The Ill-Born Prince

 I've got a new fantasy novel!  It's called "The Ill-Born Prince" (that's ILL-BORN, not three-times born or anything like that).  It's about a prince who has discovered he's actually not the son of the king but rather of the queen and the Royal Wizard, and he ends up off studying at the wizards' school.  (I was originally thinking of calling it The Bastard Prince but decided that would be too shocking.)

 

For those keeping score at home, it's number 4 in the "Starlight Raven" series.  That series is also known as the "Yurt, the Next Generation" series.  Here's the cover, and here's the link on Amazon.  It's available both as an ebook on all major ebook platforms and as a paperback (it can be ordered from any bookstore as well as bought directly from Amazon).

Like all the books in the Starlight Raven series, it's narrated by Antonia, daughter of the Master of the wizards' school, and the first young woman ever accepted to study there.  The male wizards are still not totally convinced that a woman magic-worker might not be some kind of dangerous witch, so Antonia has plenty of issues to deal with, not least her relationship to Walther, the ill-born prince.

I've tried to write it so people could enjoy the book without having read any of the others in the series, but you may pick up a few continuing sub-plots from earlier if you have.

Here's the beginning to whet your appetite.

PART ONE - Magical Problems

“Every spell in this book has an error in it,” the teacher told us.  “Something is left out, or steps are transposed, or the words in the Hidden Language are wrong.”
Our class of wizardry students looked at each other, startled, then again at the books on our desks.  This was not some ancient grimoire of half-understood magic scribbled down by an imperfectly trained magician whose wits were already going.  These were freshly printed, clean volumes, each copy identical, that we had just been told would be the fundamental text for our final two years at the wizards’ school.
There was a confused murmur while students tried leafing through the book, looking unsuccessfully for any clues.  Then Walther raised his hand and said, “Excuse me, sir, but why were the errors allowed to remain?  Or,” he hesitated a second, pushing a shock of black hair away from his forehead, “were they deliberate?”
The teacher smiled.  He was one of the older teachers; in the last few years a number of new, younger wizards had joined the school faculty, but he was still teaching.  Like all the older wizards, he always seemed to have a soft spot for Walther.
“Excellent question,” he said.  “And yes, it was deliberate.”  He scanned the room.  “Can any of you think why that should be the case?”
After a moment of uneasy silence, Chlodomer put up his hand.  “It’s an exercise for us.  If we can’t find the errors, it shows we aren’t as good at wizardry as we think we are.”
The teacher nodded, lips pursed.  No one on the faculty had ever had a soft spot for Chlodomer.  Even though he was no longer the awkward, easily startled young man he had been when first entering the school six years ago, even though he had become one of the best students in the technical wizardry division, he had never gotten the respect from the teachers he probably deserved.
For that matter, many of the older teachers were still reluctant to respect me either: the first girl the school had ever taken.
“It’s more than an exercise for you, though of course it could be that as well,” the teacher answered Chlodomer.
“This isn’t the way magic is supposed to work,” one of the students objected.  “This isn’t the way anything works.”
“Indeed,” said the teacher crisply.  “Since you have such a good idea of how everything works, this book will present no challenge for you,” which caused the student to slump back in his chair.
I was distracted, looking out the classroom window toward the school courtyard.  There, among the fountains and the rainbows, lay a crimson flying carpet, twitching as though eager to be off.  Two men were busily loading parcels onto it: a swarthy, enormously fat eastern mage, and with him the white-bearded Master of the wizards’ school.
I wished they were not going.
The teacher interrupted my thoughts.  “Miss Antonia, you usually are full of theories.  What do you think?”
I dragged my attention back to the room and tried not to appear irritated at his patronizing tone. “You’re keeping the most powerful spells from us.  Or if not from us, from the senior students, then from the more junior students.  You don’t want anyone using this magic unless and until you decide we’re worthy to have the missing parts of the spell revealed.”
Now the teacher looked surprised, even, I thought, a little guilty.  “Well, there may be something in that.  After all, it could be dangerous for some of the younger students to read and try to master a spell for which they were not ready.”
Another one of the students spoke up.  “What happens if we try the spell just as it’s written?  What is the danger, exactly?”  He and another young man bumped elbows and grinned at each other.  “Does something, well, inappropriate happen?  Does a winged gorgos appear?  Does the whole school collapse?”
“Not at all,” the teacher said reprovingly.  “If you tried one of these spells as written, it would have no effect.  Other than,” he added darkly, “perhaps blowing up in your face.  As would happen if a junior student tried to alter the spells unwisely.  These are errors that need to be considered carefully.”

