“You fought for your freedom and won a different kind of prison. I will fight for mine—” “You can’t fight… — Patricia A. McKillip

I could not find my way back in dreams, I knew then. They were memory and desire, terror and hope; they told me only what I already knew.

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.