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I mentioned back in May that I decided to volunteer with the local library to teach English as a second language. All the classes would be on Zoom. After going through several virtual training classes, I would either work one-on-one with a student or teach an entire class. I was assigned to co-teach an English Conversation Club. Essentially, the point of the club is just to get people to talk. Coming up with topics is another matter altogether.

I’ve taught three classes so far and the students are great. They’re all over eighteen and none of them were born in America, so they bring a rich variety of culture and life experience with them. My co-teacher and I have also learned from them. We did a lesson on the first day of Summer, where we mentioned the northern and southern hemispheres. One woman from Peru said that in her country, it’s cold during June and July and warm during November and December. I’d never realized the Peru was in the southern hemisphere.

All these people want to learn, grow, and thrive here in America and knowing English is a good first step. It’s hard to live anywhere, if you don’t know what people are saying. The English Conversation Club’s purpose is to give them practice, so they are comfortable conversing with others in this great melting pot we call America.

I love reading and writing (what author doesn’t?), but over the years, I’ve read certain tropes that, in my opinion, brings a book down. What do I mean by that? Well, have you ever read a book where you love everything about it and then suddenly, the author adds in a cliched story point that makes you roll your eyes? This has definitely happened to me.

Now, I’m not saying authors that do this write horrible books. Every book takes time and effort to write and I applaud every author who sticks through this major commitment. No, I still love books with or without cliches. It’s just that I have my own likes and dislikes when it comes to cliches.

This list is my own personal opinion when it comes to certain tropes. These are the ones that range from “rolling my eyes” annoying to “this author just wasted my time, I want to slam the book shut” irritating.

Spoiler Alert for certain books.

5. The Neglectful Parents

I can understand making your main character an orphan. This gives them no familial attachments, forcing them to go ahead with their hero journeys. My problem is when the parents are still alive, but ignore the protagonist so much, it’s like they’re an orphan anyway. These are the parents that are so wrapped up in their own lives, that they forget they even have a child in the first place. Why did you two have a baby, if you weren’t going to raise them? I don’t want the parents to be completely obsessed with their offspring and act like helicopter parents, where they’ll wipe their kid’s nose if they sneeze, but I would like the parents to at least acknowledge their child.

The opening chapters of The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, represent this perfectly. Ten-year-old Mary Lennox lives in India with her English parents, but she’s actually raised by the Indian servants. Her father worked for the British government in India and was always too busy with his job. Her mother was beautiful, only wanted to go to parties, and didn’t even want Mary in the first place. Mary was spoiled rotten by the servants. They knew Mrs. Lennox might fire them if she even heard Mary.

I just can’t like parents like this. Yes, Mary becomes a better person after her parents die and she moves in with her uncle in England, but the neglectful parent trope is heartbreaking. I don’t like it when children think their parents don’t want them and that they’re a mistake. A child’s life is never a mistake.

4. Love Triangles

I’ve been watching a lot of Terrible Writing Advice on youtube lately. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a series of satirical videos where the creator, J.P. Beaubien, gives advice to writers. I just love his sarcastic tone when he’s giving his “terrible advice.” A running gag on the channel is Beaubien constantly telling his viewers to fix every writing problem with a love triangle.

Love triangles aren’t the worst trope ever, but it definitely isn’t my favorite. I actually tried to write one in Silver Rose, but gave it up quickly, because I found it too counterproductive to write. I already knew who I would pair Penelope off with, so why should I tease readers with the other option? The idea of a love triangle is to keep readers guessing. Oh, who will our female protagonist wind up with? Keep reading to find out.

The problem with a love triangle, however, is that either way, an author will anger readers. In the Hannah Swensen mystery series by Joanne Fluke, our main character Hannah finds herself dating two guys at once, who know about each other. Norman and Mike. Norman is the town dentist and at least a decade older than Hannah, but they have a lot in common, he’s funny, and Hannah describes him as safe and dependable, just like a favorite blanket. Mike is a detective and closer to Hannah’s age, but he can be a bit bossy when he’s telling Hannah to stay out of his investigations. Hannah describes Mike as a roller coaster. He’s dangerous and wild, but still a thrill.

