Tunnels

The man lowered Will back down to the floor, still staring intently into the startled boy's eyes and grinning and shaking his head.

'It's a great day, a great day indeed.' He stuck out a hug ham of a hand toward Will. 'I'm your uncle Tam.'

Will automatically held out his hand and Tam took it into his giant palm, shook it in an iron grip, and pulled Will in toward him, ruffling his hair with his other hand and sniffing at the top of his head loudly in an exaggerated manner.

'He's awash with Macaulay blood, this one,' he boomed. 'Wouldn't you say so, Ma?'

'Without a doubt,' she said softly. 'But don't you be frightening him with your horseplay, Tam.'

Bartleby was rubbing his massive head against Uncle Tam's oily black pant legs and insinuating his long body between his and Will's, all the while purring and making an unearthly low whining sound. Tam glanced briefly down at the creature and then up at Cal, who was still standing next to his grandmother's chair, enjoying the spectacle.

'Cal, the magician's apprentice, how are you, lad? What do you think of all this, eh?' He looked from one boy to the other. 'By God, it's good to see you two under the same roof again.' He shook his head in disbelief. 'Brothers, hah, brothers, my nephews. This calls for a drink. A real drink.'

'We were just about to have some tea,' Grandma Macaulay intervened quickly. 'Would you care for a cup, Tam?'

He swung around to his mother and smiled broadly with a devilish glint in his eye. 'Why not? Let's have a cup of tea and catch up.'

With that the old woman disappeared into the hall, and Uncle Tam sat down in her vacated chair, which groaned under his weight. Stretching out his legs, he took a short pipe from the inside of his huge overcoat and filled it from a tobacco pouch. Then he used a taper from the fireside to light the pipe, sat back, and blew a cloud of bluish smoke up at the ornate ceiling, all the while looking at the two boys.

For a time, all that could be heard was the crackling of the burning coal, the intrusive purring of Bartleby, and the distant sounds of the old woman busy in the kitchen. No one felt the need to talk as the flickering light played on their faces and threw trembling shadows over the walls behind. Eventually Tam spoke.

'You know your Topsoiler father passed through here?'

'You saw him?' Will leaned toward Uncle Tam.

'No, but I talked to them that did.'

'Where is he? The policeman said he was safe.'

'Safe?' Uncle Tam sat forward, yanking the pipe from his mouth, his face becoming deadly serious. 'Listen, don't you believe a word those spineless scum say to you; they're all snakes and leeches. The poisonous toadies of the Styx.'

'That's quite enough, Tam,' Grandma Macaulay said as she entered the room rattling a tray of tea in her unsteady hands and a plate laden with some 'fancies,' as she called them — shapeless lumps topped with white icing. Cal got up and helped her, handing cups to Will and Uncle Tam. Then Will let Grandma Macaulay have his chair and sat next to Cal on the hearth rug.

'So, about my dad?' Will asked a little sharply, unable to contain himself any longer.

Tam nodded and relit his pipe, unleashing voluminous shrouds of smoke that enveloped his head in a haze. 'You only missed him by a week or so. He's gone to the Deeps.'

'Banished?' Will sat bolt upright, his face filled with concern as he remembered the term that Cal had used.

'No, no,' Tam exclaimed, gesticulating with his pipe. 'He wanted to go! Curious thing, by all accounts he went willingly… no announcements… no spectacle… none of the usual Styx theatricals.' Uncle Tam drew a mouthful of smoke and blew it out slowly, his brow furrowed. 'I suppose it wouldn't have been much of a show for the people, no ranting and wailing from the condemned.' He stared into the fire, his frown remaining as if he was profoundly baffled by the whole affair. 'In the days before he left, he'd been seen wandering around, scribbling in his book… bothering folk with his foolish questions. I reckon the Styx thought he was a little…' Uncle Tam tapped the side of his head.

Grandma Macaulay cleared her throat and looked at him sternly.

'…harmless,' he said, checking himself. 'Reckon that's why they let him roam around like that. But you can bet they watched his every move.'

Will shifted uneasily where he sat on the Persian rug; it felt wrong to be demanding answers from this good-natured and friendly man, this man who was purportedly his uncle, but he couldn’t help himself.

'What exactly are the Deeps?' he asked.

'The inner circles, the Interior.' Uncle Tam pointed with the stem of his pipe at the floor. 'Down below us. The Deeps.'

'Its' a bad place, isn't it?' Cal put in.

'Never been there myself. It's not somewhere you'd choose to go,' Uncle Tam said with a measured look at Will.

'But what's there?' Will asked, desperate to learn more about where his father had gone.

'Well, five or so miles down, there are other… I suppose you could call them settlements. That’s where the Miners' Train stops, where the Coprolites live.' He sucked loudly on his pipe. 'The air's sour down there. It's the end of the line, but the tunnels go farther — miles and miles, they say. Legends even tell of an inner world down deep, at the center, older towns and older cities, larger than the Colony.' Uncle Tam chortled dismissively. 'Reckon it's a load of codswallop, myself.'

'But has anyone ever been down these tunnels?' Will asked, hoping in his heart of hearts that someone had.

'Well, there've been stories. In the year two twenty or thereabouts, they say a Colonist made it back after years of Banishment. What was his name… Abraham something?'

'Abraham de Jaybo,' Grandma Macaulay said quietly.

Uncle Tam glanced at the door and lowered his voice. 'When they found him at the Miners' Station, he was in a terrible state, covered in cuts and bruises, his tongue missing — cut out, they say. He was almost starved to death, like a walking corpse. He didn't last long; died a week later from some unknown disease that made his blood boil up through his ears and mouth. He couldn't speak, of course, but some say he made drawings, loads of them, as he lay on his deathbed, too afraid to sleep.'

'What were the drawings of?' Will was wide-eyed.

'All sorts, apparently; infernal machines, strange animals and impossible landscapes, and things no one could understand. The Styx said it was all the product of a diseased mind, but others say the things he drew really exist. To this very day the drawings are kept under lock and key in the Governor's vaults… though no one I know's ever seen them.'

'God, I'd give anything to look at those,' Will said, spellbound.

Uncle Tam gave a deep chuckle.

'What?' Will asked.

'Well, apparently, that Burrows fellow said the selfsame thing when he was told the tale… the selfsame words, he used.

24

After the talk, the tea, the 'fancies,' and the revelations, Uncle Tam finally rose with a cavernous yawn and stretched his powerful frame with several bone-chilling clicks. He turned to Grandma Macaulay.

'Well, come on, Ma, high time I got you home.'

And with that, they bade their farewells and were gone. Without Tam's booming voice and infectious guffaws to fill it, the house suddenly seemed a very different place.

'I'll show you where you'll be sleeping,' Cal said to Will, who only mumbled in response. It was as though he were under some kind of spell, his mind teeming with new thoughts and feelings that, try as he might, he couldn't