I read this so long ago I forgot the details. Not that it matters, Ysabeau S. Wilce is always on my “buy without a second thought” list these days, and though I’m disappointed by any new book that’s a collection of short stories rather than some hundreds of pages of novel, I can’t say I didn’t enjoy every one of them in Prophecies, Libels & Dreams: Stories of Califa. Supposedly yeah, it’s a children’s or Young Adult book, like all of hers; so was China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, and that, this, or any one of Wilce’s Flora Segunda books are far more enjoyable, intelligent, sophisticated to read than those denominations imply. I used to read Harry Potter once every 18 months or so. Now, it’s Flora.