I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, terror and hope; they told… — Patricia A. McKillip

“You fought for your freedom and won a different kind of prison. I will fight for mine—”

“You can’t fight me,” Tearle reminded him harshly.

“I know.” In the placid light, his face looked chilled and very weary. “But I can die.”

She lies like the moon lies, a different face every night, all but one of them false, and the one true face as barren and hard as stone. Why do you believe her?

I was running from my own thoughts as much as anything. I simply wanted to untangle myself from the web I had touched. A single, sticky, quivering strand of it was all I needed to warn me away. I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.