My mom and I have both read some of the books in the series. We had a clear favorite between Norman or Mike. But, without giving anything away, Joanne Fluke eventually did marry Hannah off, and it wasn’t to the guy we wanted. We haven’t read any of the books since. This is the danger of love triangles. No matter what an author does, someone, somewhere, will be furious if you don’t “launch the right ship.” I’ve heard that shipping in books is a war. It certainly is.

3. The Misunderstanding

This is a favorite trope of all the Hallmark movies. In every single one of them, the main couple meets, falls in love, argue, and then fall in love again. And all in two hours. This isn’t just in Hallmark movies, though, the misunderstanding is littered throughout literature. The misunderstanding is usually something like this,

“I asked you to come to a party, but you said you were working. I saw you there with another girl.”

“I didn’t know you meant that party. No, I was there as part of my job. I was representing my department and you saw me talking to the mayor’s wife. We were discussing funding for my department.”

These are the conflicts in stories that can be solved with a simple conversation. This frustrates me to no end, because the misunderstanding is just padding for time, giving us an artificial problem that really doesn’t need to be there.

The day before I wrote this, my parents and I were watching “Fantastic Beasts 2: The Crimes of Grindelwald.” It’s only the second time we’ve ever watched it and I wanted to see just how bad it was two years later. Near the beginning of the movie, Queenie tells Newt that she read about his engagement to Leta Lestrange. Queenie’s sister Tina also read the article and immediately started dating someone else, who I doubt we’ll ever see on screen. Newt, appalled, quickly tells Queenie that he’s not marrying Leta. His brother Theseus is. Newt and Tina meet up in the middle of the movie, but Tina keeps cutting Newt off, not wanting to talk to him. Near the end, Newt finally gets a word in edgewise and tells Tina that Theseus and Leta are marrying. From the moment Newt and Tina appear on screen together to when the misunderstanding is resolved, I was internally yelling at them to just talk. That plot point added absolutely nothing to the story, except to waste my time.

2. Blaming the Hero for a Crime They Didn’t Commit

I know some people may not mind this one, especially since its in so many mysteries, but I hate it when a hero is accused of committing a crime. In mysteries, it’s usually the protagonist is a suspect in the murder and they solve the crime to prove their innocence. It’s a little different, though, when it happens in my favorite genre, fantasy.

Usually, in fantasy stories, this plot is saved for sequels. In the first book, we’ll meet the hero, they’ll save the day, and everyone will cheer. Nobody can deny that the protagonist is the goodest good guy who ever did good. In the sequel, however, all the characters turn on the hero, because there’s proof, flimsy unprovable proof, that shows they’ll doing bad. Whenever this happens, I classify the side characters as sheep, just going with the crowd.

In City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare, we meet our main characters, Clary and Jace. They save the day from a villain named Valentine and his evil organization named the Circle. Valentine and Jace are related, though, so that’s kind of a downer. Regardless, Jace still sides with good and helps Clary defeat him. All of the other characters are so grateful. “Thank you, Clary and Jace. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

In the sequel, City of Ashes, however, I think a couple of months have passed, and suddenly, nobody trusts Jace because of his connection with Valentine. They all seem to think that Jace, a proven hero, is about to turn to the dark side. Jace, a moody teenager, doesn’t do much to contradict this, except to pout. One character even treats Jace like a hardened criminal and throws him in a jail cell, just because Valentine got her son killed. Jace wasn’t even born when her son died, but clearly his being related to Valentine is enough proof that Jace was in on the plan. Jace’s own adoptive mom even turns on him and she’s known him for over ten years. All the teenagers treat Jace normally, but every single adult suddenly acts like Jace’s existence is a crime.

This trope just seems like another time waster, designed to make the reader question the hero, when we all know, they’ll be proven innocent by the end, anyway.

1. And Then The Hero Wakes Up and It was All a Dream

Everyone can agree that this is the worst crime a writer can commit. I don’t care if the rest of the story was fantastic, if the book ends with “it was all a dream,” I will be furious. This is the ultimate time waster. I want to be sucked into the story and feel like these characters are actually alive and I’m going through their problems with them, but if it ends in a dream, what was the point? The author just confirmed that absolutely nothing happened. My favorite characters were never real even within their own pages, so why should I care what happens to them? (The only exception to this rule is Alice in Wonderland, simply because the story is so strange that I have no idea if Alice was really in a fairyland or not.)

