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Half-A-Moon Inn

Half-A-Moon Inn by Paul Fleischman, 1980.

Aaron is unable to speak and has been mute since birth, so he has to communicate with people mainly through writing messages he writes on a small chalkboard. His father was a sailor who died at sea, so he lives with only his mother. One day, his mother, who is a weaver, is planning to go to the market at Craftsbury so she can tell the cloth that she’s made. Usually, Aaron goes with her, but since he’s about to turn twelve years old, his mother decides that he’s old enough to stay home alone. His mother has always been protective of him because of his inability to speak, and Aaron is nervous at being alone at home overnight. Still, he agrees to stay home and look after the house while his mother is gone.

His mother warns him not to go far from the house until she returns home because they live far from the nearest town, and there are wild animals and brigands in the woods. She promises Aaron that she will bring him a special present for his birthday when she returns home.

However, his mother doesn’t return when she promised she would. Aaron begins to worry about her, thinking that she might have had trouble on the road because of the snow. Since he has traveled the road to Craftsbury with her before, Aaron decides to head to Craftsbury himself and see if he can find his mother on the way and help her. He assembles a pack with some supplies, and ignoring his mother’s instructions to stay at the house, he sets out to look for her.

The journey is more complicated than Aaron imagines, partly because, when he meets other people, not all of them know how to read the messages Aaron writes, making it difficult for Aaron to explain that he cannot talk and that he is looking for his mother. A ragman gives him some food and a ride on his wagon, but Aaron is frustrated because the man doesn’t understand what he writes or the pictures he draws.

The ride on the wagon takes a worrying turn when the ragman takes Aaron on a route he doesn’t recognize. When they come to an inn, the ragman drops off Aaron. Aaron thinks that he can stay the night at the inn and continue his journey on his own in the morning. Unfortunately, the woman who keeps the inn, Miss Grackle, can’t read Aaron’s notes, either.

Miss Grackle says that she’ll let him stay the night in exchange for a few chores, like lighting fires in the fireplaces, and Aaron nods that he accepts. He tries to show Miss Grackle the drawing he made of his mother, but she still doesn’t understand. Eventually, Miss Grackle comes to understand that Aaron can’t speak, but he still can’t seem to explain to her where he is going or why.

To Aaron’s surprise, Miss Grackle tells him in the morning that she looked into his dreams during the night. Through his dreams, she saw his mother and his home. She says that she knows he’s far from home and not likely to be found by anyone looking for him, if there is anyone looking for him. She has taken his belongings and boots, and she tells him that he will be staying at the inn, working for her and that he will now answer to the name of Sam, like the last boy she had.

Aaron has become Miss Grackle’s prisoner at the inn, unable to leave on his own without his boots! Miss Grackle is a thief, stealing from her guests, and she is confident that Aaron won’t be able to tell anyone about it. At first, Aaron thinks that he can get some help from one of the guests staying at the inn, but he encounters the same problem he’s had all along: he can’t talk to explain anything to anyone. The guests don’t even pay attention to him, Miss Grackle intercepts messages that he tries to write, and even when he manages to sneak a message onto the inn sign, other people can’t read it because they don’t know how to read. What can he do? How can he escape and find his mother?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

This story is an adventure story that takes place at an indeterminate location and an indeterminate point in history, when people traveled by horse and wagon. It’s not a long story, but it is an intriguing one where a clever boy manages to outwit sinister villains. It reminds me a little of The Whipping Boy in setting, but there was no magic in that story, and there is in this one.

The atmosphere of the story seems like a fairy tale or folk tale. The evil, thieving innkeeper has a potion of some kind that she uses to put her guests to sleep and look into their dreams, which is how she saw Aaron’s dreams. The reason why she looks into people’s dreams is so she can learn more about who they are and where they come from. She’s looking for people who are more wealthy and important than they seem so she can hold them for ransom instead of just robbing them.

Miss Grackle’s magic apparently comes from her parents. Her mother was the one who came up with the method of looking into people’s dreams and robbing them. Her father was honest, and his determination to enforce honesty is the reason why Miss Grackle can’t run the inn by herself. Miss Grackle needs Aaron to light the fires in the inn because no fire will light in the hearths there if it is lit by a person who has been dishonest, and Miss Grackle has never been honest with anyone. Aaron finds a way to turn Miss Grackle’s greedy schemes to his advantage and escape. With Aaron gone and the only other person left in the inn as dishonest as she is, the villains are left to their fate in a snow storm that lasts for days.

