Maybelle Victor

Nothing is as it seems. You must learn to question everything. To wait before moving, to look before stepping and to observe everything.

- Alchemyst, Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel -

“You have appealed to Tash,” said Aslan. “And in the temple of Tash you shall be healed. You must stand before the altar of Tash in Tashbaan at the great Autumn Feast this year and there, in the sight of all Tashbaan, your ass’s shape will fall from you and all men will know you for Prince Rabadash. But as long as you live, if ever you go more than ten miles away from the great temple in Tashbaan you shall instantly become again as you now are. And from that second change there will be no return.”

- The Chronicles of Narnia, The Horse and His Boy -

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Returning home one winter’s day, a farmer found a snake lying under a hedge, half dead with cold.  Taking pity on the creature, he placed it in his bosom and brought it home, where he laid it upon the hearth near the fire.  No sooner was the snake restored by the warmth of the cottage than it began to attack the farmer’s wife and children.  Hearing their cries, the farmer, whose compassion had saved the snake’s life, rushed into the room, grabbed an ax, and smashed the serpent until it was dead.

Kindness is wasted on the ungrateful and vicious.

“In each case, your loved ones have been used to lure you into Kronos’s traps. Your fatal flaw is personal loyalty, Percy. You do not know when it is time to cut your losses. To save a friend, you would sacrifice the world. In a hero of the prophecy, that is very, very dangerous.”

I balled my fists. “That’s not a flaw. Just because I want to help my friends—”

“The most dangerous flaws are those which are good in moderation,” she said. “Evil is easy to fight. Lack of wisdom… that is very hard indeed.”

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“When I was a little girl, when we lived in our old house, a long long time ago, my dad took me for a walk on the wasteland between our house and the shops.

It wasn’t the best place to go for a walk, really.  There were all these things that people had thrown away back there — old cookers and broken dishes and dolls with no arms and legs and empty cans and broken bottles.  Mum and Dad made me promise not to go exploring back there, because there were too many sharp things, and tetanus and such.

But I kept telling them I wanted to explore it.  So one day my dad put on his big brown boots and his gloves and put my boot on me and my jeans and sweater, and we went for a walk.

We must have walked for about twenty minutes.  We went down this hill, to the bottom of a gully where a stream was, when my dad suddenly said to me, “Coraline — run away.  Up the hill.  Now!”  He said it in a tight sort of way, urgently, so I did.  I ran away up the hill.  Something hurt me on the back of my arm as  I ran, but I kept running.

As I got to the top of the hill I heard somebody thundering up the hill behind me.  It was my dad, charging like a rhino.  When he reached me he picked me up in his arms and swept over the edge of the hill.

And then we stopped and we puffed and we panted, and we looked back down the gully.

The air was alive with yellow wasps.  We must have stepped on a wasps’ net in a rotten branch as we walked.  And while I was running up the hill, my dad stayed and got stung, to give me time to run away.  His glasses had fallen off when he ran.

I only had the one sting on the back of my arm.  He had thirty-nine stings, all over him.  We counted later, in the bath.

So, later that afternoon my dad went back again to the wasteland, to get his glasses back.  He said if he left it another day he wouldn’t be able to remember where they’d fallen.

And soon he got home, wearing his glasses.  He said that he wasn’t scared when he was standing there and the wasps were stinging him and hurting him and he was watching me run away.  Because he knew he had to give me enough time to run, or the wasps would have come after both of us.

And he said that wasn’t brave of him, doing that, just standing there and being stung.  It wasn’t brave because he wasn’t scared: it was the only thing he could do.  But going back again to get his glasses when he knew the wasps were there, when he was really scared.  That was brave.”

“And why was that?” asked the cat, although it sounded barely interested.

“Because,” she said, “when you’re scared but you still do it anyway, that’s brave.”

“And that’s why you’re going back to her world, then?” said the cat.  “Because your father once saved you from wasps?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Coraline.  “I’m going back for them because they are my parents.  And if they noticed I was gone I’m sure they would do the same for me.  You know you’re talking again?”

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Where there is feeling that is not requited, there is an imbalance of power.  It is an imbalance that is easy to exploit, but it is not a wise course.  Where there is love, there is often also hate.  They can exist side by side.

- Hodge, City of Bones -

“Once there was a boy,” said Jace.

Clary interrupted immediately.  “A Shadowhunter boy?”

“Of course.”  For a moment a bleak amusement colored his voice.  Then it was gone.  “When the boy was six years old, his father gave him a falcon to train.  Falcons are raptors – killing birds, his father told him, the Shadowhunters of the sky.

“The falcon didn’t like the boy, and the boy didn’t like it, either.  Its sharp beak made him nervous, and its bright eyes always seemed to be watching him.  It would slash at him with beak and talons when he came near: For weeks his wrists and hands were always bleeding.  He didn’t know it, but his father had selected a falcon that had lived in the wild for over a year, and thus was nearly impossible to tame.  But the boy tried, because his father told him to make the falcon obedient, and he wanted to please his father.

“He stayed with the falcon constantly, keeping it awake by talking to it and even playing music to it, because a tired bird was meant to be easier to tame.  He learned the equipment: the jesses, the hood, the brail, the leash that bound the bird to his wrist.  He was meant to keep the falcon blind, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it – instead he tried to sit where the bird could see him as he touched and stroked its wings, willing it to trust him.  Hee fed it from his hand, and at first it would not eat.  Later it ate so savagely that its beak cut the skin of his palm.  But the boy was glad, because it was progress, and because he wanted the bird to know him, even if the bird had to consume his blood to make that happen.

“He began to see that the falcon was beautiful, that its slim wings were built for the speed of flight, that it was strong and swift, fierce and gentle.  When it dived to the ground, it moved like likght.  When it learned to circle and come to his wrist, he neary shouted with delight  Sometimes the bird would hope to his shoulder and put its beak in his hair.  He knew his falcon loved him, and when he was certain it was not just tamed but perfectly tamed, he went to his father and showed him what he had done, expecting him to be proud.

“Instead his father took the bird, now tame and trusting, in his hands and broke its neck.  ‘I told you to make it obedient,’ his father said, and dropped the falcon’s lifeless body to the ground.  ‘Instead, you taught it to love you.  Falcons are not meant to be loving pets: They are fierce and wild, savage and cruel.  This bird was not tamed; it was broken.’

“Later, when his father left him, the boy cried over his pet, until eventually his father sent a servant to take the body of the bird away and bury it.  The boy never cried again, and he never forgot what he’d learned: that to love is to destroy, and that to be loved is to be the one destroyed.”

- Jace, City of Bones -

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