Deeplight

by Frances Hardinge

It is always a consolation to imagine outrageously rich people miserable and drowning.

Despair was a numbing poison. The moment you decided the worst was inevitable, it was.

He stopped to stare, as he always did. Seven gods stared back.

Frecht was the old word, a harsh word ragged with superstitious awe. It was an ugliness and otherness that could only be holy, a breach of the rules that echoed those that no rules could bind. The ancient, sacred buildings aspired to that sublime distortion. Frecht transcended beauty and carried you into a realm of awe and terror.

We are what we do and what we allow to be done.