The library stretched infinitely in every direction. Shelves rose so high that the ceiling was lost in a soft, golden haze. Nora Seed walked slowly, her fingers brushing the spines of books that each contained a different life she could have lived.
"Every regret you have," Mrs. Elm had said, "is a book waiting to be opened." Nora stopped in front of a volume bound in deep burgundy. The title read: My Life as a Glaciologist. She had always wondered what would have happened if she'd pursued science instead of music.
With trembling hands, she pulled the book from the shelf. The moment she opened it, the library dissolved around her, and she was standing on a frozen plain, wind biting her cheeks, the northern lights dancing overhead...
One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost. Icicles fenced the eaves. The rocket lay on the launching field, blowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts.
The rockets came like locusts, swarming and settling in blooms of rosy smoke. And from the rockets ran men with hammers in their hands to beat the strange world into a shape that was familiar to the eye, to bludgeon away all the strangeness.
When the sun set, he walked out to the hill and stood looking down at the valley. He had planted seeds. Thousands of seeds. And now he waited. He had come to Mars to make it green, and he would not leave until it was done.
I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in.
My parents were traveling performers. My father was a better actor and musician than any you have ever seen. My mother was beautiful and had a voice like honey. We traveled everywhere in a troupe of wagons, performing plays and songs.
Sympathy is not magic. It is a science. It is the manipulation of energy through the binding of similar objects. A sympathist can lift a coin with a feather if he understands the connection between them. But there is always a cost.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;