“Mamma," whispered Rannoch as he nestled by her side, "what is man?" Bracken looked into her calf's eyes. "Man? Man is something you must always fear." "But why must I fear him?" asked Rannoch. "Because, my little one...man is cruel and cold. He eats up everything he touches. He enslaves Lera and breaks the laws of the forest. Because, Rannoch, he is the only creature that hunts without need.”

“Man, who thinks he knows everything. But what does man know...Man cares only for himself, in his fear and hate.”

“I must try to remember that a boy's heart is not a man's, and perhaps a teacher must learn from his pupil, too, eh?”

“Brassa,' she whispered, 'what is the moon? Why does it grow in the sky?''Because the moon is the goddess Tor,' answered Brassa softly, smiling down at Larka, 'looking down on us all. As some say the fury of the sun is the hunter Fenris snarling at the Varg, so they say the moon is the wolf goddess, opening her eyes wider and wider and stroking the world with her kindness.”

“Christians believe that God came amongst us as a man, do they not? Yet the Muselmen say he was only a prophet, and that God has no name...We fight and kill each other so readily, yet if I had been born in the East, would I not believe the stories they believe, and if they had been born here, would they not be Christians?”

“Death,' whispered Tarlar, 'you do not fear it, Fell? By water, or any other way?''What is to fear?" answered the black wolf. 'If it is an end, then so be it. For there is no pain in that, except the pain left to the living... And if death is not an end, then what more than a wonderful journey...”

“That story placed man above the animals, until man's fall at Eve's hand, and linked humans to God himself, fashioned in his image. But now the black wolf was telling the girl a grave secret. That man was an animal too.”