The Anatomist's Dream Read Online Free PDF

come,’ Frau Kranz went on, ‘I’ve been racking my brains for a solution, and now I have it. You must go, and you must take this with you.’
    She fumbled her shaking fingers beneath her pillow and brought out a small wooden box the colour of newborn chestnuts, with a lustre that hinted of sun-warmed forests far away.
    â€˜Look inside,’ she said, and Philbert did, lifting out a long, curly tress of hair smelling of chocolate and spices, scents from long ago he half remembered every time he walked past the confectionery shop in town.
    â€˜It’s your Mamma’s,’ Frau Kranz wheezed. It had been a day of exertion for her, forcing herself up from bed into chair to endure the overzealous care of overzealous neighbours, trying all the while to come up with a way out of a situation of which she would not, could not, contemplate being even a small part. She had known the moment she woke that a decision had to be made, and now she’d made it, and was about to do the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life, sending away the one person who had ever really mattered to her, the child she’d helped into life and practically brought up those first few years, and done so single-handed in the few years following that. And by sending this child away she knew she was condemning herself to die alone in this little shack, with no one to light up her last few days or hold her hand when she passed into the hereafter. But he was so young, this little boy with his misshapen head, and it was precisely because of that head that she had found an answer at last.
    â€˜Hush now, child,’ she said, mustering every last inch and ounce of strength she had left in her. ‘You must take Kroonk and you must go away, my darling, for I cannot protect you any more.’
    The boy was crying freely now, great hiccupping sobs breaking from him as he clutched the box she had given him in one hand and Frau Kranz’s skinny fingers in the other.
    â€˜You must go, my lamb,’ she whispered, snatching breath from the air like scraps of autumn leaves. ‘And you must go now. There’s a sack beneath the bed. I’ve packed everything you’ll need.’
    Philbert unwillingly let go her hand and pulled out the sack as she directed him, small hands trembling as he opened its neck, glancing inside, then placing Nelke’s box in with all the rest.
    â€˜But where will I go, Mama?’ his voice was thin as smoke, hardly audible, but Frau Kranz heard, her heart squeezing almost shut to hear that one word Mama , a word she’d hoped to hear all her long life, but never had until now, right at the moment she was having to send this surrogate son away from her, knowing she would never see him again.
    â€˜Go to the Fair,’ she said. ‘Ask them to take you in. Offer to do any jobs for them that you can. Show them your taupe, Little Maus, and maybe that will help.’
    She didn’t know much about Fairs but she knew they liked unusual, and that was Philbert. She had no more words, so tired it was hard to draw in breath, could only squeeze Philbert’s fingers lightly as he lowered his head upon her knees, feeling the warmth of his tears soaking through her skirts, looking down on that taupe of his, at the skin stretched taut over it the colour of spilled tea, that incongruous twist of hair growing slightly off centre; she stroked her Little Maus with all the gentleness her long and childless life had given her, stroked it ever more slowly, slowly, slowly, until she was asleep.
    He was too young to understand the full implications of what he was about to do but Frau Kranz’s word was good enough for him, so when her hand fell from his head to her lap Philbert moved, stood up, kissed his good Frau Kranz upon her clammy forehead. Then he picked up the sack she had prepared for him but did not go out of the door as might have been expected, for he’d grasped the import of what