Isabel sat up and laughed aloud with delight, relieved beyond measure that the beauty and peace of this ancient land had begun to do exactly what she’d hoped when she’d discussed this book idea with her agent—it had begun to sooth her soul and help reground her creativity in something more bearable than death and destruction.
Impulsively Isabel kicked off her hiking boots and pulled off her socks. She rolled up her jeans and, still holding her camera, stepped carefully into the crystalline water. Isabel sucked air and gasped at the initial chill, but after a few slow steps, her feet got used to the temperature of the stream, and she made her way to the shaft of sunlight that had so recently framed the bison. When she got to the light, Isabel turned her face up, bathing in the morning’s radiance while the cool water washed over her feet and ankles.
There was something about this place that touched her. Maybe it was just the drastic contrast between the calm freedom of the prairie—green, lush and clean—and the war-ravaged Middle East, where everything her eyes had focused on had been dry and burned and in a nightmare of conflict. She breathed deeply—inhaling and exhaling, imagining with every breath she was getting rid of all the negatives within herself and letting the water wash away the remnants of death and war that had clung to her for the past month. Without pausing to wonder why or second-guess whether she was making a fool of herself, Isabel spoke her inner most thoughts aloud to the listening stream and the shaft of light.
“This is just what I need. A new perspective, a new vision. To cleanse myself. That bull was telling me something. He was telling me to go for it. I just wish I knew what ‘it’ was. Tell me, Lady of the Lake,” she said, grinning. “Mrs. Tiger taught us all about you in eighth grade. What is my destiny?”
Isabel knew it was just her imagination, but it seemed the silver light intensified in response to her words, and she could swear she felt a thrill of something. Laughing with pleasure, she threw her arms wide and kicked up water so that drops of liquid turned crystal by the sunlight rained around her, baptizing her in brilliance.
VIVIANE couldn’t stay away from her oracle. She knew it was too soon for the tendrils of her magic to have found anyone, but she was filled with frustrated energy. So while her naiads milled nervously around her, the goddess sat in front of her oracle, a crystal basin filled with hundreds of pearls, and fretted.
When a pearl began to glow, she practically pounced on it. Plucking it from the others in the dark, silent batch, she held it up and gazed into its milky depths. The vision cleared to show an old woman sitting beside a large lake, spitting what looked like sunflower seeds into the surf.
“Younger!” Viviane said in disgust, severing the thread and sending it away from the crone. She tossed the pearl back into the basin and began to pace.
The next pearl that lit up showed a child playing beside the ocean. Viviane almost screamed in exasperation. “Not that young!” she admonished her oracle.
The next two visions were utterly unsuitable. Neither were too young or too old, they were just too ordinary. At the end of her already thinly stretched patience, Viviane plucked one long silver strand of silk from the thick fall of hair that hung veil-like around her body. Holding it over the pearl-filled basin, she twirled it in a deceptively lazy circle.
Not too young, old or plain—
with those there is no gain.
Find the perfect woman is my command;
beauty, grace and spirit is what I demand!
The goddess released the strand of her hair, and as the gossamer length floated down into the pearl pool, she completed the spelclass="underline"
From my own body I lend my oracle power:
find the right soul within this very hour!
There was a flash of silver and the strand of the goddess’s hair exploded, raining sparks of liquid light, which dissolved into the pearls. Invigorated anew, silver threads rushed out from the realm of the goddess and, following seaways and lakes, rivers and streams, they searched through time and realities until one small, glowing thread shot down a tiny waterway in a faraway place called Oklahoma, in the distant, modern mortal world where, in a flash of morning light, it captured the sound of a woman’s joyous laughter as she recommitted herself to the bright possibilities in life.
Viviane heard the enticing sound and plucked the glowing pearl. Holding her breath, the goddess peered within the milky depth that cleared to reveal a full-bodied blonde, oddly attired, who was dancing within a cascade of a splashing stream. Viviane’s heartbeat increased with excitement.
“Show me her face!” the goddess commanded.
Her oracle tightened on the woman’s face. Well, she was certainly attractive. Viviane squinted and focused on her. Not young, but not too old, or at least she didn’t appear to be. And there was a definite benefit to a little age and experience. The woman laughed again, and Viviane unexpectedly found her own lips tilting up in response. The sound was musical and it changed the woman from attractive to alluring.
“Yes,” Viviane murmured. “I believe she will do quite nicely.” The goddess lifted her arms, causing power to swirl around her.
I claim this mortal as fate decrees in her world she dies.
When her life there ends, it will be to me her soul has ties.
My love’s sleeping wishes I follow most truly
so that he might escape the despair that binds him so cruelly.
I take nothing that is not already decreed lost;
my purpose is clear—no matter the cost.
Arthur’s dour fate shall not come to be
and then my love will return to me!
Then the great water goddess known as Coventina, Merlin’s Viviane, hurled a blazing sphere of divine power through her oracle and out . . . out . . . into another time, another place, altering forever fate’s plans for Isabel Cantelli.
CHAPTER TWO
HINDSIGHT, Isabel Cantelli decided in hindsight, sucked. She came to this conclusion after steering to avoid a chipmunk and having her SUV spin out of control.
She probably shouldn’t have been digging for her dropped cell while she was happily singing “Camelot” and driving sixty on a dirt road. She probably should have let that little dude fend for himself instead of trying to be a hero saving him. Hindsight wasn’t fifty-fifty. It was, at the moment, zero-one hundred.
But shoulda, coulda, woulda wasn’t going to help her now. She and her Nissan were flying into Grand Lake at an alarming speed.
Isabel braced herself for the swan dive they were about to accomplish, which she doubted would be graceful. The lake, which she’d found magical just minutes ago, was about to kick her in the ass.
So many thoughts raced through her mind. Strangely enough, none of the ones she expected when she knew she was about to die. Her life didn’t flash before her eyes; the life she hadn’t lived yet did.
Terror, fear of the pain of dying, that all flashed. But the sadness of what she hadn’t yet achieved was occupying her brain.