is uncomfortable, but so are the gallows. Keep your secrets, wolfgirl. Dance your fists with Eldric’s, snatch lightning from the gods. Howl at the moon, at the blood-red moon. Let your mouth be a cavern of stars.”

“Secrets press inside a person. They press the way water presses at a dam. The secrets and the water, they both want to get out.”

“I have a theory about how she might have managed to pull off such a feat. It comes in the form of an equation: Love + Fear = Herculean Strength. It’s how mothers come to fling runaway motorcars from their children.”

“Even a witch wants sympathy.”

“I deserved a holiday, and I deserved to dispense with the laces and trusses expected of a clergyman’s daughter. I wore my oldest frock, which looked remarkably like a potato sack, and I wore very little beneath. I should never have imagined how lovely that feels. It’s most freeing, and it gives you the delicious sense you’re on your way to moral degeneracy. I shall soon be painting my lips and drinking gin.”

“You can outrun your memories, but sometime, you will have to stop. And when you do, there will always be Stepmother, waiting to be remembered.”

“I’d rather be in Hell with my soul and wits, than in the outside world without them.”

“Poor Petey. I’d like to say I could almost feel a tender spot for poor Petey, but the truth is I’d rather feel at the tender spot on his head and give it a poke.”

“Poor Cecil. It’s hard to be a devil of a fellow in these modern times. No stagecoaches to hold up. No princesses to rescue. Just Petey Todd to escort, while the easy, expert fellow walks the pretty girl home.”

“Did I kill him?” I said. “No, miss,” said Robert. “Pity.”

“Now that’s true poetic irony. I rush into battle to defend the fair name of Rose Larkin, and what does she do but fetch Robert to stop me.”

“Despite her cough, Rose was in unusually good spirits. That was irritating. If I’m to trade my life for Rose’s, I’d appreciate her exhibiting a touch of melancholy. Also acceptable would be despair.”

“I’m not like that fellow who thought it a far, far better thing to trade his life for that of another. I’m nothing like him: I’d never volunteer to lay my head in the lap of Madame la Guillotine. No, that fellow was a hero and I’m not a hero at all.”

“It’s just as well I switched hands: Witches are thought to be left-handed. Perhaps it’s true. Rose is no witch and she uses her right hand. We are mirror twins, she and I. What’s left for me is right for her; and if I wanted to feel sorry for myself, I might say nothing’s right for me.”

“Eavesdropping is such a regular-person activity.”

“He’s harmless, poor thing. That’s what everyone said. It was true, but who cares? Lots of people are harmless, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them.”

“I’m not really the sacrificing type.”

“I don’t mind the disapproving ones so much. It’s the tolerant ones I can’t stand, the ones who smile at Rose, who speak to her ever so slowly and gently. They don’t realize how very intelligent Rose really is. They’re just terrifically pleased with themselves. Look at me! they all but shout. See how broad-minded I am! How wonderfully progressive, how fantastically twentieth century!”

“But witchy magic doesn’t listen to please and pretty please, and anyway, I didn’t really care. I only pretended to care because not caring makes me a monster.”

“My feet are wet,” said Mr. Dreary. “You lack the proper gear,” I said. We teetered along a trickle of land that wound between water and mud. “Here in the swamp, even the swans wear rubber boots.”

“Is this what a nun feels when she runs wild? Perhaps running wild needn’t mean dressing in satin and taking to cigarettes. It might mean running into the wild, into the real, into the ooze and muck and the clean, muddy smell of life.”

“Our English monarchs are so unimaginative,” said Eldric. “They execute people in such tediously conventional ways.”

“People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.”

“Briony scared?” said Eldric. “I’ve never seen anyone less scared in my life. She has nerves of iron.”

“Forge ahead, O mighty enforcer of the law. May you be stout of heart and eardrum.”

