Heather Fawcett

Above the bar, where one might find a pair of antlers on the continent, there hung instead the tremendous mandible of a whale.

Ulfar. I had not been introduced to him yet, though I was constantly aware of him looming at the back of the tavern. He was not a tall man, but something about the heavy brows and sharpness of his countenance, which created little peaks and valleys of shadow, gave him the quality of a brooding mountain.

Thora Gudridsdottir’s bright gaze was wholly focused on her knitting. I almost disbelieved that she had spoken at all, so intent was she on her work, her person butterfly-fragile but eminently well cared for,

There is something that Bambleby does which would be noticeable only to those who spend a great deal of time around the Folk. It is the way in which his emotions seem to slide through him like water, one giving way to another as abruptly as waves on the shore

Bambleby’s eyes are not actually black, but the green of a forest at dusk, something you notice only when you are very close.

I am used to humble accommodations and humble folk

The wind had tasted snow

It was then, as I stared at the empty hearth, hungry and cold, that I began to wonder if I would die here

, when it comes to the Folk, there is something true in every story, even the false ones.”

for the Folk, stories are everything. Stories are part of them and their world in a fundamental way that mortals have difficulty grasping; a story may be a singular event from the past, but—crucially—it is also a pattern that shapes their behaviour and predicts future events. The Folk have no system of laws, and while I am not saying stories are as law to them, they are the closest thing their world has to some form of order.