Water has its docile moments, the earth herself may be tampered with, and an incantation may call man or any of his possessions to attention.

But space is too great a thing, space is the inconceivable Hand, holding aloft this fragile delusion that is our world.

There is no power that can mock at space, there is no enchantment that is not lost between us and the moon, and all magic people know--and tremble to know--that in a breath, between one second and another, that Hand may close, and the shell of time first crack and then be crushed, and magic be one with nothingness and death and all other delusions.

This is why magic, which treats the other elements as its servants, bows before space, and has to call such a purely independent contrivance as a broomstick to its help in the matter of air-travel.
The witches faced each other on their little unstable sanctuary in the kingdom of space.

Our witch felt secretly sick, and at the same time she tore fear from her mind, and knew that death was but an imperfectly kept secret, and that not an evil one.