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in sleep, no one could quiet her voice.
At least I do not have to work today, and I will see something new before I die.
“Do not behave as a tyrant and then tell me to scold a tyrant to behave. Show mercy and mercy you may be shown.”
This goes to show you that sometimes the unseen is not to be feared and that those meant to love us most are not always the ones who do.”
“There is a great difference between not eating a person and trusting a person.”
They pray that their children will be brave and clever and strong, that they will tell the true stories instead of the easy ones. They pray for sons with red eyes and daughters with horns.
if Koja had words, then he had hope.
I make a bitter meal, but excellent company.”
The trap is loneliness, and none of us escapes it.
But sometimes she felt her curiosity clawing at her like a different kind of hunger.
This is the problem with even lesser demons. They come to your doorstep in velvet coats and polished shoes. They tip their hats and smile and demonstrate good table manners. They never show you their tails.
But the sad tale drew new customers to the clocksmith’s door in search of the marvelous and uncanny.
My life began with wanting something for myself.
The clocksmith’s grin widened. “A bellows breathes to grow a fire. A clock ticks. Are those things alive?” Maybe, thought the nutcracker. Maybe they’re all alive.
This is the problem with making a thing forbidden. It does nothing but build an ache in the heart.
For the briefest moment, Ulla despised Signy, as we can only hate those who rescue us from loneliness. It was unbearable that this girl had such power, and that Ulla hadn’t the will to refuse her kindness. But when Signy looked at Ulla and grinned—shyly, a star emerging at twilight—all of that bitterness dissolved, gone like words drawn on the ocean floor, and Ulla felt nothing but love. That moment tied her to Signy forever.
They went with him because when he smiled, you wondered why you’d thought to deny him anything.
“Hungry Ulla,” he had taunted. “Why do you work so hard? I can smell your ambition like blood in the water.”
Song was all she had and so she clung to it, honed and perfected it, as though if she could only sharpen her skill to a fine enough point, she might carve a true place for herself in the world.
“We were not made to please princes.”
I have many lives to live.
“There is no magic that can make them love you.”
Roffe would make Signy a queen and treat her as such, or Ulla would bring the roof of his palace down on his kingly head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Are there any words so cursed?
She held each sorrow like a chafing grain of sand and grew her grudges like pearls.
The storm had brought Ulla to the cold shelter of the northern islands, to the darkened caves and flat black pools where she remains to this day, waiting for the lonely, the ambitious, the clever, the frail, for all those willing to strike a bargain.
Ursulla! Ohhhh!!! Clever! Bravo.
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