The Keeper of Dawn by Hickman J.B

Author:Hickman, J.B. [Hickman, J.B.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Shadeflower Press
Published: 2012-10-01T06:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

We left before sunrise. The early hour and empty halls made the school feel abandoned. The only light was a faint glimmer atop the lighthouse—likely Max rousing himself for another day of work. Wellington hadn’t yet returned, and our footsteps echoing down the uncarpeted halls reminded me of home when Father was away.

We passed through the field behind the school and approached the dark forest. Night lingered beneath the trees. The only sound was brittle snaps of branches underfoot. The trees had begun to shed their leaves, revealing holes of blue-black sky overhead. The remaining foliage resembled leftover pieces of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle that trembled in the cool air.

Time off the island had warped my perspective. Greenwich was already a blur. A week of the Mayhew’s ostentatious hospitality left me feeling privileged and undeserving. Here at Wellington, there was only hard work and glimpses of the hotel’s deteriorating luxury, a reminder that even the most prominent families needed to succeed. It was an environment that made it possible to feel deprived. I wanted to sit by the ocean and listen to Chris; it didn’t matter about what: cynicism over his father, a previous school that had tried to keep him under their thumb.

When the trees began to thin, my eyes sought the ocean. Its surface was lit with a soft light—either the last reflection of the stars or the quick approaching dawn. Our destination lay along its edge, a black speck on the water. The darkness had taken the depth out of the landscape, leaving the beach a flat shadow wedged into the shoreline.

We scrambled down the cliffs. Without daylight, rappelling was similar to that first time in the fog. At the halfway point, I could only see the rope—moist with dew—extending in either direction. Even Derek and Chris descended with caution, but soon we were passing beneath the cedars, the sound of waves beckoning us down the final sandy slope.

The tide was lower. The Anvil looked taller, steeper too, the archway having grown to the mouth of a cave. Dark sea moss indicated where the water had previously risen, its upper fringes having dried into patches of green fur. The area beneath the moss-covered rock tapered in, making the Anvil look like a loose tooth that the sea was determined to remove. The succession of boulders protruding from the water appeared as a chain of steppingstones extending in a wide, semi-circular arc.

The air coming off the water was cold, and my feet made shallow prints in the hard-packed sand. The sea was calm, the waves curling over and foaming ashore. Though the sun hadn’t risen, narrow bands of pink and magenta sat atop the eastern horizon.

The boulders were an assortment of shapes and sizes, some flat as tables, others jagged and uneven. The largest was over twenty feet in length; the smallest just big enough to stand on. Though most were evenly spaced, a sizeable gap split the middle that would require a substantial jump to cross.

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