Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection by Charles De Lint, John Jude Palencar Read Free Book Online

likely to give up.
    In Uncle Dobbin’s Parrot Fair, Nori Wert turned away from the pair of cages that she’d been making ready.
    “I guess we won’t be needing these,” she said.
    Uncle Dobbin looked up from a slim collection of Victorian poetry and nodded. “You’re learning fast,” he said. He stuck the stem of his pipe in his mouth and fished about in his pocket for a match.
    “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
    Nori felt her own magic stir inside her, back where it should be, but she didn’t say anything to him in case she had to go away, now that the lesson was learned. She was too happy here. Next to catch-ing some rays, there wasn’t anywhere she’d rather be.
    The Stone Drum
    There is no question that there is an unseen world. The problem is how far is it from mid-town and how late is it open?
    — Attributed to Woody Allen
    It was Jilly Coppercorn who found the stone drum, late one after-noon.
    She brought it around to Professor Dapple’s rambling Tudor-styled house in the old quarter of Lower Crowsea that same evening, wrapped up in folds of brown paper and tied with twine. She rapped sharply on the Professor’s door with the little brass lion’s head knocker that always seemed to stare too intently at her, then stepped back as Olaf Goonasekara, Dapple’s odd little housekeeper, flung the door open and glowered out at where she stood on the rickety porch.
    “You,” he grumbled.
    “Me,” she agreed, amicably. “Is Bramley in?”
    “I’ll see,” he replied and shut the door.
    Jilly sighed and sat down on one of the two worn rattan chairs that stood to the left of the door, her package bundled on her knee. A black and orange cat regarded her incuriously from the seat of the other chair, then turned to watch the progress of a woman walking her dachshund down the street.
    Professor Dapple still taught a few classes at Butler U., but he wasn’t nearly as involved with the curriculum as he had been when Jilly attended the university. There’d been some kind of a scandal—something about a Bishop, some old coins and the daughter of a Tarot reader—but Jilly had never quite got the story straight. The Professor was a jolly fellow—wizened like an old apple, but more active than many who were only half his apparent sixty years of age. He could talk and joke all night, incessantly polishing his wire-rimmed spectacles.
    What he was doing with someone like Olaf Goonasekara as a housekeeper Jilly didn’t know. It was true that Goon looked comical enough, what with his protruding stomach and puffed cheeks, the halo of unruly hair and his thin little arms and legs, reminding her of nothing so much as a pumpkin with twig limbs, or a monkey. His usual striped trousers, organ grinder’s jacket and the little green and yellow cap he liked to wear, didn’t help. Nor did the fact that he was barely four feet tall and that the Professor claimed he was a goblin and just called him Goon.
    It didn’t seem to allow Goon much dignity and Jilly would have understood his grumpiness, if she didn’t know that he himself in-sisted on being called Goon and his wardrobe was entirely of his own choosing. Bramley hated Goon’s sense of fashion—or rather, his lack thereof.
    The door was flung open again and Jilly stood up to find Goon glowering at her once more.
    “He’s in,” he said.
    Jilly smiled. As if he’d actually had to go in and check.
    They both stood there, Jilly on the porch and he in the doorway, until Jilly finally asked, “Can he see me?”
    Giving an exaggerated sigh, Goon stepped aside to let her in. “I suppose you’ll want something to drink?” he asked as he followed her to the door of the Professor’s study.
    “Tea would be lovely.”
    “Hrumph.”
    Jilly watched him stalk off, then tapped a knuckle on the study’s door and stepped into the room.
    Bramley lifted his gaze from a desk littered with tottering stacks of books and papers and grinned at her from between a gap in the