A few of my favorite passages

This month I've been participating in #ShareWords, a Twitter game (is that what they're called?) for writers. Each day has a prompt for something to quote from your writing, whether it's a finished work or a work in progress.

Some writers tweet an image of their quotes, with nice backgrounds, but I'm not getting into that at this point. Meredith+technology+visual appeal=spending way too much time. So I tweet whatever I can fit into 140 characters. Usually that means choosing passages just by their length, and sometimes it also means condensing them by rewording or removing phrases.

Today I'd like to share some of my favorite passages from Beyond the Mountain. I won't include all my MOST favorites, whether because of length or spoilers, but here are 10 quotes I can share.

Yania didn’t know she would be chased off her own palace roof that morning.

“Oh, it’s more embarrassment than pain, though I think he’s actually proud of being the first one shot down. Said something about the greatest champions always being the first target.”

“It sounds like he’s fine. We’ll visit him after we eat.”
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“Don’t expect him to talk much. If he mentions songs and heroes again I’m sedating him.”

Morning elbowed its way through the window onto Ket’s face. It was week’s end, their last day in the village. She pulled her sova over her eyes and ignored the smell of breakfast and smoke outside.

“Go away,” she commanded.

Far beyond the point where all colors hazed blue, the purple horizon rose into a shape Ket would know anywhere, its peak allegedly so cold and strange, water froze hard and colored the whole surface white.

“That’s the Midnight Mountain!”

She looked at her fist. Fist? Did she think she could bodily fight her way past two men and out of trouble? She relaxed her hands and shrugged in way that, she hoped, said, Just a commoner here, the non-fugitive kind.

Shek rotated his left arm toward her, and nodded toward the old scars on it. “Ma stuffed a shirt into my mouth to give me something to bite down on, but Da still had to sit on my waist and pin my neck down just to keep me on the ground.”

Of the neighborhoods along the north-south boundary, Ket didn’t know quite where one became the next, but with each sight the ship passed, she knew what would come next. The bend of fishing wharfs piled high with the catches the fishermen brought for their partners to sell, the storehouses with raised floors over beer cellars. The ship slipped through the water, counting the passing buildings, while the buildings lazed and counted the passing ships

“And if I were able to reclaim what was mine? I can’t undo what he’s already done.”

“But you could prevent what else he might do.”

Shek ran to the house from wherever he’d been outside, and stopped in the doorway. When he saw Ket he gripped the frame like he’d had the wind knocked from him. They stood facing each other. After a moment he said, “What in the valley were you thinking?”

Ket thought a string of words she’d never say aloud, in case her mama could still hear the living.