“Gareth remembers too the time he tried to explain to her about dandelions, which she loved—perhaps because of the magic of their changing too. Her love for things which weren't what you thought they were. She loved to play with dandelion clocks ever since hi mother had shown her how to tell the time with them, this spurious decision as to time complying with Emmy's way of seeing the world.

She had spent a long time picking dandelion flowers one day and they were proudly laid out on her bedroom floor. When they hadn't changed to clocks by the next morning she thought perhaps it was because she kept peeking and magic only happened when you didn't look. Gareth tried to explain that they had to be alive to turn to clocks. 'But they are dead when they are clocks,' she said. 'Well, they've changed' he tried to say. 'They have to be alive to change. The flower has to die to change into seed. They die to make more dandelions.' One dandelion dying makes a thousand new flowers. 'People don't do that, do they?' she said. 'No,' said Gareth. 'People don't do that.”