“He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from.”

“That buy is totally cracked out," Vic said one day, as we walked past Balthazar in the great hall.I don't think he's on alything."I didn't mean, for real. If he was cracked out for real, he'd probably be having more fun, right?" Vic shrugged. "Balty looks like he's not having any fun. He looks like he never had any. Like he wouldn't know fun if it started dancing around yelling 'I'm fun' in his face.”

“I’ll tell you something,' he said, as if he had said nothing that day. 'You’re walking on gallows ground, and there’s a rope around your neck and a raven-bird on each shoulder waiting for your eyes, and the gallows tree has deep roots, for it stretches from heaven to hell, and our world is only the branch from which the rope is swinging.”

“The bass guitarist looked like he had been buried for ten years, had just been dug up, and was rather disappointed with the scene he saw around him and longed to be put back in his grave.”

“He shook his head. He didn't know. He couldn't tell when he had woken fully. He walked to the horses. They definitely seemed alarmed. But then, they would. After all, he had just leapt to his feet unexpectedly, waving his saxe knife around like a lunatic.”

“Branches grew from his hands, his hair. His thoughts tangled like roots in the ground. He strained upward. Pitch ran like tears down his back. His name formed his core; ring upon ring of silence built around it. His face rose high above the forests. Gripped to earth, bending to the wind's fury, he disappeared within himself, behind the hard, wind-scrolled shield of his experiences.”