“She stood in the high pines along the eastern edge of the camp that ran downhill toward the river. She had a place there. A small clearing just above the riverbank where the earth was carpeted in brown pine needles, and the trees were very tall and very old, and there, in that same place, were some young pine saplings with their feathery, light green needles, fernlike in their delicacy, fanning out silently in the still cool air with the old alligator bark of the ancient trees behind them and the long golden river sliding over the rocks beyond. In this place, the black branch of one thick old tree reached out far over the river, and its smallest branches trailed along the surface like fingers, and the light fell and glittered wonderfully on the water, and she could feel her God there, inside of her, could be gentled and calmed by Him as she watched the sun pour down in long shafts and then splinter out across the the surface of the water like shards of a shattered mirror. She rested her hand against the rough trunk of the tree and then leaned her whole body against it, soaking in the silence, the curious comfort of leaning up against something so old, listening to the never-ending movement of the water.”

“Gracie leaned out the back, craning her neck as far as she could around the side, trying to catch the wind in her nose and flapping lips. She loved driving, and this car was much faster than the truck which hauled her cage. It was very green here, and the sun flashed and flickered behind the tall trees. There were a million smells along this road, both old and just born. She closed her eyes and huffed, pretending she was flying.”

“Robert Jordan saw them there on the slope, close to him now, and below he saw the road and the bridge and the long lines of vehicles below it. He was completely integrated now and he took a good long look at everything. Then he looked up at the sky. There were big white clouds in it. He touched the palm of his hand against the pine needles where he lay and he touched the bark of the pine trunk that he lay behind... He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.”

“She felt like a dry branch, sticking out of the air. Brittle, covered in old bark. Maybe she was thirsty, but there was no water nearby. And above all the suffocating certainty that if a man were to embrace her at that moment she would feel not a soft sweetness in her nerves, but lime juice stinging them, her body like wood near fire, warped, crackling, dry.”

“She walks towards Karen and Karen feels a cool wind against her skin, and the grandmother holds out both of her knobby old hands, and Karen puts out her own hands and touches her, and her hands feel as if sand is falling over them. There's a smell of milkweed flowers and garden soil. The grandmother keeps on walking; her eyes are light blue, and her cheek comes against Karen's, cool grains of dry rice. Then she's like the dots on the comic page, close up, and then she's only a swirl in the air, and then she's gone.”

“...when evening fell and the grey twilight spread its dusky robe upon the waters, she stretched her arms out to the silent river that had known her sorrow and her joy. And the old river had taken her into its gentle arms, and had laid her weary head upon its bosom, and had hushed away the pain.”