It was apparent right from the very first time he opened the cover, that the journal was going to become an object of interest for some, and once he’d figured out just what it was, Ferral realized that someone would more than likely come searching for it sooner or later. He also knew that he wasn’t going to keep it in his shop, which was why, shortly after obtaining it, he took the journal to a different location for safe keeping. Out of all the people that he knew, he knew that Mox- if anyone, could figure out what it all meant. Through the back door of the store he led them down an outer winding stone staircase that extended all the way down to BlackRock Beach, there were spots where the stones were crumbling so he warned them to be wary of their footing. once at the bottom they passed through a series of old ships that had run ashore and keeled over on BlackRock decades ago and now all that remained of the once mighty sea faring vessels were empty rusted out skeletal shells that housed homeless street urchins of Fishbin at night. He would take them all the way down to Fishbin’s waterfront warehouse district where he had a secured storage place, Mox couldn’t help but wonder what had struck Ferral so that would make him take such precautions in hiding such a book, he couldn’t wait to read it. It was mid-afternoon when they finally reached pier 22, they walked along the docks with Ferral carefully watching behind them to ensure that they weren’t being followed. Finally, they walked across a small vacant lot to a long red brick building with roll up doors in front.
Behind them, there was a slow rolling fog building that began to block out the sun, soon there would be a storm blowing in from across the ocean. Ferral unlocked the far left man door and swung it open inward and all four stepped inside, and he closed it behind them and locked it. walking over to the far wall he lit two oil lamps and began to pace along the length of a dusty old wooden bookcase, finally he stopped somewhere in the middle and began feverishly searching through the titles. He pulled a leather spined book from the case and studied the cover.
“Yeah, this is it, Moxie.” Ferral said.
He lay the book on a table-top and instructed them to each grab a chair while he lit yet another oil lamp.
“Read Moxie, read it and tell me what you make of it. I’ll go get us something to drink.”
Ferral retrieved a pitcher of cold water from the next room, and upon returning poured each of them a glass but coaxed Trip and Ava away from the table to leave Mox with his task. He read what he could in the journal, but many parts were illegible due to slurred or hurried handwriting, but thanks to the parts that were readable he was able to piece together a bit of a story, a very disturbing story. Mostly Abernathy’s journal tended to the actual expedition where he had 22 men with him all with pack mule’s and horses, they ventured up to a place behind Copper’s Mill called Arcvale peak, one of the tallest mountains in the range of Klamath. A little more than halfway up a bad snowstorm boxed them in and the expedition couldn’t move through the deep snow, one by one the members had begun to freeze to death in the blizzard like conditions, and even Abernathy himself fell ill, and stopped writing in the journal for a time, and didn’t start again for almost fifty-one days, when he woke up in a strange place. Curiously, nowhere in the text did he mention the name of the place where he ended up, only that he woke up in a hospital bed and that he still had all of his belongings, but the journal itself was missing for a time. A week later, he discovered that one of the hospital wards had hidden it under his mattress with two pencils. there were three men doing ward duty that Abernathy had contact with, one of which that told him that they had been taken prisoner over a year ago while on a hunting trip, and forced to work in a farming camp run by militants that ran the township.
Abernathy mentioned three names in the journal, Tillerman, Milner and Stiles, and from what Mox was gathering from the book was they were planning an escape to get away from the labor camp. others before them had tried similar escapes, but the militant leader sent tracking teams to bring them back or kill them before they could alert anyone to what was happening there. In one instance, it was said that an escapee made it all the way to the Ash Valley before they were hunted down by the trackers and killed. No one had attempted escape since, according to Abernathy they had outlined a brief plan to him, and he’d written it all down, they were all from three different sections of the hospital and all had planned it so they wouldn’t be missed for at least seven hours giving them a head start when they had finally made their move. Once at the bottom of the mountain range they would split up and go off across the grasslands and valley floor in three different directions, Tillerman knew of a man that could possibly get them across a narrow part of the Pacific Ocean to a small group of islands called The Storm Vale, where they would gather resources to go back with a lot more people to perhaps make a move on the militants. After reading for the better part of three hours, the writing in the journal broke down into several pages of what could only be called illustrations and partial maps and then abruptly ended altogether, leaving Mox to try to make some sense of it all.
If the place that Abernathy had ended up in the mountains had indeed turned out to be Owl’s Keep, it seemed more likely than not, that it had somewhere in time had fallen into a military state, and should be avoided at all costs, and anyone who had been unfortunate enough to have ended up there seemed more than willing to risk their lives to escape from it. Still, a part deep inside Mox was curious enough to want to see it with his own eyes, he spent his entire childhood trying to gather bits and pieces of information about Owl’s Keep, and it had always been a mystery for the ages for him, his own private holy grail. and now he had these pieces of this tantalizing mystery at his fingertips, and he wanted to do something with it. He shared his thoughts on the journal with the others, and together they began to figure out that just maybe the three trackers didn’t even know about the journal, and it was entirely possible that it was the escapees themselves that they were after, there was nothing in the book information wise damning enough to chase after it, it was more likely that they wanted to silence the escapee’s from doing whatever it was that they thought they were going to do. On through the night while the others slept Mox toiled over the pages of text and half maps again and again looking for something-anything that he may have overlooked on his first reading, when he came across a single word barely legible written on the very last page of partial maps up in the corner in an area indicating what he took to be a mountain range was a single word. “Majik”
The next morning Ferral led them all back to Fishbin, taking the same beach route back to his shop, Mox secured the journal in a cloth bag and kept it tightly under his arm as they walked along BlackRock beach. Over and over again, several thoughts about what he’d read in the book kept moving across his thoughts, until finally he had struck upon a rather unique idea that he hadn’t considered until then. there was one person that wasn’t in this picture as yet, one person that may have been able to help them make some sense of the illustrations and half maps. They walked on for almost two and one half hours before they began to see regular streams of people walking on and above the beach, the tell-tale sign that there were getting close to Fishbin again, along the stone stairway as they climbed up Mox inquired as to whether or not Ferral could still help them procure what would now be three horses rather than simply two. after all, he and Trip would both agree that Ava was one of them now, and they simply couldn’t leave her to fend off Furlong’s gang of cutthroats by herself. Ferral lead the way back up the crumbling stone stairway and opened the back door of the shop and motioned them all inside, pushing aside and forgoing any profits from this visit, Ferral knew that this was simply too important to place a business tag on it.
“Mama’s making you all some breakfast Moxie, I’ll make the arrangements for those horse’s in a bit.”
He sat down in a chair at the table across from his three visitors.
“But first you gotta tell me Moxie- what’s your plan, son? don’t tell me you don’t have one.” Ferral asked.
Mox studied the faces at the table staring back at him.
“Well there are questions about this journal that I don’t have enough information to answer, But I think Trip and I may have met someone awhile back, and if we can find him he may be able to help us fill in some of the blanks.”
“So we aren’t going to Sawtooth, are we?” Ava asked.
“Or the Diablo mountains to hunt larger game?” Trip added.
“Nope.” Mox concluded. “We’re going to Dewfork to find Pilgrim.”
~Scratch.. A.B.T. Copyright © 2017~
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