|
The house is still quiet, the corridors still go on forever. But something has
changed. |
|
| Last night there was a sound close to the window where he sleeps. Some
small animal that was trapped in the thin iron bars outside, had managed to escape and had
bounced away into the branches, breaking them recklessly in its fall. |
|
In the morning, he stood up and walked slowly to the ocean. |
| He walked past the laboratory, the many vials in different states of disrepair and the
electrical machines buzzing forever in their endless desire. |
|
|
He walked past the libraries, the books piled upon mountains of others, covered in
dust and mold, bent by the years of loneliness. |
| He walked past the gigantic outer walls of the fortress (six foot thick
and twenty feet tall) and the solid iron gates that had stood apart for a hundred dusty
summers on end. |
|
And he walked down the little dirt trail that led through winding hills to the white sand
of the deserted beach that lay just below the fortress, forever washed by the warm waves
of the southern seas. And there he stood, looking quietly but with an infinite sense of
urgency, at the distant mountains of the north. |
|
"They're coming. They're coming, at last!"
|
