Rex of Great Cross (Chapters 1 and 2)
Prologue The town of Great Cross was named for a towering monument that never existed. The founders had talked of making a bid to become the state capital, and the cross was meant to be a declaration of their ambition. The ambitious talk was more fun than the actual work of building would have been, however, and no great cross ever materialized. The town reached a stable population of about four hundred, which varied up or down by only a few dozen as decades and generations came and went. Few who lived there would have traded their quiet, close-knit town for the founders’ dream of a metropolis. Anyone who harbored that kind of dream had long since moved away. Besides, there was a four-way intersection with a traffic light, which was arguably a pretty good …