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Untreed Reads - Pat Murphy

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35 pages

English

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The Irish Giant - that's what Londoners called Charlie Bryne, an enormous country lad standing 8 feet tall in his bare feet. He made his fortune by exhibiting himself, but Bryne was far more than a human oddity. He had the magical power of healing, a deep connection to the natural magic of the earth, and the blood of Irish kings in his veins. In 1782, he came to London with a single goal - to bring the Irish home to the island they had left.John Hunter was a man of science and insatiable curiosity - a surgeon, a natural philosopher, and a tireless collector of natural oddities. With analysis and dissection, Hunter strove to understand the natural world - and he wanted to add the bones of a giant to his collection.This novella, winner of the 1990 World Fantasy Award, examines what happens when the quest for scientific knowledge meets ancient natural magic.

Sujets

Fantasy (canción de Mariah Carey)

Short story

Fantasy

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Publié par	Untreed Reads
Date de parution	12 juin 2012
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781611873559
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0030€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Bones
By Pat Murphy

Copyright 2012 by Pat Murphy
Cover Copyright 2012 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

Previously published in print, 1990.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

http://www.untreedreads.com
Bones
By Pat Murphy
This is a true story, more or less. In the history books, you can find Dr. John Hunter, a noted surgeon and naturalist. London’s Royal College of Surgeons maintains his museum, an amazing collection of eighteenth-century oddities and natural curiosities.
Charlie Bryne is in the history books, too. He came to London from Ireland in 1782. Advertised as the World’s Tallest Man and the Descendant of Irish Kings, he exhibited himself as a curiosity and a freak.
The history books tell of their meeting-but now I’m getting ahead of myself. I must start long before that.
* * *
On a cold winter evening, when the ground was white with frost, Charlie Bryne sat on a stool by the peat fire. Though the boy was only ten years old, he was already as tall as a grown man. His mother, a youthful widow, sat close by, her shawl pulled up around her shoulders and a glass of whiskey in her hand. The firelight shone on her face, making her cheeks rosy and her eyes bright.
“Tell me the story, Mum,” Charlie asked. “Tell me how I got to be so big.”
She smiled at him fondly. “Ah, you know the tale as well as I do, Charlie. You have no need for me to tell it.”
“I’ve forgotten. Tell me again,” he pleaded.
“All right-just once more. Fill my glass and we’ll have the story.” He refilled her glass from the jug and she settled herself more comfortably in her chair.
“It was a year after a young horse threw my husband and broke his back,” she began. “I was a widow with a fine farm, and many a bachelor farmer would gladly have had me to wife. But I was happy to be on my lone, and I would have none of them.” She pushed back her dark hair with her hand, smiling at the memory. “Old Sean Dermot died that autumn, and I went to the wake. As it came about, I stayed too late, and I was walking home after dark. ’Twas a lonesome road I had to travel-and I was tired, so I took a short cut, the path that ran beside the Giant’s Boneyard.”
She shook her head at her own foolishness. The Giant’s Boneyard was a lonely, haunted spot. In a field too rocky for planting, wild grasses grew thick and green around great boulders of unusual shapes. People said that the boulders were the bones of a giant, a king of Ireland, who had died a hundred years before, while fighting to protect his people from invaders. Some said that he had promised, with his dying words, to return if ever Ireland needed him. Some said he walked at night, strolling through the field that held his bones. In any case, most people avoided the place after dark.
“The moon was a sliver in the sky, hanging low and giving just enough light for me to see. I was only halfway across the field when I saw a blue light, a beautiful light, the color of the Blessed Virgin’s robes. I was not foolish enough to go running after fairy lanterns. I kept to the path, hurrying toward home, but the light danced across the field toward me. And then I saw it clearly.”
She clasped her hands before her, and leaned toward Charlie. He caught his breath, watching her. “The blue light shone from a golden crown on the head of an enormous man. A powerful man-stronger than the blacksmith in the village, taller than the tallest I had ever seen. He was handsome, but his eyes were dark and fierce. When he looked at me, I froze, bound to the spot and unable to run.”
