About Alison Croggon: Alison Croggon is a contemporary Australian poet, playwright, fantasy novelist, and librettist.
People once believed that when someone dies, a crow carries their soul to the land of the dead. But sometimes, something so bad happens that a terrible sadness is carried with it and the soul can't rest. Then sometimes, just sometimes, the crow can b...
Nothing is ever truly gone... Not for me, nor for any human being. We can only go forward, unless we are guests in some enchantment that is not is ours. We are condemned to an endless present, and we can never go back-the source of all our joy, and a...
It is not given to us to know what difference we can make, and perhaps we can make no difference at all. But that is no reason not to make the attempt," said Saliman quietly. "The Light shines more brightly in the darkness.
Your future is uncertain, and I can tell you nothing that can help you. You are singular and dangerous, and so it is that you are sought by both the Dark and the Light.
...only more keenly aware of how her soul starved within her, its wings wasting with the despair of disuse.
...she felt as if her entire body were glowing with the taste of sunlight, of wind blowing in wide spaces and trees reaching their burdened arms to boundless skies.
The risk of all friendship is, alas, a little grief.
At these times, the things that troubled her seemed far away and unimportant: all that mattered was the hum of the bees and the chirp of birdsong, the way the sun gleamed on the edge of a blue wildflower, the distant bleat and clink of grazing goats.
She ached: oh, how she ached. Her soul was like one big bruise.
And all meet in singing, which braids together the different knowings into a wide and subtle music, the music of living.
The river plunged down in a long waterfall, plashing into several rocky pools on its way down the cliff.
You have a great heart, but will only find it to be so through great pain. This is the wisdom of love, and its doubtful gift. . . . I have endured much suffering and still remain unbitter and unclosed.
By the light," he said, when he had mastered himself. "I think that beats singing a lullaby to a stormdog for simplicity and economy, Maerad. But I wish I had known that you simply had to blow at Hulls to get rid of them. It would have saved me a few...
Some say an army of horsemen some an army on foot others say ships laden for war are the fairest things on earth. But I say the fairest sight on this dark earth is the face of the one you love. Nor is it hard to understand: love has humbled the heart...
Old friend,' said Cadvan, filling another glass for himself and sniffing its rich smell. 'If we do not trust one another, we are already defeated.
Not even I can see all ends, but I have been in this world long enough to know that a choice is not choice and breeds slow ills, even were it done for the highest reasons.
Love is one of the true mysteries,' he said at last. 'The truest and the deepest of all. One thing, Maerad: to love is never wrong. It may be disastrous; it may never be possible; it may be the deepest agony. But it is never wrong.
The weather was clear and still, and the countless stars opened above them, seeming like brilliant cold fruits that Maerad could simply pick out of the sky.
The only good thing about being frightened half to death, she thought, is that it makes me forget all about being seasick.
There is a great force in renunciation of power that those who are blinded by the lust for domination cannot understand because those who truly love do not desire power.
