From the Archives.
Hi, I’m Grey Walker. Can you be very quiet? I’d like to show you something. Come this way… Watch out for that hedgehog. That’s Hamish. I have no idea what he’s doing here in the hall. He’s usually sleeping on a chair in the staff lounge. Or curled up in the lap of The Old Man while he reads in the Library.
Alright, we’re almost there. It’s just around this corner… here we are. The Publisher’s Office. He refused to let anyone see it when we were giving the tour of the building a fortnight and odd days ago, but I’ve got his key, and he’ll be down in the pub for the next hour at least. How did I get the key? Liath made me swear not to tell. Great elephants, the door’s loud! Should have brought some WD-40 for the hinges…
Cat Eldridge, our current Chief, inherited this office when he took over Kinrowan Limited from the previous Publisher, who had been here for a very long time. The first thing he did was have the brownies clean out the space so that the oak floor boards could be re-sanded and sealed in true varnish. After that, the book shelves on the wall here by the door were cleaned and painted a dark green, as you can see. The shelves hold thousands of volumes that Cat and others have accumulated over the centuries. A full set of the first edition of The Child Ballads is in there somewhere, as well as the complete works of Charles de Lint and Charles Vess. There’s a geas that keeps any book from leaving this office unless the current Publisher carries it out. Cool, no?
Take a look at that oak desk. Yes, you’re right, it’s actually in three parts. It’s twenty feet long by a full six from front to back, but the desk top is carved from a single plank that the Chief claims was salvaged from Long John Silver’s pirate ship. It certainly has interesting markings on it! The chair’s simply one left from the bankruptcy sale of an old Victorian law firm — even the leather seat is a hundred and fifty years old. No phone in this office — Cat calls ‘em ‘infernal devices’.
He likes technology that looks cool. I know his computer looks like a NeXT work station, but it’s actually a bleeding edge Macintosh computer. That flat screen monitor doubles as a television. Huge, isn’t it? Yes, it really is two meters wide! And the sound system’s part fey, part just really decent human design. He doesn’t use all those CDs much anymore — Liath indexed all the MP3s on his terabyte hard drive. She really spoils him.
Notice that globe on the stand. It looks like an 1890s globe, but it can change to be anytime you want… Handy when reading historic novels… We were figuring out where the Northumberland Republic is the other day.
Aren’t the windows gorgeous? Leaded glass… What? Yes, that’s Oberon’s Wood you can see through them. Sometimes when you look out, it’s the City you see. Cat uses that couch over there to read and nap. Plenty of other chairs, too, so we can have a small staff meeting if need be — although we usually meet down in the back room of the pub. You noticed the Charles Vess prints from Stardust over the couch, I see.
Comments