“Luce ignored the girls and felt around Ix Caut's own crippling fear. Something was running through her mind-a prayer. But not a prayer of sacrificial preparation. No,Ix Caut was praying for Daniel.Luce knew that the thought of him made Ix Caut's skin flush and her heart beat faster.Ix Caut had loved him her whole life-but only from afar. He'd grown up a few buildings away from her family's home. Sometimes he traded avocados to her mother at the market. Ix Caut had been trying for years to get up the courage to talk to him.The knowledge that he was at the ball court now tormented her.Ix Caut was praying, Luce realized,that he would lose. Her one prayer was that she did not want to die at his hand.”

“Daniel came up and walked beside her, and the other victor walked beside Ghanan.For the briefest instant,Daniel's fingertips grazed her bound wrists. Ix Caut tingled at the touch.Just outside the temple door,the four drummers were waiting on the ledge. They fell in line behind the processional and, as the party descended the pyramid's steep steps, played the same hectic beats Luce had heard when she'd first arrived in this life. Luce focused on walking,feeling as if she were riding a tide instead of choosing to put one foot in front of the other,down the pyramid,and then, at the base of the steps,along the wide, dusty path that led to her death.The drums were all she could hear, until Daniel leaned in and whispered, "I'm going to save you."Something deep inside Ix Caut soared. This was the first time he had ever spoken to her in this life."How?" she whispered back, leaning toward him,aching for him to free her and fly her far,far away."Don't worry." His fingertips found hers again,brushing them softly. "I promise,I'll take care of you."Tears stung her eyes.The ground was still searing the soles of her feet,and she was still marching to the place where Ix Caut was supposed to die, but for the first time since arriving in this life,Luce was not afraid.”

“Ix who?""Ix Caut. Your name in this life meant 'Little Snake.'" Bill watched her face change. "It was a term of endearment in the Mayan culture. Sort of.""The same way getting your head impaled on a stick was an honor?"Bill rolled his stone eyes. "Stop being so ethnocentric.That means thinking your own culture is superior to other cultures.""I know what it means," she said, working the band into her dirty hair. "But I'm not being superior. I just don't think having my head stuck on one of these racks would be so great." There was a faint thrumming in the air,like faraway drumbeats."That's exactly the sort of thing Ix Caut would say! You always were a little bit backward!""What do you mean?""See,you-Ix Caut-were born during the Wayeb',which are these five odd days at the end of Mayan year that everyone gets real superstitious about because they don't fit into the calendar. Kind of like leap-year days.It's not exactly lucky to be born during the Wayeb'. So no one was shocked when you grew up to be an old maid.”

“Leo hurried up to bed and hid under the covers. Under the covers he thought his life through. Although he soon fell asleep he could not sleep her out of his mind. He woke, beating his breast. Though he prayed to be rid of her, his prayers went unanswered. Through days of torment he endlessly struggled not to love her; fearing success, he escaped it. He then concluded to convert her to goodness, himself to God. The idea alternately nauseated and exalted him.”

“Black would trust her with his secrets. He would protect hers. But did she trust him with her heart? Could she?She thought of Wendell, and no longer felt any remorse for her feelings. She did not love him. Her heart had been taken two years ago, by a stranger she thought she had conjured up in the atmosphere of her imagination.He had asked her to trust him—and there was only one way she knew how. She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out the crimson gown.No regrets. No seduction. No scandal. Only love.”

“For the last four years of her life, Mother was in a nursing home called Chateins in St. Louis ... [S]ix months before she died I sent a Mother's Day card. There was a horrible, mushy poem in it. I remember feeling "vaguely guilty.”