“Still, the longer I was around her, the more I could see the colors of her mind and the recesses of her heart. There was a beast in there. But there was also a girl who was afraid of being a beast, and who wondered if other people had beasts in their hearts too. There was strength, and there was also just the determination to look strong. She guarded herself like a secret.”

“For the next couple of weeks she held Peter like a secret in her heart, lying right under her necklace. I could see him written on her face, and Tik Tok, too, seemed to catch shadows of him, because he'd stop to stare at her, puzzled, as if he'd just seen the boy flit across her eyes-seen the ghost of the kiss lingering for a second on the skin of her neck before disappearing.”

“Many people in the village wanted her to be more of a girl, and Peter had wanted her to be large and brave but a little less large and brave than him. But Pine Sap was sure enough to want her to be exactly who she was.”

“ And then a strong gust blew against her, and her feet slipped just slightly. She jerked forward against the railing, ever so softly. But, rotten, it crumbled like paper, and May and Kitty went sliding forward, right through it. May scrambled to stop herself, but it was too late. They slid a few more feet, then fell off the edge of the roof. They looked like blackbirds faliing out through the sky.”

“I recognized Tiger Lily instantly; I had seen her before. She stood out like a combination of a roving panther and a girl. She stalked instead of walked. Her body still held the invincibility of a child, when at her age it should have been giving way to fragile, flexible curves.”

“If there was a true moment that Tiger Lily fell so in love with Peter she could never turn back, it was that night, when he shivered and walked and told her he was warm, and told her he loved her so much. She was fierce, to be sure, but she had a girl's heart, after all. As she walked home that night, she was shaking from the largeness of it.”

“Now there are days when she is content, and days when she’s restless. But there is never a day when she doesn’t see Peter everywhere. Things hurt, and don’t hurt, and hurt again. Eighty years later, and she can still feel surprised that he’s gone. And then so much of the time, she’s glad. But just as she looks for Tik Tok in everything around her, she looks for Peter in the woods, out gathering, in the lagoon, in the burrow that is now abandoned. She goes up on the cliffs from time to time and stands there for hours, continuing her long good-bye. It’s not for lack of loyalty to her husband. It is just that she was fifteen once for the first time, and Peter walked across her heart, and left his footprints there.”