The Elder Origins Read Free Page A

understand this. And she hoped he would never have to.
    * **
    Madison awoke that night hours before dawn with an agonizing pain in her stiff neck. The walls around her appeared closer and closer together each morning. The only way to make things appear even blacker was to shut her eyes. The darkness imitated what she knew lay beneath her feet below the waters the ship floated upon.
    Finally deciding that fresh air was the only way to find any solace this one night, she felt around herself for the edge of the bed and crawled off the thin layer of feathered bedding below her.
                  Her feet found the cold surface of wood, but her shoes were almost impossible to feel out. She elected to go without them and pushed the door open next to her bed, leading herself once again up those fateful steps to the decks above. With each step she felt as though she were walking towards some unknown precipice. The gentle breeze swept across her face, and she sighed some relief. The moon lit up the deck and revealed all the men who slept on board the decks at night. She walked through them trying her best not to wake anyone, glad for the little light that the moon provided. She gracefully placed her hands upon the edge of deck just above the bow and squeezed the wood beneath her fingers as though it may give way under her hands. A few weeks ago she would not have dared to bring herself to the ship’s edge by herself, but the feeling of darkness within that room, which before had felt like the only place aboard the ship that she could call her own, had become unbearable. She knew if she were merely caught out in the open in her night robes and bare feet that she would be chastised by her brother. But after all, he had suggested that she witness the night sky at some point.
    She gazed out into the expanse of ocean before her. The stars were indeed incredible at this time of nig ht. And the light of the moon laid a gentle glaze over the water, making its depths appear blue. Only a few clouds streaked across the sky before her, just barely out of reach from the stars above.
                  She had no true idea of what drew her to come out alone without her brother there to hold her hand. Left with nothing but fear before, she now felt that she needed to see the darkness for herself. Something was drawing her attention forward, compelling her to see what lay ahead.
                  From the corner of her eye, she spotted what looked like a black spot on the horizon.  She was not even sure of what it could be upon first seeing it. She turned her attention to the man resting in his seat above her on the higher deck in the back of the ship. He was meant to look out for anything sinister in nature, but his eyes were closed, his face worn with exhaustion and his mouth hanging partially open. Madison looked back to the spot on the horizon. The frigid air suddenly struck her and sent a chill down her tender skin leaving small bumps along her arms and legs. She could only imagine it was land. It had to be. Men had been speaking days prior of hearing birds singing off from the distance and faint traces of branches and leaves had begun to linger in waters beneath them. At the beginning of their journey she would have reveled in the thought of her feet touching solid ground again for the first time in weeks. Part of her never expected to see land again.
    Their journey across the ocean had struck such rumors amongst the ship’s crew that there was nothing to be found in these ocea ns but death and eternal length of the sea. But the sight of land did not calm her as it should have. And her shivers from cold were not due to the gentle breeze that struck her slender frame. This land was not one of peace as her brother had expected they would find. And the clouds in the sky now looked more like dark curtains attempting to cover something one was not meant to witness.
                  She could almost hear the