A word from Demeter Serraffield.

I am not a lifeguard.  

The sea is deep and stormy and treacherous.

I was born in that water.  I can still feel its hands on me now.  I knew nothing but that water, that desperate scrabbling struggle for life against everything.  I could not conceive that there was any world apart from the waves, beating and beating against me.  It is a miracle that I survived, that I clawed my way out of that water.  It is a miracle of my own making, but that makes it no less miraculous.

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I am safe from that sea, standing on the dry land, but I can see the sea before me, dark and churning.

If I go too deeply into that water, I will drown.

I am not a lifeguard.

I cannot swim out after others who I see floundering in the waves. 

But I can wade out.

I can wade out, as far as I dare, and hold out my hands to help drag you out of the stormy sea.

This book is my hands.  My words are my hands.  Hold fast to them.  There is a way out of the sea.