Crane

May Character Interview

Patricia Parrington ~ May 1, 2025

Hello my lovely readers and fellow book-lovers! For those of you who are new here, I, your wonderful host Patricia Parrington, have the pleasure of interviewing characters from books all over the world.

Today we have here with us Crane from the upper YA/Adult fantasy book A Quest for Hidden Things by Karen Eisenbrey. Karen lives in Seattle, Washington, where she leads a quiet, orderly life and invents stories to make up for it. Karen writes fantasy and science fiction novels, as well as short fiction and the occasional poem or song if it insists.

---

Meet Crane

Welcome to—sorry, hold on.

[Patricia scoops up a pile of stuffed animals from the orange suede couch and dumps them behind the furniture so that her guest can sit down.]

Sorry about that. My pet pseudodragon must’ve left his hoard there last night.

[Patricia sits and smiles, hands clasped in her lap.]

Welcome to Fable Features! Do you have any pets or a pet you would like to have?

[Crane smiles uncertainly at Patricia, sits gingerly on the orange suede couch, and bounces a couple of times.]

I have never seen furniture this color before. Sorry, I’m not that good at talking. With people, I mean. So, pets . . . I don’t have any of my own, but I am friends with our neighbor’s cat, Embers. She’s black and orange—she’d look good on this couch! She’s already a good mouser, though she’s still young, and I suspect she knows more about what’s going on than a lot of people in Deep River. I never thought about having a pet of my own. I want to learn to turn into animals, though. My mentor says it’s still too advanced for me. Maybe someday . . .

That would be so cool to be able to turn into animals. Are you studying magic right now?

I guess you could say I have been studying magic for 5 years, if you count trying and failing to teach myself from books. I managed to learn a few things, enough to craft my wizard’s staff and set out on a quest to find the wizard who cursed my village. I didn’t plan to find a mentor, which is a whole story in itself, but I will say, it’s much easier to learn magic from a person instead of a book.

Oh I’ll bet! It’s a good thing you stumbled across a mentor.

What are your thoughts on lying?

Mama taught me to be honest, but also that it might be better to omit the truth if it will do more harm than good. Is that lying? She’s a good storyteller. She invents or embellishes tales that never happened in real life, but maintains that they’re still true, in their way. She didn’t tell me who my father was until I was seventeen, and when she did, she told a story that I’m still not sure was strictly true. But it wasn’t a lie, either.

Hmm, that’s an interesting way to look at it. Not quite a lie, but not quite truth either.

Speaking of being taught things, what’s something you were taught when you were young that you still remember today?

To be polite and hospitable to guests. I grew up at an inn, so there were many opportunities to practice! Mama makes it look easy. I think she enjoys having a crowd. For me, it’s work, but I think I do all right. I don’t plan to be an innkeeper all my life, though.

Working at an inn certainly would be a good place to learn how to be polite and hospitable.

[Patricia tilts her head.]

Out of curiosity, who has been your strangest guest at the inn?

Well, because of the curse I mentioned before, we never had a guest I hadn’t known all my life, and compared to me, none of our neighbors are all that strange. But Mama told me a story about a mysterious visitor who came in out of the rain one spring night when she was about my age and her father was very ill. A shy young man but well-traveled. She coaxed him into conversation, and they talked half the night. He had seen all kinds of wonders—the ocean, the city, and real magic. She thought he seemed like he had lost the most important thing in his life, though he didn’t tell her what it was. In the morning he was gone, but my grandfather was miraculously well again. And I was born nine months later, so I guess they did more than talk.

Wow, that’s amazing. Certainly not a coincidence that your grandfather got well and you were born!

Here’s an interesting question: What inanimate object do you wish you could eliminate from existence?

I can’t think of one I would eliminate, but there is a book of spells I wish I could . . . punish.

[Crane holds out his badly scarred right hand.]

A long time ago, a wizard died and left a few books in our village. When I was twelve, my friend dared me to sneak into the library and read a spell from one of the books. The words didn’t make sense to me at the time, but I memorized them so I could tell him the next day at school, to prove I’d done it. I didn’t know it was a fire spell; I set fire to my own hand! But that’s when I knew I would be a wizard. Still, that book should have come with a warning.

[Patricia’s green eyes widen in alarm.]

That must’ve hurt! I agree, books like that need to come with a warning.

