Son Quotes
"It felt grotesque and unnecessary, but she didn’t object. It was the procedure."
"They don’t want you to see the Product when it comes out of you. When you birth it."
"Discomfort, then. If that’s what they want to call it."
"Food in the Birthmothers’ Dormitory was always plentiful and delicious."
"After the first week they were moved to an interim place, where they amused themselves with talk and games before returning two weeks later to the large, familiar group of Vessels."
"There was a celebratory dinner her last evening in the dwelling."
"And she missed it. She was suffused with a desperate feeling of loss."
"Her recuperation was slower, though, than the others’, for she had been left with a wound and they had not."
"Then they wished her well in the future."
"After that year had passed, and part of another, she was deemed ready."
"The bicycle she had ridden to school throughout her earlier years was taken to be refurbished and given to a different, younger child."
"He might not even get a name at the next Ceremony. They’re already talking about keeping him here another year. He’s not doing well. They call it failure to thrive."
"It’s as if the sea sucked away her past and left her empty. What does she say to you?"
"It was a comfort, not a cure. But they would not heal her. It would be hard to heal a girl as desperately wounded as this one."
"I must try to learn creatures," she said to Alys apologetically. "It’s not right to be so fearful."
"She thought how proud Eilwen must have once been, to have birthed a strong boy like Andras."
"She resolved that she would learn. She would learn everything—about queens, whatever they were; and herbs, and birds, and how the men farmed and what they thought, and the women, too, how they spent their hours, and what they talked about, what they dreamed, what they yearned for."
"You’ll feed it each day. Seeds, mostly, and some of the bugs from the field."
"I’m beginning to remember," she whispered. "But it’s like looking through fog. I see shapes but not clear."
"She was completely, utterly terrified of cows. Claire held her breath and looked away when she had to pass the place where a scrawny milk cow, its wrinkled mouth moving as it placidly chewed on the rough grass, was fenced beside the cottage where Tall Andras lived with his parents."
"Some say it eases pain to lay a knife beneath the bed."
"Likely not. But if the person thinks it, then the thinking eases the pain."
"Don't come back till the sun is full up. And then you come with your arms filled with flowers from the meadow, to welcome the babe."
"I best tell you the why, first, so you understand."
"It will be a long time, to make you ready."
"You’ll die on the cliff. You’ll fall and be broken to pieces!"
"He told me when he was much younger that he would go looking for his past."
"It will be the next generation, the ones like our children, who were born here, who won’t feel that pull."
"He sighed, turning away from the darkness that was enfolding the village."
"They said the word [love] was meaningless."
"All of us came here from difficult places."
"I worry about what he’ll find, if he goes searching."
"Someday you’ll be called upon for something special."
"But inside herself? She was a young woman still."
"You must make yourself ready. Someday you’ll be called upon for something special."
"We must try to tell all of this to Gabe."
"Go," he said. "This is your journey, your battle. Be brave. Find your gift. Use it to save what you love."
"He sets them in motion and then watches from a distance."
"The three words that he had spoken soothed the sky, the river, the world."
"He must first concentrate on the dangerous swim he was about to undertake."
"Remember Mentor? ... He was my teacher."
"It was, all of it, familiar and beckoning and safe."