The award-winning stories in this collection range from the everyday to the outer limits of experience, where the quantum uncertainties of space and time are resolved only in the depths of the human heart. Featuring such objects of the imagination as a starship that sails on the wings of song, musical instruments that are played at funerals only, and orbiting arks designed to save a doomed humanity. Astonishing in their diversity and power, these stories exhibit both the artistry of a major writer at the height of her powers and the humanity of a mature artist confronting the world with her gift of wonder still intact. 'I count myself lucky to have been alive and reading when Ursula K. Le Guin was writing' Neil Gaiman