Little Eve Quotes

“It is a kind of privilege, to witness the darkness.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“So many questions asked about what I did that night," I say. "No one has asked, what did that night do to me?”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“My heart is a dark passage, lined with ranks of gleaming jars. In each one something floats. The past, preserved as if in spirit. Here is the scent of grass and the sea, here the creak of wheels on a rough path, here a bright yellow gull’s beak. The sensation of blood drying on my cheek in the wind. Abel crying for his mother, Uncle’s hand on me. Silver on a white collarbone. The knowledge of loss, which comes like a blow to the heart or the stomach. It does not reach your mind until later.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“There were people here before the Impure. The old people, who knew of Him. They made the circle. But they vanished long ago. Many turns later, when the purpose of the stones was forgotten, the villagers brought witches here to burn them, waist-deep in barrels of pitch. If I am quiet, under the breeze I can hear the crackle of hair catching in flame. The stones do not care for mortal things. They do not think well or ill of us. But they remember. Many lives have been passed on Altnaharra. We will be the last.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Through the open window the night is dying. Dark air full of the promise of light, the heavy pause before dawn. Below, the sea is hung with mist, which is His breath on the water. Somewhere beneath the waves His slow, heavy coils are moving in the deep.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“watch Uncle from a cold, still place. His face speaks of old pleasure revisited. The knowledge comes to me simply, like catching a ball thrown high. He has done this before. Parted women from their babies. Nora’s grief as Mary was taken from her arms. The look on Alice’s face as she tried to take me from Altnaharra in the night. Darling, come. The same need; tenderness beyond anything. No wonder Uncle fears this power. It is the greatest I have seen. The word thrums under everything. The M at the beginning, the soft r at the end.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“What you are saying doesn’t make sense,” I say. “Why would I invent the eye?” “To satisfy the great need that lies at the heart of us all.” “Which is?” “To be loved. To belong.” “That’s too easy,” I say. “It’s not worthy of you.” “Nevertheless, it is the truth.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“We will begin to lay in food and wood for winter, soon. We will board up the doors and windows, stack the walls of the hall high with logs and stores from the cellar. We will lie down before the fire and for the deepest part of winter we will sleep, waking only for food and water. It is a time of long dreaming, as outside snow drifts high against the walls. We will awake, gaunt, in the spring. Once the castle was buried in snow and we had to dig our way out into the light.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“My tongue slips in and out of my mouth, black. I see through it. I taste the world. Each tiny current of air is a brushstroke. It paints a great ringing canvas. The sea a cauldron of minerals and rot. Bruised grass rising green, each flint buried in the chalky earth a dark exclamation. The splintered scent of a grasshopper, the fizzing of midges in the air. The drumming goes on. It is the cold beat of my heart, buried between my ears, behind my brain. I have a name in the old tongue from when the world was young and my fathers ruled the earth, taking aurochs whole into their bellies, leaving acres of forest crushed by their passage. My name is not rendered in sound, but in tiny movements of my head, a delicate, precise secretion of chemicals. It means something like dark-soil-and-mouse-blood, my name. I swing in air, my body a long muscle. Something warm and meaty is clasped about my middle. Too close. I do not like it. The earth is too far below. Old inherited memory stirs, of vast copper wings, great claws and the cruel hook of a yellow beak. I cannot taste eagle in the air, but my body tells me I am caught. I feign death, waiting for the moment to strike.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Their skin like the surface of the water, their happy round eyes. What would it be like to be a seal? To swim all day and rest on the rocks at night, always among those you loved.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Would you rather be a fish or an otter?” I say to Dinah. Dinah hums. She does not like this kind of game, but she feels bad for me because of last night. “Otter,” she says. “They are nice with their little hands and their tails.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Someone must be the Adder after Uncle, to care for us as he does. Dinah does not want it. Abel has deep currents in him. He loves and hates too hard, so it cannot be him. Elizabeth—something is broken in her, not just her voice. It must be me. I realised that soon after Uncle began the trying. How many times have we tried? A hundred, perhaps more. Never have we succeeded in seeing with his eyes. We are bitten each time. Hercules is part of Him who will come from the ocean. But he is also a snake, Vipera berus, a common European adder. I know both his natures.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“I set the crab down and he makes for the cliff edge. “Carcinus maenas,” I say in a low breath. For a moment he stops, caught by the power of his name.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“The only signs of life within were the polite notes left for tradesmen in the wire cage that hung from the gate. Pale green wool, the shade of a cabbage heart. Knitting needles (x 3). Three sharp flensing knives and a ball of string (large). Beef for Hogmanay, please. Hung for at least three weeks. The people of Loyal were accustomed to check the basket as they passed Altnaharra and left the goods there when next they happened by. Payment was left in the cage in the same fashion, always correct to the farthing. It was said in Loyal that the residents of Altnaharra opened the gate at night under the autumn moon and ran wild over the moor, painted blue, looking for souls to take. Some said they were all long dead, and that the isle was now populated by ghosts. Jamie did not set any store by this. Ghosts and fairies did not use such things as lamb mince or wool.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“The knowledge of loss, which comes like a blow to the heart or the stomach. It does not reach your mind until later.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“A ’nighean mar a máthair “Like mother, like daughter” Highlands proverb”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“MY heart is a dark passage, lined with ranks of gleaming jars. In each one something floats. The past, preserved as if in spirit.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“He fetched Bill the pony from the paddock behind the henhouse.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Jamie MacRaith had always loved them.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Kindness is a physical thing. My body receives it.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“I began this as an exorcism but it is also a summoning.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Some things lie deep in the chasms between two people, and they should not be touched or looked at. We haven’t fought like this since the beginning.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Perhaps it is not so bad to be alone in the world. Perhaps alone can mean free.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“I don't know which is worse - suffering or the memory of it. Memory, perhaps, because it does not end.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“I set the crab down and he makes for the cliff edge. ‘Carcinus maenas,’ I say in a low breath. For a moment he stops, caught by the power of his name.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“Did you think you had heard the last from me? No, I have more gifts for you; more days I do not need. It has been ten years but the memories are still bright.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“The world changes at night. Bad things from the beginning of the earth roam in the dark. We must always be safe on the isle by the time the sun falls into the sea.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve

“I am filled with memory. I must make room in the dark passage. So I cast it forth, this day. I give it to you. This is the day I became what I am.”
― Catriona Ward, Little Eve