This is chapter three of this unfolding story that I am writing. You can read chapter one and chapter two. I would love to know your thoughts in the comments.
The next morning was a blur for Cecil. Though he was trying his best to help his parents load the last of the supplies onto the ship, he was deeply lost in thought and might as well have been a thousand leagues from the dock.
The tales were true... He felt vindicated, and yet, this new revelation had the most curious effect on him. Rather than shutting down more thought, it seemed as though it stirred it up all the more, as if someone had kicked a hive of bees and sent a thousand possibilities buzzing around his head.
The last of the supplies to be loaded was a worn cardboard box with scribbled brown lettering. Picking it up, Cecil felt a growing sense of intrigue and mystery swirl about him. The box held the two old books that Malcolm had lent to him to read while away. He was never told much about its contents, but he couldn’t forget the ominous warning that was given that day on the bench.
“Treat this with the utmost care,” Malcolm said as he looked down at the books with an air of reverence that startled Cecil. “But I must now say: beware and take caution! I do not want to frighten you, my boy, but I am bound by honor to tell you that to read these tales is to welcome in a change you cannot easily reverse. You will never be able to unsee what you are about to discover.”
“What change? Unsee what?”
“You will begin to live with a constant suspicion that there is always more than you can see with your eyes – and it will gnaw at you and pull you into all kinds of wild thoughts.”
Cecil replayed these haunting words in his head as he laid in his bed late that night. The heave and pitch of the boat rocked him gently, bringing comfort to his troubled mind. In some small way, he had already felt like the world he knew was starting to change right before his eyes. For starters, Malcolm wasn’t who he thought he was. There was something that seemed to flicker in his eyes as he read his journal entry that day – as if the bent wick of an aged candle was set aflame in a flash. To Cecil, he saw a side of Malcolm that he had never encountered. But it wasn’t just Malcolm that was changing before him – the sea was now a wider mystery than ever before, brimming with endless possibilities and living myths.
This was something that Fin and Maisie made sure to instill into their son from the earliest age. There were very few nights where Cecil did not have a fairy-tale told to him before nodding off to sleep. Tales of far-off countries and high castles, deceptive dragons and honorable knights, greedy witches and enchanted forests. They certainly stirred up his imagination, but Cecil was also smart, and he knew that there was nothing true about these stories.
But now, after all that had transpired, he felt as if he was living in the middle of a possible fairy-tale – at least the first chapter of one – and he had a hunch that there were many more chapters set before him in this story.