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Copyright © 2012 by Noel McKeehan

More can be found about the author at:

noelmckeehan.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, or in any eBook format without permission in writing from the author.

Published by Lulu.com

Fantasy

ISBN 978-1-105-57035-3

Author’s Remarks

Like most people, I have always thought that I had a novel in me. But I never was able to figure out what it might be about.

That was true until the first time I went to France.

From the first moment I encountered Paris I felt stories shrieking at me to be told.

Every nook, cranny, alley, downspout, petite Place, grande Place, every Passage, monument, church, bridge, bistro and bar screamed “take me; make me part of your story”. Or “make me your story”. Or “listen to me: I have your story.”

But it was an odd chance encounter with a non-human fellow creature that served as the inspiration for this – my first - novel.

That encounter occurred early one evening when I had returned to the apartment my wife and had rented on Rue Guissard.

It was about 1700. It was dark. I was tired. For reasons I have never been able to ascertain, I didn’t turn on the lights in the apartment when I entered. Maybe it was because there was ample, blinking low watt, multi-colored illumination coming in from the restaurant sign outside the casements on Rue Guissard, to make the place pleasantly, colorfully, blinkingly dim.

So I left the light off.

I sat down in a chair and dropped off to sleep.

After an indeterminate time I awoke. It hadn’t been long. The sign was blinking. The room alternated between being drenched in semi darkness and being dimly, colorfully lit.

I was giving serious thought to a glass of wine.

Then I heard something.

I have reasonably acute hearing for some things; I am virtually deaf to others. The things that I always seem to hear have something to do with animals; frequently those sounds are the sounds of small animals. Such was the case on this occasion.

What I had heard was a mouse. It was sitting not far from me bathed in the oscillating multi-colored light and was eating crumbs from the breakfast baguette and croissants.

I was entranced.

He or she sat there and finished the meal. When it finished I swear I thought it nodded its head in my direction as if acknowledging my presence. Then it went back to some place from which it had come.

I sat there happily.

I have always liked mice.

Although most of the places, and a few of the occurrences, in this book are substantially real everything else is imagined.