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He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young for a grown man—untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom.
“I’m merry twenty-four hours a day, Dick Fancy,” Cully said coldly. “That is a fact.”
She means well, he thought, and gave himself up for loved.
Who has choices need not choose. We must, who have none. We can love but what we lose— What is gone is gone.
The unicorn was weary of human beings. Watching her companions as they slept, seeing the shadows of their dreams scurry over their faces, she would feel herself bending under the heaviness of knowing their names.
The white girl said, “I am myself still. This body is dying. I can feel it rotting all around me. How can anything that is going to die be real? How can it be truly beautiful?”
Whatever can die is beautiful—more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world.
You’re in the story with the rest of us now, and you must go with it, whether you will or no.
“When you are old, anything that does not disturb you is a comfort.
He told her everything he knew, and what he thought about all of it, and happily invented a life and opinions for her, which she helped him do by listening.
“There are spells to make everything speak. The master wizards were great listeners, and they devised ways to charm all things of the world, living and dead, into talking to them. That is most of it, being a wizard—seeing and listening.”
“When I was alive, I believed—as you do—that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see it, and ‘Monday’ as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls.”
“I know where we have to go,” she said, “and that’s as good as knowing the time any day.”
The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”
I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.
“They will need time to feel comfortable with flowers,”
“He has not fared so badly,” the magician answered. “Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.”
