memorable moments
from
Storm Thief by Chris Wooding
page 3:
The seabird slid through the black sky beneath the blanket of cloud, its feathers ruffling fitfully as it was buffeted by the changing winds.
The ocean was the colour of slate. It bulged and warped in angry swells. Above, spectral light flickered within the thunderheads, and the air boomed. A steady rain fell, slipping of the seabird's oiled feathers in droplets.
It was alone. Somewhere on its solitary journey towards the breeding grounds, it had lost its way. A magnetic storm was stroking the upper atmosphere, confusing its instinctive sense of navigation. The oppressive cloud hadn't dispersed for three days now, so the bird couldn't even use the sun as a guide. It glided over an endless expanse of steely waves, completely without direction.
page 7:
"So sad, Moa thought, distracted for a moment. So sad that there was once a time when the world was full of wonders like that. So sad that we've forgotten how to make them."
page 8:
"There were voices below. Muttered phrases suddenly accelerated into high-pitched, squeaky chatter and then returned to a drone, as if someone had recorded a voice and was randomly speeding it up and slowing it down, rearranging the syllables in different orders, playing them in reverse. The warped speech of the Mozgas."
page 33:
"Last night, during the storm, a seabird had flown into his room. He had been standing by the window in his little corner when it had flown in and knocked itself dead on one of the pipes.
The event had made him sad. The seabird wasn't ugly. At least, he didn't think so. Even dead it was beautiful. Its feathers were sleek and soft, and he liked the feel of it on his skin.
page 37:
"Moa slept a lot. She preferred being asleep to being awake, for she always had the most vivid dreams: dreams of flying or of strange and mystical lands, dreams of adventure and romance. Inside her cocoon of blankets and furs, she could be elsewhere, and in her imagination she lived a life of wonders.
page 43:
"Rail shrugged, as if he could make it less important by acting like he didn't care."
page 44:
""Things will change on their own, Rail. Things always change if you wait long enough."
He tapped the side of his respirator muzzle. "I'll make my own luck," he said bitterly.
page 47:
"She looked up at him and gave him a heartbreaking smile of pure and innocent happiness. She never understood why Rail did these little things for her, these little gestures of companionship but she loved him for it. Not in the way a girl was supposed to love a boy - at least, she didn't think so - but because it made her feel wanted. Neither Rail nor Moa had anybody to care about them but each other."
page 62:
"Probability storms threw up all kinds of weirdness, and occasionally a person might be seen with three arms, or town heads, or a coat of scares, or a forked tail. It could happen to anyone, at any time. That was why people feared them: because it reminded them how fragile their happiness was, how easily their world could be turned inside out. That was why people reacted with disgust and hate.
page 64:
"If he ran, where would he run to? He was afraid of the city, and it was all around him."
page 77:
"He never could understand why she still believed in the cause that her father had died for. Maybe it was only that she didn't want his death to be in vain, that she wanted to prove him right. Or maybe it was just because she needed something to believe."
"She looked down into the water again. "Sometimes I just want to throw myself in," she murmured "To let it carry me out of the vents, into the sea, and over the horizon. Maybe I'd wash up on another shore."
"You'd wash up dead," Rail said impatiently."
page 81:
""Moa, he's baggage," Rail said.
"Well, now he's our baggage," she replied firmly.
Rail threw his hands up in frustration and stalked away. He knew she would not be dissuaded now. What burned him about Moa was that she was usually so passive, but she clung so tightly to her dreams, that she sometimes lost her grip on reality. It was a bird, for freck's sake. Who cared about a bird?
But it was what she wanted, and in the end he could never say no to her.
page 82:
"Sometimes he wished he hadn't ever gotten mixed up with this girl. But he never wished it for long."
page 85:
""I don't like it," she said. "It's such a risk."
Rail peered over the parapet again, searching for another glimpse of their pursuers. "Sometimes you have to take a risk, Moa," he threw back at her.
page 105:
"Had Moa and Rail not been wearing visors, they would have seen only men and women and children, completely unremarkable except for their almost supernatural calm. They went about their business without ever saying a word, their eyes glazed. Like sleepwalkers.
But with the visors on, it was possible to see them for what they really were. They seethed aether. Greenish-yellow energy, fine as vapour, wisped from their bodies or trailed behind them as they moved. Their eyes and mouths and nostrils were like tiny torches, blazing with blinding energy. It was as if their bodies were merely shells to contain the spectral glow. When they moved their heads, fizzing particles of aether detached from them and floated away, slowly fading into nothingness."
page 118:
"The streamer slid from the building behind, a vast swathe of turquoise, and passed through them.
