Believer Imagine Dragons Quotes

He spoke!" Ivan said, eyes wide. "The dog talked! Oh my god." "An ancient witch you can believe in, but not a talking dragon that looks like a dog?" Chudo-Yudo said, sounding slightly piqued. "Hmph. Young people today have such limited imaginations.

What I corrupted was what is called the truth in favour of a more marvelous world. I could always improve on the facts. [...] in self-defense, I accuse the writers of fairy-tales. Not hunger, not cruelty, not my parents, but these tales which promised that sleeping in the snow never caused pneumonia, that bread never turned stale, that trees blossomed out of season, that dragons could be killed with courage, that intense wishing would be followed immediately by fulfillment of the wish. Intrepid wishing, said the fairytales, was more effective than labor. The smoke issuing from Aladdin's lamp was my first smokescreen, and the lies learned from fairytales were my first perjuries. Let us say I had perverted tendencies: I believed everything I read.

Imagine a land where people are afraid of dragons. It is a reasonable fear: dragons possess a number of qualities that make being afraid of them a very commendable response. Things like their terrible size, their ability to spout fire, or to crack boulders into splinters with their massive talons. In fact, the only terrifying quality that dragons do not possess is that of existence. Now, the people of this land know about dragons because their leaders have warned them about them. They tell stories about cruel dragons with razor teeth and fiery breath. They recount legends of dragons hunting by night on silent wings. In short, the leaders make sure that the people believe in all the qualities of dragons, including that key quality of existence. And then they control the people — when they need to — with their fear of dragons. The people pay a dragon-slaying tax … everyone stays indoors after dark to avoid being snatched by swooping claws … and nobody ever strays out of bounds for fear of being eaten well and truly up. Perhaps somebody will wonder if dragons aren’t, after all, fictitious because — despite their size — nobody seems to have actually seen one. And so it is necessary from time to time to provide evidence: a burnt tree or two, a splintered rock, the mysterious absence of a villager. The population is controlled by the dragons in its collective mind. It’s contrived superstition, and it is possible because the people do not know enough about the way the world works to know that dragons do not exist.

And GUESS WHO ordered your guards to chain up Clay?” Tsunami demanded. She flung an accusing talon toward Shark. “COMMANDER SHARK! Of all the dragons who should obey you in everything! Is that not UTTERLY SHOCKING?” “It is,” Coral said. Tsunami thought she might be grinding her teeth, but she hid it well. “I find it quite hard to believe.” “Imagine the distress the poor guards felt,” Tsunami said, “when I explained to them that you would never have ordered those chains on Clay. To have to choose between their commander and their queen! Naturally they chose you, of course. That’s why they gave me the key to Clay’s chains. Because they understood that’s what you would have wanted them to do. Right?” Queen Coral gave Tsunami an appraising glance. Beside her, Blister was eating her soup with an amused expression. “Very good,” Coral said slowly. “It sounds like those guards are practically heroes.” “And Shark —” Tsunami prodded her. “To the dungeon with him as well,” the queen said with a wave. Shark didn’t protest like Lagoon had. He snarled at the guards who approached him, shot Tsunami a look full of hatred, and headed off to the dungeon without another word. Splendid,

Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry -- that was Adolf Hitler's technique. No matter whether it was true or not -- for (Hitler) meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn't dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seed it, it was God's truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it -- shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night...when ten million join in it becomes history.

