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The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price. And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.
What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind?
who says the greatest danger in change is letting the new replace the old.
she must grow roots, she would rather be left to flourish wild instead of pruned, would rather stand alone, allowed to grow beneath the open sky. Better that than firewood, cut down just to burn in someone else’s hearth.
Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.
Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.
There have been times, of course, when she wished her memory more fickle, when she would have given anything to welcome madness, and disappear. It is the kinder road, to lose yourself.
is sad, of course, to forget. But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.
secret kept. A record made. The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.
How do you walk to the end of the world? she once asked. And when Addie didn’t know, the old woman smiled that wrinkled grin, and answered. One step at a time.
If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?
Ideas are wilder than memories.
Memories are stiff, but thoughts are freer things. They throw out roots, they spread and tangle, and come untethered from their source. They are clever, and stubborn, and perhaps—perhaps—they are in reach.
And perhaps it is just that happiness is frightening.
“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”
