“The other dark places,' Evan whispered. Visions of tunnels of earth and stone, caves and streams entered his head. It was far beneath them. He knew it was real and it was down there, waiting.”

“Evan had heard it all before. A paradise underground, made for things like the worm in front of him. A place where Evan would forget he had ever been human, forget he had a mother, maybe even forget his own name. This thing did not remember its own, Evan was sure of it.”

“A head began emerging out of the darkness. It had two large antennae growing out of its forehead, with nothing recognizable as eyes. A mouth in the middle of its face opened in what I hoped was a smile. At least there weren't any sharp teeth.”

“I'd always known that when you went through one of these doors, you went to another planet, and that that other planet might be so far away, you couldn't fly there in spaceship in a million years. Somehow, the whole thing had never seemed strange before today.”

“WHAT heart could have thought you? --Past our devisal(O filigree petal!)Fashioned so purely,Fragilely, surely,From what ParadisalImagineless metal,Too costly for cost?Who hammered you, wrought you,From argentine vapor? --"God was my shaper.Passing surmisal,He hammered, He wrought me,From curled silver vapor,To lust of His mind --Thou could'st not have thought me!So purely, so palely,Tinily, surely,Mightily, frailly,Insculped and embossed,With His hammer of wind,And His graver of frost.”

“And he has tried to swim that stream,And he swam on both strong and steady,But the river was wide and strength did fail,And never more he'll see his Annie.And woe betide the willow wan,And woe betide the bush and briar,For they broke beneath her true love's hand,When strength did fail and limbs did tire.”

“He whispered, “Follow me,” though he had no idea where to go. There was a time, not long ago, when his instincts had kept him alive on the dark streets, the long beats, with rain hammering down on gun-toting punks, slick drug dealers, prostitutes with sharp teeth. He’d thought it a mad world then, and he thought it now, It’s a sharp, mad world. It’ll bleed you out.”