Luckily, I haven’t read many books that end as a dream, except for one. The Ugly Stepsister, by Aya Ling. The idea is an interesting one. A modern girl named Kat is asked to sort through a box of old children’s books in her attic. She finds an old, torn picture book of Cinderella. Kat’s mom calls her downstairs, Kat trips, and accidentally rips the book in two. A goblin spell on the book is activated and Kat is sucked into the story of Cinderella as one of the stepsisters, because she shares a slight physical resemblance to the character. A goblin tells Kat that they only way to leave the story and return to her mom and sister is to get the prince to “marry his true love.” Of course, Kat meets the prince and they fall in love, but Kat must try and force Cinderella and Prince Edward together, even though it pains her to see Edward marry anyone else but her. But, plot twist, since Kat and Edward are in love, Kat must marry Edward if she wants to leave.

Several problems here. Kat’s motivation for leaving Cinderella’s story is to return to the real world and to her mom and younger sister, Paige. Why should the reader care? Kat was only in the real world in Chapter 1 and was whisked away by Chapter 2. The only things we know about Paige are that she’s ten, made salsa, and likes Spongebob. As for Kat’s mom, um… she’s divorced? To be honest, we never saw Kat’s mom, we only heard her call to Kat while she was in the attic. Kat mentions during the course of the story that her father left them, so we don’t even learn this interacting with her family. Maybe if we had spent more time getting to know the mom and little sister, I would be rooting for Kat to go home, but it doesn’t seem worth it to me. The Cinderella characters are far more interesting and compelling people.

Another problem is the ending. Kat spends months in the story before she returns home and when she gets back, she has no memory of what happened. According to her family, she was knocked out for about a minute and Kat doesn’t question it. We know she was really in the book, because we see the goblins again, but why go to all this trouble to give Kat character development if she can’t remember it? She’s more confident, but doesn’t know why. What kind of ending is that?! So, yeah, Kat’s adventure really did happen, but since she can’t remember it, it counts as “she woke up and it was all a dream.” Aahh! So frustrating!

Tropes can be a wonderful thing. I love chosen ones, prophecies, and the hero’s journey, but you have to be careful with how you use them. All of my least favorite tropes could work, given the right author using them in just the right ways, but this can be tricky. Cassandra Clare may have blamed Jace for a crime he didn’t commit, but in a different book, Clockwork Angel, she wrote one of the most perfect love triangles I’ve ever seen, where I honestly didn’t know who Tessa would wind up with, Will or Jem. Aya Ling handled the misunderstanding far better than she ended the book. Kat was told never to discuss the book’s enchantment with the story’s characters. When she finally told Edward, he was surprised, but he did believe her.

My own advice on how to write tropes is to write whatever you want, what you think is right for the story. If you don’t like something, you can always edit it out later. And if you like a trope I mentioned here, don’t worry. Just because I dislike something, doesn’t mean that you have to think the same way. Write what you like and readers are sure to pick up on our passion. Books really are a beautiful way to bring people together.

Recently, I signed up for a volunteer program. The idea of it is to help adults who aren’t the strongest readers. This sounds like a noble cause to me, so on three separate days during April, I attended Zoom classes teaching me and the other volunteers how to be tutors. These people could need a variety of help, like reading, writing, grammar, and vocabulary. Our job is to do just that.
I’ve never actually been a tutor before. At one point, I considered being a teacher, but I never pursued it. No reason why, I just became an author instead. This volunteer program will finally give me the chance to see how good a teacher I can be. One interesting thing I learned was that we all have a different learning style. I’m a visual learner. I need to see something being written or demonstrated to understand it. The librarians in charge will try to pair me with a student with a similar learning style, but this isn’t a guarantee. I could be paired with an auditory or a tactile learner. Regardless, I have to teach based on the student’s learning style, not mine. It wouldn’t work if I tried to teach a tactile student visually or a visual student auditory.
All in all, this will be a new experience. I don’t even know who I’ll be teaching, just that this will last about four to six months. Whoever I help, I hope this will be fun and informative for both of us. Reading is a connection all of us share and I’m happy to share my love of books with others.

