“She then pulled him to the ground and clasped him in her arms.Immediately, the cry went up: "Tam Lin is away!" The Elf Queen's black horse reared and she pulled him to a halt. Turning, she cast her mesmerizing emerald eyes toward Janet and Tam Lin. As Janet held Tam Lin fast, the Elf Queen put a spell upon them. Tam Lin shrank and became a small, scaly lizard which Janet clutched to her breast. Janet then felt a slithering sensation through her fingers. The lizard had become a cold, slippery snake which she gripped tightly, even as it coiled around her neck. Suddenly, a searing pain ran through her hands. The snake had been turned into a red-hot cinder. Tears of agony ran down her cheeks, but still, Janet held on to Tam Lin and would not let him go.At last, the Elf Queen knew that she had lost Tam Lin because of the steadfast love of a mortal woman. She then shaped him in Janet's arms in his own form - as naked as the day he was born. In triumph, Janet covered Tam Lin with her cloak.”

“Janet collapsed her head into her hands with relief. She’d never reached out for help before, certainly not with someone she knew so little. But this was her new life.”

“Does is make the dragon happy?" Matt asked. "Does is make the dragon happy?" echoed Tam Lin. "Why, I never thought of that. I suppose it does. What other pleasure can a creature have whose life consists of making everyone else miserable?”

“He felt, rather than saw, her chin lift toward him. But instead of pulling her hand from his grip and turning away, she tightened her own fingers and unceremoniously, unexpectedly, threw herself down the incline, dragging him with her.Dragging him with her!”

“She took a deep breath and it was her eighteenth birthday; it was Jess’s wedding and a summer evening at the pool; it was all those hundreds of times he’d been propped against her dorm building. And it was now, and she wanted to be this sophisticated, Audrey Hepburn-esque girl who gave him a coy smile and sauntered toward him, hips swinging. But this was Tam, and she wasn’t sophisticated for crap.”

“Once upon a time there lived an old woman, called Janet Gellatley, who was suspected to be a witch, on the infallible grounds that she was very old, very ugly, very poor, and had two sons, one of whom was a poet, and the other a fool, which visitation, all the neighbourhood agreed, had come upon her for the sin of witchcraft.”

“She couldn't believe what she did then. Before she could stop herself, she leaned up on tiptoes, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the mouth. Her lips brushed over his for the barest of seconds, but it was still a kiss, and when she came to her senses and dared to pull away and look at him, he had the most curious expression on his face.Brodick knew she regretted her sponatenity, but as he stared into her brilliant green eyes, he also knew, with a certainty that shook him to the core, that his life had just been irrevocably changed by this mere slip of a woman.”