The Crow Road Read Online Free PDF

called it.
    ‘Why did the goose eat the diamond?’
    ‘Please, Uncle Kenneth!’ Diana Urvill said, holding up one hand and trying to click her fingers.
    ‘Yes, Diana.’
    ‘It was hungry.’
    ‘Naw!’ Ashley said scornfully from the cairn. She blinked furiously. ‘It wiz fur teeth!’
    ‘It swallowed it, smarty-pants, so there!’ Diana said, leaning towards Ashley and shaking her head.
    ‘Hey!’ McHoan said. ‘You’re both ... sort of right. The goose swallowed the diamond because that’s what geese do with things like pebbles that they find; they swallow them so that they go into their ... anybody know?’ He looked round them all as best he could without disturbing Lewis and Prentice.
    ‘Gizzltrd, Mr McHoan!’ Ashley shouted, waving the stone she held.
    Diana squealed and put her hand to her mouth again.
    ‘Well, a gizzard is part of a bird, too, that’s right Ashley,’ he said. ‘But the diamond actually went into the goose’s crop, because, like lots of animals and birds, geese need to keep some wee stones, like pebbles or gravel, in their crop, down here,’ he pointed. ‘So that they can grind their food up small and digest it better when it goes into their tummy.’
    ‘Please, Mr McHoan, Ah remember!’ Ashley shouted. She clutched the stone to her chest, getting her ragged, thin grey jumper a little dirtier.
    ‘Me too, dad!’ Prentice shouted.
    ‘And me!’
    ‘Me too!’
    ‘Well,’ he said, rolling slowly over and letting Lewis and Prentice slide off his back. He sat up; they sat down. ‘Way back, a long long time ago, there were these big enormous animals that used to live in Scotland, and they -’
    ‘What did they look like, dad?’ Prentice asked.
    ‘Ah.’ McHoan scratched his head through his brown curls. ‘Like ... like big hairy elephants ... with long necks. And these big huge animals — ’
    ‘What were they called, please, Uncle Kenneth?’
    ‘They were called ... mythosaurs, Helen, and they would swallow rocks ... big rocks, way down into their crops, and they used these rocks to help crunch up their food. They were very very big animals, and very heavy because of all the rocks they carried around inside them, and they usually stayed down in the glens because they were so heavy, and didn’t go into the sea or the lochs because they didn’t float, and they stayed away from marshes, too, in case they sank. But -’
    ‘Please, Mr McHoan, did they up climb trees, naw?’
    ‘No, Ashley.’
    ‘Naw, ad didnae think so, Mr McHoan.’
    ‘Right. Anyway, when they were very very old and they were going to die, the mythosaurs would come to the tops of hills ... hills just like this one, and they’d lie down, and they would die peacefully, and then after they were dead, their fur and their skin would disappear, and then their insides would disappear too af -’
    ‘Where aboots did their fur and their skin go, please, Mr McHoan?’
    ‘Well, Ashley ... they turned into earth and plants and insects and other wee animals.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘And eventually there would just be a skeleton left -’
    ‘Eek,’ said Diana, and put her hand over her mouth again.
    ‘Until even that crumbled away and became dust, and -’
    ‘And their tusks, Mr McHoan?’
    ‘Pardon, Ashley?’
    ‘Their tusks. Did they go intae dust as well?’
    ‘Umm ... yes. Yes, they did. So after a while everything was dust ... except for the stones that the big animals had carried in their crops; those lay in a big pile where the mythosaurs had laid down to die, and that,’ he turned and slapped one of the larger stones protruding from the base of the rock pile behind him. ‘That,’ he grinned, because he liked the story he had just thought up and told, ‘is where cairns come from.’
    ‘Ah! Ashley! You’re standing on stuff that’s been in a animal’s gizzurd!’ Darren shouted, pointing.
    ‘Eaurgh!’ Ashley laughed and jumped down, throwing the stones away and rolling on the grass.
    There was a deal