Early this month, my parents, brother, and I went to the Coachella Valley Preserve for a morning of hiking. It’s a wildlife refuge and botanical oasis out by the San Andreas Fault. The reason for the trip was that my mom has been enrolled in the local branch of the Master Gardener’s Program. Once or twice a week, she’s been logging onto Zoom classes and learning all about plants. At the beginning of the month, her teacher assigned a special lab to her students. Go out to the Coachella Valley Preserve and take pictures of the native species. We all jumped at the opportunity to go with her and get out of the house.

There were many people there enjoying the preserve, but we didn’t see a lot of people on the first trail. That was just as well, given that my mom had to keep stopping to identify plants on her list and take pictures of them. We even took a break in a small picnic area and found an active beehive on the outskirts. We didn’t bother the bees and they didn’t bother us.

The last trail we went on that day was on the opposite side of the preserve. While the first trail was arid, the second one made me feel as if we were in a jungle. It was more swampy and cooler in the shade. My mom found and recorded my plants on her list. It was a fun morning.

Like all churches now, the church I’ve attended since I was a baby, has been closed due to COVID-19. That’s not to say, there haven’t been services, but they are… different. In my church, there’s a pastor and a liturgist, someone who does some of the readings and gives the announcements. For the past year, the pastor and liturgist have been recorded separately and then everything is edited together to make a youtube video. It then goes up on Sunday morning.

I was asked to be the liturgist and just finished my readings. It was an interesting experience. I had done school presentations, taken a speech class, and even a theater class in college, but the setup at the church was impressive. The music director of the church is currently the film director and editor. He had me read the prepared material, thankfully no memorization, and filmed me on two different cameras, so he could get the best angles. We did the readings early in the week, so he had time to edit all the footage for Sunday. If I hadn’t been sitting at home, watching myself read, I would’ve thought it was live.

Hopefully, everything will go back to normal soon. I would love to walk around and go places without wearing a mask or worrying about COVID-19, but until then, it was an interesting and fun experience to record the readings for the church.

Hi, friends! I decided that it might be a good idea to give you a sample of Silver Rose. Enjoy!

Chapter 1 Strange Encounters

It all started when a bright red flash darted past the castle’s mullioned windows. I gasped, my hands flying to my mouth, which caused the water pitcher I was carrying to clatter to the floor, shattering to pieces and spilling water on myself. What was that? I thought, rushing to the window. I had glimpsed a triangular head, scales, and a long, tapered tail. It couldn’t be. I scanned the courtyard below. Something red by the ground caught my attention. I squinted, but I couldn’t see anything. Don’t be ridiculous, I told myself. They weren’t real. They were just a myth. They inhabited the mists of old tales. They were on the fringes of stories, stealing, killing, and wreaking havoc.

“Penelope! What is the meaning of this?”

Quaking, I turned and looked up into the face of the matron in charge of housekeeping, Mrs. Sophia Thompson. Her hands were on her perfectly starched waist and her mouth was a thin line of displeasure. I became fascinated with my black shoes, trying to ignore my hammering heart and the sodden hem of my handmaiden dress.

“Miss Bogg, kindly explain yourself.”

“I dropped the pitcher on the floor. My apologies,” I mumbled.

“Are you injured?” Mrs. Thompson asked, inspecting me from head to foot.

I shook my head. My cheeks were burning.

“Well, if you are positive, report to the Queen’s private chambers. She is expecting you.”

I waited until Mrs. Thompson had rounded the corner before gathering the pieces of broken pottery and placing them in a nearby rubbish bin. Satisfied with my work, though cringing at the damp spot that remained, I headed toward the queen’s apartments on the third floor.

A noise attracted my attention on the stairs. There was a lit torch burning off to my left, but it was too dim to make out any details. Just my imagination, I thought, when suddenly a dark red shadow detached and started toward me. I backed up hastily, my foot slipping on the step. I waved my arms wildly, trying to keep my balance, when something tackled me from behind, sending me sprawling to the ground.

“Lydia!” I grunted, as I righted myself and turned to see my younger sister. She helped me to my feet and the figure disappeared into the shadows again. “What are you doing here? You know you’re supposed to wait in your room while I’m working.”

My twelve-year-old sister pouted. “I was bored,” she said. “I was walking down the hall when I heard something break. I ran past Hazel going in the opposite direction. Are you all right?”

