Along the Saltwise Sea (The Up-and-Under, #2)

by A. Deborah Baker

“Screaming isn’t going to help or change anything,” she said. “No matter how loud you get, the facts remain the same. I’ve never encountered noise-soluble facts, although I suppose they must exist.

“You need to break your addiction to the idea that anything is impossible. Things don’t have to be possible to be true.”

Like eggs and flour put into the same cake, they made something between them that they could never have been on their own, something bigger and better than their solitude.

“Some people are never strangers, even if you haven’t met them before. Some people are always strangers, even if you live with them for a hundred years.

It seemed ridiculous to her that anyone could look at her and think she was the sort of child who was suited to laundry and sweeping and eventual motherhood, and all because of a name she had never chosen for herself. “Girl” was a name for another kind of creature, something she was not and would have no idea how to go about becoming, even if she wanted to.

“We’re not little kids!” she protested. “We faced down the Bumble Bear and we found the skeleton key and we—” “And we paid for those things,” he said. “Nothing’s free on this side of the wall! Maybe nothing was free back home either,

“There’s a difference between speaking truly and being cruel. You were cruel. You chose words you knew would hurt her, and you slung them like stones. Words have power. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t carry them the way we do. Sometimes a word is the only weapon you have. Go apologize.”

Everyone has another self inside them who comes out when they feel the time is right. For most people, that second self is summoned by fear or panic, which are similar and not the same. For others, that second self is brought out by the feeling of love or safety. The trick with second selves is not learning how to get rid of them—which can’t be done, no matter how hard a person tries—but finding a way to teach them to be kinder, one simple step at a time. Even second selves can be taught the way of walking through the world transmuting harm into healing; even second selves can grow.

“Nothing has to change its nature to suit what someone else decides it’s going to be.”

“I’ve met a lot of people where it would have been easier to pretend that they weren’t, but all the pretending there is wouldn’t have changed what they were. As long as someone’s still people, you have to treat them with kindness.”