The boyâs eyes had always seemed darkâ but now they had become quite black. Without wishing it, Kitty found herself staring into them: it was like looking at a clear night skyâ all black and cold and infinite, with tiny lights glinting, unreachable and far away⊠. It was terrible, yet beautiful; she was drawn to it as a child to a window.  (Kitty, on Bartimaeus)
And her eyes were as bright as a birdâs; they shone with the light of what sheâd seen. Â I regarded her with mingled reverence and compassion. Â (Bartimaeus, on Kitty)
At the sound, a fierce exultation suddenly flowered in Kitty. Â Far from the fear she should have felt, she knew only defiance and a kind of joy. Â Since the first numb shock of Mandrakeâs appearance she had been quite calmâ calm and curiously revived. Â For three long years she had led a solitary, cautious life. Â Now, with all its prospects shattered, she knew she could not have endured that life a moment longer. Â She wanted action, regardless of the consequence. Â Her old recklessness came flooding back to her upon a tide of frustrated rage.
She turned. Â Mandrake stood before herâ Mandrake, one of the Council. Â It was like an answer to her prayers. Â (Kitty, on Nathaniel)
Nathaniel was quite calm. Â So black was the outlook now that fear had become redundant. Â The worst was upon them, death was all but inevitable, yet he faced it without anxiety. Â His final conversation with Kitty had lit a fire within himâ to Nathaniel it seemed she had burned away all his weaker emotions. Â His head still spun with her revelations of Bartimaeusâs past, but it was her own example that inspired him as the crisis approached. Â It scarcely mattered that she had pinned her hopes on Ptolemyâs Gateâ a mirage, a phantom, a fairy tale that all sensible magicians had long ignoredâ it was the look in her eyes as she talked of it that fascinated him. Â Excitement had shone there, and wonder, and beliefâ sensations that Nathaniel had almost forgotten. Â Now, at the last, she had reminded him, and he was grateful. Â He felt cleansed, almost eager for what was to come. Â (Nathaniel, on Kitty)
It was like being refreshed and rebuilt and reborn, all at the same time.
And for a moment there I marveledâ it was like stepping into a great buildingâ some holy mosque or shrineâ and glimpsing its perfection; something airy built of clay. Â (Bartimaeus, on Nathaniel)
It was like an electric shock, a surge that threatened to carry him off the floor, to deny gravity altogetherâ all his weight and weariness fell away. Â He burned with life. Â With sudden clarity (his mind seemed sharper, newly whetted), he perceived the djinniâs natureâ understood its ceaseless urge for movement, change, and transformation. Â He sensed how harsh a fate it was for this nature to be forcibly restricted, to be pent up among earthly, solid things. Â He glimpsed (only blearily at first) an endless succession of images, memories, imprints, stretching back into a terrible abyss of time. (Nathaniel, on Bartimaeus)

