I stared intently at her, touched. She was tall for her age at almost five feet, no matter my four years and three inches on her. “Yes, I’m fine. Why don’t you visit Constance in the village?”

Lydia perked up immediately at the mention of her best friend. She took off running down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

“Don’t forget!” I called after her. “Malcolm will be home later today. Be back in half-an-hour.” Malcolm was our older brother and the captain of the castle’s guards. He had been gone for the last few days on a special mission for the queen. Something to do with werewolves.

As I started away from the staircase, footsteps could be heard heading in my direction. Thinking it was Lydia again, I turned, but it wasn’t her. Instead, the figure on the stairs stood watching me. It was difficult to tell whether it was a she or a he, but whoever it was wore a dark, almost blood red hooded cloak. The figure was at least half a foot taller than me.

We stared at each other for a full minute. The figure was completely still, except for the fingers of its left hand, which were drumming against its leg. Is this person going to speak or not? I thought.

I had just turned away, when the figure spoke. It had a raspy, yet feminine, voice. “Penelope Bogg, I must talk to you.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“A friend,” she said, stepping forward, past another torch bracket on the wall. The torch inside was spluttering fretfully. “Please, Miss Bogg, you must help me.”

But, I heard no more. The girl had stopped near the sputtering torch, which had suddenly flared to life. My eyes widened with shock. “Magic!” I whispered. How did she get magic? I knew only two people with that kind of power: my late mother and the court wizard, Casimir. I took one last frightened look at the girl before I took off running down the hall toward the queen’s rooms. Stopping before the third door on the left, I knocked smartly on the wooden surface.

“Enter,” the queen’s voice said.

I yanked the door open and slipped inside, closing it with a soft click.

“Penelope, there you are,” Queen Alana said. She was a beautiful woman with long, black hair, piercing blue eyes, and a kind smile. She was wearing a green velvet dress with a white bow encircling her waist. She was standing in front of a full-length mirror decorated with carved roses.

The room itself was a pale turquoise. Several chairs and a couch decorated the center of the room. There was an old desk in the corner. I loved that desk. I saw it at least once a day. It reminded me of the desk my mother used to own. A portrait of a blonde-haired woman with Queen Alana’s blue eyes hung above the couch, staring out across the room. She was wearing a necklace shaped like a crescent moon. I smiled. This was Queen Rebecca, Queen Alana’s grandmother and founder of Kelton Castle.

Queen Alana had inherited her grandmother’s good sense. She was never rash or impulsive, but ruled the entire kingdom of Alsmora fairly. On her desk, I could see Malcolm’s latest report about the current state of the werewolf population.

“I don’t know, Malcolm,” the queen had once said to him, while I cleaned the room around them. “The werewolves are getting out of control. There are more attacks daily.”

“We could attack back, Your Highness,” my captain of the guards brother had suggested.

“No, they are normal most of the time, except when the moon is full. We must come up with another solution.”

Queen Alana had been agonizing over this for weeks, trying to decide whether to give werewolves more or less rights. She had finally sent Malcolm to investigate a werewolf attack in the west of Alsmora. While there, he was to arrange a meeting between an ambassador werewolf and Queen Alana.

I turned my attention to the rest of the room. Another handmaiden was there, buttoning Queen Alana’s forest green dress.

“Milady,” I said, with a curtsey.

The other handmaiden, Hazel, smiled at me, but it didn’t quite reach her cold, gray eyes. She had never liked me, ever since she had discovered that my mother, Alice Bogg, had been an old friend of Queen Alana’s. Hazel thought it was wrong for a handmaiden and the captain of the guards to have known Queen Alana since childhood.

“Precious Penelope,” she had once muttered loudly as I passed. “Thinks she can get away with anything, just because her mother was friends with the Queen.”

I averted my eyes, mumbling a greeting to Hazel.

“Penelope, hand me that shawl,” Queen Alana said, extending her hand.

I spotted the shawl in question, a dark red that complimented the green beautifully, but reminded me forcefully of the figure outside the room.

Handing it to the queen, I stood beside her, waiting for further instructions. I could see myself in the mirror. I stared at myself thoughtfully. Lydia and I looked the same. We both had brown hair, round brown eyes, and fair skin. Lydia’s hair was longer, though. It reached as far as her waist. Mine, on the other hand, fell to slightly below my shoulders. My handmaiden uniform was a dark blue dress and a white mobcap.

