Once Upon a River

And now, dear reader, the story is over. It is time for you to cross the bridge once more and return to the world you came from. This river, which is and is not the Thames, must continue flowing without you. You have haunted here long enough, and besides, surely you have rivers of your own to attend to?

As often as not, people reserved their curtness for those who were, like him, unfamiliar. Difference was upsetting, and people armed themselves with aggression when they met it.

You can buy and sell anything you wants at the Green Dragon – rubies, women, souls.

If it has a beginning, it is located in a dark, inaccessible place. Better study where it goes than where it comes from.

They were collectors of words, the same way so many of the gravel-diggers were collectors of fossils. They kept an ear constantly alert for them, the rare, the unusual, the unique.

‘Marry? Not me,’ she told him every time.
‘Why ever not?’ he pressed, when he had heard the same answer half a dozen times.
‘I’m more use to the world as a nurse than as a wife and mother.’

An idea came floating towards her in the dark

It was no wonder it made a sound like the teeth of a saw on wood

was no wonder it made a sound like the teeth of a saw on wood

if he were alone it was foolish