RampionRAMPION IS THE flavor of yesterdays never known, only told to her, sharp and sweet as stolen love—or at least as roots and leaves for a summer salad, stolen for love—or not. She does not know for certain, because she isn’t certain she understands love, as the poets in one of her cherished books in her tiny library would have it.
It does not seem the same as the love of her mother, who is not her mother, but is at the same time father and mother and sister and brother, friend and jailer, tyrant and teacher, and all, all of her world, which must fit into the space of a tall but narrow tower, because the world outside, she has been taught, is not sweet, but sour and bitter and shocking as sudden salt on the tongue.
She cannot say—although she does say, as often as gratitude and fear
