A woman swung toward us out of the sky on a knotted rope, a pistol in her free hand. The ocean roared around us; the hull sunk away from underneath us; my mother's grip on me shifted and tightened around my waist. "Hold tight," our rescuer said to us.

Diana Wynne Jones, who died last month, was brave. I don't know if she was brave in person, although tributes from friends, including Neil Gaiman and Emma Bull , indicate that she probably was. But she was certainly a brave writer.

The half-masked man asserts that owls are luck.