Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1)

by Seanan McGuire

Numbers are simple, obedient things, as long as you understand the rules they live by. Words are trickier. They twist and bite and require too much attention. He has to think to change the world. His sister just does it.

The old fool forgot the lessons of Blodeuwedd and Frankenstein: never create anything smarter, or more ruthless, than yourself.

The numbers don’t need him to give them meaning the way the words do. Words don’t mean anything without someone to understand them. Numbers just are.

“No, silly, this is math. Math is never a trick. Math never plays tricks. Sometimes it makes problems, but they always have solutions.

“If something’s not true, it’s a lie.” “Not always.”

“It was a good idea to get a few of the answers wrong. I didn’t think to do that.” Dodger shrugs. “People don’t believe things that are too perfect.”

Roger guesses people all over the world must use the same tone when they talk to the smart kids, like they were bombs on the edge of going off, instead of children with brains too big for the people they’re supposed to be.

“Girl nerds are in even more trouble than boy nerds, because everybody says we don’t exist, or if we do exist, it’s because we’re trying to get the boy nerds to like us. I don’t like any of the boy nerds in my school. I’m smarter than all of them, so they’re mean to me just like everybody else.”

Smart kids get put on a pedestal by parents and teachers alike, and the rest of the class gathers around the base of it throwing rocks, trying to knock them down. People who say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” don’t understand how words can be stones, hard and sharp-edged and dangerous and capable of doing so much more harm than anything physical.

Words almost never end that way. Words can be whispered bullet-quick when no one’s looking, and words don’t leave blood or bruises behind. Words disappear without a trace. That’s what makes them so powerful. That’s what makes them so important. That’s what makes them hurt so much.

You can’t skip to the end of the story just because you’re tired of being in the middle. You’d never survive.”

Color is a kind of magic. He hopes people who have it understand that, and don’t take it for granted.

Forgive me, my children, but I will never know you. —A. Deborah Baker

Here is a secret about powerful men, one they would prefer go unspoken: their arrogance is one of the greatest forces in the universe. Even the most paranoid among them see what they want to see, believe what they want to believe, and this creates cracks through which the clever may insinuate themselves, changing the story around them.

“Your math is bad and I refuse to let it stand,

(she is a child of the Up-and-Under, but that is not the only story here, and there is a history of trapped girls throwing buckets of liquid on witches in Oz, and “witch” is just another word for “alchemist”

their hair full of tangles and their hearts full of a boy with a smile like a country funeral)

“Nothing is ever lost. It just moves into a different tongue. And you? You stopped existing a long time ago. You’re a story without a storyteller. We don’t need you anymore.”