...all the grace I saw then was his own: simple, unadorned, glorious.

That is my mother's lyre,' I almost said. The words were in my mouth, and behind them others crowded close. 'That is my lyre.

She was taller than I was, taller than any woman I had ever seen. Her black hair was loose down her back, and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon.

...the sea was hidden by the house's curve, but we could both hear it, the distant hiss of waves against sand.

The islands looked all the same to me--high cliffs bleached white, pebbled beaches that scratched the underside of our ships with their chalky fingernails.