“Thou art a scholar.”
Those words still echoed.
God dammit, Marcellus: a lot of good being a scholar was doing Horatio right now. Okay, he had to admit that being a scholar was of some benefit. Granted, it was not the benefit of being able to fight off the dark creatures of this place like Laertes was probably doing with his rapier, and definitely not the benefit that Friar Lawrence would have since he could draw upon a deep knowledge of plants - a knowledge that was likely to keep him alive long after others had starved to death or mistakenly chowed down on a patch of poisonous mushrooms.
But, Horatio had studied at Wittenberg. He had learnt the classics. Horatio had studied history and literature, the arts and the Poetics. He had made Greek Mythology his (metaphorical) bitch. His meticulous study had at least equipped him to figure out what the game was, and to have some idea of what they were up against.
This was an island. Everyone could see that. Hell, even Marcellus could probably have seen that. However, Horatio recognized the telltale signs that this was the island of that foul witch Sycorax. There was the ethereal drumming at twilight. There were the shadows of fae creatures that lingered at the edges of the firelight long after the moon had dropped below the trees - not the whimsical creatures of the faerie court of Oberon, either. Not by a long stretch.
Furthermore, there was the cove of wrecked ships at the western end of the island. And fucking Caliban was loping around, joyously breaking shit and throwing rocks into valleys.
It had been over seventeen hours, and Horatio was exhausted. He hadn’t slept, and now it was near noon (twenty-four minutes away, he was quite confident). He knew that he would need to find somewhere to rest. He knew that he would have to find some way to gather food. He knew that he’d have to improvise at least some sort of weapon to, at a minimum, defend himself when needed. He knew for sure that some means of self-defense would be paramount.
But Horatio also knew one more thing.
If he wanted to survive this, he knew that he had to find Hamlet.
No comments:
Post a Comment