I pray that the world never runs out of dragons. I say that in all sincerity, though I have played a part in the death of one great wyrm. For the dragon is the quintessential enemy, the greatest foe, the unconquerable epitome of devastation. The dragon, above all other creatures, even the demons and the devils, evokes images of dark grandeur, of the greatest beast curled asleep on the greatest treasure hoard. They are the ultimate test of the hero and the ultimate fright of the child. They are older than the elves and more akin to the earth than the dwarves. The great dragons are the preternatural beast, the basic element of the beast, that darkest part of our imagination. The wizards cannot tell you of their origin, though they believe that a great wizard, a god of wizards, must have played some role in the first spawning of the beast. The elves, with their long fables explaining the creation of every aspect of the world, have many ancient tales concerning the origin of the dragons, but they admit, privately, that they really have no idea of how the dragons came to be. My own belief is more simple, and yet, more complicated by far. I believe that dragons appeared in the world immediately after the spawning of the first reasoning race. I do not credit any god of wizards with their creation, but rather, the most basic imagination wrought of unseen fears, of those first reasoning mortals. We make the dragons as we make the gods, because we need them, because, somewhere deep in our hearts, we recognize that a world without them is a world not worth living in. There are so many people in the land who want an answer, a definitive answer, for everything in life, and even for everything after life. They study and they test, and because those few find the answers for some simple questions, they assume that there are answers to be had for every question. What was the world like before there were people? Was there nothing but darkness before the sun and the stars? Was there anything at all? What were we, each of us, before we were born? And what, most importantly of all, shall we be after we die? Out of compassion, I hope that those questioners never find that which they seek. One self-proclaimed prophet came through Ten-Towns denying the possibility of an afterlife, claiming that those people who had died and were raised by priests, had, in fact, never died, and that their claims of experiences beyond the grave were an elaborate trick played on them by their own hearts, a ruse to ease the path to nothingness. For that is all there was, he said, an emptiness, a nothingness. Never in my life have I ever heard one begging so desperately for someone to prove him wrong. This is kind of what I believe right now… although, I do not want to be proved wrong… For what are we left with if there remains no mystery? What hope might we find if we know all of the answers? What is it within us, then, that so desperately wants to deny magic and to unravel mystery? Fear, I presume, based on the many uncertainties of life and the greatest uncertainty of death. Put those fears aside, I say, and live free of them, for if we just step back and watch the truth of the world, we will find that there is indeed magic all about us, unexplainable by numbers and formulas. What is the passion evoked by the stirring speech of the commander before the desperate battle, if not magic? What is the peace that an infant might know in its mother’s arms, if not magic? What is love, if not magic? No, I would not want to live in a world without dragons, as I would not want to live in a world without magic, for that is a world without mystery, and that is a world without faith. And that, I fear, for any reasoning, conscious being, would be the cruelest trick of all. -Drizzt Do’Urden

Plato in the Symposium used to say that, at the beginning of time, human beings had four arms, four legs, and two heads. In time, they began to be insolent toward the gods, who, as punishment, separated them into two parts with a thunderbolt, creating from each primordial human being two new divided beings. As a consequence, every man tries to find his initial wholeness looking for his lost half. He was right, more or less. I believed that even my soul was born differently. With ten arms, ten legs, and five heads. Creepy if I imagined it, but I thought it would make the idea better.

Belle's mind populated the castle with royalty from all the eras she could imagine: Recent ones with great powdered wigs and hats in the shapes of fanciful things like ships, great skirts that billowed out, ugly garish makeup on the faces of those who gossiped behind embroidered silk fans. Renaissance rulers with thick curled collars and poison rings, intellect and conspiracy at every dinner. Ancient kings and queens in long, heavy dresses and cloaks, wise looks on their faces and solid gold crowns on their heads, innocents in a world they believed to possess unicorns and dragons, and maps whose seas ran off at the edges, beyond where the tygres were. Of course, maybe around here there were dragons and unicorns. Who knew? They had talking teacups.

