To give a little tease of what’s to come, I will share the first two pages of the first chapter here now. Feel free to give feedback!
Lords and distinguished gentlemen of the Guild,
I am writing to you on my return journey from the isle of Rapa Nui. My findings on the island date the Moai statues ages beyond what we believed them to be prior, and I’ve taken soil samples to showcase this.
I hope to be able to present my findings to the Guild upon my return. Perhaps then I may have a meeting with the high council about being initiated into the Guild myself.
I arrive upon Her Majesty’s isle within the next few months of penning this letter. I hope my ink finds you well and that you will consider my requests. I eagerly await a response.
Yours,
Dr. Everett Meriwether Erie. July 5th, 1881.
Erie put down his pen and squeezed the parchment together with his fingers, creasing the sides into a neat triangle. He then pressed the folds down upon themselves to flatten the letter in the most pristine of ways. Finally, he took a dollop of hot red wax and pressed his stamp into it, the wax molding into the imprint of Dr. Everett Erie’s seal.
The seal that belonged to Dr. Erie depicted the head of a bull to the average onlooker, yet Erie had chosen the sigil, not for its connection to a giant cow, but instead for its reference to the Ancient Greek monster; the Minotaur. The Minotaur, the half-man half-bull monstrosity confined in the labyrinth beneath King Minos’s palace on the isle of Crete, or, at least, that is what the myths had stated. Yet, Dr. Erie had been to Crete with his mentor, Dr. Elrond Pearson, and neither could find a trace of this colossal maze beneath the ruins of any palace. Yet, this expedition was the first Erie had been allowed to tag along on. He was barely 13, but Dr. Pearson approved the boy to journey along with him. This memory, the depictions of bulls, of dancing Minoans, of dilapidated ruins, and of a culture lost to time inspired Erie. To this day, the image of the Minotaur served as Erie’s sigil to remind him of his humble beginnings.
Erie fingered the stamp, looking down at the rapidly cooled wax press that sat upon his hand-carved desk. The wood was cut of mahogany and carved by the greatest masters in all of Europe. It was a prized desk, one that Erie eagerly awaited before every voyage. If he could hire men willing to carry the large piece of furniture from the ports of London to his dormitory in Oxford, he certainly would have sold every item he found on Rapa Nui to do so. Yet, something about the smooth ridges and swoops in the wood almost made the thought worthwhile. The allure of this desk was undoubtedly not lost on him, yet, perhaps it alone called him back to the sea. Leaving it aboard the Ironclad was his reason to continue adventuring. Or, perhaps, he had been on this blasted vessel for the better part of a year now, missing his love, his mentor, his college. He was missing the chatter and buzz of intellectuals and scholars rather than the mumblings and chantings of a horde of drunken seamen. Perhaps this desk was the last piece of civility and decency Dr. Erie had, allowing him to hold onto his sanity.
Indeed, that must be the case. Even now, outside of his cabin doors, the chattering and clambering of deckhands and crew fumbling with mops and buckets or messing the sails disturbed his thinking. By dinner, the crew would have had enough of their blasted grog to be shouting and raving in a raucous chorus of blasted shanties. Dr. Erie could admit that a shanty or two could lighten the mood after a hard day of sailing, even that he found himself enjoying one or two of the songs, though he’d never share this with them. But after months of the same four songs nightly right on the main deck of the ship, he’d grown quite tired of them. One can only hear the sorrowful cry for a beautiful Spanish woman so many times before it ceases to be an earworm and becomes a far worse parasite.
Dr. Erie collected his letter and rose from his chair, reeling with the ship as it rocked in the waves. He opened the cabin door as many of the lower-ranking seamen stared awkwardly or averted their gaze and continued their duties. Dr. Erie was a guest on the ship, a member of high class who was not to be fraternizing with the crew, yet, he held no official rank about the vessel. He was no captain, no first mate, so the crew could not place him. Some saluted, though this was hardly necessary, in fact, even in poor taste, while others watched, their jaws slacked and their tongues hanging free like a dog without a thought in its head. Dr. Erie merely passed along, making his way to the captain’s quarters.
