More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Above all, do not attempt the journey unless you are certain of your own evenness of mind.
It is said that there is a price that every traveller through the Wastelands must pay. A price beyond the mere cost of a ticket on the train.
He has suffered too many tedious evenings, amazed at how they can speak so long about so little.
When else are we to have so many hours and days released from the burdens of yet another art gallery, yet another museum, yet another statue by some long-dead sculptor that one cannot possibly leave without seeing? We are released from the tyranny of decision-making. What restaurant shall we eat at tonight, my dear? Ah, I know it already! Such a blessed relief!’
A crow is a sign of sin, the crew say. When the changes began, crows were the only birds that would fly over the Wall, eating carrion from the changed lands, returning with trinkets or bright stones clutched in their claws. This is why people in the north of China throw stones at them; they are tainted.
What’s that? A refrain that echoes through every crossing. The crew have taught themselves not to react. A crawler, a spectre; some familiar strangeness. They are accustomed to unpredictability,
What use is it to theorise and pontificate when all that remains is empty space?’
It is always like this, on the first night. They think that the music and laughter and noise will keep the shadows outside at bay.
Isn’t that what everyone wanted? To not be forgotten. To be more than a line in a ledger, the sum total of your life adding up to little more than the strength you wasted to make other men rich.
is said that so much had been taken from the land that it was always hungry. It had been feeding off the blood spilt by the empires, and by the bones of the animals and people they left behind. It gained a taste for death.
‘And yet perhaps there are things that cannot be understood. That should not be.’
Back in her cabin, she tries to slow her breathing, but her usual tricks are not working she can’t find the deep, slow river to calm her mind, and she feels as if her lungs are being squeezed, as if her heart can’t find the steady rhythm it needs to beat.
But it is too late – Weiwei has seen her, for the first time, as she is, not as she pretends to be, and hasn’t she known it all along? Hasn’t she been hiding the truth from herself? Not a scared, lost stowaway, in need of protection, but a Wastelands creature, a not-quite-girl.
‘They do not say what they really mean. Their faces do not match their mouths.’
It is like a spell, thinks Marya. Words transmuted into being. I say, therefore it is.
A life returned is a life borrowed; more fragile and brighter than he ever could have imagined. A life no longer his own.
Because boundaries are guarded, and boundary guardians always need to be told that those who cross are not afraid.
