About an hour later the tunnel ended and we entered the home of Desmond Tiny. I'd never really thought of him having a home. I just assumed he wandered the world, always on the move, in search of bloodshed and chaos. But, now that I considered it, I realized every monster needs a den to call its own, and Mr Tiny's had to be the strangest of them all.
It was a huge ¨C and I mean HUGE ¨C cave, maybe a couple of miles or so wide, and stretching as far ahead as I could make out. Much of the cave was natural, stalagmites and stalactites, waterfalls, beautifully weird rock colours and formations. But much more of it was incredibly un natural.
There were grand old cars from what I guessed must be the 1920s or 1930s floating in the air overhead. At first I thought they were attached to the ceiling by wires, but they were in constant motion, circling, crossing paths, even looping around like planes, and not a wire in sight.
There were mannequins all over the place, dressed in costumes from every century and continent, from a primitive loincloth to the most outrageous modern fashion accessories. Their blank eyes unsettled me ¨C I got the feeling that they were watching me, ready to spring to life at Mr Tiny's command and leap upon me.
There were works of art and sculpture, some so famous that even an art cretin like me recognized them ¨C the Mona Lisa, The Thinker, The Last Supper . Mixed in with them, displayed like art exhibits, were dozens of brains preserved in glass cases. I read a few of the labels ¨C Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Mahler. (That one gave me a jump ¨C I'd gone to a school named after Mahler!)
"Our father loves music," Evanna whispered. "Where humans collect sheet music or gramophone records-" She obviously hadn't heard about CDs yet! " -he collects brains of composers. By touching them, he can listen to all the tunes they ever composed, along with many they never completed or shared with the world."
"But where does he get them from?" I asked.
"He travels to the past when they have just died and robs their graves," she said, as though it was the most casual thing in the world. I thought about questioning the right and wrong of something like that, but there were weightier issues to deal with, so I let it slide.
"He likes art too, I take it," I said, nodding at a flowery Van Gogh.
"Immensely," Evanna said. "These are all originals of course ¨C he doesn't bother with copies."
"Nonsense!" I snorted. "These can't be real. I've seen some of the real paintings. Mum and Dad-" I still thought of my human Dad as my real father, and always would. " -took me to see the Mona Lisa in the Loo once."
"The Louvre," Evanna corrected me. "That is a copy. Some of our father's Little People are created from the souls of artists. They make perfect copies of pieces he especially admires. Then he slips back to the past and swaps the copy for the original. In most cases even the actual artist cannot tell the difference."
"You're telling me the Mona Lisa in Paris is a fake?" I asked sceptically.
"Yes." Evanna laughed at my expression. "Our father is a selfish man. He always keeps the best for himself. What he wants, he takes ¨C and he normally wants the best of everything. Except books." Her voice became pointed, as it had earlier when she'd been talking about his attitude towards books. "Desmond never reads works of fiction. He doesn't collect books or pay any attention to authors. Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Twain ¨C all have passed him by unmarked. He doesn't care what they have to say. He has nothing to do with the world of literature. It's as if it exists in a separate universe from his."
Once again I didn't see her point in telling me this, so I let my interest wander. I'd never been a big art fan, but even I was impressed by this display. It was the ultimate collection, capturing a slice of pretty much all the artistic wonder and imagination mankind had ever conjured into being.
There was far too much for any one person to take in. Weapons, jewellery, toys, tools, albums of stamps, bottles of vintage wine, Faberg¨¦ eggs, grandfather clocks, suites of furniture, thrones of kings and queens. A lot of it was precious, but there were plenty of worthless items too, stuff which had simply caught Mr Tiny's fancy, such as bottle tops, oddly shaped balloons, digital watches, a collection of empty ice-cream tubs, thousands of whistles, hundreds of thousands of coins (old ones mixed in with brand new ones), and so on. The treasure cave in Aladdin seemed like a bargain bin in comparison.
Even though the cave was packed with all manner of wonders and oddities, it didn't feel cluttered. There was plenty of space to walk about and explore. We wound our way through the various collections and artefacts, Evanna pausing occasionally to point out a particularly interesting piece ¨C the charred stake on which Joan Of Arc was burnt, the pistol which had been used to shoot Lincoln, the very first wheel.
"Historians would go crazy in this place," I noted. "Does Mr Tiny ever bring anybody here?"
"Almost never," Evanna said. "This is his private sanctuary. I've only been here a handful of times myself. The exceptions are those he pulls out of the Lake of Souls. He has to bring them here to turn them into Little People."
I stopped when she said that. I'd had a sudden premonition. "Evanna..." I began, but she shook her head.
"Ask no more questions," she said. "Desmond will explain the rest to you. It won't be long now."
Minutes later we reached what felt like the centre of the cave. There was a small pool of green liquid, a pile of blue robes and, standing beside them, Mr Tiny. He was staring at me sourly through the lenses of his thick glasses.
"Well, well," he drawled, hooking his thumbs behind his braces. "If it isn't the young martyr himself. Meet anyone interesting in the Lake of Souls?"
"Ignore him," Evanna said out of the side of her mouth.
Mr Tiny waddled forward and stopped a few metres shy of me. His eyes seemed to dance with fire this close up. "If I'd known what a nuisance you were going to be, I'd never have spawned you," he hissed.
"Too late now," I jeered.