With bare feet in the dirt, fulmia, ten times with conviction, will shake the earth to its roots, if you have the strength, Jaga’s book had told me, and the Dragon had believed it enough not to let me try it anywhere near the tower. I had felt doubtful, anyway, about conviction: I hadn’t believed I had any business shaking the earth to its roots. But now I fell to the ground and dug away the snow and the fallen leaves and rot and moss until I came to the hard-frozen dirt. I pried up a large stone and began to smash at the earth, again and again, breaking up the dirt and breathing on it to make it softer, pounding in the snow that melted around my hands, pounding in the hot tears that dripped from my eyes as I worked. Kasia was above me with her head flung up, her mouth open in its soundless cry like a statue in a church. “Fulmia,” I said, my fingers deep in the dirt, crushing the solid clods between my fingers. “Fulmia, fulmia,” I chanted over and over, bleeding from broken nails, and I felt the earth hear me, uneasily. Even the earth was tainted here, poisoned, but I spat on the dirt and screamed, “Fulmia,” and imagined my magic running into the ground like water, finding cracks and weaknesses, spreading out beneath my hands, beneath my cold wet knees: and the earth shuddered and turned over. A low trembling began where my hands drove into the ground, and it followed me as I started prying at the roots of the tree. The frozen dirt began to break up into small chunks all around them, the tremors going on and on like waves. The branches above me were waving wildly as if in alarm, the whispering of the leaves becoming a muted roaring. I straightened up on my knees. “Let her out!” I screamed at the tree: I beat on its trunk with my muddy fists. “Let her out, or I’ll bring you down! Fulmia!” I cried out in rage, and threw myself back down at the ground, and where my fists hit, the ground rose and swelled like a river rising with the rain. Magic was pouring out of me, a torrent: every warning the Dragon had ever given me forgotten and ignored. I would have spent every drop of myself and died there, just to bring that horrible tree down: I couldn’t imagine a world where I lived, where I left this behind me, Kasia’s life and heart feeding this corrupt monstrous thing. I would rather have died, crushed in my own earthquake, and brought it down with me. I tore at the ground ready to break open a pit to swallow us all.

I thought it very likely I might have this sort of untestable power myself. It was kind of logical--no good at sport, alrightish at my studies, there must have been some field in which I excelled. Magic had to be it. It's difficult for adults to picture just what a grip these fantasies can take on a child. There's occasionally a reminder as a kid throws himself off a roof pretending to be Batman, but mostly the interior life of children goes unnoticed. When I say I thought I could be a wizard, that's exactly true. I really did believe I had latent magical powers, and, with enough concentration and fiddling my fingers into strange patterns, I might suddenly find how to unlock the magic inside me. I wouldn't call this a delusion, more a very strong suspicion. I'd weighed all the evidence, and that was the likely conclusion--so much so that I had to stop myself trying to turn Matt Bradon into a fly when he was jumping up and down on the desk in French saying, "Miss, what are mammary glands?" to the big-breasted Miss Mundsley. I feared that, if I succeeded, I might not be able to turn him back. It was important, I knew, to use my powers wisely. There's nothing that you'd have to call a psychoanalyst in for here. At the bottom line my growing interest in fantasy was just an expression of a very common feeling--"there's got to be something better than this," an easy one to have in the drab Midlands of the 1970s. I couldn't see it, though. My world was very small, and I couldn't imagine making things better incrementally, only a total escape.

Despite Darwin and the later prophets of science, I grew up in a world in which my elders taught me that the planet earth was the chief purpose of the Creator, and that all the stars in the heavens were put there entirely for our benefit, and that humankind is God’s only real interest in the universe. It didn’t take as much imagination and courage then as it does now to believe that God has time to be present at a deathbed, to believe that human suffering does concern him, to believe that he loves every atom of his creation, no matter how insignificant.

