Into the Fire

Today on “Saturday Sample . . . ” I have the pleasure of sharing a small piece of the trilogy written by Rebecca Luella Miller, aka Becky, one of my internet “friends” I’ve never had the pleasure to meet in person. Bright, insightful, and definitely not a self-promoter, Becky Miller loves the Lord and the desire of her heart seems to be to reach readers, lost and found, via fantasy fiction written through the lens of a Christian.

Becky and I have this understanding: I don’t read fantasy, and she doesn’t particularly like some of my flavors of thriller novels. However, I can’t help but admire her writing, and I’m sure you will, too. You can read the first chapter on her blog, “A Christian Worldview of Fiction”. This is from chapter two.

I found the following quote about J. R. R. Tolkien in the book Through a Screen Darkly by Christian film critic Jeffrey Overstreet and it seemed apropos:

“Tolkien was drawn to the world of faerie for just this reason. Through fantasy, we find metaphors that murmur about spiritual, unseen realities. Middle-Earth is a fantasy world, rich with magic, continuing in the vein of great fairy tales from King Arthur’s epic to A Midsummer Nights’ Dream to Aslan’s Narnia to Harry Potter’s Hogwarts. Whether Christian or otherwise, cultures throughout history have dabbled in stories of the fantastical, giving shape to their deeply rooted sense that there is more to life than the material world makes visible.”

The Lore of Efrathah

The Lore of Efrathah—a relief map of the soul.
Stones of power. Black-armored Vacant Ones. Exiles on the run. When professional basketball player Jim Thompson falls into the parallel world of Efrathah, he encounters more than he can handle. His one goal is to find the way home—that is, until he begins to care for the people who have befriended him, until he falls in love with Eli-sa, Keeper of the Light Censer.

Will Jim cooperate with those loyal to the displaced ruler of the land and master the power of the sword he acquired? Will he discover the way home? Even if he does, will he choose to stay in Efrathah in order to make his life count for something greater?

Chapter II—Jonathan

Jim opened his eyes a crack. A yellow glow, as dim as a child’s nightlight, interrupted the darkness, but he couldn’t see anything else without lifting his head, and he didn’t want to move. His heavy eyelids closed, and he drifted toward sleep.

Drifted. He’d dreamed about drifting. If it was a dream. And before the drifting—Jim’s stomach somersaulted. Now he remembered. The fall from the cliff. His desperate effort to get off the ledge. The cave. The illusion of floating into a network of tunnels. The appearance of that intimidating, hairy creature.

Jim brushed a hand over his eyes. The physical exertion from his ordeal earlier was taking its toll on his thinking processes. That had to be it. But where was he?

He rolled over and sat up, groaning with each painful movement.

“You are awake.”

Jim started. Someone else was in the room, maybe someone with a narrow face covered in hair.

A ridiculous thought. He had to get a grip on himself. After all, he’d earned his Mr. Ice handle for a reason—he didn’t panic under pressure, didn’t let an opponent knock him off his game. Clenching his jaw, he turned toward the speaker.

A man about Jim’s age stood next to a petite woman sitting on a stool. In spite of her rustic cotton dress, she was attractive, with her long blond hair neatly tied at the nape of her neck.

The man, built like an NFL fullback, looked familiar, but for the moment Jim couldn’t place him. His clothes—khaki pants and a plain v-necked walnut-brown shirt, the same color as his hair—resembled a costume more than anything. Jim glanced at his own clothing—shorts instead of his jeans and a plain white shirt replacing his sweatshirt. But how—

Mr. Vaguely-Familiar touched an open palm to his chest. “I am Jonathan ‘edai Sabarim.” He shifted his hand to the woman’s back. “This is my helpmate, Deborah ‘adai Danél. Tell us once more who you are.”

“I’m Jim Thompson. Where are we?”

In his other hand, the guy with the foreign-sounding last name held up a glowing, softball-sized sphere. Jim’s eyes widened. This was the guy he’d seen earlier beside the campfire.

The golden light intensified, and the enclosure brightened. Jim’s gaze swept from the crystal sphere to Jonathan’s swarthy face and back again. He’d thought this sphere was part of his hallucination. But if the sphere existed—

Jim ratcheted the pitch of his voice a step higher. “Where am I?”

Jonathan reached for Deborah’s hand and edged in front of her. The smile vanished from his brown eyes. “Before I tell you where you are, I must be certain you are not a servant of Vildoth-sadín.”

Hearing the name, Jim recoiled. Darkness swirled through his mind. Darkness and death. But he didn’t want this Jonathan to know how stunned he felt or how hard his heart was pounding. “Look,” he blustered, “I’m nobody’s servant, and until you found me, I’d never heard of that guy.”
For a moment it seemed as if Jonathan hadn’t understood because he held his position, without moving, without speaking, just staring at Jim from under his thick brows. At last, he released his wife’s hand and stepped toward Jim.

Taken from The Lore of Efrathah (200?; written by Rebecca Luella Miller)