“Don’t trust anybody over a hundred and fifty years old, particularly if they look thirty. Anybody who gets that old in Caverna loses something, and they don’t get it back. They can’t feel properly any more. They’re hollow inside, and all they got left is a hunger – a hunger to feel. They’re like . . . great big trap-lanterns, all blind gaping need, and thousands of teeth, with decades to come up with tricks and schemes.”

“She’s got us, she’s got us all. Caverna. She doesn’t want to let us go. Do you know what she’s like? A huge trap-lantern with us inside her, digesting us really, really slowly, and not wanting to let any of us go. Maybe that’s the worst kind of prison – not knowing you’re in a prison. Because then you don’t fight to get out.”

“It draws you in. You twist your mind into new shapes. You start to understand Caverna . . . and you fall in love with her. Imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, but with tunnels as her long, tangled, snake-like hair. Her skin is dappled in trap-lantern gold and velvety black, like a tropical frog. Her eyes are cavern lagoons, bottomless and full of hunger. When she smiles, she has diamonds and sapphires for teeth, thousands of them, needle-thin.""But that sounds like a monster!" "She is. Caverna is terrifying. This is love, not liking. You fear her, but she is all you can think about.”

“Don’t sneeze, don’t point at anybody with your little finger, don’t scratch your left eyebrow, don’t angle your knife so that it reflects light in somebody’s eyes unless you’re challenging them to a duel...”

“Sometimes she felt she would like to engulf him like a trap-lantern, and never share him with anyone or anything else again, not even the light. Even his obsession with ruling Caverna pained her, as if the city were a woman, and a rival.”

“Well, they set spiders and snakes on me for a bit and blew me up and there was this really scary cake, but it’s mostly all right now, I think. Except I don’t ever want any more cake. Look!”

“I know how it is," Madame Appeline said, narrowing her slanting eyes slightly over her ice-cream smile. "There is a feeling deep down inside you, isn’t there? All the time. It bothers you. You don’t really know what it is, or how to describe it. You do not have a Face for it. And so you scan all the Face catalogues, and ask for Faces for every birthday because perhaps, just perhaps, if you had the right Face, you might understand what you are feeling. You need to find that Face." She leaned forward slightly. "Do go and look at our exhibition rooms, Miss Childersin.”