A Glimpse

Today I decided to share an excerpt from my novel with you guys, one that's shaping up as a fairly critical part of the story -- a hinge, as it were, upon which a fairly significant part of the plot swings. The beauty of it is, outside of its context, you can't necessarily tell that. Which means I can share it without giving away a huge part of the novel. Taken from a moment about halfway through the novel, this excerpt includes three of the novel's four main characters: Haydren, Geoffrey, and Pladt. They've been travelling, lost, for an indeterminate time, but probably weeks in a forest of complete darkness. To keep track of intersecting trails, they began laying bark arrows along their route of travel, with other strips to mark them by numbers. They had spent this last day chasing the call of a bird known to inhabit fringes of forests -- that is, a bird that should be living near their exit. Two of their three torches have run out of fuel and extinguished, and they paused to eat...

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Slowly they rose from what could possibly be their last meal, and with no other recourse, set off down the path. After walking another few hours, they came upon another crossroad. Beside it, pointing to their left, was a bark arrow and a number denoting an intersection they had passed three days ago.

As they looked at it, Haydren’s torch began to wane. Haydren gazed at the flame as if he had forgotten what torches were, and was trying to determine what was in his hand. Slowly, he bent down and pressed the tip into the ground. He sat beside it, unable to take his eyes off the flame as it drifted up to the crest of the ball of cloth, now burned dry. The single flame held impossibly long upon the horizon as Haydren waited with bated breath. Finally, when he thought it just might defy reality, it snuffed out and sank them into total darkness.

Sitting there, Haydren recalled the wolfhound of so many years ago; despite what seemed impossible at the time, he recognized now that he could fight flesh and blood. Even with a simple gardening implement, he had been able to defend himself against a beast well over his size. But this enemy was intangible, insurmountable; there was nothing for him to attack with his sword, nothing against which to defend with a shield. The creatures hidden by the darkness were not hindered by it; it would not be the creatures, ultimately, that would kill them. But this impossible blindness, unassailable, unfathomable, would be their demise.

You must lead them out. Look up.

Blinking, Haydren looked up. Unlike ever before, the whisper this time rang from the silence like a tolling bell, the echo overpowering and erasing from remembrance the stroke of its inception. It was as if the words sprang into existence from nothing, beginning before time and existing always as fact – and it spoke to him now beyond a whisper and almost like a voice: a voice with authority and knowledge outside of himself.

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See you Friday.