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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Eat your kail, please.” “But they taste like dirt.” “They taste like the earth,” Sidra said in a gentle tone. Spirits below, she was so tired. Her head was throbbing, her foot was aching. . . . “They taste of life and bright sunshine and the secrets that hide deep down in the soil. Secrets that make you strong and smart once you eat them.”
“I was thinking about all the different paths our lives take, how little choices here and there suddenly guide us to places we never expected. How sometimes even the worst of experiences turn us into what we need to be, even though we would rather avoid the pain. But we grow stronger—we grow sharper—and before we truly even know it, we are looking back on it all. We see who we were and we see who we have become, and it is why the spirits watch us and marvel.”
He knew that icy feeling of self-preservation, the instinct to cut away something good for fear of it wounding you later. He knew about having no choice but to protect yourself when you feel like you’re on your own.
But he thought about all the times he himself had taken the isle’s magic and resources for granted. Not until now, when his eyes were open to the spirits, had he learned to slow down and to ask. To thank the spirits for their gifts.
There is heady power in such a thing, I’m learning. To write without constraints. To write what you truly feel. To turn a memory immortal. Into ink and paper and the unique slant of your hand.
She let them all go because he was her home, her shelter. Her endless fire, burning through the dark.
“May you be strong and courageous,” he said. “May your enemies kneel before you. May you find the answers you seek. May you be victorious and spirits-blessed, and may peace follow as your shadow.”
It was strange, Sidra thought, how being around Adaira made her feel that way. All those previous worries felt small and thin. The days ahead felt brighter, warmer, like an endless summer.
“Give your fear a name,” Jack said, remembering that Adaira had once said this very thing to Torin. “Once it is named, it is understood, and it loses its power over you.”
He marveled at how his own heart could exist outside his body. “You don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered. “By you alone I could be undone.”
I want to write a ballad with you, not in notes but in our choices, in the simplicity and routine of our life together. In waking up at your side every sunrise and falling asleep entwined with you every sunset. In kneeling beside you in the kail yard and leading a clan and overseeing trade and eating at our parents’ tables. In making mistakes, because I know that I’ll make them, and then restitution, because I’m better than I once ever hoped to be when I’m with you.”