Posted on by TracyC

Miss Bianca

Miss Bianca by Margery Sharp, 1962.

Miss Bianca is still a hero to the Mouse Prisoners’ Aid Society after the rescue of the Norwegian poet in the last book.  Bernard is a lesser hero, even though he was part of the mission, but such is the lot the organization’s Secretary.  Since the success of the rescue mission, the society is keen to perform another rescue, a deviation from the society’s usual role of merely providing comfort to prisoners.  The rescue mission that they have in mind this time is that of a little girl.  (The first Disney The Rescuers movie also featured the rescue of a little girl, but the circumstances in the book are very different.)

Patience is an eight-year-old orphan who has been abducted and enslaved by the Grand Duchess and is being held in her Diamond Palace.  The Grand Duchess is cruel, and some people think that she’s a witch.  Miss Bianca appeals to the Ladies’ Guild of the society to help free Patience.  The Ladies’ Guild doesn’t usually take part in the more exciting missions of the society.  The mice are somewhat concerned about what they will do with the child once they have rescued her because other prisoners they’ve helped have had homes to return to, but Miss Bianca assures them that they have a home in mind for the girl, a farm family in Happy Valley who have lost a daughter and would be likely to take in another girl.  The Ladies’ Guild agrees to undertake the mission.  Bernard wanted to come, too, but Miss Bianca insisted that they didn’t need his help.

The Diamond Palace is a strange place, in many different ways.  People often come to see it because it looks like it’s made out of diamonds, although it’s actually rock crystal.  It’s cold all the time, but even weirder than that, there seem to be less servants in the Palace than Miss Bianca would expect, given that the Duchess is always surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, who would be expected to have maids of their own.  It turns out that the “ladies-in-waiting” aren’t real people – they’re clockwork automatons! 

Rather than being a witch, the Duchess is simply an odious person who has so much money that she can give full reign to a nasty personality without anyone stopping her.  She’s so nasty and spoiled and used to forcing people to do what she wants that all of her previous, human ladies-in-waiting found that they just couldn’t handle her increasingly unreasonable demands, like insisting that they all stand perfectly still all day long while she sits on her throne, not even the slightest movement allowed.  No human being could possibly manage that.  When the human ladies-in-waiting all fainted after trying to keep perfectly still for forty-eight hours straight, the Duchess screamed that they all must have done it on purpose and dismissed them, replacing them with automatons.  The mechanical people are almost perfect because they always stand perfectly still until they’re needed and never complain or have human needs, but the Duchess discovers that they’re not quite perfect because there are some chores that they can’t do and she also misses seeing people react fearfully or start crying when she bullies them.  Keeping Patience as her slave gives the Duchess someone to do those chores and also someone to abuse.  The Duchess has had other child slaves before, but the others have died from the abuse, ill-nourishment, and general bad treatment.  (This is a darker story in a lot of ways from the Disney one.)

When Miss Bianca and the other mice meet Patience, she is also under-nourished and desperately lonely.  Miss Bianca sends the others back to the society to report about the automatons and stays with Patience to keep her company, trying to decide how to deal with the strange, mechanical people.  Bernard worries anxiously about Miss Bianca when the others come back without her and decides to go after her.

The Duchess’s other human servant, Mandrake, her Major-domo, is also little more than a slave.  The Duchess has evidence of a crime that he once committed and uses it to keep his loyalty.  Usually, he’s the only one who gets to go out the back door because he doesn’t trust Patience to take out the garbage without running away.  However, Patience tells Miss Bianca that the clockmaker sometimes comes in that way when he comes to wind up the mechanical ladies-in-waiting.  Miss Bianca hatches a plan that involves making the ladies-in-waiting break down.

However, to Miss Bianca’s surprise, the Duchess commands Mandrake and Patience to come with her to her hunting lodge when the ladies-in-waiting break down.  There is no opportunity for escape.  However, it turns out that the hunting lodge is actually above Happy Valley, and Bernard knows where it is.

Of course, they do get Patience safely to her new foster family.  Miss Bianca actually talks to the girl’s foster mother and tells her that Patience will probably forget about her eventually, when she grows up, but the foster mother likes the lullaby that Miss Bianca sings for Patience and promises to keep it as a family tradition.

The darker aspects of the story really bothered me, and I have to admit that I didn’t like it as well as the Disney version.  Mandrake actually reappears in another book in the series.

The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.