Hazel stepped back, her task complete. “I am finished, Your Highness.”

Queen Alana withdrew from the mirror and sat in one of the chairs. “Hazel, go find Viola and see how my dress for the gala tonight is coming along.”

“Yes, milady.” She exited through the open door.

I was left alone in the room with the queen.

“Penelope, find me the pale blue dress in the wardrobe.”

While I was searching, pushing aside at least three green dresses, the queen said, “Hazel has reported that Lydia was running in the halls. She shouldn’t do that.”

I turned around and saw that Queen Alana’s eyes were twinkling with humor.

“How old is she?” Queen Alana continued.

“Lydia?” I said, returning to my task, my hand slipping on some yellow fabric. “Twelve.”

“Has she shown any signs of magic yet?”

“No,” I said, looking through a dozen pale blue dresses. Which one did she want? “But, her birthday will be soon.”

I lapsed into thoughtful silence as I selected a pale blue with short sleeves. My mother had told me that thirteen was the age in which magic was said to appear in young children. She never knew why this was. It had never surfaced in me. At sixteen, I was much too old for it. Lydia, however, was the right age.

“If she shows, I would like to introduce her to my magical advisor, Casimir.”

“That is a great honor, milady. I thank you.”

Casimir was a mystery to most of the servants in the palace. He had appeared one stormy night two years ago, offering the king his magical services. King Marcus was Queen Alana’s husband. He had scoffed at Casimir, telling the wizard to take his bag of tricks and depart at once. Unperturbed, Casimir had used a spell to calm the skies of their wrath. Impressed, the king accepted him as his magical advisor.

A little over a year ago, the king had gone off to stop an invading army. He drove them back into the sea from whence they came, but died from a stray arrow in the process.

Queen Alana had been in mourning for a year afterward. She took over the kingdom and had been a fair and just ruler ever since. She kept Casimir around for his magic and because he had been on the field with King Marcus at the time. He had tried everything to save the king, but to no avail.

I tried to imagine Lydia learning magic from Casimir. At once, I could see Lydia becoming a witch. She would have the power to do whatever she pleased and wouldn’t have to work as a handmaiden.

“Thank you,” I said again, handing the pale blue dress over. “I will mention this to Lydia when she returns from the village.” Speaking of which, nearly half-an-hour had passed. Where was she?

The queen smiled and patted my hand as Hazel stepped back into the room, accompanied by the third handmaiden, Viola.

Viola curtseyed; her eyelids drooped over her tired green eyes and her brown hair had come undone from its bun.

“My Queen,” she said in a strained voice. “I am afraid your dress is not complete as such.”

“Explain.”

“The fabric is sewn and hemmed, but lacks lace.”

“How much is missing?”

“We are almost complete. All that is left is the neck, but all the lace has disappeared.”

“It is most peculiar,” Hazel said. “Your ladyship sent me to buy lace only last week.”

I frowned. I had been with Hazel during that outing and I remembered what at the time had seemed like a mountain of lace.

“Could we have used it up on something else?” Queen Alana asked.

“It is indeed possible, Your Highness,” Viola said. “The seamstresses have been hard at work on your dresses for weeks.”

“Penelope,” the queen said. “Go down to the village and buy more lace from Mrs. Wilkins’s shop.”

I curtseyed and departed, shutting the door quietly on the sounds of the queen’s continued conversation with Viola and Hazel.

I paused, staring down the hallway where I had seen the strange figure, but she had gone. The only evidence of her presence was the brightly burning torch. I skirted around it, making my way to the staircase and descending to the first floor. The pendant my mom had given me before she died two years ago thudded against my chest. The pendant was shaped like a star and in the center, like a large egg, sat a ruby.

I kept it on a chain around my neck, under my dress. The ruby must have cost a fortune and would have easily allowed me to quit my position as handmaiden, but I couldn’t do it. My mother’s voice echoed inside my head whenever I thought of selling it.

“This pendant is very powerful, Penny,” she had said. She had still been quite young, only in her mid-forties, but an unknown sickness had claimed her. “It cannot fall into the wrong hands. Keep it safe for me.”

I had for these last two years. Whenever I was sad or lonely, I would feel for the chain and smile at the pendant’s familiar weight.

