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The Crossing
Chapter One
 
Kathryn Kelly had been in the writing business for almost thirteen years. She startingwriting because she couldn’t sing. She found she needed a way to give back to the universesomething of what she’d been given. And since she couldn’t sing, she wrote. She had talentand she did well. A couple of children’s books, several articles, and was, during the coldestsummer ever in San Francisco, thinking about a first novel.Then fate intervened. On a cool summer morning in mid-August, Jason, Kathryn’shusband of almost fifteen years wandered into their second story flat in downtown SanFranciso and informed his wife that he had given up his tenture at the San Franciscomuseum and had decided to move the family from California to Sedona, Arizona. Jason,usually a staid conformist who loved working in the dry environment of the museumarchives, found what he had been searching for all his life.After discovering several misplaced digital photos of rock outcroppings with pictographs,their message sent Jason to Sedona, Arizona and then to Sunset Crater National Park wherehe uncovered an ancient Anasazi village now called
Canyon de Kelly
. After receivingseveral grants, one from
Save America’s Treasures
, another from the
 National Trust for  Historic
 
 Preservation
, and lastly from the
 Arizona State Historical Fund,
nothing couldstop him. Not even the grumblings of his wife and child.Married at eighteen, Kate Kelly, had spent more than a few years listening to Jason’scontinued verbosity regarding the Anasazi civilization. She fell in love with their cultureand decried the rumor of their cannibilism. The Anasazi carved out an existence in the hillsand mountains of the desert. They dug pits, hunted elk, and grew maize. Their firstdwellings were pit houses that were often made of horizonal logs laid with mud mortar.
 
Later they created elaborate cliff dwellings and terraced apartment houses of stone, mud,and wood. Jason had found the former; logs, a firepit and a ball court. But it wasn’t the digthat upset Kate. And it wasn’t really the move, though it brought hardship to herself andher son. No, what bothered her most of all was the lie. Jason had known about the grantsand the dig for more than a year before the great announcement. Not once had hementioned it to Kate or to Ryan and it was his betrayal by silence that bothered her most of all.So, Kate tried everything – from tears to hysterical anger resulting in several broken cupsof her favorite Carrollton china, not to mention a few plates and saucers. She loved potteryand she loved shaping it from clay. Often, when Jason was on a dig, Kate assisted inrestoring the bits of ancient pottery left behind by dead civilizations. Consequently, breaking her favorite china bothered her so much it almost always reduced her to tears. Butit was to no avail. She had to leave her beloved city and travel to the red rock desert of Sedona, where the night sky stretched into infinity and the howls of the skittish coyotecould be heard nightly.She packed their bags, arranged for the furniture movers, canceled a trip to her mother’sat Mammoth Lakes, said good-bye to her dearest friends, comforted their son, and movedon with life. She drove their Lexus complete with seat warmer, DVD-satellite television,and XM radio, which had by all accounts eaten Sirus alive several years previous, throughthe cool, mist covered valleys of the Bay Area, straight through the green lushness of theSan Fernando Valley, and on to the bleak desert landscape of the Mohave. She enteredSedona three days later with her thirteen year-old son, Ryan.Accompanying Kate and Ryan during their journey was the newly discovered comet
 Eros
.It was a large comet and colored an unusual reddish orange. During the day, its passagewas so close to the sun that it was hard to see, but at night, the comet did a stand-up danceacross the sky, coloring everything on Earth with its blood-red passage. Some people saidthe comet was slowing Earth’s rotation, others said the comet was responsible for globalwarming. But most people said the comet was just a comet, swinging close enough toEarth for its tail to leave bits of red metallic dust over everything in sight.
 
Kate spent the first week in her new home putting away boxes, tending to her son’senrollment in a new high school, and buying furniture. The second and third week wasspent trying to learn the streets of her adopted city, adapt to the inhuman heat of the desert,and to digging in the dry red dirt attempting to get something green to grow in thecourtyard of their new home. By the fourth week, with Ryan in school and Jason hardlyever home, she spent most of her days napping, perhaps a little depressed, a lot lonely, and
oh so ready
to return to her flat on the hill in San Francisco.Kate quickly discovered that she hated the heat, detested the black desert nights, and the blood-red soil of Thunder Mountain frightened her as much as the comet. She couldn’twrite, couldn’t fall asleep at night, and hadn’t the energy of dead cockroach. The laundrywas left unwashed, the dishes undone, and she’d hadn’t had a haircut, a manicure, or a footmassage since leaving the city. But most of all, she hated Jason. And the hate was growingdaily. His voice irritated her, his manners bothered her, but more than anything else, hishabitual contrariness that she’d lived with since she was eighteen jangled her nerves untilshe wanted to scream. She allowed him the fact that he was fifteen years older than she andat forty-eight was having some kind of midlife crisis she was not prepared for. She probably could have forgiven him anything if she were able to sleep at night instead of having to sit in her favorite chair, watching the stars rotate across the heavens with dullregularity accompanied by the creepy orange-red comet
 Eros.
 Naps became her salvationand then her damnation.Kathryn Kelly rolled over, a slight snore interrupting her sleep. A thin line of salivadribbled down her chin as she buried her face into a pillow. She tried to breathe andcouldn’t. Her body twitched as it fought for air. Terrified, one eye opened and…There was darkness.
 Incense clung to tattered curtains then hovered about the room in a wavering haze. Acrinkled old woman sat bunched in a chair, dressed in flowing robes of purple. Her smiledeepened, eyes nearly lost in a maze of wrinkles. She pointed upward, speaking, "You will travel to the stars." 
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