Tim Law is an author of fantasy, horror, detective and general short story fiction as well as the occasional poem or two. He heralds from a little town in Southern Australia called Murray Bridge. A happily married father of three children (plus four cats and a rabbit), family is very important to him. Currently working at the Murray Bridge Library in the role of Library Manager he has dreamed since his early high school years of becoming a full-time author. Working for a library, surrounded by so many wonderful authors it is difficult not to be inspired to write. Tim finds inspiration from playing board games, family movie night, family time and the world around him. The greatest inspiration of all for him comes from asking the golden question “what if?”

The Adventures of Lucy Lovett

Lucy Lovett lifted the locket to her lips.

“At last you’re mine,” she sighed.

It had taken Lucy more than half her fifty-four years to uncover this wondrous treasure, piecing together snippets of clues, snatches of conversations, even a trip to Loth, Egypt’s infamous home for the insane to speak with Doctor Peterson. Every moment spent, every dead end discovered, almost dying twice, having to spend those months with the doctor who was just as crazy as he was cruel, it had all been worth it. She was not home free yet though. Placing the precious find into a secure pocket, Lucy used the tip of her father’s dagger to gently prize a hexagonal coin from the socket in the base of the plinth. Acquiring that coin had been a half a million dollar sacrifice, money well spent. Her father had shared with her his knowledge of the jewelry of Princess Ahk Ma Rahalli, and when he died Lucy had promised she would find the last known remaining piece. As she sheathed the dagger, and made to collect the coin, a very strange thing happened. It dissolved into mere grains of sand. Similarly the plinth upon which the precious locket had unassumingly sat suddenly fell apart. Lucy felt her boots sink into the floor. Behind her, the archway that she had used to enter into the chamber fell to pieces, a puzzle that would never be completed again.

“Miss Lovett, once more you have proven your uncanny ability to be in sticky situations, you need to rocket out of here,” Lucy sternly told herself. “But how do I escape from the inescapable?”

Then it hit her. Animals, especially insects, somehow knew the quickest path to safety. An ant colony was at that precise moment making a very straight line for a corner in the room where the floor still seemed solid. Lucy began to shuffle that way through the sand, as quickly as she could. While the ants vanished through the minutest of cracks, Little Lucy found she was too big, the wall did not give, no matter how hard and often she hit it.

“Father, I need you, help me in my time of need.”

Was it a note scrawled in Lincoln Lovett’s rushed pen, or the whispered words of Doctor Peterson? It suddenly dawned on Lucy that the locket was her key to freedom. Pulling it from her pants, Lucy held it tight.

“I wish I was far away from here,” she breathed.

There came a brilliant flash and then the chaotic scene vanished, replaced by Lincoln’s grave.

“I am sorry,” the daughter cried, placing the treasure, now tarnished, upon the headstone.

The locket melded into the granite and then, from the O spat out a parchment. Lucy unrolled it to reveal a map, upon which her father had marked other sites where he suspected more pieces of Princess Ahk Ma Rahalli’s treasures had been hidden.

“Oh father, thank you,” Lucy sighed, this adventure was far from over.