Chapter 9 “came in heavy” as I like to say, and so I axed this little ditty because it didn’t add enough to the chapter to warrant staying in. But it’s still a neat flashback, if I do say so myself, so I thought I’d post it here. This takes place when Carlisle is lying on the glacier in the Alps, looking up into the night sky.
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As he lay staring to the heavens, a memory came to him. The human memories were almost unknowable, what he imagined dreams must have felt like, when last he had been able to sleep—wisps of thought that raced away as quickly as they came. He had been a boy, standing in the churchyard on an unusually clear night like this one. He had asked his father about the stars, and had been met with the same answer as to everything; they had been made by the Lord.
When he had pressed, however, for once his father had not angered—he remembered now that this was the more common response—but instead had told the story of the promise to Abraham. How Abraham had nearly given in to siring an heir by another, but the Lord had insisted that he would sire his own heir, with his wife. Then how Abraham had been instructed to look to the heavens, and had been told, “Look now towards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them…So shall thy seed be.”
Carlisle’s father had placed a hand on his shoulder as they both looked upward. “A reminder, child,” his father had said. “A reminder that thou art among that seed, that thou art a child of Abraham.”
The memory whirled away.
“That thou art a child of Abraham,” he muttered.
He wondered if this was still the case.
As sure as Carlisle seems, he still has doubts. Makes him more believable.