“I rose to standing, like Lars upon the barbican, the dark city spread at my feet. Lights twinkled in tavern windows, bobbed at the Wolfstoot Bridge construction. Once I had been suspended over this vast space, hanging and helpless, at a dragon’s mercy. Once I had feared that telling the truth would be like falling, that love would be like hitting the ground, but here I was, my feet firmly planted, standing on my own. We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”

“We were all monsters and bastards, and we were all beautiful.”

“Peaches and Cheese”:The vagabond sun winks down through the trees,While lilacs, like memories, waft on the breeze,My friend, I was born for days such as these,To inhale perfume,And cut through the gloom,And feast like a king upon peaches and cheese!I’ll travel this wide world and go where I please,Can’t stop my wand’ring, it’s like a disease.My only regret as I cross the high seas:What I leave behind,Though I hope to find,My own golden city of peaches and cheese!”

“I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence,and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven. I believed, then, that I would have risen bodily into the sky but for the anchor of his hand in my hair and his round soft perfect mouth.”

“I felt lighter when I had finished, and for once emptiness was a sweet relief and a condition to be treasured.”

“He was laughing, silently, and then we were both laughing, and then something changed. It was as if I had been watching the world through oiled parchment or smoked glass, which was yanked abruptly away. Everything grew very clear and bright; the music burst forth in majesty; we stood still and the room turned around us; and there was Kiggs, right in the middle of all of it, laughing.”

“Keeping my smile raised like a shield between us, I curtsied and quit the room.”