The Anatomist's Dream Read Online Free PDF Page B

might happen to Kroonk if he did. Instead he went to the back of the shack and prised up a loose section of the metal-sheeted wall that was thin, corroded by all the salt that pervaded the whole of Staßburg. It gave easily, and soon wide enough for him and Kroonk to wriggle their way through. Straight into the yard then and down past the chicken coop, and from there to the river meadows where Shminiak and Nelke first lay down together, and on into the darkness, bypassing the neighbours’ spit that Philbert saw burning merrily away at the tail end of their street, just as Frau Kranz had said it would be. His heart was thudding hard. When he was close by the bridge he picked Kroonk up, pulled her to his chest, dragging his jacket as far as he could across her to keep her hidden, holding the sack up in front of them both for a last protection.
    To the Fair, Frau Kranz had directed him, and towards the Fair he went, and over the bridge without any trouble, keeping his head down, moving with the rest of the crowd surging over its back, jostling and laughing as they went to the Last Night of the Fair. He folded himself into the hustle and bustle of folk as they funnelled into the Fair’s Ground, slipping a lead around Kroonk’s neck as he let her down, wary of anyone who might yet recognise her and try to grab her up, moving immediately away from the crowds and down to the river. He listened to the water moving ever onward to who knew where. He listened to all the people shouting and singing, flinging themselves into this last night of holiday, fully aware that tomorrow it would be back to the mines, back to grudge and drudge, back to normality. He moved away, lay down on the river bank, eyes wide open – Kroonk beside him – wondering what to do, how to find Little Lita, make her understand. He was so tired and troubled that he didn’t even realize he’d fallen asleep.
    Next thing he knew he was being awoken by a small hand shaking his shoulder. Philbert started, jumped up, his hand gripping tight about the rope that held him fast to Kroonk, his eyes going straightaway towards the bridge, looking for trouble.
    â€˜I’ll not let Kroonk go!’ he shouted, almost before he knew he was speaking. ‘I’ll not, I will not!’
    But the person standing before him was no enemy, no neighbour or townsperson wanting to turn his Kroonk into spit and sausage. Instead it was the one person in the entire world he wanted to see. It was Lita, and she was looking at him so strangely that his throat constricted and would allow out no more words, not even the gasp of surprise he felt but could not express. After his small outburst about the pig she did nothing for a few moments, was merely observing this small boy with his overburdened head and the small pig nuzzling at his knee like a frightened dog. She took a step back from them and glanced across at the river, seeing the lights of the Fair reflecting dimly from the shack she knew to be the boy’s home, precisely because it had been from this very spot she’d first spied him – and his odd little pig – dipping their collective feet into the river. She’d seen in him at that moment something she recognised of old, the very reason she’d crossed the bridge that first night of the Fair just to check it out. And she knew why he was here now, though not the particular reason behind it, but she knew, and was kind, and reached out a hand and took Philbert’s in her own.
    â€˜It’s always been like this,’ Lita said, in that oddly high voice of hers that had Philbert thinking back to the serinette his father had given him the morning he’d left, hoping it was in the sack he was clutching as if it was a chicken whose neck he’d just wrung. ‘And maybe always will be,’ she went on. ‘Towns we pass through? The people we see? Always someone to gather up with us when we leave. You’re not the first,