When he had his fire burning so hot that his glass was liquid and I had to stand back at the far side of the room, he dipped a long tube into the molten glass and began to blow. I was fascinated; I had never seen glass being made before.

He blew a large, thin bubble, brilliantly red, then laid it down and rolled it flat before it could cool. He stepped back, wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, and waited for comments from me.

It was exactly what I had asked for, an oval piece of glass a little thicker than a window pane. But I had had an awful thought. I had knocked my head on the ceiling going up the stairs to the chapel, and I was not the tallest person in the castle. I didn’t want my magic lights shattered into shards of glowing glass the first time Dominic raised his head too quickly.

“I’d like to try something a little different,” I said. “Maybe this time could you make something hollow, like a flat-bottomed bottle that tapers toward the top-” I waved my hands in the air, sketching the shape. I was describing the base of a telephone.

“These are going to be strange looking lights,” he said with a grin when he had blown it. “How many do you want?”

“Just one more, I think,” I said, looking at my telephone; it was still glowing hot. “And then I’ll want some more parts in different shapes.” For the next hour, he blew different shapes to my specification. The mouth piece was the trickiest part. At the end, I had a glass oval and two very lovely though very unusual glass telephone instruments.

“These actually aren’t all going to be lights,” I told the young man. “Have you ever seen a telephone?”

“Those are telephones?” he said with interest. “And I made them? Can I make a call and tell my mother?”