I want to survive this world that keeps trying to destroy me.

There was nothing else to do but keep moving forward. You chose your path. You walked it. You hoped to find a way home again.

There should be more magic. Not the creased-greasepaint performances of clowns and hack illusionists. Not card tricks. The magic he'd been promised would be found at the backs of wardrobes, under bridges, through mirrors. It was dangerous and alluring and it did not seek to entertain.

That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you'd been before life took away your belief in the possible. It gave back the world all lonely children longed for.

Magic doesn’t require beauty,’ she said. 'Easy magic is pretty. Great magic asks that you trouble the waters. It requires a disruption, something new.

Somehow the men and women of this city knew: Their streets were home to other gods.

She's seen the dead, he thought. She's witnessed horrors. But she's never seen magic.

The storm has brought Ulla to the cold shelter of the northern islands, to the darkened caves and flat black pools where she remains to this day, waiting for the lonely, the ambitious, the clever, the frail, for all those willing to strike a bargain. She never waits for long.