She fixed her gaze on Charlie, as if to show him how it felt, and he shivered. “He spoke to me sweetly, saying that I would bear him a son. His son would have the old blood in his veins, and he would save Ireland. Then he took me by the hand and led me to a spot where the grass was soft. There he lay with me, taking his pleasure as a man does with a woman. In the morning, I woke with the sun in my eyes, beside the boulder they call the Giant’s Skull.” She leaned back in her chair. “Nine months later, you were born. You were the biggest baby the midwife had ever laid her eyes upon. And you’ve kept growing ever since. You take after your father, sure enough.”
Charlie nodded, gazing into the fire. “Have you ever seen my father again?”
“That I have not,” she murmured. “But I know you for his son.”
“Then I must save Ireland? When must I do this?”
“That I don’t know. When the time comes, surely it will be clear to you.”
Charlie frowned at the fire, his expression fierce. “I will do what I must do,” he said. “If only I can figure out what that is.”
* * *
Charlie wasn’t his mother’s son, though he sat at her knee and fetched her whiskey. He was a child of the woods and the wild fields-growing up outdoors as much as in. Summer and winter alike, he ran barefoot, coming home to his mother’s house with dusty feet and brambles in his hair.
He was a strange lad-with a peculiar, dreamy air about him that made some think he was dim-witted. But he wasn’t stupid-he just paid attention to other lessons. Reading and writing seemed unimportant when he could look out the window and see the flowers growing in the fields, hear the birds singing. He understood the mathematics of bird nests, the poetry of cloud formations, the penmanship of snail tracks left on the cold stones of the churchyard wall.
He had a way about him. Animals liked him: the wildest horse would consent to be shod when Charlie held its head. Cows bore their calves more easily if he were standing by. Over the years, the widow Bryne’s farm prospered: her fields were fertile and her hens laid more eggs than any in the village. Her cows gave the richest milk and bore their calves with never a bit of trouble.
Charlie lived with his mother, helping to tend her prospering farm. When he was just sixteen, he was taller than the tallest man in the county. At twenty, he measured eight-foot-tall, and he was still growing. And always he wondered when he would be called upon to save Ireland.
One sunny day, he was drowsing in the Giant’s Boneyard, his back against the boulder known as the Giant’s Skull. Leaning against the sun-warmed surface, he listened to the wind in the grass and the high thin peeping of the little birds that searched for seeds in the meadow. A lark flew from the grass and came to perch on the boulder. When Charlie held out his hand, the bird flew to him. With one finger, he gently rubbed the bird’s head. When Charlie stopped his petting, the lark tilted back its head, sang a liquid trill, then pushed off his finger and took flight.
Charlie watched the bird fly, then plucked a blade of grass from a clump beside him and chewed on the sweet stem. The earth beneath him was warm; the sun shone on his face. He belonged in this meadow the way the boulders belonged. It seemed to him sometimes that he should stay here always, letting the grass grow over him, its roots tickling the surface of his skin as it tickled the granite boulders.
The wind carried the sound of voices. Some neighboring farmers had stopped their work in a nearby field to have a bit of lunch. Their deep voices blended with the distant songbirds and the humming of bees in the wildflowers. Charlie let the sounds wash over him.
“Patrick’s gone to England,” said one man. Charlie recognized the voice of Mick, an elderly farmer. Patrick was his oldest son. “He said he’ll come home rich or not at all.”
“Not at all, more than likely,” muttered his companion. John, Charlie guessed from the voice-another neighbor. “Have you ever known a young lad to come home? My wife has borne me five strong sons. The Lord took two of them, and they are happy with the angels in heaven. But the other three are in England. I think the ones that are with the angels are more likely to come home than the ones that are in London.”
“Aye, that’s God’s truth,” Mick agreed sadly. “I’ve never known a one to come home to till his father’s farm.”
A pause, punctuated by the gurgling of beer pouring from the jug. “Every night, as I go to sleep, I wonder who will till this land when I’m gone,” John said softly. “’Tis not such a large plot-barely enough to feed us-but it was my father’s farm and his father’s before him.” John stopped talking long enough to take a draught of beer, and then continued. “’Tis a sad thing when a man who has raised five sons has no one to help him with the plowing.”
“It ain’t right,” Mick said. “It ain’t right that the best of our children run away to England, never to return.”
John laughed, a dry humorless sound. “Aye, we need to protect ourselves. The blasted English have given up fighting with swords. Instead they lure the children away with sweet promises and gold. Treacherous bastards.”
“Aye,” Mick agreed sadly. “That they are.”
The men were silent for a moment, and then John spoke again. “I see you looking over there at those boulders. Old stories won’t help you now.”
Mick’s voice was soft. “I think sometimes about the old king, rising up from his bones. If he were to come before us, I’d tell him to bring the children home. Go to London and bring our sons and daughte