“A sematary," I say. "A what?" Viola says, looking round at all the square stones marking out their graves. Must be a hundred, maybe two, in orderly rows and well-kept grass. Settler life is hard and it's short and lotsa New World people have lost the battle."It's a place for burying dead folk," I say.Her eyes widen. "A place for doing what?""Don't people die in space?" I ask."Yeah," she says. "But we burn them. We don't put them in holes." She crosses her arms around herself, mouth and forehead frowning, peering around at the graves. "How can this be sanitary?”

“I sighed. 'It's hard. You're the only one who listens to what I have to say.' Longshot dropped a gentle, comforting arm around my shoulders. 'Then speak louder, girl. Don't let them put out your spark.”

“What chance?’ she had asked, bewildered.‘Your chance. Your chance to live your own life. Right now you have the look of a woman who is seeing ghosts. Not everybody believes in ghosts, but I do. Do you know what they are, Trisha?’She had shaken her head slowly.‘Men and women who can’t get over the past,’ Aunt Evvie said. ‘That’s what ghosts are. Not them.’ She flapped her arm toward the coffin which stood on its bands beside the coincidentally fresh grave. ‘The dead are dead. We bury them, and buried they stay.”

“...I knew at times I have a loud chirp for such a petite bird, a chirp that some think is slanted, opinionated, and way too unladylike coming from a mouth as prim-looking as mine. Until I open it and the space between my two front teeth shoes. It's the space that everyone blames for my outspokenness, and although my parents don't really believe it, they use it, too. Whenever I say things that embarrass them, they're the first to tell people, 'It's that space between her two front teeth. Things just slip out of it, and she can't help it. We don't know what to do about it.”

“You know what must be done.""No, I do not know what must be done. I do not routinely summon people from the grave and have them following me around!”

“How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not being able to turn round in the grave and to say It is over.”