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Her skin was the color of fallen oak leaves, and her black hair lay tightly curled against her scalp.
“But I know what it is to be in a body where you do not belong.
Being a dragon is like being alive or being dead. It is a thing you are or a thing you are not.”
was a dragon. I had a dragon’s body and a dragon’s heart. And then someone got hold of a great and terrible magic, and wished to be a dragon.”
“You cannot turn your heart into a dragon’s heart. Hearts can only be changed from within, and there is no magic in the world that can change them from without. But a dragon’s body can be stolen, and I imagine that I was the nearest.”
It did not know what to do, having a dragon’s soul slammed inside it. Like trying to catch a bonfire with a candlewick. But it was a child’s body, then—yes, this was long ago, longer than you know—and it still had a little give to it, so it wrapped itself around me as best it could.”
The best a dragon can do is burn you alive, and while that is a very short eternity while it is happening, it ends. She has trapped herself in a prison that will never grow old.”
This body has lived for a long time, for its takes its cues from the heart inside it. And it has done its best.” She patted her own arm affectionately, like a rider with a good-natured horse.
“Magic is like rain,” said Glorious. “Dragons are like mountains. Or wolves. Magic may happen to a dragon, but mountains are not made of rain.”
And Lord Almondgrove had asked her to take care of his son, as if she were a grown-up, or a wolf.
She’d never been very good at knowing how people would act. It was as if she’d spent so much energy learning to predict her mother that she had very little left to spend on other people.
perhaps he has simply been doing this for so long that he no longer knows any other way.”
They went into the hole in the earth and the gods gave them no gift, but vowed to leave them alone, as wolves have always wished to be left alone.”
We were the last to come from our dying world and we will be the last to walk this world, when all other things have passed away. Even the gods who cursed us will fall at last, and we will grind them beneath our hooves and dance together, and from our dance, who knows what new worlds may be born?”
“He wants the world to burn and I want to dance on the ashes, so he thinks that we are alike. But hate and chaos aren’t the same thing.
“Pretty things are usually poisonous,” said the weasel. “It’s why they can afford to be pretty.”
“We will leave a cow out for them tomorrow,” said Lord Almondgrove. “They will come for anyone—rich or poor, small or great. They do not require payment. It is the bargain. But we can give more, so we will.” “If…if there was a body…” began Summer. “They would take that instead.”
Baba Yaga sees all the way through time and chews off the bits she doesn’t like.”
“You sent me because I know what to do when someone cries and I tell them it will be okay. Because of my mother.” “Ah…” said Baba Yaga. “Yes. Quite a skill you have at it, too. A great and terrible magic, but not one that a dragon would think to guard against.
“I’m not a monster, child. Or I am, but not a completely unfeeling one.”