Who do you usually turn to for help?

Mama, or my best friend Elic, or Elic’s mother Sudi, depending on what kind of help I need. Mama’s good if I’m sad or confused. Or hungry! She’s kind and patient, and she’s a good listener and cook. I go to Elic if I need to talk something out until it makes sense. When we were little, he was my protector, but I don’t need that kind of help anymore. Aunt Sudi knows a lot about herbal medicine, so she’s the one I used to go to if I was sick or injured, like with a burned hand or something.

[Crane gets a dreamy look on his face.]

I made a new friend on my quest: Ketty, a student healer. If we were in the same town, I would want her to treat me. Her touch is magical.

[Patricia smiles.]

Ketty sounds like a special girl.

If you were to suddenly get very rich, what would you do with all the wealth?

It’s hard for me to picture having great wealth. When I left on my quest, Mama gave me a pocketful of coins, and I felt as rich as I could imagine. I spent about half of them on five days of room and meals at the inn in Misty Pass.

[Crane goes all dreamy again.]

That’s where I met Ketty.

[He sighs.]

Sorry, what were we talking about? Oh, right, riches. I don’t know, I guess I’d give it to people who need food or medicine or a place to live. Wizards can usually get by without a lot of money.

That would make sense. You would probably be able to do and obtain things with magic instead of money at that point.

You’ve mentioned this quest a couple times now—what kind of quest is it? Is this required for wizards?

[Crane laughs until the tears come.]

Sorry, it’s probably only funny to me. I learned after the fact that I had done everything backwards. In the usual course of things, a young person with a gift for magic will apprentice with a mentor. When the mentor feels they are ready, they seek to learn some kind of magic they don’t already know, from a source other than their mentor—that’s their quest. They aren’t actually required to go anywhere, though apparently, most do. If they succeed, they earn a staff and the title of wizard. I didn’t know any of this! I made my own staff from instructions I found in an old book, which made it possible for me to find a mentor so I could learn all the basic things I should have learned years before. See? Backwards. And that wasn’t even what I meant to do! I was looking for Yrae the Mad Wizard, who had enchanted my village before I was born. Yrae’s Curse kept residents from leaving and new people from arriving, and prevented us from thinking about how odd that was and why it might be. But my magic allowed me to see it and think about it, at least a little—enough to want to do something about it. I dreamed about Yrae’s mountain stronghold. So I hiked off into the forest and up the mountain. That was the first time I ever left home.

[Patricia frowns.]

I am not liking this Yrae fellow. It’s not nice to curse people. Maybe it’s a good thing you did things backward—it allowed you to notice the curse and seek out the Mad Wizard!

[Patricia taps her nose.]

What’s the weirdest smell you have ever smelled?

On my quest to find the wizard Yrae, the trail passed near a hot spring that smelled like rotten eggs, but . . . wet.

[Crane wrinkles his nose.]

Ketty told me some people think the water is good for their health, but I don’t know if they drink it or soak in it. Hard to imagine doing either—I had to move away from the smell before I ate my lunch. The mud around it was the same color as this couch, if you can believe it.

[Patricia glances at the couch and scrunches her nose.]

I like the color for a couch. Not sure that’s a good color for rotten egg–smelling mud.

Here’s our last question for today! What would you say is your greatest achievement so far?

I found Yrae the Mad Wizard and lived to tell about it. So far, anyway.

After hearing what he did to your home, that certainly does sound like it would be a difficult thing to do!

[Patricia stands.]

Thanks for chatting. I wish you the best of luck in your future questing . . . and with Ketty.

[She grins.]

End of interview.

---

Want to Read More?

Crane’s author, Karen Eisenbrey, can be found on her website, https://kareneisenbreywriter.com/. You can buy A Quest for Hidden Things here!

A Quest for Hidden Things by Karen Eisenbrey

---

See Ya Next Time

Aaand that's all the time we have today. Thank you, readers, for coming. And thank you, Crane, for letting us get to know you! See y'all next time.

---

If you would like to submit a character to be interviewed for a future issue of Fable Features, please send an email to linnae.writer@gmail.com with the subject line: Fable Features.

Please note that erotica and content with excessive vulgar language will not be accepted.

If you have questions you'd like Patricia Parrington to ask in a future interview, please submit them to linnae.writer@gmail.com with the subject line: Interview Questions.