Book Description

Livette encounters two strange men who she doesn't recognize. Then she sees a young gypsy woman who has a reputation of asking for items. This gypsy asks her for oil and she says this is not an oil region. The gypsy performs an elaborate ritual and calls forth magic that will create enormous challenges for the young protagonist, Livette.Excerpt from King of Camargue:There are ponds like the huge central pond, the Vaccar�s, in the center of which one can wade with ease; there are tracts of land where the pedestrian sinks out of sight and is drowned. Here deception is easy. Yonder green slime that you take for a level plain--beware!--men are drowned therein; those vast stretches of water which seem to you small seas--return that way to-morrow; they will have evaporated, leaving only a mirror of white salt that crackles beneath your feet. Yonder, do you see the calm, deep water? and trees on the shore? Ah! no, you can run along the surface of that water; it is dry land; the mirage alone formed those trees, just as it showed you the little child walking a league away, apparently near at hand and very tall. A land of visions, dreams, and hard work. A land of sedentary folk, who inhabit a vast space on the shore of endless waters, with an infinity of variations of mirages, sunbeams, reflections, and bright colors.