“What would you here, unhappy mortal, and for what cause have you left your own land to enter this, which is forbidden to such as you? Can you show reason why my power should not be laid on you in heavy punishment for your insolence and folly?”
“Bravest heart will carry on when sleep is death, and hope is gone. Rowan doesn’t believe he has a brave heart. But when the river that supports his village of Rin runs dry, he must join a dangerous journey to its source in the forbidden Mountain.”
“Another thing you won’t find is radios. There were forbidden at the beginning of the occupation. And, of course, television hasn’t been invented yet. The occupying army wants to take whatever is left in the empty houses for itself, and so it leaves the wall standing the keeps the guards stationed at the check posts.”
“Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.”
“Man Alan,” said I, “ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. What did he next?”
” ‘And that’s a good observe, David,’ said Alan. ‘Troth and indeed, they will do him no harm; the more’s the pity! And barring that about Christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or I would be nae Christian), I am much of your mind.’
‘Opinion here or opinion there,’ said I, ‘it’s a kent thing that Christianity forbids revenge.’
‘Ay’ said he, ‘it’s well seen it was a Campbell taught ye! It would be a convenient world for them and their sort, if there was no such a thing as a lad and a gun behind a heather bush!’ ”
No one goes near the place. It stands in the shadows...dark, crumbling, and forbidding. At night, smoke curls from beneath its doors, and an old man toils in secret.
“You may go anywhere you wish in the castle, except where the doors are locked, where of course you will not wish to go. There is reason that all things are as they are, and did you see with my eyes and know with my knowledge, you would perhaps better understand.”
“The harm of it is, that her father would hate me if he found I suffered her to enter your house; and I am convinced you have a bad design in encouraging her to do so,”
“The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.