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

Kinds of Fantasy

 In the late 1960s - early '70s, fantasy became its own genre.  Now the word "fantasy" had been around for a long time, meaning something not just unusual but unlikely, as in, "I wanted to train my cat to fetch, roll over, and shake hands, but what a fantasy!" or "I have this fantasy of dozens of beautiful young women competing for my attention."  But the genre of fantasy is something different.

At its most basic it is stories with magic, larger-than-life people having wondrous adventures, often imbued with the supernatural.  Some of the oldest stories we have could be called fantasy, starting with The Epic of Gilgamesh and large chunks of the Old Testament.  The modern version is most commonly what one might call medieval-adjacent, being set in something that could remind the reader of medieval society.  This is because it is heavily influenced by medieval myths and legends (like King Arthur or the tales of the gods in Norse mythology) and by the fairy tales that carry on many old legends in a simplified, sanitized way, but keep such medieval aspects as castles and knights and kings.

Medieval fantasy is so influential because of J.R.R. Tolkien, himself a medieval scholar, whose Lord of the Rings launched fantasy as a genre (first published in the UK in the 1950s, only taking off in the US a dozen years later, with the release of a copyright-defying edition).  When the books first came out, people didn't know what to make of them.  A very positive review called them"super science fiction."  Other reviewers called them "fairy tales for grownups."  (Wait, so myths got watered down into fairy tales, and now you're saying that they got watered back up? or something?)

Tolkien wrote what is now called "high" fantasy, a story set in a thoroughly imagined alternate world (although it may bear many resemblances to ours), with a variety of magical creatures (or at least non-human sentients), including (in his case), hobbits, elves, dwarves, orcs, and dragons.  This remains the most common sort of fantasy, usually provided with a map and a plot involving a brave, mis-matched band of companions off to save the world from evil.

There was no organized religion at all in Lord of the Rings, but there were hints of great gods off in the distance, made more explicit in Tolkien's Silmarillion.  When there are gods (or at least immortal beings) galloping across the landscape as well as the elves and dragons, one often sees the term "epic" fantasy.  The term epic can also be used for any fantasy that covers wide stretches of territory, lots of characters, and a "save the planet" plot.  George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones and its sequels are always called epic, even without gods (he does have organized religion, however).

Then there's "low" fantasy, which has magic but less of it, and all the sentient beings are regular humans.  This designation sounds somewhat derogatory.  I remember being quite irritated the first time I saw Count Scar, which I wrote with Robert Bouchard, called "low" fantasy.

Count Scar could also be called "historical" fantasy, in that it is set in what is basically southern France in the thirteenth century, complete with medieval Christianity, although with the addition of magic.  The advantage of historical fantasy as a story-telling medium over historical fiction is that no one is going to get honked off if anachronisms creep in.  (I'm a medievalist.  There are extremely few anachronisms in Scar.  Maybe the forks.)

In recent years fantasy has picked up lots of new varieties.  "Science fantasy" is a real sub-genre, which combines fantasy with science fiction, even though both fantasy authors and SF authors dislike the term.  It has major elements of science fiction, like space ships, alien beings from other planets, hyper-modern technology, and a setting in a future version of our universe, but it also includes magic and/or supernatural beings.  Dune is really science fantasy, although the sub-genre didn't exist when it was first published.  In the SF community, faster-than-light travel is designated as NOT fantasy (because SF would be a lot less interesting if we only bopped around our own galaxy and its uninhabited planets), but other than that science fiction suggests semi-plausibly that one could get there from here.

Another version is "humorous" fantasy, where the author tries to have well developed characters and an actual plot, but there are chuckles on almost every page, as the author mocks many of the conventions of fantasy.  Terry Pratchett was the master of humorous fantasy.  My first published novel, A Bad Spell in Yurt, got panned by some readers as not being funny enough, whereas others felt, What's all this humor doing in a book that also mentions the redemption of souls?  (Fortunately a whole lot of people liked it anyway.)

Maybe Bad Spell is closer to what is termed "cozy" fantasy, where you can have magical beings and fully-realized imagined worlds, but you do not have to have the fate of the planet resting on whether our brave band of adventurers do or do not manage to overcome the Dark Lord.  Cozy fantasy is often recommended for tweens and early teen readers, even if the protagonists are not teenagers themselves (my wizard hero, seen above, is 29).

