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GNO Chapter Excerpts Page ~ B1C20 Quick-Browse
Chapter Quick-Browse For Graven's Grotesque: A Gothic Epic
Chapter 20 Excerpt Teaser
Description: The Wreckage of the Jewel of Eden ~ 6 Paragraphs
“What is it?” Medicci asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion.
“'Tis nothing of you,” Lazarus offered, waving a dismissing hand. “I merely recalled a moment long passed.” He nodded, elaborating, “Once, I gathered the world to be much smaller than it truly is. 'Twas more agreeable, when I thought it, small.”
“How did you gather it to be less than it is?”
“Well, I once believed that birds might fly high enough, even to reach Heaven.” He shrugged, admitting, “I know that they cannot, yet I did wish to believe it.”
Medicci smirked. “And how can you be certain that birds cannot fly to Heaven, Lazarus?” He opened his arms and briefly peered upward. “Have you flown so high and far, as to have inspected every part of the sky?”
Lazarus searched Medicci's eyes before answering, “I can be as certain of it as you, with your similar belief that your monsters did not come from out of Hell, Medicci. Have you searched so deep and far, as to have inspected every part of the ocean?”
“They are not my monsters,” Medicci rejoined with a grin. “Yet, perhaps we can be, mostly certain of both notions.” He nodded and praised Lazarus; “There is truly a discerning and deliberate alchemist lurking within you.”
“And by your balance of faith and misgiving, I believe that you may likewise make a fine friar,” Lazarus conveyed, in passing, as he strode toward the centre of the ship's deck. Medicci followed.
They stepped over scattered debris and moved into a relative clearing near the entrance of the hold. Lazarus halted and closed his eyes. Medicci rounded Lazarus. He watched him draw a deep breath and gracefully tilt his head up and down, and from side to side. And from without and within him, Lazarus drew distinctness and direction from an Eljo's keen sense of orientation, upon which he simultaneously overlaid, the unblemished memories of Abbey maps. He turned about and opened his eyes toward the southeastern ocean horizon. Medicci spotted his now widened pupils; and the apparent blackness of them nearly drained all of the blue hue from Lazarus' eyes. “We shall find our new course in this direction,” Lazarus stated, pointing toward the ocean horizon. “Shall we be off?”
Medicci checked him—he glanced skyward, located the pole star, and followed the lay of the constellations evermore down, till his gaze fell parallel with Lazarus' pointing finger, and precisely in his calculated direction of the distant Isle of Corsica. He pursed his lips and shook his head. “And you dare to accuse me of witchery, when I merely fetched a hare? How do you navigate so perfectly with closed eyes?”
Lazarus smiled and popped his wings. “You are not the only one of us, with an ability; which is not witchery.”
The Ghost sighed. “Vague enough; good turnabout.”
Lazarus asked, “Shall we set a course for Corsica?”
Medicci extended a presenting hand toward the heavens. “Upward and onward, by the Grace of God; do light the way, Friar Lazarus.”
Lazarus beamed, turned, and unfurled his wings.
As one, they abandoned the wreckage and took to the night skies, circling it only once before cutting a deliberate course out to sea. The Jewel of Eden sank into the distance; the lands of France fell away; and beneath the brightness of a new moonrise, the choppy ocean surface eventually smoothed into a shimmering sheet of smoked glass. Still higher, they climbed, till the sprawling waters of the Gulf of Leon appeared to swallow the whole world, once again, as only Noah might have known. Yet, even with the water's featureless seascape and infinite horizon, the migratory-like Eljo and the coldly calculating Spectre never wavered from their aerial course betwixt the earth and the heavens. Together, they served as an indispensable set of instruments, even to rival the most notable navigational tools of any ship's captain. They were like a high-flying, compass and sextant, sailing straightly over a brackish abyss of ocean.
As unnatural and gifted as, such a pair of complementary companions might have appeared, Lazarus and Medicci had yet to discover that Destiny would soon demand from them, immeasurable effort and incalculable timing to undo that, which had since been done to the world. However, that pivotal point in History had not yet happened to them—or Humanity, for that matter.....
[ End Excerpt Teaser Text ]
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