The woman [Cadsuane] looked at the battered tea things as if she had all the time in the world. “Now you know,” she said at last, calm as ever, “that I know your future, and your present. The Light’s mercy fades to nothing for a man who can channel. Some see that and believe the Light denies those men. I do not. Have you begun to hear voices, yet?” “What do you mean?” he asked slowly. He could feel Lews Therin listening. [...] “Some men who can channel begin to hear voices.” She spoke almost absently, frowning at the flattened sphere of silver and gold. “It is a part of the madness. Voices conversing with them, telling them what to do.” The teapot drifted gently to the floor by her feet. “Have you heard any?” [...] “I will ask the questions,” Rand said firmly. “You seem to forget. I am the Dragon Reborn.” You are real, aren’t you? he wondered. There was no answer. Lews Therin? Sometimes the man did not answer, but Aes Sedai always drew him. Lews Therin? He was not mad; the voice was real, not imagination. Not madness. A sudden desire to laugh did not help. Cadsuane sighed. “You are a young man who has little idea where he is going or why, or what lies ahead. You seem overwrought. Perhaps we can speak when you are more settled. Have you any objection to my taking Merana and Annoura away for a little while? I’ve seen neither in quite some time.” Rand gaped at her. She swooped in, insulted him, threatened him, casually announced she knew about the voice in his head, and with that she wanted to leave and talk with Merana and Annoura? Is she mad? Still no answer from Lews Therin. The man was real. He was! “Go away,” he said. “Go away, and...” He was not mad. “All of you, get out! Get out!” [...] Finally they were all gone, and he was alone. Alone. Convulsively he hurled the Dragon Scepter. The spear-point stuck quivering in the back of one the chairs, the tassels swaying. “I am not mad,” he said to the empty room. Lews Therin had told him things; he would never have escaped Galina’s chest without the dead man’s voice. But he had used the Power before he ever heard the voice; he had figured out how to call lightning and hurl fire and form a construct that had killed hundreds of Trollocs. But then, maybe that had been Lews Therin, like those memories of climbing trees in a plum orchard, and entering the Hall of the Servants, and a dozen more that crept up on him unawares. And maybe those memories were all fancies, mad dreams of a mad mind, just like the voice.

he gave an account of the Spenserian world that championed its ethical attitudes as well as their fairy-tale terms, with a rich joy in the defeat of dragons, giants, sorcerers, and sorceresses by the forces of virtue; it was a world he could inhabit and believe in as one inhabits and believes a dream of one's own; its knights, dwarfs, and ladies were real to him...he rejoiced as much in the ugliness of the giants and in the beauty of the ladies as in their spiritual significances, but most of all in the ambience of the faerie forest and plain that, he said, were carpeted with a grass greener than the common stuff of ordinary glades; this was the reality of grass, only to be apprehended in poetry: the world of the imagination was nearer to the truth than the world of the senses, notwithstanding its palpable fictions, and Spenser transcended sensuality by making use of it

You will want to stand close by, but don’t touch it. Just allow your hands to hover. Pretend an atmosphere of acidic gas exists between you and the gemstone, and if you get too close, the acid will eat the flesh off your fingers.” “That won’t actually happen, will it?” “No, Amora. I’m just warning you not to touch it.” “Why? What if I do?” “The enchantment will fail.” “From a simple touch?” “Yes.” “Why?” “Because.” “Because why?” Edgar groaned a sound of annoyance. “Because if you touch it, the stone will suck out your living essence in the most painful manner possible and consume your flesh before turning your bones to powder.” Her face twisted up imagining the agony of such a death. The worst part was that being immortal, she would somehow survive it. “You’re lying,” she quickly decided. “Am I?” “You just said the flesh won't be eaten off my fingers.” “If you don’t believe me when I tell you not to touch it, feel free to test the outcome of such folly for yourself.” “I think I’d rather not.” “A wise choice. Shall we move on?

I thought we might even retell some of the stories she used to invent for us." "Like the one about the gate at the bottom of the garden that led to fairyland." "And the dragon eggs she found in the woods." "And the time she ran away to join the circus." "Do you remember," said Iris suddenly, "the circus we had here?" "My circus," said Daphne, beaming from behind her wineglass. "Well, yes," Iris interjected, "but only because-" "Because I'd had the horrid measles and missed the real circus when it came to town." Daphne laughed with pleasure at the memory. "She got Daddy to build a tent at the bottom of the meadow, remember, and organized all of you to be clowns. Laurel was a lion, and Mummy walked the tightrope." "She was rather good at that," said Iris. "Barely fell off the rope. She must've practiced for weeks." "Or else her story was true and she really did spend time in the circus," said Rose. "I can almost believe it of Mummy." Daphne gave a contented sigh. "We were lucky to have a mother like ours, weren't we? So playful, almost as if she hadn't fully grown up, not at all like other people's boring old mothers.

