by Mark McCabe
The smirk on his face as he turned away and began to stroll down the pathway brought a smile to Sara’s lips and a lump to her throat. There must be a god somewhere, she thought. How else could such happiness have come her way?
Pulling the hood of her cloak back over her head, she hurried to catch up to him, knowing there would be much to talk over on the long ride back to the city. An image of her parents formed in her mind as she walked through the rain. It was hard to accept that the life she was choosing would be one in which they couldn’t play a role. Life’s choices were like that, she guessed. Pathways opened before you and you had to make choices. You couldn’t always have all of the things that you wanted.
Still, she wouldn’t let them go through their life despairing of what had become of their daughter. She would have to tell Rayne eventually. Not now, but soon. He would understand, she was sure. He would have to. She was going to stay, she had made that decision, but that didn’t mean that she was going to stop trying to find a way back home. There had to be a way to go back and tell her parents what had happened to her, to tell them how much she missed them, to tell them that she was happy, and about Rayne and everything else. Golkar’s diary, the one that Tanis had written, the answer was in there. Josef had worked it out and so would she, no matter how long it took.
As she reached the tree where Rayne stood waiting for her with their horses’ reins in his hand, she realised that she felt better than she had for weeks. There was so much to do, so much to plan, so much to look forward to now, both for her and for the rest of the country. Taking Rayne’s hand, she climbed up onto Nell and together they set off on the long journey back to Keerêt.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark McCabe was born in Brisbane, Australia, later moved to Sydney and then to Canberra, the Australian capital city, where he completed a career in the Australian Government and Australian Capital Territory’s public service agencies.
Upon retiring, Mark and his family moved to New Zealand and took up residence near Dunedin.
Mark holds a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Classics, Latin and English from the Australian National University.
Mark’s favoured genres are fantasy (predominantly epic and high fantasy) and science fiction, although he does hope to write a series of crime novels at some stage in the future. He cites David Gemmell, Jack Vance and Ursula Le Guin as key inspirations and influences.
In his spare time, Mark is an amateur photographer and a keen student of the classics, with a particular focus on Rome as well as ancient myths and legends such as the Trojan Cycle.
Author website: markmccabeauthor.com
