Dust swirled in the beams of morning light as K---- swept the floor of her modest stone hut.

D. wavered, his weight constantly shifting as he learned this new art of balance, then he began moving toward his mother in something resembling a controlled forward fall.

“Yes, my love. You can walk!” Č. rewarded the thirteen-month-old, showering kisses on his dark curls as though this were his first time. He had actually begun to walk a couple of months ago but the anxiety around the palace over events in F. was absorbed by the young lord’s heart and he regressed for a few weeks. Now he was getting bolder each day.

Yes, my frolicking earwigs, I keep returning to the scale of the domestic, over and over again. The princess encourages her firstborn in "this new art of balance." Into this charming scene comes a friend of great-grandma's, no ordinary woman, who had just flown in - really! - in the form of a white-bellied sea eagle.

A brighter future is linked, in the princess' mind, with too many nightmare memories. Can she, who survived so much horror in the first two books, find peace?

I kill off so many characters. Anyone want to lay odds on the princess' future happiness?

[Yes, David, 2009 is the year I seek publication.]

--the BB