“My mouth opened.It happened.Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling.Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions pored up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn't. I didn't care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, oh, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn't lie down.”

“But suddenly something sharp was cutting me, my throat, my wrists, my ankles. I screamed in shock, thinking he'd brought me there to hurt me more. Then fire started burning through me, and I didn't care about anything else. I begged him to kill me. When Esme and Edward came home, I begged them to kill me too. Carlise sat with me. He held my hand and said that he was so sorry, promising that it would end. He told me everything, and sometimes I listened. He told me what he was, what I was becoming. I didn't believe him. He apologized each time I screamed. Edward wasn't happy. I remember hearing them discuss me. I stopped screaming sometimes. It did no good to scream.”

“It tore my heart out, because I heard his voice. The wolves sang slowly behind him, bittersweet harmony, but all I heard was Sam. His howl trembled, rose, fell in anguish.I listened for a long time. I prayed for them to stop, to leave me alone, but at the same time I was desperately afraid they would. Long after the other voices had dropped away, Sam kept howling, very soft and slow.When he finally fell silent, the night felt dead.”

“Grace: Outside, deep in the woods, I heard a long keening wail, and then another, as the wolves began to howl. More voices pitched in, some low and mournful, others high and short, an eerie and beautiful chorus. I knew my wolf's howl; his rich tone sang out above others as if begging me to hear it.My heart ached inside me, torn between wanting them to stop and wishing they would go on for ever. I imagined myself there among them in the golden woods, watching them tilt their heads back and howl underneath a sky of endless stars. I blinked a tear away, feeling foolish and miserable, but I didn't go to sleep until every wolf had fallen silent.”

“What a strange place, I thought. If I look up everything is so clear and beautiful, and if I look down, everything is so dangerous and ugly. I wished I could keep my head in the sky, but the scorpions brought me back to reality. Or was the sky the reality?”

“For I knew already that something had taken me from me, and had replaced it with a desperate longing for a time before; a time before fear; a time before shame. And now that knowledge had a voice that rose from the depths of my years and howled into the night sky like a wounded animal longing for home.”