“He saw so many emotions mingled on her face: anger disappointment, fear – and defiance. Like her daughter, thought Fenoglio again. So uncompromising, so strong. Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn’t break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out, very slowly.”

“Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly.”

“Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!”

“You are crazy!" whispered Meggie. "You're a total lunatic!"But her opinion did not impress Fenoglio in the slightest. "So what? All writers are lunatics!”

“Sometimes, when I went to the spring to wash early in the morning," he murmured, "there'd be tiny fairies flitting around above the water, not much bigger than the butterflies you have here, and blue as violet petals. They liked to fly into my hair. Sometimes they spat in my face. They weren't very friendly, but they shone like glowworms by night. I sometimes caught one and put it in a jar. If I let it out at night before going to sleep I had wonderful dreams.""Capricorn said there were trolls and giants, too," said Meggie quietly.Dustfinger gave her a thoughtful look. "Yes, there were," he said. "But Capricorn wasn't particularly fond of them. He'd have liked to do away with them all. He had them hunted. He hunted anything that could run.""It must be a dangerous world." Meggie was trying to imagine it all: the giants, the trolls, and the fairies. Mo had once given her a book about fairies.Dustfinger shrugged. "Yes, it's dangerous, so what? This world's dangerous, too, isn't it?”

“It's a world full of terror and beauty (here her writing became so small Meggie could hardly make it out) and I could always understand why Dustfinger felt homesick for it.The last sentence worried Meggie, but when she looked anxiously at her mother, Teresa smiled and reached for her hand. I was far, far more homesick for you two, she wrote on the palm of it, and Meggie closed her fingers over the words as if to hold them fast. She read them again and again on the long drive back to Elinor's house, and it was many days before they faded.”

“Yes, Mo would come. Meggie could think of nothing else as Fenoglio led her away with him, his arm around her as if he could really protect her from Capricorn and Basta and all the others. But he couldn't. Would Mo be able to protect her? Of course not. He mustn't come, she thought. Please. Perhaps he won't be able to find his way in again! He mustn't come. Yet there was nothing she wanted more, nothing in the whole wide world.”