01UndatedHe asked, looking at her dark-rimmed eyes, "You do not sleep?"She shivered. "No. I do not want to sleep any more. I sleep too much already. It is so cold, where Quincy sends me in my sleep. Deep into the house, farther in, not into the house we see. It is as if that house were a face, and when you see a face you can't see the brain or the thoughts of the person behind it. And it is so strange - the house inside the house."********"How is it strange - this that you call the house inside the house?"She said vaguely, her eyes growing glassy, "Strange. Shapes change, and sizes. The rooms are different: bigger and blacker and longer and the shadows are full of things. Creatures - or sometimes the rooms get smaller, fewer, and the furnishings change and change, like the scenes in a kaleidoscope, and I see the people in the portraits walking about in them.Evangeline Walton / quote ↗
02UndatedQuincy laughed. "If I were Elizabeth I shouldn't thank either of you for that comforting diagnosis. Would it do any good to open Aunt Sarai's grave and drive a stake through her? If you believe in as much sorcery as that, you must regret the days of witch-burners, Carew."Carew said quietly, "No. Witch-burners were barbarous blunderers. If I wanted to suppress a dangerous letter, could I do it by burning the envelope and leaving the letter loose? The witch would come back unchanged; I should merely have postponed the danger until another time and place. And have further handicapped myself to meet it, by depriving the witch, by violent death, of the years allotted her, or him, for evolution."Joseph said with dry humor, "She might not have used them for that, Carew. At least not for your idea of it."Carew shrugged. "That would be her responsibility, not mine. And, in any case, she would be that many years nearer the time of her inevitable change."This time Joseph did not answer, only smiled.Evangeline Walton / quote ↗
04UndatedAlso another time she had wakened in dead of night, thinking that something touched her, and when she looked she saw that a black scaly tail, tufted with flame at the end, like a fiend's, had switched across her and lay there burning the covers. And when she turned shrieking, to see what manner of thing lay beside her in the bed, she was at first reassured by sight of her husband's face, then saw, to her horror, that horns had risen, black and pointed, from his forehead. After that she screamed again and remembered nothing until Joseph was shaking her awake, and there were neither horns nor tail to be seen. Nor were the bedclothes scorched.Evangeline Walton / quote ↗
05UndatedThe doctor from the mainland came and went. Silence settled over the island again, like a displaced curtain falling back in thickened, heavier folds. For there was a different quality in the silence now. It had tasted something, rich food on which it had long been thinly rationed. Shadowy things were trooping up, called by that scent of blood, like flies that smell carrion. They were not strangers to the old house; they had been ill-fed and at a distance, now they were hungry and avid and near.Evangeline Walton / quote ↗
06UndatedOutside the drizzling rain had begun again. It pattered around the house, and on the roofs and eaves, like a million, tiny, stealthy feet: softly, as though the night were teeming with a host of minute, dark beings.Evangeline Walton / quote ↗
