The world was full of dangers now that she was pregnant: mercury in tuna, hot tubs, beer, secondhand smoke, over-the-counter medicine. Not to mention crazy baby-abducting fairy kings.

Storytelling wasn't about making things up. It was more like inviting the stories to come through her, let themselves be told.

All great heroes have a flaw. It's one of the things that makes them heroes.

What if things happened to you—special, magic things—because you’d been preparing for them?

I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they'll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident.