Chapter 5 - Bucketrider
Mr. Grey loomed at the granite brim of a wide, circular well. His eyes descended the bucket chain, rusty-link by rusty-link, until it vanished into hollow darkness. Mr. Grey held supernaturally still, balancing with a slight bend, his arms crossed before his chest, face sober; like some crestfallen statue, resigned to eternally watch over the entrance of the Bottomworld.
Unlike most statues, Mr. grey moved. He leaned back from the edge and stepped from the shadow of the well’s roof. He walked over to Tom, among a glebe of scattered foundation stones. Mr. Grey scanned these stones. “Should we drop a loose rock down?” he asked Tom.
Tom’s steel eyes snapped to Mr. Grey. His brow furrowed with incredulity. “Of course we shouldn’t! What a rude thing to suggest; dropping rocks on homes.”
Mr. Grey raised his palms. “I meant no offense. But how will we be announced? I see no doorbell.”
As if replying, a peal of bellbugs churred from the surrounding field of wavy grass. A ring of five standing-stones separated the field from the well’s zone. Within the ring, the grass gave way to a patchwork of packed turf and the loose stones.
The sun sank. Into the west today Mr. Grey noted. No stars yet pinholed the plum sky, which was ripe with clouds. Smaller cousins to the parchmentwork mine glow-beetles started and snuffed their lantern shells; matchstick flares on the dark, scattered stones. One fluttered through the air and bonked into Tom’s bristly cheek. Tom ignored it, maintaining a glare at Mr. Grey.
“‘Should we drop a stone.’” Tom tried imitating Mr. Grey’s monotone. “That’s your noble idea… Unbelievable.”
“I am sorry, Tom. I proposed without thinking.”
“You don’t drop stones in Oh Wells…”
“You mean in old wells.”
“I mean what I say. This one’s a royal Oh Well. Very wise with age.”
“How are Oh Wells different? Do they draw water?”
Tom shook his head. “They’re much more potent. First you leave a memory; a thing of your past. Then you say, ‘Oh Well’. Then you take a memory; a drink from the well.” Tom waited for a reaction from Mr. Grey. He gave that up eventually, but added, “Oh Wells are sacred.”
Neither Mr. Grey’s face nor his tone expressed the least emotion, but he chose his words with care. “My sincere regrets. I spoke discourteous words. I won’t repeat them.” Tom nodded once. The tightness in his brow loosened. He squatted and patted one of the patchwork fragments of foundation, like the head of a beloved pet.
The maturing plum clouds growled with an oncoming storm. Mr. Grey looked dubiously at the oversized, creaky bucket. It swayed on its looped chain, running through a mechanism in the well roof. Mr. Grey didn’t believe anyone could live down in that clammy hole. It was why he’d suggested dropping the stone.
Mr. Grey asked, “What lies at the well’s bottom?”
“Water probably,” said Tom.
“It must be quite damp and cramped.” Tom shrugged in reply. “Should we wait outside? Until she exits?” Even as he asked the question, Mr. Grey swiveled a grey eye to the approaching storm.
“That’s just like spying. And I doubt she often leaves.”
“Surely she needs groceries? How else would she eat?”
“We’ll know when we see.”
Mr. Grey stepped back to the margin and peered over. The walls vanished into the abyss before revealing any bottom. Some baser urge tempted Mr. Grey to drop the rock. He banished the thought.
Mr. Grey watched a brave glowbug drop into the hole and plinked off a granite wall. When it did, he suddenly realized that no echo reverberated in the well’s damp throat.
Mr. Grey glanced back at Tom. The man stood complacently, enjoying deep, refreshing breaths of brisk twilight. Mr. Grey asked, “Why’s there no sound in the well?”
“It’s rude to shout into homes,” Tom answered. His face again turned sour.
“I didn’t… Oh, never mind,” Mr. Grey’s eyes roved the chain links. He dreaded the answer to his next question. “How will we descend?”
“We’ll take the bucket.”
“Is that why it’s oversized?”
Tom nodded. “So people can take it down.”
Mr. Grey contemplated the swaying bucket from behind a doubtful brow. He shivered. The Wind threw her first misting of rain against his neck. Mr. Grey tightened his shawl, and said, “We might as well attempt it.”
The grey face tried to bring the joke home with a coaxing, cheerful expression. Mr. Grey didn’t quite pull the look off, but Tom’s sour face melted. His sudden, thunderous belly-laughter silenced the chirring bellbugs.
