City of Twelve Towers

"Truly girl, you have never hear of the City of Twelve Towers?" Bartholomew stroked his fur as though it were a beard and peered at me. "Seat of the Papess, She Who Was Born in the Purple, the Anointed City which shines like a summer star?"

"Never!" I cried breathlessly.

"Very well," he chuckled, straightening his back like a teacher about to give lessons, "your kind mother permitting, I shall tell you of the Dreaming City, enclosed in her seraphic spheres..."

-In the Night Garden, Catherynne Valente

http://www.catherynnemvalente.com/