The sounds of modern-day New York permeated the air; the rumbles and aggressive beeps of taxis as they compete against every other taxi trying to reach their destination as quickly as possible, punctuated by sharp beeps and irate profanity; the laughing, cursing, casual, shouting, continual conversing and bustling of passerby; the calls of vendors insisting that their own t-shirts are better than the ones being sold down the street; sirens, slammed doors, shrieks, a dog barking from a window, a man tells someone where to stick it. Endless, tirelessly persistent sound.
Deep below the streets where traffic now bustled, a few sets of ears had yet remained deaf to the noise. These were old ears, ancient, old enough to have withered and disintegrated, really only patches of dirt where ears had once been. But the bones of one who had one had ears... the bones heard. They had been the bones of a boy, a boy young and strong, a warrior. When the boy still had still lived on this land rather than under it, it had been quite a different land. There had been trees reaching for the for the sky in place of skyscrapers, the earth had been soft and green instead of gray and hard, and the people had known how to be silent; noiseless as the animals they had hunted, all now long gone from the region.
It had been a noise sharp and loud and unfamiliar that had ended the boy's life, sprung from the strange spear of a man with a strange, pale face. It was a sound that would have familiar to the people now living above; the sound of a gunshot.
After centuries of slumber, the sounds of New York had penetrated deeply enough into the earth for even for the ears of the dead to hear, and the ghost of a young Canarsie Native American boy awoke to the sounds the city above.
The boy turned to the bones of his father and bid him stir, for the boy could not identify the strange sounds which had awakened him. The father was slowly roused.
The boy said, “Father, what are these noises I hear?” To this, his father replied, “I know not, for it surely not of any beast, nor stream, nor wind; these are the noises my own father and experience taught me to listen for carefully. But let us investigate.”
The two Canarsie spirits traveled upward, out of the earth that cradled their bones to stand underneath the sky once more… that is, the sky of downtown Manhattan.
They find themselves on a black river with crowds of people pushing past on either side, and strange square mountains... when suddenly a loud noise makes them turn around, to see a strange yellow beast hurtling toward them, roaring...
The taxi goes right through them, as do the car that follows it. Nevertheless, the two jump to the side of the street, as more traffic roars past, heedless of the two spirits they nearly ran down... or through, at least.
