Clara's Tale

By Robert Collins

Clara grows up a foundling with an affection for reading. It doesn't help her much until she meets a charming young man named Thomas. As it happens, he also enjoys reading and books. Clara strikes up a friendship with Thomas. She wonders about this young man who seems to know much about history as well as tales. As for Thomas, he's intrigued that she's a foundling. Could they both be part of a real-life story?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Collins
• Release date: Feb 27, 2025
• ISBN: 9798230006541

Robert Collins

Robert Collins is the author of the science-fiction novels "Monitor," "Lisa's Way," and "Expert Assistance." He's also author of the fantasy novels "Cassia" and "The Opposite of Absolute," and the young adult novel "True Friends." He has several short-story collections available, including "The Frigate Victory Omnibus Collection" and "The Case Files of Gwen Conner."

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CLARA’S TALE

by

Robert Collins

Ebook Edition

Copyright © 2021 by Robert Collins

License Notes, eBook edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1

Clara looked out on the town that day, and wondered if there was a wizard who could make her invisible.

She had spent her life in the village of Tall Glen, which was in the kingdom of Wildthorn. In most ways it was a rather common life. She was born to a farmer and his wife. She had two older brothers. The only toys she had were those she made from sticks.

In one way, though, it was quite the uncommon life. She could remember a day, when she was small, and a bard had come through the village. That itself wasn’t unusual. Bards would come through at least twice a year. This particular bard had something with him, something Clara had never seen before. He looked at it before and after he performed.

What is that? she asked, pointing at the object.

It’s a book, he answered.

What’s a book?

It’s something you read.

What’s read?

He opened the book and showed it to her. Do you see the marks on the page?

She nodded her head the instant she saw them.

Those are letters. You put letters together to make words.

Make words?

Just as talking makes words.

It’s like talking?

Only you look at the letters together, and the book talks to you.

Can it talk to me?

Only if you know how to read.

Can you teach me?

He shook his head. I haven’t the time, little girl. He reached into his traveling sack. He pulled out another book, much slimmer than the one he’d shown her. I will give you this.

For me?

As long as you take care of it, and you ask your parents and the other adults of the village to help you.

She took the book from his hands and held it to her chest. I will.

When I come back here, I’ll see if you’ve made progress. If you have, I’ll try to give you another book.

I will! I will!

The book was the first important thing she ever owned.

After the bard left she did as he instructed. Her parents couldn’t help her read. Only the man who owned the grain mill in the village could. As the bard had come early in the autumn, the miller only had the time to show her the letters and the sounds they made. Clara was on her own the rest of the time.

It took her several days but she was able to decipher the book. She already knew quite a few words as she’d learned to talk. Putting the letters together showed her that the letters matched sounds she knew. Words that weren’t so obvious on the page, like they and sheep, she puzzled out from saying them aloud.

As it turned out the book was a small volume of common villages tales. She’d heard them all before, from bards and her parents. Yet it was a different experience for her, reading as opposed to listening. She could real the tales anytime she wanted to, while if she wanted to hear them, a bard had to come to the village, or her parents had to have the time to tell them.

Reading the book also made her realize that the bard owned at least one other book. That book was thicker than the book he’d shown her before putting it away. There had to be other books in the world. Those books might well have tales she enjoyed that weren’t in the book she owned. They might have tales she’d never heard before.

She asked her parents how she might acquire other books. They told her other books cost coins that they didn’t have to spend. They also couldn’t take time away from the farm to travel to buy books. You’ll have to see what the next bard says, he father advised.

The next bard to come to the village the following spring wasn’t interested in giving her any of his books. That made her sad. One made an unexpected visit during the summer. He wasn’t willing to part with any of his, but he was willing to loan one of his to her. I’ll need it back when I come back, he’d said. Clara agreed to the bargain. That bard passed through late in the autumn. She had to give him back his book.

That experience told her that if she couldn’t get books as gifts she could ask to borrow a book from a bard and return it. About half the bards who came through the village were unwilling to do even that much. But several were happy to do so. Clara always treated their books with the utmost care, which made them all the happier to have dealt with her.

As for the bard who had given her one of his books, he did return to Tall Glen three years later. He did indeed remember her, though he said she was taller than before. He gave her another of his books, a stouter volume. He didn’t make any promises about coming back or giving her books, but he did say that he’d try to do both.

