Description
The Thing in the Attic
Honath the Pursemaker was hauled from the nets an hour before the rest
of the prisoners, as befitted his role as the arch-doubter of them all.
It was not yet dawn, but his captors led him in great bounds through the
endless, musky-perfumed orchid gardens, small dark shapes with crooked
legs, hunched shoulders, slim hairless tails carried, like his, in
concentric spirals wound clockwise. Behind them sprang Honath on the end
of a long tether, timing his leaps by theirs, since any slip would hang
him summarily.
He would of course be on his way to the surface, some 250 feet below the
orchid gardens, shortly after dawn in any event. But not even the
arch-doubter of them all wanted to begin the trip–not even at the
merciful snap-spine end of a tether–a moment before the law said, Go.
The looping, interwoven network of vines beneath them, each cable as
thick through as a man’s body, bellied out and down sharply as the
leapers reached the edge of the fern-tree forest which surrounded the
copse of fan-palms. The whole party stopped before beginning the descent
and looked eastward, across the dim bowl. The stars were paling more and
more rapidly; only the bright constellation of the Parrot could still be
picked out without doubt.
"A fine day," one of the guards said, conversationally. "Better to go
below on a sunny day than in the rain, pursemaker."
Honath shuddered and said nothing. Of course it was always raining down
below in Hell, that much could be seen by a child. Even on sunny days,
the endless pinpoint rain of transpiration, from the hundred million
leaves of the eternal trees, hazed the forest air and soaked the black
bog forever.
Product ID: 9781776785780
Sku: 9781776785780
