Frances Hardinge

Violet raised her eyebrows and just looked at Pen. Not-Triss’s spirits sank. Violet didn’t like Mr and Mrs Crescent, but adults believed adults. Adults believed in adults. Violet evidently liked Pen, but Pen told lies and Violet clearly knew that.

Memories of the previous evening crept back into her head, but did so numbly. They made her feel scraped out and empty. She wondered if soldiers felt this kind of blankness when they looked out at battlefields that had been pounded into mud and stark wasteland. There was no grieving for the lush valley that had been. Its destruction was too complete.

It was not human music; she could tell that in an instant. This was truer, purer and more chaotic, but also… colder. Human jazz was a clumsy imitation of this music, but it had blood, breath and warmth to it.

‘Most of them would not find a way to live. Some are too old, or too lost in the past, some too strange, or too stupid. One or two are… unpleasant things, and perhaps they would be better off dead. But they are my people, and this is their last chance to change, and find a place in this new world. I would like to see them have this chance. And if they fail to take advantage of it… then let them join the lizard bones in your museums

We… used to live in the wilds, the deep forests, the bleak mountains, the unused places. Because they were unknown. Mysterious. Lost. Uncharted. And… we need that. We can’t survive anywhere that is governed by certainty, where everything is known and mapped and written about and divided into columns. Certainty poisons us, slowly.’

A knife is made with a hundred tasks in mind,’ he continued, threading his bone needle. ‘Stab. Slice. Flay. Carve. But scissors are really intended for one job alone – snipping things in two. Dividing by force. Everything on one side or the other, and nothing in between. Certainty. We’re in-between folk, so scissors hate us. They want to snip us through and make sense of us, and there’s no sense to be made without killing us. Watch out for old pairs of scissors in particular, or scissors made in old ways.’

‘I do not pretend to know if there is a God,’ he went on, ‘or whether the cold stars go on forever. The War belonged to humanity, and nobody else.

I’m afraid she’s not designed to endure,’ the Shrike explained, with a tiny shadow of regret in his voice.

‘I’m falling apart, Pen,’ Not-Triss said quietly. ‘I’m made of pieces, and I’m losing them, little by little. That’s why I’m hungry all the time, and keep losing weight.’

It occurred to Not-Triss that they were playing the parts of little and big sister, and she felt a crushing sense of loss, as if somebody had shown her something immensely precious then taken it away forever

Not-Triss had to run. Everything was an enemy. She was shaking like a flag in the wind