Short Story Press Presents Valerie's Tale by Alicia Pesce Valerie’s Tale is a story about a little girl with a heart filled with courage and strength living in a world plagued with war and where magic is divided by Clerics who believe in using magic conservatively and mages who use it for whatever their heart’s desire. Valerie is force to grow up quickly when her mother contracts a life threatening illness, one that a Cleric cannot heal. With hopes of saving her, Valerie would have seek out an old wizard, a gentle man with a silly personality and unusual powers to heal her, but ends up getting frozen and brought to the future filled with odd machines powered by steam. She meets up with an old friend offers to help her through this dark new world, mostly occupied by Dark Mages who dominate the land with their dangerous magic, and find the kindly old wizard who helped her in her childhood. In her adventure, she must learn to accept things that she can’t control and she learns of patience, death and the toll that one takes when one messes with forces in which they don’t understand. But could magic really be such a dangerous force to mess with?