Bringing back the Golden Fleece,” I repeated, mocking him. “As if it exists.” Castor frowned. “What’s biting you? Of course it exists! We told you what Jason said. It belonged to a marvelous ram sent by the gods to rescue two royal children, Phrixus and Helle, from their murderous stepmother. A pity it wasn’t a perfect rescue. Phrixus reached Colchis safely, but his sister, Helle, fell off in mid-flight and drowned. Jason says that’s why the place where she plunged into the sea’s called the Hellespont. If that doesn’t prove the story’s true, what will satisfy you?” “Anyone can give a place a name,” I said, rolling my eyes. “When I get home, I’ll name that olive grove near our training ground Wolf Forest and see what happens. A ram with a fleece of real gold, a flying ram that could carry the children through the skies to Colchis, where there are dragons, oh yes, that’s believable! That’s worth risking your lives for on a voyage across the world! I’ll bet you don’t care if that story’s true or not. You just want an excuse to go off chasing fame!” Polydeuces set a honey cake on my already heaping plate. “There must be something waiting for us in Colchis, little sister,” he said gently. “Maybe not the gold fleece of a flying ram, but something. Why would Jason go to the trouble and expense of outfitting a ship for such a long, dangerous voyage otherwise?” He smiled wistfully and added, “You mustn’t worry about us. We’ll come back; we’ll be fine.” He was right: I was worried about what would become of my brothers on that great adventure. But more than that, I envied them with all my heart. So what if the goal of their expedition was the phantom fleece of a ram that never existed? The fascinating lands my brothers would see and the exploits they’d share would be real enough. And I’d be left behind. They’ll see marvels I can’t being to imagine, I thought. Maybe they’ll even see that old sailor’s five-legged monster! Meanwhile, I’m going to be trundled home in an oxcart so thickly hedged around by Spartan soldiers that all I’ll see during my journey will be spears. It’s not fair! I can handle a sword almost as well as either of them, and I know I’m better with a bow and arrow!

... sleeping with someone else and deceiving her husband, her poor husband, always so understanding and loving ... But only you know that this husband is unable to keep the loneliness at bay. Because something has been missing that even you don’t know how to pinpoint, because you love him and don’t want to lose him. But a shining knight promising adventure in distant lands is a much stronger lure than your desire for everything to remain as it is, even if at parties people stare at you and whisper among themselves that it would be better to tie a millstone around your neck and toss you overboard than let you be a terrible example. And to make matters worse, your husband quietly puts up with everything. He doesn’t complain or make a scene. He believes it will pass. You also know it will pass, but now it’s stronger than you. That’s the way things go for a month, two months, a year ... and everyone quietly puts up with it. But it’s not about asking permission. You look back and see that you also used to think like these people who have become your accusers. You also used to condemn those you knew were adulterers and imagined that if you lived somewhere else, the punishment would be stoning. Until the day it happens to you. Then you come up with a million excuses for your behavior and say you have the right to be happy, even for a little while, because dragon-slaying knights exist only in fairy tales. The real dragons never die, but you still have the right, just once in your life, to live out an adult fairy tale. Then comes the moment you tried to avoid at all costs, one that you had been putting off for so long: the moment you must decide to stay together or to separate forever. Along with this moment, however, comes the fear of making a mistake, no matter what decision you choose. And you hope someone will make the choice for you, throw you out of the house or bed, because it is impossible to go on like this. After all, we are no longer one person, we have become two or many, each completely different. And since you’ve never been through this before, you don’t know where it will end. The fact is that now you are facing a situation that will make one person suffer, or two, or many. But mostly it will destroy you, whatever your choice.

