Stranger Things Happen

She's disguised as a young woman. Her eyes are keen and they flash a lot.

No one has ever explained to the girl detective why her mother left, although it must have been to do something very important. Possibly she died. That would be important enough, almost forgivable.

This child, radioactive with curiosity, bit the girl detective, and in that instant the girl detective suddenly saw all of these answers, all at once.

When you travel, everything's always new. If you don't speak the language, it isn't a big deal. Nobody expects you to understand everything they say. You can wear the same clothes every day and the other travelers will be impressed with your careful packing. When you wake up and you're not sure where you are. There's a perfectly good reason for that.

That was the great tragedy, the inconvenient unseaworthiness of memories and boats and letters, that events never remained themselves long enough for you to insert yourself into them…

A swan, a bull, a shower of gold, something new, something old, something borrowed, something blue.

Of course he wasn't dead: she'd read the book. He'd explained the whole thing to her. When you're immortal, you don't die. Half-immortal, she corrected herself. So maybe half-dead, she could live with that.

The dead flicker like candles around you. They are burning their memories for warmth.

He came to the conclusion that it was a silly question, and that if he didn't answer it correctly, Rachel wasn't going to marry him. He wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to give the correct answer, even if he knew what it was.

She grinned at him in what might have been a friendly fashion, except that at some point after dinner, she had removed her dentures.