ELF HILL
DOMENICA creeps up the west slope of Elf Hill, keeping low.
She reaches the black cloud, examines it, and listens...
They emerge in silence, pale faces twisted in grimaces, dirty hands reaching for the spy. Six dead men.
She evades them, sliding down the hill, but even as she escapes her slow pursuers...
EVERYONE sees it. The cloud melts and peels away in strips. The top of Elf Hill writhes with
maggots the size of sheep, wriggling out through the standing stones and rolling down all sides of the mound.
One rolls right past Domenica. She sees what distance spares the others; its
The men in watch positions crawl or stagger back at the sight of the ghastly swarm coming from the hill top.
THE ROAD
FILBERT, SAFANA, TERMELAN
The rush of transit leaves Filbert with afterimages of blurred, far off roads and byways swimming in his vision, like a map might appear to a drunkard.
His companions merely feel dizzy, and then regain their balance to find the roadway near Falcon's Roost has somehow changed into an unfamiliar dirt path in hill country.
Judging by the position of the afternoon sun, little time has passed.
The party searches the road and nearby hills for several minutes before Termelan spots a black cloud in the distance to the north, and some puffs of trail dust near it. The folds of the land hide the source of these aerial phenomena.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)