Z is for Zumil

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.  I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, and I’ve also been sharing some of the background on why we urgently need joyful stories.)

        Here’s the part in the story “The Home for Dispossessed Familiars” where we meet Zumil.  (I’ve added just a couple of inserts for context, where needed.)

        When Trudy arrived home from school on Thursday she found Colly [a crow] standing on the table, examining the papers Great Aunt Gert had sent.  The crow shuffled the top one aside with a claw, cocking her head from side to side as she scanned across the tattered pages.

        “Oh!  You can read?” Trudy exclaimed.  “Sorry, I guess I just assumed that because Grimalkin [a cat] said he couldn’t…”

        “Grimalkin is a heavy,” Colly replied, “I’m the scholarly type.”

        “I’m a man of action,” Grimalkin muttered from where he lay sprawled across the loveseat at the other end of the room.

        Trudy dropped her bag on the table and reached to pull out the chair.  She screamed as her hand touched something that was definitely not wood – something that squeezed out from under her palm and skittered into the shadows under the table.

        “What the…?”

        Colly hopped to the edge of the table and peered down.  “Are you okay, Zumil?  Come on out.”

        “What…?” Trudy repeated weakly, wondering how her life had so suddenly gotten so bizarre.

        A sharp nose poked up from the underside of the tabletop, vanished as the creature and Trudy startled each other again, and then slowly reemerged.  It crept up over the edge to the top of the table.

        Grimalkin jumped down from the loveseat, stretched, sauntered over, and hopped up onto the chair seat.  “Zumil,” he said, indicating the creature with a nod.  This new creature was a yellow-speckled lizard, long-nosed and long-tailed like an anole, but larger than any Trudy had ever seen.

        “A familiar, I presume?” she asked.

        The lizard bobbed his head.

        “And has his witch died recently?”

        Another nod.

        “Someone should probably be looking into the mortality rate of local witches.”

        I wrote this story after realizing, to my astonishment, that I’d actually never written a short story that included familiars or similar animal companions.  This was a great surprise to me because I’d included animal companions in all of my novels, and just assumed that of course I must have written stories about them… But I hadn’t, so I went back to basics and started with your classic witches’ familiars.  But the twist is that they’re gathering at the home of a woman who is not a witch, has no desire to be a witch, and doesn’t even know what to do with them all!  And of course it ends up being another story about cooperation, compassion, and caring for each other.

        Marketing Moral: We end where we began: Buy my Book!  If this series of posts has enticed you to the point where you actually wish to have your very own copy the book, it’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or straight from me.

        Proper Moral: Divided we fall, which is why repressive governments work so hard to sow distrust and divide people from each other.  However, as long as we refuse to stop caring for each other, we cannot be truly defeated.  (Also, a friend in need is a friend indeed.)

        If you could have a magical familiar, what animal would you choose?

[Picture: Anole, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2024 (Image from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals are still available at NydamPrints.com).]