The books she read opened the world up for Clara. She found early on that not all books contained tales and ballads. A couple were about the past of Wildthorn. Others were about the pasts of other domains. At first she wasn’t sure if those places were real. But since a few of those domains’ histories mentioned the kingdom she lived in, the one she knew was real, then those others had to be real as well. This in turn told her that the world was more than just her village, the others nearby, and the town where the castle was. The world was made up of kingdoms and dukedoms, mountains and plains, seas and great rivers.

Other books were about how someone was supposed to behave in the society of a town. A few offered notions on how the world came to be or what animals lived in the world. One book spoke of how to live a moral life. One was nothing but descriptions of battles. As she grew up she read that the world could be a dangerous place but also a wondrous place.

The only trouble for her with all this reading was the expansion it gave to her mind. The play of the other village boys and girls was fun, but none of them shared her interest in reading. As they got older the boys expressed their interest in following their fathers in their trades. The girls wanted to be mothers. No one wanted to find out about the world described in the pages of the books Clara read.

This disinterest turned into mockery. No one could be too vicious. After all, unless you were married off to someone in a nearby village, you would spend all your life around those you mocked. The boy you made fun of at a younger age could become the farmer you had to work with to bring in a crop when you became adults. The girl you laughed at might serve you food at a village festival once she was grown and had married. No one wanted to be so hated by their neighbors that they could be threatened or ignored later in life.

Clara still had to endure some amount of jests from from the other village youth. None of it was particularly painful. Most was over how impractical it was for a village girl to read about the world when village life, either their or in a nearby village, was all she was ever going to experience. She was silly, she dreamed too much, and she’d never amount to a good wife.

Then came her transition from girl to young woman. Her face and figure became fair to look at. She was no longer a silly girl but the beauty of Tall Glen. Yet she wasn’t so enamored of her looks that she forgot the jests she’d gotten from the boys a few years earlier. She dismissed their attentions and pointed them at the other women of the village.

This didn’t cause troubles for her with the other young ladies of the village. They were pleased and relieved that Clara had no interest in the young men they pursued. It did mean that her parents became more demanding on her. She had to cast her eye farther to find a husband. That meant travel.

On that particular day, it meant going to the town of Smith’s Ford with her father for the town’s harvest festival. Although town boys and village boys seemed on the surface to be different, to her they were much the same. They wanted little to do with books and the larger world. What mattered to them were good jobs and a wife who could cook, clean, and bear children.

She had been to Smith’s Ford in the spring. She didn’t enjoy her time there then. She was dreading her return. All the folk she hadn’t wanted to talk to were still there. The young ladies who had glared at her with flowers in their hair were glaring again, only now they had tiny branches with colored leaves wrapped around their heads. The young men who gaped at her and had nothing to say were gaping again, and their talk was still dull.

She wanted to be invisible. However, wizards did not work cheap, and witches didn’t know the proper spell. So she stuck close to her father and endured the best she could.

The one sight that lifted her spirit was that a bard she’d spoken to over the years back in Tall Glen was entertaining at the town. She sought the man out to talk with him. His hair wasn’t as brown as it used to be, and there wasn’t as much of it as there used to be. His voice was still as strong as ever. She approached him after he’d sung a couple of ballads.

It’s me, Clara, the book girl from Tall Glen, she said.

His eyes narrowed. I daresay you’re not a girl anymore.

No, I’m not.

You didn’t come all this way for poor old me, did you?

No. Father brought me. I’m supposed to be searching for a husband.

The bard gave her a gap-toothed smile. You’re lovely, but I’m taken.

She grinned. You’re still a charmer.

That I am.

Are you coming to Tall Glen after you’re done here?

Not this autumn, I fear.

Why not?

The chill gets to me sooner each autumn. Makes going to every town and village harder and harder.

She took another look at the bard. She hadn’t noticed at first, but there were lines around his eyes, much like those around her father’s eyes. His movements while he sang weren’t as grand as she’d remembered. His signing voice still had weight but had less while he spoke.

You’re growing old, she said.

We all do, sooner or later.

I understand. I suppose I shouldn’t ask to borrow any books from you.

I would be happy to lend you one, but I only carry what I work from these days.

Oh, but that’s so sad.

It is. Since I can’t carry as much, I don’t travel as much. Bad circle, that.

Well, I’m glad to have seen you.

He bowed his head. As have I. Are you going to do something with all that knowledge in your head?

I’ve been trying to find something. I haven’t had any luck so far.

Well, then, this night I shall pray for you.

You’re too kind.

He gave her a nod, and she curtsied to him. She turned and walked away.