Together, they climbed into the bucket.
Mr. Grey and Tom dropped; further and further. The chain rattled vehemently, as though the links seethed at there being no echo, and made up the lost sound through louder clinking. For each length that the bucket side of the chain loop rattled down, a matching skein of rusty iron ascended. Tom grabbed this other strand, handfuls at a time, and pushed upwards; sending it shaking towards - and their bucket plummeting from - the twilight disc above.
That disk shrank much, much smaller than Mr. Grey had thought possible. First it shrank to a spot, then to a dot, then to a distant speck. Then the light disappeared. Mr. Grey and Tom dangled suddenly in a void, their only companion the rattling chain.
A new light whispered to existence between the two. What had been a gulf of oblivion reverted into mossy walls of cobbled granite. Tom had produced a foldable lantern from his robe, and set it burning. Fish-patterns cut into the lantern’s parchment casing sent fish-shadows swimming over the dank stones.
Tom handed Mr. Grey the lantern, then returned to manning the chain.
Louder grew the rattle as they plunged; deeper and deeper. Every rusted link clanged like sheet metal caught in a gale, with sections of chain working together like a whole sound field of crashing Wind-catchers. Yet the stones refused to echo. Refused to echo, even after losing their muzzle of wine-gorged moss. Refused to echo, even after they slickened and shone with what Mr. Grey believed was regular water.
As they shed their lichen the stones convulsed and twisted. At the top they’d looked like granite bubbles, glued together by mortar of hemoglobinic wine. This changed as the two descended. The well walls became jagged cliffs and crevices; unworked by the peoples’ hands; the primitive earth bones.
The ‘memories’ dropped by ages of Oh Well patrons collected upon these primordial shelves of rock. Mr. Grey saw wet mounds of jewelry in the shape of poetrees, or chicktails, or candy; all valueless after the touch of Time’s decaying hands. Here was a massive round cauldron-memory, perched precariously on a shelf, its iron skin sickly flaking. There was a pegleg-memory, wedged in a cleft of the wall. Mr. Grey wondered how the former owner had traveled after giving it to the well. Tom pointed out - as he pushed the rattling chain upward - a vase of glossy, artificial daffodils. On another shelf, he brought Mr. Grey’s attention to a ‘sword’; a primitive weapon from before the time of the mallet, according to Tom.
On one narrow ledge Mr. Grey spied a pocket ticker. It was not unlike his own. He didn’t reach inside the usual pocket. Mr. Grey knew the feel of bent casing and cracked glass would make him sad. Nor did he reach for this other ticker. Like every other object on the stone edges - stopped partway through a fall to unknown depths - the ticker-memory lay broken. The shelved collection aged like a wandering vagrant. What could rust, rusted. What could molder, moldered. Everything gathered grime. Like the mold growing on those higher, rounder stones, the objects seemed like part of the well. Mr. Grey would not have taken the ticker, or any other item, even in mint condition. Mr. Grey paid an instinctive reverence to the memories in their place of final rest.
The air swelled; thicker and thicker. As they descended Mr. Grey began to hear a noise different from the thunderous rattling. He brushed it off at first as a product of malformed links in the well chain. Then he wondered if they’d finally reached a point of echoes. Eventually, Mr. Grey realized that the noise came not from the chain, nor from any acoustic properties of the well. The noise came from something in the dark.
Further down.
It sounded like the wooden clapping made by Hyoshigi. It repeated in the same pattern over and over; a single loud wooden clap, then another, then increasing in frequency, then stopping all of a sudden. There came a pause, and then the sequence began all over. Sometimes there were small variations in the acceleration. But always, it was the same, wooden, cracking.
The noise soon drowned out even the chain. It clapped louder and louder inside Mr. Grey’s ears. He held the parchment lantern over the edge of the bucket and squinted. The light revealed nothing below. Mr. Grey saw only fishy shadows swimming over disintegrating memories.
Unable to ignore the invasive resonance any longer, Mr. Grey said, “Tom, hold up for a moment.”
Tom let go of the chain and stared at him. “What’s your distresser?”
“Don’t…” he paused and let the word fade. “Doesn’t something seem wrong here?” Tom waited. “Let’s reconsider.”
“Nothing seems wrong here. Except you’re making that sound; like a wooden clap.” This, of course, was the least reassuring thing Tom could have said. But Mr. Grey held his troubled thoughts in check when Tom took up the chain once more. They rattled deeper.
