“I can preserve (here insert animal’s name if known, otherwise state ‘your loved one’) in any pose and moment of expression that you desire. Whenever you are plagued by dolorous thoughts of his (or ‘her,’ never ‘its’) passing you may simply turn your gaze to your mantelpiece and your spirits will be raised as you see him (or ‘her’) captured eternally in a moment of zestful energy.”

The final scenes leave me breathless. The priestess’s condition enters its final stages, and, though she hammers at the portals of her sealed chambers, no-one comes to her aid. The artist responsible for the narrative cuts his scenes faster and faster, becoming more and more metaphorical. We see her eyes tighten in pain; a shot of the two birds, both young and old, silhouetted against a gas flame; the woman’s hand clenching her bed sheets; the gas flame flickers; the woman’s hand relaxes; the young canary sitting alone on its perch, its older companion nowhere in sight.

Slipping into the dead girl's body was like meditating inside a stone, cold and still. Yōsei filled her with tendrils of gold and divided life energy between two bodies—one cold and dead, the other hot and familiar. The girl was too plump, too dense, and filled with tiny creatures that decomposed her flesh. These Yōsei banished, drowning them in golden light.

"That's a very noble thing, Miss Parrish. I commend you." The strange woman smiled. It was a small, half-secret smile that hinted at private approval and a vast but encouraging amusement. Lavinia flushed, and went on before she grew tongue-tied.

There was a small, insistent part of her that wouldn't let her give up so easily. The tiny part of her that had put down roots outside of her uncles' laboratories and workshops. She'd poured hours into learning how to make things grow, how to keep them alive, and she had succeeded. She could spend an entire day in her garden with Marci and Gil, weeding, watering, laughing and it never felt like wasted time.

The train took us to the maker's bench, and we laid out our son's body, chest open. Tonight the maker would give him a mainspring and wind him for the very first time. "Should we name him now, or after we've gotten to know him?" My parents had waited to name me until my second day, because they wanted to be sure the name would fit.

"Touch the tree here. Listen." There was nothing at first, just the early breezes rustling a few tattered leaves. Then the blood rushing in my ears, my breath in and out. These sounds faded with concentration. Beyond them there was a very faint groaning, as of wood straining in a wind, but nothing more. "They still sleep," Sister Mauro whispered.

We found my dog by the eastern overlook, sniffing the floor beneath a table with her pink nose. As Deng and I approached, I greeted the spirit of Dog echoing within my mind with a reverent thought. Your visit surprises yet honors me, Lord Dog.

"No, I will not. I cannot. I do not have a baby and even if I did, I would not give it to such a dreadful little monster as you!" Sylvie thrust the carrot back into the dirt and ran into the house. She slammed the door and secured each of Mother Dar's seven locks.

I swear that I hear it when the Star deploys her new lanterns. I feel it as a low vibration in all the mineral parts of my body and look out of the starboard window just in time to see the six cold iron cages slide out of her. They ignite one at a time, turning the faceless ether of the ghostmurk into a haze of green light. It's so bright that I have to turn my head. Raise my hand to shield my eyes. Can almost feel my own shadow burning into me.

I bowed my obedience, but inside my hopes blossomed like a rare evening flower. He had let slip a clue: the day for which I was born. Never had I known why he had chosen me as servant, above other boys. And so I spent the day as instructed, bathing in scalding water and fasting on bitter tea. What could it mean that I was born for this?

"At the end, where else?" Streamers of greasy black smoke leaked from her cloak to vanish in the wind, her body like dry grass in my arms. I shook her, but she, the god of the dead, was dead herself and my hands empty but for her cloak of feathers.

Jared studied her, her sopping hair and gaunt face. She was nothing to him, or shouldn't have been. The story she told—he might have ridden past the field where she worked a hundred times and never noticed her, not even her face, because it was bent to the earth.

The nightmares had mostly stopped now, and my face only ached on hot days. I never looked at myself in the stream, so I wasn't sure what color the scars were, but my fingertips told me the skin was tough and dead. As for the rest, once I washed myself out with lemon juice, I just went on with my rituals in the temple, because someone had to. I tried not to remember.

There is greater magic still he could deploy. He could weave an illusion that would swallow the tree from sight. Or let his heartbeat ease down into a shallow nothing—the stillness of the grave—so no sound or motion could betray him. But he resists. Ezekiel is curious. Lyla was sure-footed on the journey, in the dark. How long will it take for her to learn his hiding-place?

