
Maja was happy living in the Temple of Thenoth, Lord of the Beasts, in Haven; it was a place that could use her gift of Animal Mindspeech and her love of animals. But the arrival of a hysterical little girl and her injured finch started a chain of events that took Maja from the peace of Thenoth's temple to the intrigues of the king's court. This story was originally published in [BOOK:Finding the Way and Other Tales of Valdemar], December 2010.
Author

Elisabeth Waters sold her first short story in 1980 to Marion Zimmer Bradley for The Keeper's Price, the first of the Darkover anthologies. She then went on to sell dozens of short stories to a variety of anthologies. Her first novel, a fantasy called Changing Fate, was awarded the 1989 Gryphon Award. Its sequel is Mending Fate, published in 2016. She currently writes short stories and has edited the Sword and Sorceress anthology series, which ended with Sword and Sorceress 34. She has also worked as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera, where she appeared in La Gioconda, Manon Lescaut, Madama Butterfly, Khovanschina, Das Rheingold, Werther, and Idomeneo.