Martha

I did no such thing as sit there with my mouth open, though I may as well have, since I felt as if my mind was gaping. It had simply never occurred to me to wonder what kind of person I was, what kind of person I wanted to be. I had not envisioned this as something I had any control over, just as I could not alter the round shape of my face or the dense black curl of my hair.

But there was something else about Elisandra that was even more striking, and that was her air of absolute, unbreakable calm. Even when she spoke and gestured in the course of an ordinary conversation, a great stillness lay behind the animation of her features and the glances of her eyes. Even when she danced, she seemed to move as a figure in a frieze would, stately and frozen in place from panel to panel. There was no exuberance in her, no matter how she laughed or smiled. There was a great watchfulness that hung about her like a curtain of light or shadow, and filtered out any thoughts, any expressions, that she wanted no other to see.

“So do I wish I was to be king? That is not a question I ask myself. I ask myself, Would I be a good king? Would I be quick witted and generous of spirit and full of that boundless energy? Or would I be clumsy and stupid and dulled by my own prejudices? I try to be a good man, since I am alive at all, and hope that that teaches me what I would need to know if I was ever faced with a higher challenge.”

His sonorous voice echoed through a hollow place of sorrow, catching its reverberations from those ragged walls. His gaiety masked a deep well of loneliness; he was a bright outward shape wrapped around shadows.