If you cannot fight a dragon (because they are too powerful or because they don’t exist anymore,) you can always create a simulacrum of one by chasing little lizards and yelling at them. It’s a bizarre thing to do, but if the public (and these performances are always public) is really terrified of these monsters, they may believe you are fighting a real Dragon, and they will bestow you the honors (or, at least, the attention) that Dragon-hunters deserve. In fact, even the lizards may end up believing they are dragons.   These

but one of the things that drew me to science fiction and then into fantasy was how it rewarded me for using my imagination. And it wasn’t just using my imagination to picture myself on a space station or riding a dragon;* it was using my imagination to visualize and believe in a world where the things that made me weird and awkward would actually make me cool and valuable.

Why would I faint?” she asked again, feeling fortified by the food. Now she just needed some water. “Draven, water,” Ran demanded. She bit the inside of her cheek. She’d never get used to that, feeling like her mind wasn’t her own anymore. At the same time, it was a little nice to get her needs met without asking. But could she really believe this man could read minds? Or that she’d somehow survived a tussle with a huge gang and ended up in an upscale apartment with two unbelievably gorgeous underwear models? No, she’d probably died and gone to heaven. Luckily, the chow mein tasted great there. “You aren’t dead,” said the blond figment of her imagination. “And I’m not a figment of your imagination.

It is perfectly all right for children to believe in fairy tales. Believing in dragons and other imaginary creatures may scare them a bit, but don't be overly concerned by this fact, and keep in mind that children with creative imagination are better off than children with dull imagination.

So, what exactly did Ignita tell you about me?” he hissed, sounding decidedly peevish, even to his own ears. “All good?” “Besides that you are her favourite great-nephew by any measure under the suns –” wielding the foot-wide ladle with aplomb, she poured one last bucketful of dragonwort soup, a noted restorative, down his throat with a pleasant gurgle “– she said that you are honourable, faithful, creative, artistic, misunderstood, a Dragon whose heart lives in his poetry, which you have sadly neglected to admit to me; you are finicky to a fault, severely short-sighted and lacking in firepower.” Gnarr-rum-blasted-death! he swore unhappily. “Nice list. Thanks for sharing.” Blithely, the mite added, “Ignita is also furious that you did not come to her earlier with your eye problems.” Blitz said something even ruder. “She even claimed that I’m more stubborn than you, which I believe was meant to be a compliment. Now, hold still. The eye drops are next.” “She specifically said, ‘Lacking in fire power?’ ” He sighed moodily, unable to break the sense of being utterly defeated. This was not a happy place for a Dragon. His wings drooped as if they weighed a tonne each, and his food stomach churned with nausea. “She didn’t use words such as disabled, worthless, fireless lizard, witless fool, cold-hearted undraconic worm, a Dragon who is no Dragon at all, or –” “Blitz, stop.” “So, why don’t you just run back to Daddy, little Princess? Go on. Go home. Why be dragged down in the maelstrom of a worthless loser?” “Blitz! Shut your stupid fangs.” “Whinging being so charismatic in a Dragon …” Grinding her teeth furiously, the girl who was climbing his neck leaned over to his left upper ear canal and hissed, “Do you know what I would go back to, you thumping great moron? Let me give you the salient highlights. Since I was old enough to walk and my mother passed, it has been impressed upon me that my sole purpose in life is to get married to the richest fool I can charm into my bed, no matter how despicable he might be. I will not inherit. That privilege is for my brothers. Instead, I am merely an entry on my kingdom’s asset register – a very fat entry. I am commanded to be charming, accomplished and perfectly presented at all times. I go to balls to catch wealthy Princes. Can you imagine what it is like to be valued for your dark, beautiful skin, and nothing else? To only ever be seen skin-deep – I mean … you know?” Blitz groaned softly. “So aye, I don’t really want to go home, in case that was somehow unclear. I would rather live with an enormously unreasonable, complaining, crabby, haughty chunk of a Dragon, because among your many admirable qualities and your damnably beautiful honour, you have one gift I value above all others. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?” He croaked, “Of course, aye … sort of … not a whole lot. Sorry.” Nonsensical, but true. Warm moisture dripped into his ear. Crying! Oh, by his wings, what had he done now? The Princess whispered, “You see me, and accept me, just as I am.