The moment was too fast to really feel it. It was swift as an eyeblink, a dislocation, where everything seemed suddenly wrong and they were a fraction out of step with the pulse of the universe."
page 120:
"They were breathtaking. It would be easy to be mesmerized by these beings of sparkling energy as they moved with lazy elegance in the air... Though they represented a fate worse than death to humans, Moa couldn't help being awed by them."
page 126:
"... and as Rail watched, several of the houses simply disappeared, fading like a dream upon waking."
page 146:
"But the Fulcrum inspired its own special awe and dread. Inside it, so rumour held, was the great machine that controlled Orokos, that generated the probability storms and created the Revenants. They called it the Chaos Engine."
page 158:
"A tough upbringing had left him with one rule which he lived by: to think of himself above all others. You had to be selfish to survive."
page 162:
"This whole place was built on a foolish dream, Rail thought. No wonder Moa had been so keen to bring Vago here. He wonder she was so keen to come home. She lived for dreams."
page 166:
"... I wandered for a while. I went east to find my uncle, but he had long gone and nobody knew where. Instead I found Rail. Or rather, Rail found me."
page 167:
"..."Thank you." It seemed a pitifully inadequate response, but Moa was too tired and drained to offer anything else."
page 170:
"... - but she projected a presence that made her seem much larger than she was. She had an absolute and unquestionable confidence that other people responded to."
page 172:
"These people were just like everyone else he had met. They viewed him with mistrust at best, horror at worse. They thought of him as a dangerous animal, something less than them. Only Moa treated him as an equal."
page 180:
"... It comes down to a matter of belief. It's a leap of faith. We can stay here with our dreams just out of reach, or we can risk everything to reach them."
"Nothing's worth risking that many lives for," Rail said.
"Some things are," Kittiwake replied."
page 182:
""I want to go with her," Moa said the next day. It was so depressingly inevitable that Rail didn't bother to even respond at first."
page 185:
""... But I'm not going to be condemned here. There's more than this, Rail! And I will find it if it kills me."
"That," replied Rail quietly, "is exactly what it's going to do.""
page 186:
"None of it interested him. He barely felt the faint warmth of the sun on his skin. The faces he was were only marks to him, potential victims for pickpocketing or mugging. Even the beautiful ones, the girls with the smooth face flashing joyous smiles as they laughed and talked - even they didn't do a thing to stir him. Finch didn't have a soul that was capable of appreciating the finer emotions."
page 200:
""You seem older, Vago. Not as young as you once were," he said absently.
"It's hard to feel like a child when you see what the world has become," Vago replied.
"That's why we shelter our children as best we can," Cretch replied. "The contentment of ignorance is all too brief.""
page 208:
"Recollection as slipping towards him like a landslide, gathering momentum as it neared."
page 210:
"Then he hadn't always been this way. He had been human once, and he'd had a face and a name. Now he was a monster."
page 214:
"He sagged. "Why do you treat us this way?"
Bane laughed in surprise. "What do you mean?"
"The ghettoes, the disappearances, everything. What you do to the ghetto-folk. Why?"
Bane's laughter faded. "Because you ruin our world," he said.
Vago met his eye, and he saw that he was perfectly serious.
"We all have dreams," Bane said. "Mine is a world of order, where everything has its place and everything works, where people can walk the streets in safety. A society of citizens who are happy because they are secure and because their lives are overseen by us." His face soured, and Vago could hear the disgust and hatred in his voice as he went on. "All I want is a society of good, healthy people with enough food to go round and enough jobs to satisfy everyone. But there are always you filthy ghetto-folk getting in my way. The poor and the weak and those with criminal genes who breed more criminals. The sick and the useless, taking up our food and our space. Don't you realise how small Orokos is, compared to its population? Already our hydroponics farms are stretched to the limit. Our fish stocks deplete daily; even the sea is not inexhaustible. And with the Revenants appearing all over the city we can never be certain of any kind of steady supply. You people are leeches, draining out society dry, and we can't allow that any longer."
Vago regarded him silently.
'But we can't just kill you. The citizens won't allow genocide. So we do it quietly. We take you away a few at a time, and then we shut down one ghetto and move all the inhabitants to another. One day Orokos will wake up and you just own't be there anymore. There'll be no poor, no sick, no criminals. Everyone will be happy and content. Then once we've defeated the Revenants, there'll be a new age. An age of peace and order and perfection, like there was in the days before the Fade."