The cook greeted me as I entered the kitchen and headed for the servant’s exit. “Morning, Miss Penelope.” A pleasant, plump woman, she smiled good-naturedly at me, handing me a bit of bread.

“Good morning, Mrs. Appleton.” I grabbed a basket from the table.

The air was crisp and full of the songs of birds as I made my way from the castle grounds. A black and fluffy cat watched me from a low bench. A paw was dangling over the edge. A pattern like an “M” could be seen on its furry forehead. The cat was rather small, unlike the old cat Constance Wilkins owned, who also had an “M” on her forehead, but Petals the Maine coon was at least twice the size of this cat.

I had always liked cats and this one appeared to be a stray, though a well-fed stray. I left the piece of bread beside it on the bench, noticing as I did so that the cat’s front half was raised slightly higher than its back, like it was lying on something. I shrugged and continued on my way.

I followed the cobbled street into the village of Kelton. Near the edge of the village was the tanner’s, where the smell from the cured hides assaulted my nose, making me cough. Beside the tanner, was the cobbler, his shoes visible through the window.

Rounding the corner, I stumbled to a halt. There, across from where I stood, was the figure in dark red that I had seen in the castle. A strange silver glow was coming from her right hand. My stomach plummeted. Not again.

A tense moment passed as we stared at each other. I took a deep breath and walked forward. The figure started across the street toward me as well.

“Who are you?” I demanded, stopping several feet from her. “Why are you following me?”

“I can see it now. You are definitely the right descendent, Penelope Bogg.” She turned her right hand slightly and I saw a mass of silver and black. Before I could ask what she was talking about, a voice hailed me.

“Greetings, Penelope.”

I turned to see the widowed owner of the general store, Mrs. Georgina Wilkins. She was a short woman, who was hardly taller than myself. She was watering her flowers in the window box in the front of her store. Mrs. Wilkins once told me that she thought the window box made her store feel more homey.

“Good morning, Mrs. Wilkins,” I said, turning back toward the girl. She had disappeared again.

“Are you here for anything, dear?”

“…Yes, the Queen sent me to buy lace.”

“Lace? I believe I have some in the back,” Mrs. Wilkins said, leading me into the store. Within seconds, she had brought out the same white lace that was supposed to adorn Queen Alana’s unfinished dress.

After I had paid for the lace and placed it in my basket, I left the store, thanking Mrs. Wilkins.

“Don’t forget, dear,” she called before the door slammed shut. “Constance and I will be in Dewdrop Village next week. Old Mr. Pewter will be looking after the store.”

As I crossed the square back toward the castle, I heard laughter from behind Mrs. Wilkins’s shop. It sounded like Lydia, so I decided to investigate.

Lydia and Constance Wilkins were standing, talking to a tall man with black hair and mismatched eyes. The left eye was brown, while the right was green.

“… and that, girls, is why you should never taunt a wild mushroom,” the black-haired man said. “Ah, the elder Miss Bogg. Welcome.”

“Greetings, Master Casimir,” I said with a curtsey.

Casimir smiled and gave a long, sweeping bow. “Your sister and her friend have been a most enjoyable audience.”

Lydia giggled. “I liked your story of the evil wild mushroom.”

“Did you really slay it with nothing more than an onion stalk and the dye from a flower?” Constance asked in awe.

Casimir winked at me. “Don’t forget the magic.”

“Lydia, its time to return to the castle,” I said. “Malcolm will be back soon and I have to get this lace back to the Queen.”

“Allow me,” Casimir said, pulling out his staff. He muttered something under his breath and the lace disappeared from my basket. “Queen Alana should be receiving it momentarily, along with a message claiming credit for you.”

“Thank you,” I said, frowning that he hadn’t asked me first.

“My pleasure. I must be going now. I told the Queen I would be joining her for the gala this evening. I will be seeing you shortly, Miss Bogg, girls.”

As he twisted and vanished in a gust of gray smoke, Lydia turned to me. “That was amazing. I wish I had magic.”

I glanced at the empty basket. Queen Alana would be expecting me soon. “You might,” I said. “You still have a few weeks. If you do show, the Queen would like you trained by Casimir himself.”

Lydia looked excited, but I couldn’t help shivering, even though it was a warm, clear, day.