The bell above the door let out that soft, oddly resonant chime we all know and love as I stepped into the bookstore. Not the kind of place you’d ever expect to find in a shopping center or strip mall, which this wasn’t… I hate those rat traps—no, this shop was barely more than a shadow… between a shuttered antique dealer you couldn’t tell from the sidewalk was open or not… and a pawn shop that didn’t bother with signs anymore since the neon tube lettering above the door was busted in a few places. Sandwiched in between those two delightfully obscene examples of businesses was this bookshop I’d been meaning to visit for a while now.

The name above the door simply read… κτλ

The air was thick with age. Stagnant dust, kinds of pungent old growth bolewood they don’t sell anymore, dried leather, empty oilcloth tobacco pouches, the ghosts of forgotten inkwells, and other aromas I couldn’t quite nail… all assailed my nostrils. The kind of heterogenous mixture of smells that hugged your clothes and inhabited your lungs long after you’ve left, but not nearly long enough. And for a second or two, I greeted the growing grin gracing my visage by closing my eyes, and allowed myself to just… be, if you catch my drift.

“Ah… a seeker,” came a voice like smoke curling downward through a keyhole.

From behind a distant counter built more of stacked books than wood, a creature emerged… a man actually. Average height and muscular build like someone standing in for the owner; these places were typically run by their owners. A handsome sharp-eyed blonde haired man whose age seemed younger than the wrinkles around his wise eyes betrayed. He at once seemed out of place, as if he was meant to be in a feature film… a Western villain or sword and sorcery hero. The faint grin he sported tugging one side of his mouth upward made you want to ask him his life story after inviting him home to a family dinner.

“Name’s T-Bone,” he said, like it wasn’t something to question as his eyes took their time drifting away from mine back down to the open book beneath where he stood, “You’ll know what you’re looking for when you find it.”

I nodded, not quite sure why, but somehow this tiny amount of communication between us made me feel like I was wearing a cowboy or pirate hat and resting my right hand comfortably on the grip of a trusty sidearm, maybe a dagger or a six-shooter. I quickly snapped out of the fantasy that held me to myself so tightly in that instance, and I wandered the maze of stacks that made up for the lack of more than a few large bookshelves. There were no aisles. It was a bigger space than the storefront let on to, a place the imagination could truly run amock in. The walls were covered in all manner of trinket, chained-slung-and-strung things, paintings… I did not have the time to scan it all… but everything was old. I was only interested in what I could not yet see; what was in the books, and I had no clue where to begin. Nothing was categorized. Books leaned, stacked, and sprawled like they’d grown that way. Some were bound in thick leather with no title. Others had titles I could not read—other than English. Some were barely held together by threads, or worse—bone clasps! I touched one wondering if it was real bone, maybe ivory; I’m still not sure. The more I looked, the less sure I became that the books had ever been mass produced at all. This was a veritable dragon’s hoard of ancient knowledge. How was it all here, in a streetfront bookstore and not in a collector’s house or museum? I couldn’t stop wondered at how so many unique books could rest in one place! Some felt… breathed on, whatever that means. I was about to turn to T-Bone and ask him… but then… then I saw it. Set into the back wall—half obscured by an avalanche of atlases—was a small wooden door, like it had never been meant for anyone tall, or even average height… like one of those doors you see under and to the side of a household staircase, yet there was no staircase here. Rough-hewn, the old door reminded me of the type of door a Dungeon Master would describe tauntingly to you in a low level dungeon adventure infested by evil gnomes who cut and picked their way through the rocky underworld in search of the shinies! It was bound with rough iron braces hammered by hand, reddened by damp and time.

Next to it, resting on a crooked shelf was a hand drum like the kind a shaman would use while sitting crossed legged in anticipation of his Amanita muscaria to aid him in contacting the spirits of the descendent… BOOM, BOOM, BOOM… he would gently tap away the time, eyes closed, luring the first spirit animal to come close enough to grab and return to the surface with. Simple. Rawhide stretched tight. A single drumstick, carved and worn lay across it, with feathers dangling loosely from its grip, dancing in the still air as if remembering the winds that animated them in the long ago on wild prairies far away.

I glanced back toward the counter. T-Bone was watching me. He said nothing. And then, “Like the cut of beef, you know… the steak… but with an ‘o-a-n’ not a ‘o-n-e’.” I thanked him for the clarification, and as suddenly as I opened my mouth his eyes fell comfortably back down to the pages he was reading from that huge tome that rested flat of its own heavy accord. I turned back to the door. The drumstick felt warm. The feathers tickled my wrist. I raised it slowly and let the stick fall against the drum—THUMP. It was a beautiful ancient sound that satisfied to the core, to my very ancestry… I could feel my soul turn and look around with joy at the nearby souls of my kin… I then set the drum and its stick to again rest on the shelf, just as I had found them. 

And then… a deep and primal sound too loud for its size echoed inside my ribs and… the door… emitted a soft slow creak. It had opened inward just a crack. The sliver of darkness I could see beyond its threshold smelled of cedar smoke, unrecalled dreams, and something else older than language. I turned back again to see if TBoan had noticed. Of course he had, I thought… yet he was gone; perhaps he had ducked down behind the jumble of books and table to put away or retrieve something; if this was true he did not rise. Only a faint whisper of TBoan’s voice curled through the many slowly swirling dust motes in the dappled beams of storefront window sunset, “You found it.”

OF SKARL THE DRUMMER

When MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI had made the gods and Skarl, Skarl made a drum, and began to beat upon it that he might drum for ever. Then because he was weary after the making of the gods, and because of the drumming of Skarl, did MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI grow drowsy and fall asleep.

And there fell a hush upon the gods when they saw that MANA rested, and there was silence on Pegana save for the drumming of Skarl. Skarl sitteth upon the mist before the feet of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, above the gods of Pegana, and there he beateth his drum. Some say that the Worlds and the Suns are but the echoes of the drumming of Skarl, and others say that they be dreams that arise in the mind of MANA because of the drumming of Skarl, as one may dream whose rest is troubled by sound of song, but none knoweth, for who hath heard the voice of MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, or who hath seen his drummer?

Whether the season be winter or whether it be summer, whether it be morning among the worlds or whether it be night, Skarl still beateth his drum, for the purposes of the gods are not yet fulfilled. Sometimes the arm of Skarl grows weary; but still he beateth his drum, that the gods may do the work of the gods, and the worlds go on, for if he cease for an instant then MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI will start awake, and there will be worlds nor gods no more.

But, when at the last the arm of Skarl shall cease to beat his drum, silence shall startle Pegana like thunder in a cave, and MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI shall cease to rest.

Then shall Skarl put his drum upon his back and walk forth into the void beyond the worlds, because it is THE END, and the work of Skarl is over.

There may arise some other god whom Skarl may serve, or it may be that he shall perish; but to Skarl it shall matter not, for he shall have done the work of Skarl.

{Lord Dunsany [Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the 18th Baron of Dunsany, (born: 24 July 1878; died: 25 Oct 1957)], The Gods of Pegana (1905)]

 

The rabbit hole runs deep,
as the evenings creep.

With time the world turns thin,
and truth begins to ache within.

So he beats upon the skin stretched tight,
and yes — the stars are all just right!

A rhythm not for song or feast,
but to cradle the limbs of a slumbering beast.

They say he sleeps, that idiot god,
blind at the heart where echoes trod.

Yet drums still beat. And while they do —

He dreams. Not of stars.
But of you.

“But one initiative beat from you, in furtherance of the as of yet unfulfilled purposes of the gods, shall open the way.” {T^Boan]