Wednesday, August 8, 2012

The Curiosity Chronicles - Excerpt



 
The Curiosity Chronicles

The Gallery of the Obscure

You will need to prepare for a story like this.  Stories like this one should be read at night, long past your bedtime, preferably during a thunderstorm and by the light of a candle.  But if your parents are the overprotective type a flashlight will do. 
If you look around the room you are in right now and think about it you are probably warm.  You’ve probably had a delicious supper and possibly dessert.  And very likely as you begin this story and huddle beneath your blankets you are in your own room and you pulled this very book from your own bookshelf.  You likely have a parent or two somewhere in your house possibly making your lunch for tomorrow or folding your clothes.  Perhaps they even tucked you into bed and kissed you goodnight.  Now close your eyes for a moment and imagine that it was all gone.  Imagine that all you owned fit in the knapsack that is lounging on the chair in the corner and that your parents aren’t there at all but traipsing through the jungles of Costa Rica or climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro simply because they liked the sound of the word.  And now imagine that they had forgotten you completely.  If you can picture all of this then you might be able to imagine what life was like for the Cornell children and how much they longed for what you have right now.  Pity I wouldn’t give it to them.  I couldn’t could I?  Who would want to read a story about 3 children who had everything they could have wanted and dressed in lovely clothes and had holidays at the beach with their equally lovely parents?  No one.  Not a soul.  And so the story I am about to tell you is about 3 children whose parents didn’t want them at all.  In fact they hadn’t seen their parents in so long that they had forgotten what they looked like.  Almost.   Maybe I should rephrase that.  They tried very hard to forget what their parents looked like because sometimes it is less painful to forget a thing than to remember it. 


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