Her whole body ached; she ached, as if there were a terrible hollow emptiness inside her.

Words have the power to change us." - Tessa Gray

Blue does not go with everything," Will told her. "It does not go with red, for instance."
"I have a red and blue striped waistcoat," Henry interjected, reaching for the peas.
"And if that isn't proof that those two colors should never be seen together under Heaven, I don't know what is.

Will rolled up his sleeves. "We'll probably have to knock down the door--"
"Or," said Jem, reaching out and giving the knob a twist, "not."
The door swung open onto a rectangle of darkness.
"Now, that's simply laziness," said Will.

Well, she's not responding to my advances," he observed more brightly than he felt, "so she must be dead."
"Or she's a woman of good taste and sense.

He opened his mouth. The words were there. He was about to say them when a jolt of terror went through him, the terror of someone who, wandering in a mist, pauses only to realise that they have stopped inches from the edge of a gaping abyss. The way she was looking at him - she could read what was in his eyes, he realised. It must have been written plainly there, like words on the page of a book. There had been no time, no chance, to hide it.

“Will,” she whispered. “Say something, Will.”

But there was nothing to say. There was only emptiness, as there had been before her. As there would always be.

'I have lost everything', Will thought. 'Everything.