The Stories You Come Back To meme

Between the two of them, pathdancer and rocket_jockey have got me all riled up and determined to do this. Blame them!


First Lines from the Stories I Come Back To.
Guess them if you can!

1. Far away, where the swallows fly when our winter comes on, lived a King who had eleven sons, and one daughter named Eliza. The eleven brothers were Princes, and each went to school with a star on his breast and his sword by his side.

pathdancer correctly identified Hans Christian Anderson's "The Wild Swans"

2. It was just past midday, not long before the third summons to prayer, that Ammar ibn Khairan passed through the Gate of the Bells and entered the palace of Al-Fontina in Silvenes to kill the last of the khalifs of Al-Rassan.

_storyteller_ recognized one of my very favorite books The Lions of Al-Rassan, by Guy Gavriel Kay.

3. The Old Republic was the Republic of legend, greater than distance or time. No need to note where it was or whence it came, only to know that. . . it was the Republic.

athenian_abroad recognized Alan Dean Foster's novelization of Star Wars, even though I omitted the actual first sentence: "Another time, another galaxy."

4. After the war was over, they bound him under the Mountain. And so that there might be warning if he moved to escape, they crafted then, with magic and with art, the five wardstones, last creation and the finest of Ginserat.

_storyteller_ also recognized the other Guy Gavriel Kay book: The Summer Tree.

5. The story of Terisa and Geraden began very much like a fable. She was a princess in a high tower. He was a hero come to rescue her. She was the only daughter of wealth and power. He was the seventh son of the lord of the seventh Care.

_storyteller_'s lady Jess recognized Stephen R. Donaldson's The Mirror of Her Dreams.

6. From the Great Above she opened her ear to the Great Below.
From the Great Above, the goddess opened her ear to the Great Below.

saskia139 recognized Wokstein and Kramer's translation of "The Descent of Inanna".

7. Mine is a story that must be told. And a story that must be heard, because those who presume to tell it do not know it. Or want to.

kateri_thinks gets extra points for recognizing The Moon Under Her Feet because she just received it from Amazon after taking my recommendation and ordering it!

8. Damn it, I don't have time to lie here. Whatever comes, there's more for a king to do than squat like a mushroom and maunder on eternity.
Dignity be damned, it's a tedious bore.

9. There was a Master come unto earth, born in the holy land of Indiana, raised in the mystical hills east of Fort Wayne.

rocket_jockey got Illusions, by Richard Bach.

10. The Emperor was two hundred years old, and even with the rejuvenation chamber few lived more than two hundred years in Atlantis.

saskia139, the only other person I know who has actually read this book, recognized The Romance of Atlantis.

11. Having harbored two sons in the waters of her womb, my mother considers herself something of an authority on human foetuses.

12. My lifelong involvement with Mrs. Dempster began at 5:58 o'clock p.m. on 27 December 1908, at which time I was ten years and seven months old.

athenian_abroad also correctly identified Fifth Business, by Robertson Davies.