The Headless Cupid, beginning of chapter 1
David often wondered about how he happened to be sitting there on the stair landing, within arm's reach of the headless cupid, at the very moment when his stepmother left Westerly House to bring Amanda home.
When Molly appeared at the foot of the stairs, David knew she was leaving because she had her shoes on and there was no paint on her hands and clothes. Molly, who at that time had been David's stepmother for about three weeks, was an artist, and around the house she dressed like an artist, very informally.
"Oh, there you are," she said to David. "I'm going now to pick up Amanda. Would you keep an eye on the kids while I'm gone? They were down by the swing a minute ago."
David said he would and Molly left, smiling back at him from the doorway. He sat a minute longer enjoying the deep silence of the big old house, empty now except for him. Even then, before anything happened, he felt there was something unusual about that spot on the landing. There was a central feeling about it, as if it were the heart of the old house.
The Egypt Game, end of chapter 3
As they walked to the door Melanie said, "Do you want to play some more tomorrow?"
April was adjusting her fur stole around her shoulders for the trip upstairs. "Oh, I guess so," she said with a sudden return to haughtiness.
But Melanie was beginning to understand about April's frozen spells, and how to thaw her out. You just had to let her know she couldn't make you stop liking her that easily. "None of my friends know how to play imagining games the way you do," Melanie said. "Some of them can do it a little bit but they mostly don't have any very good ideas. And a lot of them only like ball games or other things that are already made up. But I like imagining games better than anything."
April was being very busy trying to get her stole to stay on because the clasp was a little bit broken. All at once she pulled it off, wadded it all up and tucked it under her arm. She looked right straight at Melanie and said, "You know what? I never did call them that before, but imagining games are just about all I ever play because most of the time I never have anybody to play with."
She started off up the hall. Then she turned around and walked backward waving her fur stole around her head like a lasso. "You've got lots of good ideas, too," she yelled.
Cat Running, near the beginning of chapter 23
That night Cat sat at her window for a long time. For the first time in what seemed like ages it was a clear, almost cloudless night. The man in a nearly full moon seemed to have a startled expression on his face, as if he were suprised about something. Surprised, maybe, to see that California hadn't washed completely away after all, and that it had finally come out from behind all those everlasting clouds.
Cat knew she was certainly glad to see an end to the rain. Calm, clear nights with lots of moonlight sometimes gave her a hopeful feeling. And right now something, perhaps the moonlight, was making her feel that all sorts of problems could be solved if only people would get to know each other instead of being so suspicious and frightened just because of a few differences.
Song of the Gargoyle, the beginning of chapter 1
It was well after midnight on a chill, dim night in early spring, and beneath a cloud-haunted sky Austerneve Castle slept deeply and heedlessly. In the castle's many chambers, in rooms large and small, on hard, narrow pallets and in grand canopied beds, bodies lay limply and minds drifted deep in dream. Even at the great gate the sentinels slumped at their posts. And in the tiny guardhouse beside the postern gate two aged watchmen rested their old heads on a table amid scattered chess pieces and snored peacefully.
Far up in the northwest tower, in a large round room that had once been a sentinel's wardroom, a boy of scarcely thirteen years was also sound asleep. Tymmon, son of Komus, the court jester of Austerneve, was sleeping peacefully and well, until he was awakened by a mysterious sound.
Startled wide awake as suddenly as if shaken by an unseen hand, Tymmon was not sure what he had heard. At that moment of waking he only knew that there had been a sound, and that its blurred echoes were still throbbing through his sleep-clouded mind. It was only later, perhaps, in memory, that it seemed to have been a voice calling his name from a great distance.
"Tymmon" a far faint voice might have cried. "Wake up, Tymmon. They are coming."
But he could not be certain. Memories do tend to shrink over time, and perhaps it followed that some of them might grow instead--in new and important directions. And there had been moments when Tymmon had wondered how much he remembered clearly of that strange awakening. Perhaps, in the long hours that followed, his memory of that awful night had been shaped and slanted by dreams.
"Too much of your life is dream-patterned," his father had once told him. "You fool yourself with your dreaming." Tymmon had frowned, and, as he often did, his father softened his scolding by making a jest of it. Crossing his eyes and lolling his tongue, he did one of his comical loose-legged capers and then, bending down to Tymmon's height, went on. "We whose lives depend on fooling cannot afford to fool ourselves."
Komus's words had angered Tymmon, and he had thought of saying, "Your life, Father, not mine." But biting his tongue, he had only muttered, "My dreams are not of fooling." Which, of course, meant much the same--if Komus had been listening.
But one thing was certain. It had been a strange sound, faint but clear, that had roused him that night during the dark, still hours before dawn. And it was also certain that the course of his life had been changed forever by that awakening.