Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories (43 page)

Still hung on just a moment longer than she could bear, then let go of the stone.
Whoosh!
She shot up like a clown fired out of a circus cannon.

“Pfaaah!” she spluttered as her head broke through the surface. She looked around wildly. There was the grill—and there was the sky, on the other side of it! She’d done it! The current had swept her beneath the grill!

That same current was still carrying deeper beneath the city. Misshapen patches of fungus glowed the roof of the tunnel like moonlit clouds. A side tunnel led away from the one Still was in. She couldn’t see her violin any longer. There was no way to tell where the current had taken it.

“I can’t just stay here,” she fretted. “What should I do?”

As if in answer, something giggled softly behind her. She whirled around with a splash. “Who’s there?” she called. No one answered.

“Please, can you help me?” she said loudly. “I’m lost.”

“Tee hee, tee hee.” The giggles seemed to come from all around her. “She’s lost . . . she’s lost . . . tee hee . . .” Still whirled around again in the water, peering into the darkness. Suddenly she heard tiny feet scamper across stone, and saw one of the patches of fungus on the wall ripple slightly.

Glass rats! Glass rats, with diamond teeth and sharp little appetites. Another patch of fungus rippled, and another. There must be dozens of them, all around her!

“What do you want?” she cried out.

“Tee hee,” the rats giggled. “Why, oil, of course,” one rat squeaked. “Slippery puppet oil, and crunchy puppet wood.”

Still floated in the water with rats all around her. “I’m afraid I don’t have any wood or oil to give you,” she said as calmly as she could.

The little ratty voice spoke up again. “Well, if you won’t give it to us, we’ll just have to take it,” it squeaked, which made the other rats giggle, “Tee hee, tee hee,” once again.

“But what if I don’t want to give it to you?” Still asked.

“Give it to us?” the rat squeaked. “Tee hee, tee hee! Why, it’s already ours! Everything that comes down here without a good reason is ours.”

“But I
have
a reason!” Still said. “A very good reason!”

The giggling stopped. “And what reason is that?” the rat squeaked.

“I’m looking for something,” Still said. “Something I lost. Something very important.”

“Really?” the rat asked suspiciously.

Still hesitated. If she told them the truth, they might eat her violin! “Yes,” she said firmly. “I’m looking for Key the Cutter. I have to warn her about something.”

There was a moment of silence, then the rats began giggling again. “That’s not why you’re here,” the little voice squeaked. “We can tell. Rats can
always
tell. Now, perhaps if you give us your arms and legs, we’ll let the rest of you go.”

“All right!” she said. “All right, I lied. I’m looking for—I’m looking for my violin. It fell in the water, and I have to get it back.”

There was another moment of silence, a longer one, but then the rats began to giggle once more. “Still not the truth, still not the truth,” the little voice said with glee.

“All right! All right!” Still shouted. “I’m not looking for Key. I’m not really looking for my violin! I’m looking for—for—for me! That’s why I’m here! I put myself somewhere, but now I can’t remember where that was, and I’m trying to find me again. Now, if you want to eat me up, then come and eat me up and get it over with!”

Silence filled the tunnel. It stretched and stretched until Still thought she would scream, and then the little voice said, “Rats, she figured it out.” Little feet scampered away in the darkness.

Still waited a moment, then paddled over to the side of the tunnel and pulled herself up onto the walkway. She was safe now, but what did that matter? She had no idea where she was, or her violin either. Drops of oil welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks. All of a sudden she felt too weak to keep looking, too weak to walk, too weak to even stand. She slumped down in a heap.

She had no idea how long she lay there—minutes? Hours? Her next thought came when she realized that something was bobbing up and down in the water in front of her. She blinked. It was still there. She blinked again, then picked it up.

It was a tiny boat made out of neatly-folded white paper. Neatly-folded paper—now what did that remind her of? She shook her head. Something was written on the side of it. She couldn’t read it—the light was too faint. She stood up wearily and held it up close to the nearest patch of glowing fungus.

Someone had painted a picture of a puppet on the side of the boat. Written underneath it were the words, “Have you seen our daughter?” Still peered at the picture. The puppet looked familiar somehow. She was wearing black and white—

“And eight shades of green,” Still whispered, there in the darkness. The paper boat fluttered like a bird trying to escape from someone’s hand. Still realized that she was trembling. She knelt down and gently set the paper boat back in the water. “Go ahead,” she whispered, pushing it out into the current with one finger. “You go ahead, and I’ll follow you.”

The little boat bobbed up and down as it floated gently away. Still followed it, lost in her thoughts. Black and white, and eight shades of green . . . Eight shades of green . . . She
knew
that puppet, she was sure of it. But what was her picture doing on the side of a paper boat?

When the boat reached the split in the tunnel, it turned right. Still followed it around the corner, and stopped dead. A whole flotilla of little paper boats lay in the water in front of her. She knelt and picked one up. The same picture was painted on its side. “Please help us find our daughter,” it said. She picked up another. “If you see our daughter, please tell her that we love her.”

Her hand was trembling as she picked up a third boat. “Still, please come home,” she read aloud. Suddenly she hugged the little boat to her chest. “Ramble . . .” she whispered. “Elbow . . . Oh, where have I been?”

