Read Online The Anatomist's Dream by Clio Gray - Free Book Online Page B

Frau Fettleheim and her cart only enhanced this image, giving it clarity, making it seem as if this Philbert had brought into ­existence another facet of the stone into which they had all been cut, able to see things from a different angle. For how else could a child as young as he, and as alien to their way of life, have conjured up a plan the rest of them should have thought of long before? That the root of the solution had come from Hermann and not Philbert, who had only posed the question, was inconsequential, for the fact remained that had the boy not posed the question the solution would never have been found.
    Philbert didn’t know of this nebulous something-else the Fair’s folk attributed to him, and they in turn were unaware of the true consequence of Philbert’s near-death experience, which was that the lever he’d felt thrown the first time Lita touched his head had taken on a significance he could neither name nor understand. What he did know was that life was short and ­precious and could be snatched away at any moment and that not a second of it should be lost, nor forgotten. The unsettling thoughts he’d had the night Otto gave him the nail were a small start of his understanding; Philbert became convinced that deep inside his head lay a repository of memories waiting for him to reach them: of serinette, donkey, mother and father. Quite why he found it so imperative to track down those ghosts of ages past he didn’t know, only that he sensed them there lurking, tickling like feathers, enough to make him want to bring them back out into the light.
    Philbert could not have expressed a whit of all this if asked, and life went on as usual, or as usual as it had become now that Philbert was part and parcel of the Fair. He performed his duties as quietly and solicitously as always, sat often with Hermann after doling out his numerous ministrations, finding a comfort with him not found elsewhere, not even with Lita with whom, young as he was, he was a little in love. Philbert was ­accustomed to solitude and spent much of his spare time – if not with Hermann – then away from the rest with only Kroonk for ­company, which was as he liked it.
    On one of those Autumn evenings apart, Philbert was sitting on the edge of that ox-bow lake, the banks of the Mohne set ablaze by the low-lying sun, a depth of orange and amber in every reed, on every tree bole, everything exuding a warmth never seen at any other time of year. Philbert was ensconced amongst a heap of fallen leaves, all rustling and rattling by the nudge of the softest breeze, gossiping in small, cracked voices as he watched undiscovered worlds reflected in the smooth water of the lake a few yards below him. It was an evening of content, the Fair’s folk camped up a few hundred yards from where he sat, no show to do, no wonders to perform, no villagers or town’s people to impress. They sat quiet and comfortable, smoking tobacco, or an approximation of it, around their fires, or mending clothes and bits of canvas, repainting boards, brushing down donkeys, chatting quietly, hanging bowls of hare or pigeon stew over the flames.
    Philbert had long since finished his duties, had prepared Maulwerf’s macédoine of vegetables, simmered the quince he had picked, peeled and chopped earlier, setting its fragrant flesh into a wine jelly for a late-night treat, wondering if this time Maulwerf would get even a hint of the scents everyone else took for granted. He’d retrieved Kroonk from Tomaso’s earlier attempts to have her hunt for truffles, which according to Tomaso were more valuable than gold. It was a task Kroonk had apparently been unable to comprehend, uncovering not a sliver of the fungus, spending her time kicking dead leaves into the air with such abandon and obvious joy that Tomaso despaired of her and had sulked off back to his lace-making, a trade he was learning in order to leave the Fair once