Susanna Clarke

Your reward will be Arabella safe and well and restored to us. For what other reason has God made me the Greatest Magician of the Age if not for this?

`Tree speaks to stone; stone speaks to water.'

The Folded-Up Child is a skeleton

Today I would consider it madness to journey through a Hall I cannot see properly and of which I have no record, but today I do not allow Myself to get as hungry as I was then.

May the House in its Beauty shelter us both.

Imagine water flowing underground. It flows through the same cracks year after year and it wears away at the stone. Millennia later you have a cave system. But what you don’t have is the water that originally created it. That’s long gone. Seeped away into the earth.

Then, sir, may your Paths be safe,’ I said, ‘your Floors unbroken and may the House fill your eyes with Beauty.’

My hair – which is dark and curly – was as full of droplets as a Cloud. I rained every time I moved.

When I awoke I thought: I am not home. I am here.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.