The jagged shelves of spoils spread; wider and wider. Soon the shelves were more than arm’s-reach away from the rocking bucket. The light of the parchment lantern gleamed on them still. Little comfort in that, for the wet walls added an uncanny twinkle to the eyes of the shadow fish.
Louder struck the wooden clapper. Tom understood now that it wasn’t Mr. Grey making the noise. He continued pushing the chain. The vibrations eddied about their descending bucket, like invisible, predatory cousins to the silhouette school swimming on the walls.
Mr. Grey begged Tom to stop again. “I’m sorry, but no. I reallytruly insist. Let’s wait till morning.” He tapped his foot, causing the bucket to sway and creak. “Aren’t night visits rude?”
Tom shuffled, and swayed, and took his handkerchief from his pocket to wipe a tiny bit of gathered sweat. He breathed deeply and slowly, and neatly folded the handkerchief. He tucked it with care back in its pocket. The entire time, the wooden noise ran through one cycle of its accelerating smacks. Tom finally shrugged, grabbed the chain, and tried pulling down instead of pushing up.
The chain didn’t move.
Tom tugged several more times. There wasn’t even a rattle. Mr. Grey watched with mounting, internal terror. Tom turned to Mr. Grey, shrugged again, and said, “It must be one-way. Some gearwork quirk at the top. We’ll have to go on.”
Mr. Grey hated the truth in Tom’s words. He would have given the same amount of treasure the bandits had stolen - twice over - not to go deeper into the Oh Well. He went and tugged futility on the chain. Not because he distrusted Tom, but to feel for himself the resistance, the certainty of their course. Their bucket tilted with an unbalanced load as he stood by Tom. The chain remained obstinate. Mr. Grey stepped reluctantly back to his side. Tom waited patiently while Mr. Grey resigned himself to the facts. All the while, the wooden clapper taunted the poor grey ears.
Mr. Grey finally convinced himself that confronting whatever made the noise was better than waiting in the bucket, while it clapped and clapped and clapped through the dense air. He nodded at Tom. Tom pushed them deeper.
Many things could be measured in each passing link: the descending bucket, the increasing humidity, the rising clapping, the decay of the memories. Mr. Grey noticed that the links changed from mere rusty metal to rusty metal slick with water and algae. “Now we’re halfway there,” said Tom encouragingly. Mr. Grey heard it as, ‘We still have half the well to go.’
Just when Mr. Grey wondered if they might never unravel the sound, and if it would get infinitely louder until their ears fractured, and if their descent would never end, the fish lantern lit upon the clacking source.
Tom stopped the bucket as they plumbed a section of the well where the craggy rock formed a long, wide ledge. Upon it, old robes, dolls, umbrella-hats, and sleeping mats formed an enormous nest. The nest stretched in a half circle across a grand span of the jagged wall; a bird-shaped castle, with edges crenelated in discarded shoes.
Along this battlement, there hopped a lonely raven.
The bird’s feathers and eyes showed the same bleaching hand of Time which worked upon the memories. Mr. Grey saw that its wings were wrongly folded. They had broken and healed badly sometime in the far past. The raven stared blindly around. It opened its beak, and produced — loud as a dragon engine - the wooden clap.
Mr. Grey leaned exhaustedly against the bucket’s side. Tom let out a long-held breath. The tension melted from their muscles. Tom smiled.
Mr. Grey said, “It must have fallen. It looks to have gotten stuck. Now it dwells down here,” Tom nodded.
The two of them watched the raven for a few moments. Their terror of the sound evaporated. The bird seemed not the least bit troubled by its situation. It hopped merrily along the crenellations of its castle. It made its wooden noise. Sometimes it moved to a crevice in search of bugs to eat.
Tom said, “This raven is old. But it flies on fate’s fancies, with a cheerful wing.”
Mr. Grey said, “It’s stayed occupied, despite rough circumstances. A worthy approach.”
After a moment’s contemplation, they continued down; calmer, easier. As the blind raven disappeared from sight, the clacking faded. The humid air became peaceful. Mr. Grey said, “You know something Tom, I think I worked myself up, fretting pointlessly. It was the lilies. Those birds gave me misgivings. I dreamed of monsters,” After further thought, he added. “I feel better now.”
Tom said, “Be glad we saw no Woe Worms.”