“I believe you have my umbrella" he says, almost out of breath but wearing a grin that has too much wolf in it to be properly sheepish.”

“You send me all these roses.Every time I think the last bouquet has arrived, finally, another turns up.I’m running out of vases.I didn’t know roses came in so many colors.You say they’re the perfect symbols of love because they have thorns and love is pain.I say life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.And you don’t get it.You say you love me, but you don’t speak my language.You don’t even realize I’m an orchid girl.”

“Stories have changed, my dear boy,” the man in the grey suit says, his voice almost imperceptibly sad. “There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep overlapping and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there in no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey.”

“Wufju fay foo im?” he asks, with his mouth mostly full. “I tried to explain as much as I could,” Poppet says. “I think I made an analogy about cake.” “Well, that must have worked,” Widget says. “Who doesn’t like a good cake analogy?”

“It's not a real name," she says. "Not one that he's carried with him always. It's one he wears like his hat. So he can take it off if he wants.”

“Why haven’t you asked me how I do my tricks?” Celia asks, once they have reached the point where she is certain he is not simply being polite about the matter.“Because I do not wish to know,” he says. “I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.”

“I tried to explain as much as I could," Poppet says. "I think I made an analogy about cake.""Well, that must have worked," Widget says. "Who doesn't like a good cake analogy?”