The Triple Oracle

"People say now the Victorian authors rely too much on coincidence, but it's because they grew up in a world where magic hadn't quite faded. Long-lost relations springing out of the woodwork, mysterious doubles, that sort of thing happened when the cracks in the world were open. It wasn't that things were better, exactly. Terrible things happened all the time. But there was always a chance of better."

'Sarah took a deep breath and set off along the passageway again. A clump of lichen on the gatepost opened its eyes and watched her go. The eyes, on tendrils, had an anxious look, and when she had gone some distance away the clump, swiveling its eyes toward each other, commenced to gossip among itself. Most of it disapproved of the direction she had taken. You could tell that from the way the eyes looked meaningfully into each other. Lichen knows about directions.'

“As she crossed the threshold, she hummed a melody older than the mountain they stood on. Like all the Tufa tunes, it was part prayer, part story, and part statement of intent. It signaled to the universe that Bronwyn was once again home, under the protection of the night wind and its riders.”

“Sonny walked back to his apartment from the Avalon, head down, shoulders hunched. Along the way, he spotted several Lost Fae: a dryad in an empty lot offering encouragement to a sickly-looking juniper bush; a winged boy crouched atop a fire hydrant who watched him pass with big, glistening eyes; the fruit seller at a corner market who hid his taloned, feathered feet beneath an impressive glamour and a long white apron."

"He accepted everything that came into his mind, without thought or question, as if he were moving through a dream. But a deeper part of him knew that he was not dreaming. He was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that."

“Up. She had been climbing forever; she would be climbing forever. She would be a new god: the God That Climbs. It was no more improbable than some of the other gods: the God That Isn’t There, for example (more often known as the God That Follows or The God That Goes Before), which was the shadow-god at midday.”