There was one last thing Vago wanted to know. "What would have happened to me if I hadn't volunteered to this? What happens to all those who are taken away?"
Bane's face was stern, rigid with conviction. There wasn't a flicker of doubt there in the righteousness of his cause. "That's the most elegant part. As I said, we don't have enough food to go round, and wasting it on ghetto-folk is foolish. The nutrient gruel that we feed them to stop them from starving and rioting . . . it's made from the people we take away."
Vago lowered his head, and his features fell into shadow. The horror of it was too much. All of it was too much."
page 220:
"Now that she felt herself and Rail splitting apart, she realized how tightly they had been entwined."
page 221:
"Finch couldn't be everywhere, it was true. But it was amazing what the promise of a little money could do."
page 229:
"... We got into this together." He embraced her gently. "I'd rather be here with you than anywhere else."
page 230:
"It was a sombre place where echoes seemed hollow, and the atmosphere was that of soulless and clinical efficiency."
page 231:
"He felt flattened and unable to pick himself up."
page 233:
"They lay together in each other's arms, and Moa, exhausted, had fallen instantly asleep. Rail, however, had been kept awake by the warmth of her body, the feel of her bony frame, and the faint pressure of her breath against his throat. How casual she could be sometimes, not knowing what she was doing to him by letting him hold her this way.
For a time, he resented her for it. He had lost all hope, and he had accepted that. But now she had reminded him of something he had all but forgotten about these past days: that he had one thing worth clinging to and fighting for, and she lay in his arms that night."
page 234:
"On the wall was a bronze plaque, on which was engraved the legend WE WILL MAKE THIS WORLD RIGHT AGAIN - BENEJES FRINE. It was a quote from someone neither Rail nor Moa had ever heard of."
page 236:
"He's a tricky one; I admire that."
page 238:
""How do you know?" said Moa, her voice quiet with the edge of hysterical anger. "How do you know that?""
page 240:
"You always wanted to change the world, Rail, he said to himself. Now's your chance."
page 241:
"...Perhaps they are sailing to nowhere, perhaps not. But I'm not going to let some ragged group of outcasts become the inspiration for a generation of rebels."
page 242:
"... Bane sat at his desk and dreamed of perfection."
"Tomorrow they would change the world. There were preparations to be made."
page 247:
"Rail had been right. She was too softhearted. She was too willing to believe the best of people, when it made more sense to assume everyone was a potential enemy until they proved otherwise. But when she said this to Rail, he surprised her by his response.
"No," he said softly. "Don't you ever think that. That's what I think, and I wish I didn't. You have faith in people, Moa; you're willing to give. I can't do that, but being with you when you do it makes my life a little more worth living.""
page 274:
"These were the colours of raw probability energy, the colours of change."
page 277:
"... and suddenly he understood her, if only a little. He caught a glimpse of her dreams, the mystical place where joy and awe lived, the invisible land that she visited when she slept. It was this feelings he was after when she talked of the new world over the horizon."
page 279:
""... We believed that a society needed law and order, and the stricter the law, the greater the order. We liked that.""
page 288:
"Finch gave a mocking salute and a rotten grin. Then he was gone, slipping through the soldiers who were crammed onto the gantry around the spire of the Chaos Engine."
page 295:
"Her faith in people was perhaps the only weapon they had left now."
page 296:
"Moa was trying shake her head, but she couldn't move it within his grip. "I don't want to die," she whispered. "Don't do this. Please don't do this. I want to live."
I want to live. It was the naked simplicity of it that broke Vago's heart and cracked open the incomplete Protectorate conditioning that had fogged his mind. Suddenly the girl he was looking down on wasn't some filthy ghetto rat but Moa, a girl with a name, and she had been his friend once. She had been the only person in the world who had shown him kindness, when everyone else had treated him with hatred and mistrust. She had believed in him until the very end. And for all that, he had rewarded her with suffering."
page 306:
""You tow are the luckiest kids I've ever had the misfortune to meet," she declared.
"You make your own luck," said Rail, smiling with his eyes. "Nobody ever tell you that?""
page 309:
"Perhaps they were happy now. Perhaps they never made it. He couldn't say. This was limbo: a place of oblivion, a place where nothing was determined or certain. He liked it here."
page 310:
"In the end, it was all down to chance; but he knew one thing above all else.
Anything was possible."
