Debora Elizabeth Hill

Chapter Eight: The Ways of Fate

Pal watched the crowd milling around the entrance to the faire. They had just opened the gates, and it looked as if there were already twice as many people out there as there'd been on Sunday. Labor Day Monday was notorious amongst faire workers as the toughest day of the season, and he could see why. Part of it was because the performers gave away free passes to all their friends, and those passes were only good the first weekend. Monday being a holiday, it was natural all those people with responsibilities or plans for the remainder of the weekend would take advantage of the day and their passes.

Detective Mark Hanson was reading the latest copy of Conspiracy magazine. He was scheduled for lunch with his friend Rob, and wanted to be up on whatever strange things he might have published that month, but he wasn't prepared for Rob's interpretation of the campus murders in the blurb he'd agreed to write. Mark couldn't believe he was actually stringing the two at Sonoma State together with those at campuses all over the country.

He laid the magazine down for a moment, and considered the material he had read about the various murders. It was impossible that the crimes had been committed by one person, but Rob wasn't suggesting that. He was fond of a conspiracy theory; while the police had, up until this time, been treating the first murder as the work of someone who hated the female professor or wanted to get rid of his girlfriend. That theory had been shot down by the second murder, and Mark knew it was just a matter of time until the F.B.I. arrived in Santa Rosa. He wished he had more information for them.

The story

Lilly and Marshall are going forward with their wedding plans, and Valaura and Evan join them in New Orleans. It is a happy time despite the fact that one of the twins has been left behind in the other dimension. Through the offices of a marble tile pentacle design in Lilly and Marshall's new home the four adventurers are pulled through into The Land of the Pentacle.

Despite their joy at the re-uniting of the young family, they can't help but notice that everything on this side of the dimension is a mess. King Nicholas looks old and tired, and his brothers are worried. And everyone is tired of the occasional wars that pop up.

(Published December, 2006)

The story

Evan wants to buy a little time, and it didn't escape his notice that he and his friends aged not a minute on their first time through the dimensional barrier. He wants children while they are still young enough to have them, and a whole year has passed since their last trip. He and Valaura are in love, but she is unwilling to marry, and he believes that another trip to the magical dimension may provide the answer. Suspecting that the Wand won't work for them a second time, he has an artisan rework the metal and the jewels into a chalice.

(Published March, 2006) 

The story

Four people in Chicago, one weekend in June, all go to the same gift shop in the Galleria and examine an ornamental crystal wand. Rock star Marshall Storme, fantasy author Evan Stone, architect Valaura Bennet and fast-food worker Lillian Curtis all look at the wand, though only Marshall and Valaura are seriously interested in purchasing it. They are all transported to a parallel dimension, a place where the myths of earth originated, and live as real, if unusual, beings.

LAURA

It began in 1967 -- my second year in college, when Kate and I became good friends. We were on the verge of womanhood, from backgrounds as divergent as our personalities. We had no idea what we were destined for, but we were looking for the things all women of the late 1960's wanted -- love, a family, a career -- the whole lollipop.

Volume three of THE LOST MYTHS SAGA, THE SWORD AND THE SCABBARD has not yet been published, due to my plunge into the deep end of global financing. Hopefully soon!

The second volume of THE LOST MYTHS SAGA, THE CRYSTAL CHALICE was published by Fire Mountain Press in 2007. Publisher, Roxann Caraway. Available everywhere!

Published in 2006 by Fire Mountain Press, publisher Roxann Caraway. Available everywhere!