She pulled the boats from the water one after another. They spilled out of her arms onto the walkway, but she didn’t care. She was sobbing, but she didn’t care, because she knew what she was going to find.

And there it was—her violin. The current that had carried the boats to this backwater had brought her violin as well. She picked it up and hugged it close. “Time to go home,” she whispered.

Still walked out into the dawn with her violin in one hand and the little paper boat in the other. A bird chirrupped nearby, then fell silent, as if embarrassed.

The streets around her were broad and clean, and the houses were as tidy as Elbow’s creases. Her fear lay in her belly like cold soup, but she kept walking. The streets began to fill with puppets on their way to work, or school, or just out to enjoy the crisp, cold day. A few stared at Still as she strode past, but she paid them no heed.

The park next to Mister Leaf’s house was just as tidy as she remembered, and the steps leading up to its front door were just as square. The high, hesitant sound of a flute floated through the air from the second-story window.

Still set the little paper boat on the sidewalk in front of the steps, laid her violin on top of it, and bowed her head. Slowly, she raised her left arm, bent at the elbow. Slowly, so slowly, she tilted her head to one side, and brought her right arm up, the wrist and elbow loose, just as she had been taught. Slowly, silently, she began to play.

The wind rustled the last few paper leaves on the trees around her. A squirrel with a squeaky tail scampered across a branch. A child’s balloon blew by. All of them were louder than Still’s music. It was as silent as deep snow, and it spread out in waves around her. First the puppets in the nearby houses heard it. They set down their gossip and chores and stared at one another. The streetcars fell silent, and then the children in the playgrounds. Even the roustabouts working on the balloons overhead stopped their chatter and bluster.

Passersby began to gather around Still. “What’s she doing?” they asked one another, but no one had an answer.

Finally a police puppet rode up on a shiny blue bicycle. He leaned it against a tree, straightened his serious hat, and scowled. “What’s going on here, then?” he asked. Still just kept playing.

“Excuse me, miss, but I asked, what’s going on here?” the police puppet repeated. He took a step toward her.

“Perhaps I can explain,” a warm voice said. Still opened her eyes. Mister Leaf was outside his front door. His student was standing beside him, her flute in her hands, her eyes big and dark. Mister Leaf’s hand was on her shoulder. She looked straight at Still, and Still looked straight back at her.

“Well, I’d be grateful if you would,” the police puppet said. “It’s a mighty strangeness to me, it is.”

“This poor thing was one of my students,” Mister Leaf said. “She had an accident—look, you can see the mark on her cheek. She ran away from home several months ago. Her parents have been very, very worried. I’m sure that—”

But no one ever got to find out what Mister Leaf was sure of. The young puppet at his side shook off his hand and walked down the steps. As Still kept playing, the young puppet set her flute down on the paper boat beside Still’s violin, tucked her elbows in at her sides, raised her hands, and began to play silence as well.

Someone gasped. “Tsk tsk,” said Mister Leaf, striding down the steps himself. “You really shouldn’t encourage her. She needs—”

But no one ever got to find out what Mister Leaf thought Still needed, either, because a puppet in the crowd stepped forward. Wiping away the drops of oil on her cheeks, she raised a ghostly trumpet to her lips.

The silence was deafening. Together, the three puppets played Still’s song all the way to its end. When they were done, Still lowered her arms.

“I didn’t fall,” she whispered. The world was so quiet that everyone around could hear her clearly. “I didn’t have an accident. I had
him
.”

The moment was broken by Elbow and Ramble pushing their way through the crowd. “Still! Oh, Still!” they cried. They hugged her between them.

“Oh, daffodil,” Ramble finally said, gazing at the nicks and scratches on her daughter’s face. “You’re all grown up now. Are you all right?”

Then, finally, Still began to cry. “No,” she said, hugging her parents close, “but I will be.”

It took Still a while to get her story out. When she was done, the police took Mister Leaf away. “Strings are too good for him!” Elbow said harshly as the three of them walked homeward. “After what he did—your violin, that poor girl’s flute, that woman’s trumpet . . . Chains are what they ought to put on him!”

“Strings will be enough,” Still said quietly.

It was several days before she could slip back to the little market on the edge of the fog. She bought the biggest, brightest orange scarf she could find, then walked down into the fog. She took three wrong turns on her way to the gargoyle’s warehouse. Finally, she spotted the familiar drainpipe. “Hello,” she called out as she climbed it. “Are you awake? I’ve brought you a present.”

But when she reached the top, all she found was a worn old statue with the remains of a fierce look carved on its face. She stared at it for a long moment, then wrapped the scarf around its neck, climbed back down the drainpipe, and went home.

O
riginally published in On Spec
Summer 2010 Vol 22 No 2 #81

Greg Wilson
is a programmer, teacher, and author who lives in Toronto.

Corey Brown

Her father had been a railman, cut down in his thirty-fourth year by a castling bent on the £86 cargo on board. Elaine had been eleven, old enough to remember everything about him, but not mature enough to see him as anything less than the ideal man. She had not wavered in her determination to never again attach herself to anyone who rode the rails.

Lord knew, Devin had tried to sway her.