Chapter One

Clemency Pogue was a child who listened to the stories she was told. It was a quality that saved her life once, and started her on a great adventure.

These stories were spun for Clem by her parents, who were good, kind, and creative people. Unfortunately they worked far away in the mansion of a very rich, very fancy man on the other side of the forest. In the gray of every morning they would march off to work, leaving Clem to her own devices until twilight time, when they would rush back home, her father carrying the evening's meal, her mother percolating with richly embellished stories distilled from the...