More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Your daughter is very like you, Fitz. She keeps her own counsel and follows her own will. I am sure that if she still wants to be with Riddle, then she is.’ ‘Sweet Eda, what if she gets pregnant?’ Anxiety twisted my voice tight. Molly gave a brittle caw of laughter. ‘Fitz! Must you always leap from one imagined disaster to another? Listen to what I’m actually saying, which is that I don’t know what path Nettle chose for herself. But if she is alone now, it is because she chose to be alone, not because someone decreed it for her. Her life is hers to live, not yours to repair.’
Baba
I need a friend, and I have none to whom I can admit my weakness, my fear, my errors.
There are endings. There are beginnings. Sometimes they coincide, with the ending of one thing marking the beginning of another. But sometimes there is simply a long space after an ending, a time when it seems everything has ended and nothing else can ever begin.
I was quite certain that he considered me far less capable than I was. Did that mean I should limit myself to what he thought I could do? I didn’t think so.
It had been years since he had been my mentor or my protector, yet my heart had still yearned to once more feel the shelter of his wisdom. When we are children, we believe that our elders know all and that even when we cannot understand the world, they can make sense of it. Even after we are grown, in moments of fear or sorrow, we still turn instinctively to the older generation, hoping to finally learn some great hidden lesson about death and pain. Only to learn instead that the only lesson is that life goes on.
I did not feel pity for her. She was too dangerous for me to pity. I suspected that in her thoughtless wretchedness she could employ cruelty such as I had never experienced from an adult.
No one spoke while we waited but it was not an awkward quiet. Rather it was a careful one. It was better to leave the space empty of words than to choose the wrong ones.
There comes a time when every cub is left to fend for himself. You’ll do well, if you don’t mire in self-pity. Self-pity only gets you more of the same. Don’t waste time on it.
