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Inn Quotes

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Inn Quotes

“He ordered oxtail soup and enjoyed it heartily. Then he glanced at the menu for the fish, ordered a haddock and, seized with a sudden pang of hunger at the sight of so many people relishing their food, he ate some roast beef and drank two pints of ale, stimulated by the flavor of a cow-shed which this fine, pale beer exhaled. His hunger persisted. He lingered over a piece of blue Stilton cheese, made quick work of a rhubarb tart, and to vary his drinking, quenched his thirst with porter, that dark beer which smells of Spanish licorice but which does not have its sugary taste. He breathed deeply. Not for years had he eaten and drunk so much. This change of habit, this choice of unexpected and solid food had awakened his stomach from its long sleep. He leaned back in his chair, lit a cigarette and prepared to sip his coffee into which gin had been poured.”

“She took me through the parlors and the kitchen, and I marveled at the beautiful ceiling molding, the wooden banisters up to the second floor, the crystalline chandelier in the dining room. The furniture was tasteful and sparse, plastic over the fainting couches and coffee tables and wingback chairs, so that as they stood in stasis they wouldn't collect dust. The second floor was just as gorgeous, the rooms all themed in different flowers. The yellow daffodil room was my favorite. The wall with the headboard had an entire mural of huge daffodils blooming across it. Junie's handiwork, I was sure. Just like the mural on the side of Frank's Auto Shop, and the logo for the Grumpy Possum, and even Gail's bar scene. She showed me all the different rooms, each with a different flower theme and a different focal color--- lavender and coral and sage. The pink ones--- roses--- matched Junie's pastel hair.”

“And then we came to a stop in front of a large yellow Victorian house that sat, so stately, between two brick buildings, like a misplaced Lego piece, overgrown with ivy and bluebells and honeysuckle. The Daffodil Inn looked exactly how I'd imagined. The bed-and-breakfast was fresh and bright, the dentils all painted across the edging on the roof, the corbels replaced, the sawn spandrils and turned spandrils all given proper attention. The bay window was set with a stained-glass daffodil, the same one that encrusted the window in the front door. Around the inn, encasing it like a lovely cage, was a wrought-iron fence overgrown with ivy and honeysuckle that bled into the rose garden that surrounded the house.”

“The bed-and-breakfast is a nexus," Jack said. "A nexus of realms." She absorbed that. "And what exactly does that mean?" He shrugged. "Lots of doors to other worlds." Again, for an instant, Calisa couldn't breathe. She'd been right--- there really were other worlds through those doorways. Actual other worlds. I've been to other worlds! That was why the sun had felt and looked so strange and why the smells from the night market had been so unfamiliar. There wasn't anything like it on Earth, because she hadn't been on Earth. She'd known it, but she hadn't known it. A nexus of realms. "It's rare, a place like this," Jack said. "That's why it's so special. It's a place where people can come to escape. A real getaway, for whoever needs it." "So the guests... they're actually from other worlds? Realms, you said?" "I think of them as 'realms' because, as my dad explained to me, they're not other planets. At least not other planets in our solar system. It's not like Kendra is from Venus, and Mulligan is from the moon or even Alpha Centauri. They're just from other places. Faraway places. Like pocket dimensions, if you want to sound all sci-fi about it”

“An inn, of course, was a place you came to at night (not at three o'clock in the afternoon), preferably a rainy night—wind, too, if it could be managed; and it should be situated on a moor (“bleak,” Kate knew, was the adjective here). And there should be scullions; mine host should be gravy-stained and broad in the beam with a tousled apron pulled across his stomach; and there should be a tall, dark stranger—the one who speaks to nobody—warming thin hands before the fire. And the fire should be a fire—crackling and blazing, laid with an impossible size log and roaring its great heart out up the chimney. And there should be some sort of cauldron, Kate felt, somewhere about—and, perhaps, a couple of mastiffs thrown in for good measure.”

“For me life is an inn where I must stay until the carriage from the abyss calls to collect me [...] I could consider this inn to be a prison, since I’m compelled to stay here; I could consider it a kind of club, because I meet other people here. However, unlike others, I am neither impatient nor sociable. I leave those who chatter in the living room, from where the cosy sound of music and voices reaches me. I sit at the door and fill my eyes and ears with the colours and sounds of the landscape and slowly, just for myself, I sing vague songs that I compose while I wait. Night will fall on all of us and the carriage will arrive. I enjoy the breeze given to me and the soul given to me to enjoy it and I ask no more questions, look no further. If what I leave written in the visitors’ book is one day read by others and entertains them on their journey, that’s fine. If no one reads it or is entertained by it, that’s fine too.”

“What did this place used to be like?" Mulligan answered first. "Glorious, serene, vivacious. Ah, I do remember those days fondly. Every room full. Lively chatter over breakfast. Strolls through the garden and the surrounding hills. I have heard it claimed that the High King of the Goblins himself once chose to stay here in disguise, and that Auntie Zee simultaneously hosted the famed enchantress Isatre and her mortal enemy, the ruler of the Elind, without a single incident. They sipped juice at breakfast together and spoke of spring flowers, utterly unaware of who the other was." "That was a long time ago," Kendra said, clipped. "The glory days," Mulligan agreed. Calisa asked the more important question. "What do you think it would take to bring the inn's old guests back?" "Cake is a start," Kendra said, piercing another bite of the chocolate cake with raspberry jam.”

“I am not some minor jellyfish. I am the sea witch for the Eastern Seaboard, and I cannot be absent for an extended length of time. Auntie Zee understands this. If I am unable to return within twenty-four hours, there will be havoc.” Reaching room number three, Kendra flung open the door. Calisa was struck by the stench of seaweed. Sea witch, did she say? What was a sea witch? Eastern Seaboard? As in the Atlantic Ocean?”