In all the world, there is only one woman I respect, and that is Tatrini, my mother. She spoke your name to me. She sees all.” “If you have no respect for me, then why honor the powers you imagine I have?” “My opinions can be changed,” he answered. “You are very much like your brother.” “We are twins. That is hardly surprising.” Bayard looked away from her, up at the soaring walls of the castle. “One day, I shall bring together all the elemental creatures: the sea dragons, the fire-drakes, the winged serpents of the air and the basilisks of the earth’s deepest chasms. Only then can power be brought into balance and the empire secured. I believe you and your brother have a place in this future that I see.

Valraven Palindrake’s presence flowed out into the room, hanging about him like a dark miasma. Varencienne imagined that he drew energy from the candle flames, made them grow dim. She could not believe he had once touched her so intimately; it was a stranger sitting there, his inky hair cascading over his shoulders, his hawk eyes deep and shadowed. Handsome, yes, but not classically. There was a brutality to his face, and his eyes were cold like a predator’s. Hardly a surprise; how many had been his prey? Near him, at the head of the table, sat a woman, who could only be his twin-undoubtedly Pharinet. She was leaning towards him and laughing conspiratorially, her strong dark arms lying with panther’s ease on the tabletop. Here was a black-haired enchantress who could have stepped from Varencienne’s own fantasies; a charismatic creature who shared her brother’s aloof mien.

think we become better people when we spend time imagining what other people are living through. Maybe it’s your job to make Lady Argent believable

Made you a pie!” Peacemaker chirped, smashing a pile of mud over Hope’s talons. “Yum yum yum yum,” he sang as he buried her claws, his wings fluttering in the breeze from the river. “Oh, delightful,” Hope said. She shot Moon a curious look. “I have no idea. I guess I always thought yes, probably. I mean —” She broke off, freed one of her talons from the mud, and picked up a cantaloupe from a nearby pile of fruit. “Imagine this is our world, right? According to NightWing calculations, our continent only covers about this much of it.” She spread her talons on one side of the melon, covering about a third of the space on the knobbly globe. “So it’s well within the realm of possibility that there’s more land around this side.” She turned the melon around. “And if there’s another continent, why wouldn’t there be more dragons? But it’s too far for any dragon to fly, we believe, so there’s no way to know for sure.” “Hmm,” Moon said. Her temples were starting to pulse again. “You had a vision, didn’t you?” Hope lowered her voice even more. “I know that look.” “Maybe,” Moon said. “But it’s … mysterious.” “As visions should be,” Hope said wryly. “Well, before you go looking for trouble, see if you can find anything on the Legend of the Hive.” “What’s that?” Moon asked. “An old story. I don’t remember it well, so read about it if you can. It might give you some ideas about these missing tribes.” “AHA!” Peacemaker suddenly declared. “Have an idea! Super good one! Going to take a NAP! Like a RAINWING! YAY!” He scampered off toward one of the hammocks. “You’ve only been up for an hour!” Hope protested. “Peacemaker! What about this mess? Excuse me,” she said to Moon, and chased after him.

