You guys know that I'm working on this new trilogy set in and around Enchanted Rock in the hill country. The closest town in existence at the time was Fredricksburg:
http://www.settlerscrossing.com/attractions1.html
This page has local attractions listed, including this view of Enchanted Rock:
And, further down the page, a picture of the Pedernales Falls area:
Here is another picture of the falls, from my collection:
All of these places are almost identical to the imaginary places I had in my head concerning the Redstone stories' concepts before I started checking the area out.
The problem is that the falls are on the Pedernales River (here in Texas we say something more like "purden-alice." It's terrible what we do to our Spanish and German place names.) and the Pedernales is more than 30 miles from the rock, which, in fact, has no significant body of water close by. The nearest river is the LLano River (we say
lan-oh
) which is about 10-15 miles to the north. There was a place on that river, at the time my story is set, called Marble Falls, but it is now under an artificial lake, so I don't know what it actually looked like.
Now, there are rumors and legends about underground streams and caves that interconnect the whole area, and some of them are known to be true.
My hero - and this has been a major part of his story, which I first came up with back in '89, that, while he was on a vision quest, he stumbled upon an underwater cave entrance that led to the grotto where he found the red stone with magical healing powers, and that his life's work, as well as that of his descendants, is to protect the place and keep its secrets hidden.
And, in addition to the places shown above, just a few miles east of the falls, is this grotto:
http://www.texasoutside.com/hamiltonpool.htm
But I really need them to be closer together for the story, as I have it now, to work.
Can I do that? Just pull them closer together? Can the valley in my story be a kind of composite? This place for real has legends of portals to other dimensions, so could those portals be my means of condensing the area?
I'm at a point in the writing where Daniel, as a good Comanche should, is ready to tell his new bride his vision quest secrets, which will be a bit of flashback since the book doesn't begin until several years later. I'm trying to decide whether I can fictionalize the place, or whether I should find a way to make the distances plausible.
Any ideas?
Ann