spindle's end -- robin mckinley

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like slightly sticky plaster-dust. (Housecleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. (It didn't have to be anything scary or unpleasant, like snakes or slime, especially in a cheerful household — magic tended to reflect the atmosphere of the place in which it found itself — but if you want a cup of tea, a cup of lavender-and-gold pansies or ivory thimbles is unsatisfactory. And while the pansies — put dry in a vase — would probably last a day, looking like ordinary pansies, before they went greyish-dun and collapsed into magic dust, something like an ivory thimble would begin to smudge and crumble as soon as you picked it up.)
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http://www.robinmckinley.com/Excerpts/Spindle01.html





i gave this book to one of my neices (age 10) -- she's about halfway through with it. i was flipping around in it while she was doing homework, and by chance fell on to one of my favorite bits...


spoilers:

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