“Lily appeared, wearing her nightclothes, in the doorway. She gave an impatient sigh. 'This is certainly a very LONG private conversation,' she said. 'And there are certain people waiting for their comfort object.'Lily,' her mother said fondly, 'you're very close to being an Eight, and when you're an Eight, your comfort object will be taken away. It will be recycled to the younger children. You should be starting to go off to sleep without it.'But her father had already gone to the shelf and taken down the stuffed elephant which was kept there. Many of the comfort objects, like Lily's, were soft, stuffed, imaginary creatures. Jonas's had been called a bear.Here you are, Lily-billy,' he said. 'I'll come help you remove your hair ribbons.”

“Jonas went and sat beside them while his father untied Lily's hair ribbons and combed her hair. He placed one hand on each of their shoulders. With all of his being he tried to give each of them a piece of the memory: not of the tortured cry of the elephant, of their towering, immense creature and the meticulous touch with which it had tended its friend at the end.But his father had continued to comb Lily's long hair, and Lily, impatient, had finally wriggled under her brother's touch. "Jonas," she said, "you're hurting me with your hand.”

“I'll teach you," Tiger Lily offered with a shrug of her shoulders."Did your mother teach you?" he asked."I don't have a mother," she said. "Like you."For some reason, Peter was glad to hear it.”

“Around a child, people come and go, objects appear and are taken away, surroundings take shape and disintegrate. And no explanation is given, because how can you explain the world to a child?So she had used the words. Words call forth and secure that which has gone away. With her lists she had ensured that whatever she had once known would come back”

“Lily looks back down at the necklace in her hand that Kavita had given her. "It must have cost a fortune.""It did." He confirms. "Though not nearly as much as you're worth."Lily looks up at him. "Don't say that. You hurt me everytime you speak.”

“You looked strange climbing in the tree like that."Tiger Lily pulled her braids between her fingers, her sudden self-consciousness feeling foreign and strange to her. "I didn't do it to look nice," she said."But you do care."Tiger Lily studied the tree and decided if she did care, she would now choose not to. "I don't," she said."All girls do," he added, pushing the point."You must not know many girls.""I know a million," Peter said, dark and serious. There was a long awkward silence, but if Peter regretted his words, I couldn't tell.”