“So Witch Baby played. Tossing her head, sucking in her cheeks and popping up with the impact of each beat. Thrusting her whole body into the music and thrusting the music into the air around her. She imagined that her drums were planets and the music was all the voices of growth and light and life joined together and traveling the universe.”

“The mint and honeysuckle air is chilly on her damp face, awake on the nape of her neck as Witch Baby Wigg skates home.”

“When Cherokee and Raphael got back to the canyon house, they set up the tepee on the grass and crept inside it. They lay on their backs, not touching, looking at the leaf shadows flickering on their canvas, and trying to identify the flowers they smelled in the warm air. "Honeysuckle." "Orange blossom." "Rose." "The Sea.""The Sea! That doesn't count!""I smell it like it's growing in the yard."They giggled the way they used to when they were very young. Then they were quiet. Raphael sat up and took Cherokee's feet in her hands. "Do they still hurt?" he asked, stroking them tenderly. He moved his hands up over her whole body, as if he were painting her, bringing color into her white skin. As if he were playing her-his guitar. And all the hurt seemed to float out of her like music. They woke in the morning curled together. "Remember how when we were really little we used to have the same dreams?" Cherokee whispered. "It was like going on trips together.""It stopped when we started making love." "I know." "But last night...""Orchards of hawks and apricots," Raphael said, remembering. "Sheer pink-and-gold cliffs.""The sky's wings.""The night beasts run beside us, not afraid. Dream horses carry us...""To the sea," they said together...”

“West didn’t want her to get hurt anymore. He wanted her to let go. He wanted her to appreciate her life. To know he loved her. All these things sounded so stupid to him when he imagined saying them and he knew she didn’t want to hear them anyway. She wanted to hear one thing.”

“She wasn’t crying at all. This was what scared him the most. Where had she locked up the things he’d seen her feeling that day when she heard? She wasn’t that big a girl to hold all of it—to hold her brother’s life and his death inside of her. To hold all his long-limbed raging tidal motion and all the loss of that.”

“Sylvie wishes the anti-depressants had been around when she was in her early twenties, not only to rescue her from the dark tunnels that came when her brother first got sick, but also to keep her from fucking all those assholes.”

“The circus tent was flowing pale in the rain like a fleshy flower lit from within. It seemed to bloom in the downpour. Drops of rain caught on Rafe's eyelashes, blinding him as the circus light struck them. He groped for the flap, that slit in the fabric that would reveal her to him.She was on the rope again, her skirt flashing with tiny mirrors, hair braided with petals. He looked up at her, dizzy with it, seeing her face framed in the parasol. There were bluish shadows around her eyes.”