RALPH When I was a child, my mother read me stories every night before bed, fantastic stories of noble knights and wizards with blue beards and dragons who lived in the earth, but she was careful with me. I had one of those imaginations, she said. Overactive, I guess. Are elves real, Ralph? she’d ask, closing the book and flattening one hand against its back cover. Are dragons? She’d peer into my eyes as if my secret belief might swim up in them, visible to her as color or texture. I knew what to tell her. The hill had told me what to say. I didn’t have to tell the truth in the yellow house; I had the hill for that. The hill would carve a special seat out of itself and let me nestle inside there to read and say and believe whatever I wanted. The hill told me which stories were true, and which were not true. The hill built canopies for me when it rained, fed me water when it was dry. The hill reached out and tripped the boys who followed me, jeering, after school, and punished the ones who broke my glasses, or who stole. The hill hid me when my father was angry, and later, when he became an empty sack, floating from chair to car to chair to bed to chair to car to chair, the hill chattered away in my ear. The hill has cared for me, I think. I have cared for the hill. But I am older now, you know. My parents are gone. There is a girl who works at the ice cream parlor with me, and when she talks, I can see her lips move.

Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry—that was Adolf Hitler’s technique. He had been applying it for thirteen years, ever since the accursed treaty had been signed, and now he was at the climax of his efforts. He and his lieutenants were holding hundreds of meetings every night, all over Germany, and it was like one meeting; the same speech, whether it was a newspaper print or cartoon or signboard or phonograph record. No matter whether it was true or not—for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn’t dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seen it, it was God’s truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it—shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night. If one person states it, it is nonsense, but if ten thousand join in it becomes an indictment, and when ten million join in it becomes history. The Jews kill Christian children and use their blood as a part of their religious ritual! You refuse to believe it? But it is a well-known fact; it is called “ritual murder.” The Jews are in a conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization and rule the whole world. It has all been completely exposed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the party has printed these, the Führer has guaranteed their authenticity, the great American millionaire Henry Ford has circulated them all over America. Everybody there knows that the charges are true, the whole world knows it—save only the Jew-lovers, the Jew-kissers, the filthy Jew-hirelings. Nieder mit den Juden!

You have nice manners for a thief and a liar,” said the dragon. “You seem familiar with my name, but I don’t seem to remember smelling you before. Who are you and where do you come from, may I ask?” “You may indeed! I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen.” “So I can well believe,” said Smaug, “but that is hardly your usual name.” “I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.” “Lovely titles!” sneered the dragon. “But lucky numbers don’t always come off.” “I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me.” “These don’t sound so creditable,” scoffed Smaug. “I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider,” went on Bilbo beginning to be pleased with his riddling. “That’s better!” said Smaug. “But don’t let your imagination run away with you!

No matter whether it was true or not—for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn’t dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seen it, it was God’s truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it—shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night. If one person states it, it is nonsense, but if ten thousand join in it becomes an indictment, and when ten million join in it becomes history. The Jews kill Christian children and use their blood as a part of their religious ritual! You refuse to believe it? But it is a well-known fact; it is called “ritual murder.” The Jews are in a conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization and rule the whole world. It has all been completely exposed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the party has printed these, the Führer has guaranteed their authenticity, the great American millionaire Henry Ford has circulated them all over America. Everybody there knows that the charges are true, the whole world knows it—save only the Jew-lovers, the Jew-kissers, the filthy Jew-hirelings. Nieder mit den Juden!

I'm a very old woman, Simon, and in the nature of things I don't have a great deal longer to live. But I've already so far outlived normal life expectancy, and I'm so fascinated by the extraordinary behavior of the world around me and the ordered behavior of the heavens above, that I don't dwell overmuch on death. And I'm still part of a simpler world than yours, a world in which it was easier to believe in God.' 'Why was it easier?' 'Despite Darwin and the later prophets of science, I grew up in a world in which my elders taught me that the planet earth was the chief purpose of the Creator, and that all the stars in the heavens were put there entirely for our benefit, and that humankind is God's only interest in the universe. It didn't take much imagination and courage then as it does now to believe that God has time to be present at a deathbed, to believe that human suffering does concern him, to believe that he loves every atom of his creation, no matter how insignificant.

Wow…” Peter couldn’t believe his eyes. “This must be the treasure. Look at all that Copper. Can you imagine how much it’s worth?