"Below stretched a panorama of sculpted hills crowned by toy houses, cradling the aging skyscrapers that rose from the low ground beside the bay. The city was a mosaic of jewel-like colors set in green, veined by streams and dotted with gleaming ponds and pools. Seen from above, blocks of old row houses defined streets that no longer existed. Instead, bicycles and electric carts and the occasional horse moved through a labyrinth of narrow walkways that snaked and twined through the green" (Chapter 1, pg. 1.)

"If we have courage / We can be healers; / Like the sun, / We shall rise" (Chapter 1, pg. 24.)

"The cord twisted in her hands. It had become a snake, a pair of snakes, whose heads facing each other fused into the face of La Vieja/Snake Woman/Tiamat/Hecate/Coatlicue, all with the same challenging pair of eyes: not cold but implacable. The eyes were strands...