The Thirteenth Tale

by Diane Setterfield

There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist.

Time was of the essence. For at eight o’clock the world came to an end. It was reading time.

that she could not read a book for fear of the feelings she might find in it.

she talked on, her voice moving as freely in her tightly policed plot of life as though it were seven acres.

The writer’s life needs time to rot away before it can be used to nourish a work of fiction. It must be allowed to decay.

To look at me now, you would think my birth must have been something special, wouldn’t you? Accompanied by strange portents, and attended by witches and fairy godmothers. But no. Not a bit of it. In fact, when I was born I was no more than a subplot.