“I've confessed to everything and I'd like to be hanged. Now, if you please.I don't mean to be difficult, but I can't bear to tell my story. I can't relive those memories—the touch of the Dead Hand, the smell of eel, the gulp and swallow of the swamp. How can you possibly think me innocent? Don't let my face fool you; it tells the worst lies. A girl can have the face of an angel but have a horrid sort of heart.I know you believe you're giving me a chance—or, rather, it's the Chime Child giving me the chance. She's desperate, of course, not to hang an innocent girl again, but please believe me: Nothing in my story will absolve me of guilt. It will only prove what I've already told you, which is that I'm wicked. Can't the Chime Child take my word for it?In any event, where does she expect me to begin? The story of a wicked girl has no true beginning. I'd have to begin with the day I was born.If Eldric were to tell the story, he'd likely begin with himself, on the day he arrived in the Swampsea. That's where proper stories begin, don't they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?But this isn't a proper story, and I'm telling you, I ought to be hanged.”

“I turned my peeled-apple face to him. I'd make myself look at him. I owed him that. His touch lingered on my neck as though he'd left a handprint of melted light.”

“Actually, it would be assumed that the young lady had no such impulses at all, but I’ll tell you something: Chocolate melts on my tongue too.”

“I was going to ask him, yes I was. “You remember Blackberry Night?”The torches were alive with yellow butterfly-flames. “I can’t forget it.” His eyes were whiter than white.“You remember the thing we might have done that night, but it turned out to be a thing we didn’t do?” It was late and my tongue had gone bleary. “The thing you stopped us from doing?”“I especially can’t forget that.”I was asking about lust, wasn’t I? I was fairly certain of it. But isn’t love supposed to come before lust? It does in the dictionary.”

“I have some questions about betrayal,” I said. “Think about this: A person who calls you his best friend, and says he has dinner plans with you, goes off with a beautiful woman, saying he’ll be back directly, then makes you wait half an hour because he’s kissing the woman in the alley. Is that betrayal?”“Oh, Lord.” Eldric tossed back his wine.”

“Wine is certainly warming, but communion is a great deal more so.”

“When we were small, Rose and I used to play a game called connect the dots. I loved it. I loved drawing a line from dot number 1 to dot number 2 and so on. Most of all, I loved the moment when the chaotic sprinkle of dots resolved itself into a picture.That's what stories do. They connect the random dots of life into a picture. But it's all an illusion. Just try to connect the dots of life. You'll end up with a lunatic scribble.”

“This is what I want. I want people to take care of me. I want them to force comfort upon me. I want the soft-pillow feeling that I associate with memories of being ill when I was younger, soft pillows and fresh linens and satin-edged blankets and hot chocolate. It's not so much the comfort itself as knowing there's someone who wants to take care of you.”

“Yes, I'm shallow, I don't mind admitting it. Perhaps I should admit that there's no end to the depths of my shallowness.”

“I might be a wicked girl who'd think nothing of eating a baby for breakfast, but I'd never allow myself to get expelled. It's far too public.”

“Father’s silence is not merely the absence of sound. It’s a creature with a life of its own. It chokes you. It pinches you small as a grain of rice. It twists in your gut like a worm. Silence clawed at my throat. It left a taste of burnt matches.”

“How can something as fragile as a word build the whole world?”

“I hated myself, but I also loved myself in a hateful way.”

“It never ends, this business of being a lady.”

“I like rain and mist. I've never understood why people exclaim over bright skies and bushels of glaring sunshine.”

“A poem doesn’t come out and tell you what it has to say. It circles back on itself, eating its own tail and making you guess what it means.”

“It's one thing to keep secrets. It's quite another to lie.”

“Eldric turned away from the mirror, holding out his hand. In the cup of his hand lay his fidget of paper clips. But the fidget had blossomed into a crown. An allover-filigree crown, with a twisty spire marking the front.I stared at it for some moments. "It's for you," said Eldric. "If you want it.""I'm seventeen," I said. "I haven't played at princess for years.""Does that matter ?" Eldric set it on my head. It was almost weightless, a true crown for the steam age.In a proper story, antagonistic sparks would fly between Eldric and me, sparks that would sweeten the inevitable kiss on page 324. But life doesn't work that way. I didn't hate Eldric, which, for me, is about as good as things get.”

“It is true that I can trip over anything and nothing – a speck of dust, a patch of sunlight, an idea. I move through life like a person with one eye, through a landscape that looks flat, but is really tricked out with hidden depths and shallows. It didn’t use to be so, but no matter. I navigate the world well enough in my own way.”