“I’d thought he was stars and then I’d thought he was a fox. I had thought I’d been alone, but I hadn’t.”

“When I was a boy, that was all I wanted—to grow a pair of wings and get up into the sky. I had a basement full of failed wing projects. Boards and capes and motors, even a pile of found feathers I once tried to glue together with a bottle of Elmer’s; you should have seen your grandmother’s face. But I never got any higher than the backyard fence I’d launch from. I never got inside a cloud. Your raven did.”

“I’d have given any- thing to know how Mom and Dad were, but you can’t ask your parents such questions. You have to wait for them to tell you what it is that will happen next...”

“Fox-TrotBy the stream the fox and she-fox stoodNose to nose beneath the starsDancing the music of the woods.The deer rapped a beat with their hooves,The ravens sang from raven heartsAs by the stream the fox and she-fox stood.The great owl called as a great owl would,The squirrels all shimmied in the dark,Dancing the music of the woods.Then from the north a fierce wind blewAnd broke the starry dance apartBy the stream where the fox and she-fox stood.”

“Here’s another change I’ve noticed: The dark is more than the sun dropping off, more than the moon and the stars. It’s what you can’t see that you hope you will see, what hasn’t been that might be.”

“His client needs him, he says. Needs him? But isn’t he needed at home?”

“Have you ever watched a leaf leave a tree? It falls upward first, and then it drifts toward the ground, just as I find myself drifting towards you.”