Home > Work > Winter Rose (Winter Rose, #1)
21 " A wind came up and snatched the roses from my hair, then pulled my hair loose as I ran. I did not care… I was running from my own thoughts as much as anything… I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood…the trees were bending like great fans in the wood. Clouds of gold and red and brown sailed along the wind. I slowed as I reached the privacy of the trees. A woman running across the cornfield in her mother’s best dress is subject to human speculation; in the wood, the trees did not care. "
― Patricia A. McKillip , Winter Rose (Winter Rose, #1)
22 " The rains began. Hard, constant, they battered the fields, turned the roads to mud, crushed the gold leaves into the ground and turned them black. In the wood, the sodden trees and brambles bowed beneath the torrents. "
23 " I could barely do more than watch the rich tapestry they were of their glances and slow smiles, the words they spoke that said one thing to my father, and another to me, while the ivy, growing secretly all around us, whispered warnings. "
24 " They rode horses as white as hoarfrost. Snow and star and dark whipped around one another to etch a fine-boned face, eyes of night and crystal fire. Their mantles were of dark wind and snow; their wild hair caught snow and falling stars. The boy watched them, too, longing for their beauty, their mastery over cold and storm. Come to us. This is not your true home. You belong elsewhere. You belong with us. "
25 " The human world is a cold and bitter place: nothing lasts in it. You must know that by now…. What did you imagine you were doing in those two rooms? Trying to turn yourself human?” “Yes,” Corbet said, so simply that for a breath he rendered his father incapable of moving. "