Then there is "urban" fantasy, set in something like our current world, but with vampires, werewolves, and the like hiding at the edges.  The Twilight series really catapulted urban fantasy into prominence.  Is Harry Potter urban fantasy?  Not really, because urban fantasy tends to be quite dark.

Rather, Harry Potter is YA ("young adult") fantasy, which can take on aspects of all different sorts of fantasy, but is consistent in having young protagonists having to take charge because the adults for some reason have failed (or been killed off or just don't understand).  In the process our young protagonists mature and learn about themselves.  Sometimes they have sex, though that is not required.  The teen years with magic, swords, and capes!  Less school cafeteria, more castles.  Let's do it.

YA fantasy is often set in what I call "fairy tale land," where you've got your princesses and castles and maybe fairy godmothers and witches, but there's little effort to create a whole, consistent world, and the princesses behave pretty much like modern teenage girls.  If they find themselves in a patriarchal, class-based society, they struggle against it.

So what does all this mean?  It means that fantasy is a rich, diverse genre.  If someone says they "don't like fantasy," maybe they just haven't read the right sort (I think I've written most of these versions and know I've read all of them).

© C. Dale Brittain 2024

The Sapphire Ring

 I've published a new book!  As with all of my fiction, there's plenty of magic interspersed with elements of medieval culture.  This one is entitled The Sapphire Ring, and it's the third in the "Starlight Raven" series, also known as "Yurt, the Next Generation."  It's available as an ebook on Amazon (link here).  A paperback version is also available, and ebook versions on other major platforms are also available (B&N-Nook, Kobo, iTunes).  Here's the cover.  Note the badger and the chicken-legged house in the background.

 

Antonia, daughter of a witch and a wizard, continues trying to find a way to combine men's and women's magic, the heritage of both her parents, which is difficult because male and female magic-workers distrust each other thoroughly.  She has been touched by the Starlight Raven, which may mean she is prophesied to save her people, but she doesn't believe in prophecy, and she isn't even sure who "her" people are.  Meanwhile, she's just turned 18, too late to be a girl, not quite ready to be a woman.

Here's the opening, to give yourself a taste:

I

“I know who you are.”
It took me a moment to locate the voice in the middle of a loud and busy market.  But then I saw her, an old woman with a face wizened like last year’s apple, but with eyes of piercing blue.  At one time I would have called her a witch.
But I was a witch too, a member of the Sisterhood, and we didn’t use that word.  It was a word that men attached to us.
“You’re the one they call the Starlight Raven.”  She motioned me toward her, where she sat behind a table scattered with herbs tied together with string or twisted into a paper cone.
I turned to look out across the market, to where my Guide in the Sisterhood was negotiating for a new cooking pot.  She appeared fully occupied, laughing and gesturing, her long black hair swirling around her.  Half the men in the market were staring at her, and no one was looking at me.
I went over and sat down next to the old woman.  “My name is Antonia, but I’m afraid I don’t know yours.”
She smiled, flashing a gold tooth, but did not answer.  On her knee sat a little girl who gave me a long and serious look.  Probably age two or three, I thought.  I tried smiling at her, but she did not smile back.
“My granddaughter,” said the old woman, nodding at the girl.  “She likes to come to the market with me.  Her mother is probably glad to have a chance to be on her own for a few hours.”
For a moment I felt a pang—jealousy? wistfulness?  I had never known either of my grandmothers.  Had my mother ever wanted to be on her own?  If so, she had never said so—and I had never thought to ask.
But if she’d wanted a chance to live her life without a girl’s presence, then she had had her fill the last four years, while I was off with my Guide learning the ways of the Sisterhood or else studying at the wizards’ school.
“We’ve not given her a name yet,” the old woman continued.  “But Antonia is a good name.  We could name her for you.”
It took me a startled moment to respond.  This woman and child suddenly seemed very alien.  How could one leave a little girl nameless?  It seemed almost to be saying she was not fully human.  I had been baptized when just a few days old—unlike most Sisters, who tried to avoid the church and its male priests as much as they avoided wizardry and the male wizards, but who still had the sense to give their babies names.
“But best not to tell her it’s your name,” the old woman added, “the Starlight Raven, the one who either saves her people or who leads them into final destruction.”
I stiffened but tried to hide it.  Better cut short any notion of some prophecy.  “You can name her Antonia if you like,” I said, trying not quite successfully to chuckle, “but I’m not going to save anyone, much less lead them into destruction.  That’s just a story.”  A story I had almost believed back when I had first heard it, when the strange giant raven with stars glinting among its feathers had flown to me.  But I had only been fourteen at the time.
The old woman reached under her table and pulled out a pack of battered cards.  Her piercing blue eyes held mine.  “Let’s see what the cards have to say to that,” she said, looking amused, as though knowing far more about me than I did.  The voices and clamor of the market were all around us, but here with the old woman, her granddaughter, and her dried herbs, we seemed almost in a little private, quiet island.
She handed me the cards to shuffle.  They felt slick from much handling, edges and corners notched and nicked.  They were larger than the cards to which I was accustomed, and the deck felt thicker.
Both the old woman and her granddaughter kept their eyes on me as I shuffled.  “You’re a woman grown, Antonia,” she commented.  “You cannot deny your future much longer.”
She took the deck back and started dealing them out, face down.  “Earth, air, fire, and water,” she said in a low voice, dealing onto four piles.  “I mind you, I bind you, I call you out, from among the living, from among the dead.”
The hair on the back of my neck rose.  For the second time I thought:  This is a witch.
“Here is your birth, here is your death,” she intoned, slightly louder.  “Here is your loss, here is your love.  And here,” slapping down the next card so hard it bent, “are you.  Turn it and read your fortune.”
A fortune-teller, I told myself firmly, trying to steady my hand as I reached for the card.  Fortune-tellers picked up a few coins at fairs, telling the girls they would meet a handsome stranger, telling the boys they would fall hopelessly in love with someone unattainable, warning both not to trust false friends.  This woman was no different.  Why would I even think she had some ability to see beyond the world around us?
I turned the card.  It showed a young girl, standing in a flowering meadow and smiling.  “The Maiden,” said the old woman complacently.  “I expected that one to show.”
The Maiden was blonde.  I was brunette, chestnut-colored hair my father called it.  Good, I thought.  I don’t have to believe anything else.
“The Maiden,” she repeated, almost in a sing-song.  “A woman grown, yet still a little girl.  Eager for her independence, but almost afraid of it too.”
I was not afraid of anything, or at least not of independence, I told myself.
The little girl had been watching the cards with interest.  Now she gave a sudden and unexpected grin.
“Choose a card from the first pile,” the old woman continued, pointing with a gnarled finger.  Were these supposed to be the cards of Earth?  Or of my birth?  I had seen a few other fortune-tellers, but they had not told the cards like this.  I slipped a card from the middle of the pile and turned it over.
It was hard at first to tell what the card represented.  This really was like no deck I had ever seen.  There seemed to be all sorts of little symbols, drawn very small, in among swirling lines that might have indicated a wind storm.
But the old woman did not hesitate.  “This surrounds you,” she said.  “Magic.  Wild magic, tamed magic, magic in all its forms.  You are brimful of magic, maiden girl.”  She paused, then added, not quite as confidently, “I would have expected rather the card of the Sisters, or perhaps the Mother, to indicate our magic.”
She might think I was the Starlight Raven, but she clearly did not know I had been learning men’s magic as well as women’s.  Emboldened, I pointed at the second little pile of cards.  “So what does Air show?”
“Here we will see what crosses you,” she said, “what forces oppose you.  Choose your card.”  I took the top one.
This time it was “the Sisters.”  I recognized them at once, three young women, nearly identical although wearing different colored dresses, standing and smiling in the same meadow.  This time they were brunettes.
I showed the card to the little girl, since she seemed interested.  She nodded emphatically.
“I had not expected that card,” said the old woman slowly.  This showed there was nothing special about her fortune-telling—or so I told myself.  The first card, the Maiden, she would have known from its back, from long familiarity with the deck, but she had no control over which card I pulled from her little piles.
Whatever opposed me, it could not be the Sisterhood.  I had spent every summer with my Guide, learning the Sisters’ ways, since I turned fourteen.
And now they were supposed to be my death?
The old woman took a deep breath.  “The cards will all become clearer as we continue.  Choose from the cards of Fire.  This shows what is behind you.”
I hesitated, fingering the cards’ broken edges, then pulled one out from near the bottom of the pile.  The woman sighed as I turned it over.
The card showed a flock of crows swooping down into a field of grain.  “The Raven!” she pronounced.
Those weren’t ravens.  Those were crows.  And none of them had stars glinting among their feathers.  That she would try to pass off a flock of crows as the great black bird who had once landed on my shoulder showed she had already decided what she wanted to tell me, and she was going to force her cards to say it.
One pile remained.  “The full story will be revealed now,” she said.  “The card of Water will show what is before you.”
I still didn’t understand entirely how this was supposed to work.  Four piles of cards, earth, air, fire, and water, except the cards didn’t seem to have anything to do with the elements.  She had said they represented birth, death, loss, and love, but it wasn’t clear if those aspects were associated with the separate piles or the overall reading from all the cards.  But apparently the individual cards represented what was around me, against me, behind and before me.
It was going to be interesting to see how she made this into a coherent prophecy.  I reached for the final pile.
As I ruffled through the thick and slightly greasy cards, one slid out into my hand.  I turned it over.
If I’d had any doubts, now I really knew there was nothing here.  The card showed a majestic woman, sitting on a throne, a scepter in her hand and a jeweled crown on her head.  Whatever lay before me, it was not becoming a queen.
The old woman tugged at her lip.  “Magic, the Sisters, the Crows, and the Queen,” she said, half to herself.  I’d known that card was crows.  “The Maiden is facing many challenges here, but a future, with the Starlight Raven as the base….”

