towers of paper.
“I’ve been doing some research since you called,” he said. He poked a finger at a book that Jilly couldn’t see, then began to clean his glasses. “Fascinating stuff “
“And hello to you, too,” Jilly said.
“Yes, of course. Did you know that the Kickaha had legends of a little people long before the Europeans ever settled this area?”
Jilly could never quite get used to Bramley’s habit of starting conversations in the middle. She removed some magazines from a club chair and perched on the edge of its seat, her package clutched to her chest.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” she asked.
Bramley looked surprised. “Why everything. We are still looking into the origins of this artifact of yours, aren’t we?”
Jilly nodded. From her new position of vantage she could make out the book he’d been reading.
Underhill and Deeper Still, a short story collection by Christy Riddell. Riddell made a living of retell-ing the odd stories that lie just under the skin of any large city. This particular one was a collection of urban legends of Old City and other subterranean fancies—not exactly the factual reference source she’d been hoping for.
Old City was real enough; that was where she’d found the drum this afternoon. But as for the rest of it—albino crocodile subway conductors, schools of dog-sized intelligent goldfish in the sewers, mutant rat debating societies and the like ...
Old City was the original heart of Newford. It lay deep under-neath the subway tunnels—dropped there in the late eighteen hun-dreds during the Great Quake. The present city, including its sewers and underground transportation tunnels, had been built above the ruins of the old one. There’d been talk in the early seventies of renovating the ruins as a tourist attraction—as had been done in Seattle—but Old City lay too far underground for easy access. After numerous studies on the project, the city council had decided that it simply wouldn’t be cost efficient.
With that decision, Old City had rapidly gone from a potential tourist attraction to a home for skells—winos, bag ladies and the other homeless. Not to mention, if one was to believe Bramley and Riddell, bands of ill-mannered goblin-like creatures that Riddell called skookin—a word he’d stolen from old Scots which meant, variously, ugly, furtive and sullen.
Which, Jilly realized once when she thought about it, made it entirely appropriate that Bramley should claim Goon was related to them.
“You’re not going to tell me it’s a skookin artifact, are you?” she asked Bramley now.
“Too soon to say,” he replied. He nodded at her parcel. “Can I see it?”
Jilly got up and brought it over to the desk, where Bramley made a great show of cutting the twine and unwrapping the paper. Jilly couldn’t decide if he was pretending it was the unveiling of a new piece at the museum or his birthday. But then the drum was sitting on the desk, the mica and quartz veins in its stone catching the light from Bramley’s desk lamp in a magical glitter, and she was swal-lowed up in the wonder of it again.
It was tube-shaped, standing about a foot high, with a seven-inch diameter at the top and five inches at the bottom. The top was smooth as the skin head of a drum. On the sides were what appeared to be the remnants of a bewildering flurry of designs. But what was most marvelous about it was that the stone was hollow. It weighed about the same as a fat hardcover book.
“Listen,” Jilly said and gave the top of the drum a rap-a-tap-tap.
The stone responded with a quiet rhythm that resonated eerily in the study. Unfortunately, Goon chose that moment to arrive in the doorway with a tray laden with tea mugs, tea pot and a platter of his homemade biscuits. At the sound of the drum, the tray fell from his hands. It hit the floor with a crash, spraying tea, milk, sugar, biscuits and bits of crockery every which way.
Jilly turned, her
Aj Harmon, Christopher Harmon