Winston let out a whoop which could have been heard for miles in the caves, had there been anyone to hear it, and scooped out the pebbles, stuffing them into his pockets. He considered checking the rest of the pools, but he was too eager to get out and show Genevive.
As he turned to go, Winston suddenly felt his blood run cold. He saw something moving at the edge of his light, where nothing should move at all. If he could have, he would have extinguished the torches, but he knew that if he ever lost the light, he’d never get it back. And did he want to be alone in the dark with the shape he could barely see?
So he tried to hide behind a large stalagmite. The shape came on, carefully stopping at each pool and waiting a moment before moving on. It paid no immediate attention to the torches or Winston, and it dawned on the ancestor of the Slade clan that the thing was blind in the normal sense. Clearly it could make its way around without help, but it wasn’t using sight or smell. Winston began edging slowly away from it, and received confirmation that it could not, in fact, see him. Winston still moved very carefully, as he suspected the thing had other senses—possibly hearing, or something more outlandish.
The creature was making its way methodically along the array of pools, and Winston realized it wouldn’t be long before it reached the pool he’d just emptied. It was then that it dawned on him that these pools must be something special to this creature. Maybe it was a miner, as well. What it might do when it found one of its pools emptied was something Winston didn’t care to find out. The thing might be shorter than him, but its color and the way it moved gave him the impression of something with the solidity of stone. Winston grabbed up one of the torches, made sure the rest of his equipment was secure, and headed for the exit as quickly as he dared.
His foot struck a pebble just as he reached the tunnel, and the rattling, clicking sound echoed like thunder around the cavern. Instantly the creature’s head turned in his direction, and it began walking purposefully towards him.
Seeing that stiff-limbed mockery of a man shambling towards him, Winston panicked. He spun and dashed off, hearing something like an unoiled gate screech behind him.
“Winston got out, of course, or we wouldn’t be here to talk about it,” I finished. “He and Genevive darn near moved out that day, momentarily wondering if he was atop a stairway to Hell, but the lure of money was stronger. Plus, with the relief born of escaping the things, Winston’s curiosity returned.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Jodi said. “What, is this the reverse of the old bit where the city slickers play tricks on the country rube? Are you serious?”
For answer, Adam pulled on one of the fireplace bricks, which opened a concealed vault. He reached in and tossed what he found to Jodi.
Jodi looked at the rough pebble. “Diamonds? Here? Isn’t that crazy talk?”
I shook my head. “Turns out there’s three places you find kimberlite pipes in Kentucky. One of them is in this county, not far from here. No one’s ever found a diamond in Kentucky, but as near as I can figure it, the Nomes can dig into ’em at a level no one’s ever reached before and there’s diamonds down there.”
Jodi looked at me. ” ‘Nomes’?”
I blushed while the rest of the family laughed. “Ayup, Nomes indeed!” Grandpa Marlon boomed. “Old Winston called ’em kobolds, or somethin’ close to that, but when little Clint saw ’em first he was readin’ them Oz books an’ so he started callin’ them Nomes, and their leader, assumin’ they got one, Ruggedo.”
“Okay, so it’s silly. Still the way I think of them.”
“So,” Jodi said, “these ‘Nomes’ or ‘kobolds’ have been after you guys ever since for stealing their diamonds, like a leprechaun and his gold or something?”
“Something like that,” I said. “Winston figured out a lot of stuff about them in the next few years. The reason they had a hard time tracking him was because he carried iron with him. Cold iron, he remembered, was one of the ways of dealing with the faerie folk. Most of their senses didn’t do well around iron and steel. I guess they’re doing some kind of electromagnetic sensing. They could hear some things and make sounds—pretty creepy ones. They don’t do their tunneling themselves, they’ve got some kind of rockworms that do that for them. And their tunneling creates things that look just like natural caverns, complete with the formations. We’re not sure yet what they actually want all those minerals for; maybe they eat them or something.”