“...and so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole wold smelled like pie.”

“I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.”

“...and from then on whenever he smells lilacs he'll think about this moment. How the bees were circling above him, how purple the ink on the leaflets he's been distributing suddenly seemed, how he realized, all at once, just how beautiful a woman can be.”

“Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they'd follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every boy and girl in the village reported smelling mint in the night air, as if somehing sweet had passed them right by.”

“...there was a storm of enormous proportions, with winds so strong that dozens of fish were drawn up from the reedy shallows, then lifted above the village in a shining cloud of scales.”

“Only her death could prove her innocence; a circle of impossible, deathly judgement. ”

“Like the rabbi with the red circle, she should have said "no" to everything. She should have become a raven. She didn't understand that every word the judge said was a trap, in that every word she said could easily be a stone used to shut her into that trap.”