The Life and Times of Bonnie Chance

Prologue

May 22, 1971
Several miles outside of Bingöl, Turkey

"Bonnie!" a beautiful brunette woman called out to her twelve-year-old daughter.

"Yeah, Mom?" the little redhead called back, looking up from the book she had been reading beneath the shade of a tarp.

"Supper's ready, go let your father and the other workers know!"

"'Kay!" Bonnie said, dog-earing her place in the book before jumping up to head over to the dig site. As was the usual case whenever they discovered some new ancient ruins, her father the archaeologist was always right in there in the dirt with the rest of the diggers, practically living in the ruins for all the time he spent in them. Not that she could blame him. She liked to help out, too. When they let her. "Hey, everyone!" Bonnie called out in Turkish as she arrived at the edge of the dig, smiling as she looked down into the maze of rooms they had excavated. "Supper's ready!"

"All right, everyone. I guess that's our cue to quit for the day," her father said good-naturedly, earning a couple of cheers from the rest of the hungry and tired men, who wasted very little time straightening up upon receiving their dismissal for the evening. "Hey, Bonnie!" he called up to his daughter as she turned to leave. "Before you go, come and take a look at this!"

"What is it?" Bonnie asked curiously, carefully descending the stairs on the temporary scaffolding they had installed.

"I found this hidden in a compartment on one of these walls," he said once she was next to him, showing her the small statuette he was carefully cradling in his hands.

"Oh, wow..." Bonnie breathed, impressed. "It looks like one of those ancestor worship idols from ancient Sumer, the ones with lapis lazuli eyes."

"Yes, some ancient cultures believed blue eyes were a sign of the gods," her father said, pleased with her reaction. "And if you look even closer, you can also see traces of red ochre still clinging to the crevices in between the carved braids of hair."

"Oh! You're right. Isn't that really unusual?" she asked, blinking in surprise.

"It is!" her father said excitedly. "I think the woman this represents was a blue-eyed redhead. I'm thinking of calling her 'Bonnie'." The real Bonnie sweat-dropped and smiled wryly.

'I had a feeling that was coming...' she thought, a little embarrassed. Her parents were always trying to name stuff after her. "But I didn't know they had any redheads in this region back then," she said, changing the subject.

"Well, there are actually some records of accounts from the Greeks that indicate there were some redheaded Thracians, but those are from a later era... Maybe—"

RUMBLE...

"!?" they both gasped in alarm when the earth quaked fiercely beneath their feet, knocking them off balance, as the walls around them trembled. Bonnie's eyes widened when she realized part of the thick and heavy brick wall behind them had split and was falling towards her.

"Bonnie!!"

CRASH! WHAM!!

Bonnie opened her eyes after she hit the ground, surprised to find herself relatively uninjured and underneath something warm. She glanced over her shoulder and gasped. It was her dad. He had thrown himself in between her and the wall at the last minute. Blood was running down the side of his face, and his arms were shaking from the effort of holding himself up under the weight of the stone to keep her from being crushed.

"Crawl out... Quick!" he snapped urgently. Bonnie quickly did as he said.

"H-Hold on, Dad!" she said shakily, running to get something to push under the wall to hold it up. "I'll find something to use as a lever or—!?"