There had been seventy islets when Mei came to Deleur six years ago. There were more than eighty now. The aliki, the nobles of Deleur, would never be done building their city: they always wanted more platforms for their palaces, more storehouses for tribute, more training grounds for the feathered warriors, more stone pyramids to house their dead

"Antlion's mirror-writing. He was Leonardo da Vinci when he wrote this book, and favoured writing that way because he was left-handed. It made less of a smudge and also serves as a deterrent to others who cannot easily read the words in reverse. They are needed for navigating the many paths through the Codex. The first protean seal is like the entrance to the maze."

None of us took a wound, none of them. And Eirik's men made it out of the forest, and we made it back to our cave, and King Harald was still dead, still not coming back to save us. The nuthatch still trilled its descending wippling notes in the trees, unconcerned by the arrows. Nothing changed.

The doe's blood melted and burned the earth. The smell of old rot poured into the forest. The ground collapsed, pulling the saplings and ferns down into the underworld, and Sal and her company stepped back. A single segmented leg, infinitely thin and long, crept out from the hole. First one, then another.

If I take my shoes off and curl my toes deep into the dirt when I walk around the field, I can raise the corn a quarter inch a day, so long as I make sure to touch all stalks I pass. You'd think that's an amazing talent, especially in a place where the other fields around our farm lie dead. But ain't nobody noticing a lick of what I do—not when my sister can travel into the ahead and tell us how to keep the stretch away.

My cousin Ren was waiting for Mama in the kitchen, pacing. When he looked at me, I saw the flickering light in his eyes, just like Mama's. He was going away, too. It looked like nobody would get to say goodbye to him properly, either. I hated the soldiers so much it hurt.

In the darkness at the hole in the ship's hull, Thuy isn't blind. Her suit lights up with warnings—temperature, pressure, distortions. That last is what will kill her: the layers of unreality utterly unsuited to human existence, getting stronger and stronger as the current carries her closer to the wreck, crushing her lungs and vital organs like crumpled paper when her suit finally fails. It's what killed Kim Anh on her last dive

I accepted that Master Allardyce had the potential to write the greatest play ever; a play so good that if God were to summon Mankind before the bar of Heaven and demand to know one good reason why He shouldn't send a second flood and drown the lot of us, all we'd have to do is hand Him the manuscript and there'd be no case to answer. I knew that, in order to write this play, Master Allardyce needed to drink himself stupid, get beaten up twice a week, and generally mash himself down into a cheese, like the cider-makers do, before he could ferment and distil his very essence into words on a ...

Even in human-shape, I had an excellent sense of smell. I had no difficulty tracking the pilot. She lay on her side in the lee of a chunk of rubble, apparently asleep. The remains of a Brick Ration's wrapper had been tossed to the side. She had downed all of it, which impressed me. But then, I'd heard that piloting was hungry work.

Bekka snorted at the absurdity, then clamped a hand over her mouth at the unladylike noise. Joakem didn’t notice. "I’m an apprentice, not a familiar. And Miriam Cow-nose doesn’t have enough sense to fill a baby’s belly-button. The witch chose me because I’m smart and talented."

“Slowly now,” Thalie said. The children knew the danger of the ever-opening and quickly closed Holes of the City. They had seen safety nets go up, springing from the ground like whiteclusters after rain. Last summer, a Hole had opened right in front of Three-Hill Nest, and the crib-siblings had spent an afternoon watching Fillers pour wagonloads of dirt-brown forget into a Hole no larger than a loaf of black bread.

Too many voices in my head; too many visions. But I swear Kaeler opens a small hatch in his bottom jaw, and from it he withdraws a narrow jeweler's blade, and, with a quick glance up, cuts off the top of his left middle finger.

In the amnesty-city of Vannat, Aln Panette has let guilt go. The city of Vannat is a strict and inscrutable rulemaster, so Panette doesn't question the rules. She lives a plain, clean life. Keeps her recollections as free of the war as she can.

She eased herself over the edge, bare toes feeling for footholds. As in most villages, these had been deeply carved to make getting around easy, and even supplemented with metal bars in places or flat ledges for resting. Every few fathoms there was a round eyebolt for attaching a child’s tether. It was a trivial climb, and in no time Jeone was down among the trees.

Black Jonas secures Essie, his pleesaur, to a ring occupied by a massive, rusted droop-chain and walks down the promenade, noting the old storefronts. Brackysaur bays still line the boardwalk where land meets canal, big ol' rectangular cutouts in the once-white stone, used for loading and unloading back in the days of the dinosaur riders.