“She was a natural blonde, with delicate hands and feet, and in her youthful photographs one saw a girl with mocking eyes and a tragic smile, the course of whose life would conspire in time to transpose that pair of adjectives.”

“I pictured the first time we saw the girl, breezing past us in that Lincoln, blond hair whirling around her, her glasses tipped down, her smile, the stroke of her fingers. The teasing.Simon tumbled the meteorite around in the sweat of his hand. I wondered what it would be like to look down at the earth, to fall, to burn brilliantly in the air like the image of the girl who passed by, kicking back dust like cosmic ash, and could she see that, now; was she up there above us?I wondered.We closed our eyes.”

“The instant she saw the letter she squinted her eyes and bent her lips in a tough tiny smile that advanced her age immeasurably. "Darling," she instructed me, "would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.”

“Dagmar turned when she felt a tug on her sleeve, a human male standing next to her. “Yes?”“Yeah, how much for the blonde?”Dagmar blinked, glanced back at Gwenvael and the three girls before asking, “Pardon?”“The blonde. How much for the blonde? The bigger one. Just for an hour or so?”Of course. Dagmar would never be one of the whores … she must be selling the whores.“Five coppers for an hour,” she replied. “Any more than that and it’ll cost you.”“An hour will do.” He reached into his pocket and handed her five copper pieces. She dropped them into her satchel, tapped Gwenvael on the shoulder, and said, “He’s bought you for an hour of sex. Enjoy.”

“Quickly, she pulls out a photograph from the same drawer. Two girls; one English, one Japanese. Their hair is in plaits, knees in the same position, peeking out under school skirts. There is no gap between their bodies. They look entirely different. Chinatsu is delicate, so flawless that she seems like a drawing, whereas Fleur is scrawny and ablaze with freckles. And yet, they look like sisters; the same posture, the same sadness in their eyes. She remembers that day. It was the worst and best of her life.”

“Except for Thurlow,there was not a person she would have missed and many a one to whom she would gleefully have said farewell forever.But that had changed now,utterly changed. She longed for Dragon, the sound of his voice, the touch of his hand,the warmth of his smile. For a moment she closed her eyes and saw him behind them.”