Happy reading!

© C. Dale Brittain 2021

The Starlight Raven

I've just published a new book!  It's an ebook, available on Amazon, BN/Nook, Kobo, and iTunes; a paperback version has also been published (on which see more here).

The story can be considered "Yurt, the Next Generation" (by those who have read the original Yurt series), or it can be enjoyed as a stand-alone.  It's a "YA" book (aimed at a young-adult audience), because Antonia, the heroine, is fourteen when it begins.

A sneak preview is below.  Enjoy!

THE STARLIGHT RAVEN

Of course I knew my mother was a witch.

She never needed a match to light the fire.  She knew immediately if someone new had come to town, even if she had spent the entire day at home, sewing.  Sometimes in the evening, after she had finished tailoring a new ballgown for the mayor’s daughter or embroidering a new altar-cloth for the church, women would knock quietly on our door, giving quick glances up and down the cobbled street, and Mother would tell them if they were going to have a baby boy or a girl.

But I had no intention of living an uneventful life as a small-town witch.  I was going to study to be a real wizard.

That would be easy, I thought.  My father was head of the wizards’ school in the great City, a much more interesting place than our little town of Caelrhon.  He’d said himself that I could come and study there when I became fourteen, the first girl the wizards’ school had ever admitted.  Already I knew how to turn someone into a frog, something even my mother couldn’t do.

But on my fourteenth birthday it all became much less easy.

It started two weeks earlier.  A gentle hand on my shoulder interrupted my dreams.  “Antonia, wake up.”

“It’s too early to get up for school,” I mumbled into the pillow.

The hand remained on my shoulder.  “It’s not a school day.”

Then I remembered.  “We’re going to the City!”

I was out of bed with a bound, and then, with another bound, right back under the covers.  The air from my casement window was cold.  ”It’s not even morning yet!”

Mother flicked a flame into life on my candlestick.  She was already dressed, her brown braids neatly wrapped around her head.  I loved her hair, smooth where mine was always tangled, darker than mine but showing golden highlights in the glow of the candle.

“I want to go there and be home again before it gets late,” she said firmly.  “After all, tomorrow is a school day.  In fact I hear,” she added with a smile, tugging the quilt off me, “that at the wizards’ school they give the new students only one warning.  Then, if they aren’t on time for the first early-morning class, they set the dragons on them.”

I swung my legs out of bed and kept them out.  “Sometimes I think everyone’s seen dragons except for me.  Father even killed one once when he was young, even though he won’t talk about it.  And there was the time we arrived in the City just too late to see a whole flock of them.”

“I’ve never seen a dragon either,” said Mother.  She had the brush and was working the snarls out of my hair.  “I think it would be more terrifying than exciting.  And I’m not at all sure they come in ‘flocks.’”

I let her work on my braids, thinking that once I was a wizard I would go visit dragons myself, rather than waiting for them to come to me.  A herd of dragons?  A pack?  A clutch?  I was fairly certain it wouldn’t be a gaggle.

