Sandy's World Falls Apart: A Name to Conjure With Chapters 1-2
Book: A Name to Conjure With by Donald Aamodt (1989)
Chapter 1: The Soup Incident
Sandy MacGregor is having a normal Saturday afternoon in Baltimore. He’s eating at a Chinese restaurant. Wonton soup, barbecued ribs, fried rice. Standard comfort food.
Then his soup vanishes.
Not like he finished it. Not like someone took it. One second the bowl is full. The next second it’s bone dry. Empty. Like it was never there.
Sandy stares at the bowl. He touches it. It’s real. It’s just empty. His brain does what any reasonable brain would do. It panics a little, then rationalizes. Maybe he has some weird psychic power. Maybe his memory glitched. The rest of his food shows up and tastes great, so he decides to just move on.
This is what makes Sandy a good character. He doesn’t freak out for thirty pages. He acknowledges the weirdness, files it away, and eats his ribs.
But Aamodt drops a detail here that matters later. Sandy has always had a talent for losing things. Objects vanish around him. A steel chisel disappeared from the middle of a bare basement floor. A book vanished while he was reading it in bed. These aren’t normal losses. Something about Sandy makes things disappear.
After lunch, he cracks open a fortune cookie. It reads: “An unexpected journey awaits you.” Sandy laughs it off. He can barely afford to get out of town.
The Phantom Rainstorm
Sandy steps outside into bright sunshine. Half a block later, he gets drenched by a sudden downpour. He ducks into a doorway, cursing the weathermen.
Then he looks back at the street. It’s dry. The sun is shining. There are no clouds. The sidewalk is dusty. Not a damp spot anywhere. But Sandy is soaked.
This is the second impossible thing in one afternoon. The world is getting strange around him, and it’s speeding up.
Old Betty
A voice cackles from behind him. An old woman grabs his arm and pulls him into a dark, shabby fortune-telling room. Her name is Old Betty. She’s tiny, wrinkled, and ancient. But there’s power in her. Sandy can feel it.
Old Betty reads his palm and her expression changes. She sees something real. Something that scares her and excites her at the same time. She tells Sandy that great things lie ahead of him. That he has a destiny.
Sandy doesn’t really buy it. He’s a practical guy from Baltimore. Destiny isn’t really his thing.
Old Betty blesses him before he leaves. Not a casual “bless you” sneeze blessing. A real one. She places her hands on him and speaks words of protection. It seems small at the time but becomes important later. Old Betty knows more than she’s saying.
The Redhead and the Party
Sandy walks on and runs into Chris, a good-looking redhead who invites him to a party. Sandy is interested. He’s a normal guy and she’s attractive and friendly. He says yes.
They head to a building. Sandy follows her toward an elevator. The doors open.
And then the floor isn’t there.
Sandy falls. Not into an elevator shaft. Into blackness. Into nothing. The world disappears under him and he drops into a void that has no bottom and no sides. Just darkness.
Chapter 1 ends with Sandy falling through the space between worlds. His ordinary Saturday afternoon in Baltimore is over. Everything that comes next is going to be very, very different.
Chapter 2: The Goddess Watches
Chapter 2 is short. It shifts perspective completely. We leave Sandy falling through the void and go to Zarathandra.
There’s a citadel made of jade and crystal. Inside it sits the Goddess. She’s the divine ruler of this world. And she’s been watching. She’s been watching for a very long time.
A thousand years ago, Kels Zalkri invaded Zarathandra. He’s a dark god from somewhere else. An outsider deity who forced his way into her world and planted himself there like a poison. The Goddess fought him. She weakened him. But she couldn’t destroy him completely. He’s been festering in her world ever since, his followers spreading cruelty in his name.
The Goddess has been planning her revenge for centuries. Patient. Methodical. She needed a weapon that Kels Zalkri couldn’t see coming. Something from outside the system. Something from a connected world.
Earth.
She’s been pulling strings across dimensions. Arranging events. Making sure the right person would be in the right place at the right time. Sandy didn’t fall into Zarathandra by accident. He was chosen. Not by Zhadnoboth the sorcerer who thinks he summoned a demon. By the Goddess herself.
Sandy has a name of power. When he speaks his full name, it carries the force to unmake things. The Goddess needs that power aimed at Kels Zalkri. But she can’t just hand Sandy a sword and point him at the enemy. It has to unfold naturally. Sandy has to grow into what she needs him to become.
So she watches. From her citadel of jade and crystal, she watches a confused man from Baltimore fall through the space between worlds. And she waits.
What’s Working So Far
Two chapters in and Aamodt has set up a lot. Sandy is likable and grounded. The weird events in Baltimore build tension without being over the top. The shift to the Goddess gives us the big picture that Sandy doesn’t have yet.
The contrast between the two chapters is great. Chapter 1 is street-level, funny, and personal. Chapter 2 is cosmic and ancient and heavy. Sandy thinks he’s having a bad day. The Goddess knows she’s executing a thousand-year plan.
That gap between what Sandy knows and what we know creates real tension. We know he’s been chosen for something enormous. He doesn’t even know where he is yet.