“Lebed, how can I live in that world? I am hardly human. I was only a child—how can I find the girl I was before I knew what magic was? That world will not love me. It will kick me and slap me in the snow, and take my scarf, and leave me ashamed and bleeding.” “You will live as you live in any world,” Madame Lebedeva said. She reached out her hand as if to grasp Marya’s, as if to press it to her cheek, then closed her fingers, as if Marya’s hand were in hers. “With difficulty, and grief.”