“Besides,” I said after a minute, “I know they don’t punish students for sleeping late.  Father told me that when he was a student at the wizards’ school, he hardly ever made any of his morning classes.”

There was a chuckle behind me.  “Antonia, your father is an admirable man in many ways, and he’s made himself an excellent wizard over the years, but I would not recommend using him as your model when you become a wizardry student.”

I shrugged and laughed myself.  Having my hair braided was very pleasant.  I glanced toward my window, still nearly dark, and was hit by a sudden memory.  “I had the strangest dream,” I said slowly.  “It was about a bat.  He tapped at my window and squeaked this really high squeak, but when I sat up he flew off.  And for some reason I wasn’t frightened at all.”

“Of course not,” Mother muttered through hairpins.  “Bats won’t hurt you.  I’m glad you knew that, even in a dream.”

“And the strangest thing of all,” I went on, “was that he had a little cylinder tied to his leg—you know, like the carrier pigeons wear.”

“Who would send messages by a bat?” said Mother abruptly.  The last pin went sharply into my hair.  “Really, Antonia, you’re old enough to know that nobody finds someone else’s dreams very interesting.  Get dressed and come downstairs.”

She slammed my door behind her, leaving me wondering why she could possibly be so irritated by a dream.

No time to worry about it.  I splashed cold water on my face from the washbasin, pulled on a school dress, and laced up my boots.  In front of the mirror I smoothed out the hairs disarranged in getting dressed.  I grinned at my reflection and blew out the candle.  I was the daughter of a witch and a wizard, almost fourteen years old, and I didn’t think there was anything I couldn’t do.

When I clattered down the stairs into the kitchen, Mother was frying bacon and smiling again.

But then I saw it, lying on the table amid dressmaking scraps:  a tiny piece of parchment, half unrolled.  It looked like the kind of message usually brought by a carrier pigeon.

We took the air cart.  It was barely light as we hurried down the streets to the livery stable, where we rented space for it.  The building was still locked this early in the morning, and after Mother had concentrated for a moment she said that there was no stable boy inside who might have answered our knock.

But that didn’t slow us down.  The wind tugged at our cloaks as I used a tiny lifting spell to turn the tumblers in the lock and drive the bolt back.  The spell worked perfectly the first time—a good sign, I thought, for my future as a wizardry student.  Mother led the cart out into the street, talking soothingly to the horses in the stalls, and I relocked the big doors.

The air cart was the skin of a purple flying beast, a gift to us from Father a few years ago.  It had been born in flight, and even though long dead it would still start flying if not carefully tethered.  This was wizardry, not witchcraft, and I had learned the spells even before Mother had.  We climbed in, and I confidently gave the commands in the Hidden Language.  The cart took off, wings flapping steadily, to circle above the narrow streets and dark tile roofs of Caelrhon.

I glanced sideways at Mother, saw that she seemed deep in her own thoughts, and quietly muttered the spells that made the air cart pick up speed.  I loved to go fast.

The sun rose behind us as we headed toward the City.  It was springtime, and the trees and meadows below us were fresh and green in the light of breaking dawn.  Finally I got up my nerve to ask.  “What was that letter I saw on the table?”

Mother shrugged, unconcerned.  “Just a message about a dress I’m supposed to be making.”  I would have believed her and thought no more about bats—except that no one in Caelrhon would have sent her a pigeon-message.  They would have used the magic telephones or walked over to talk to her in person.

Most of the time it was fine having a mother who kept her concerns to herself.  She had calmly bandaged me the time I’d come home all bloody from beating up a boy who’d invented an insulting song about witches.  She’d just shaken her head when the teacher sent her a frosty note saying she hoped I would never cover another student with green spots again—I didn’t even have to explain that I had virtuously resisted turning him into a frog.

And this last year, when I’d gone to a few school dances with the same boy who’d come closer to being a frog than he realized, she just asked me when I got home if I’d had a good time.  She didn’t quiz me about what we had and hadn’t done—as I’m sure my father would have in her place, as if I didn’t have excellent good sense!

But if someone had trained a bat to carry messages, which I’d never before heard of anyone doing, then the content of that message must itself be interesting.  If I’d been waked in the middle of the night by a bat, I thought, and the bat was carrying a message, I’d certainly tell my daughter about it.

© C. Dale Brittain 2015