This is the story of a snowstorm. The story of a tinker. The tinker's name was John, and he came to a certain village every winter, to stay at a certain inn. The village was in the middle of a deep forest called the Forest of Waters. The name of the village was
Worthing, because the name of the inn was
Worthing. John Tinker stayed at the inn because it was his brother's. He lived in a room in a tall tower in the inn, with windows on every side. His brother was Martin Keeper, and he had a son named Amos. Amos loved his uncle John and looked forward to winter, because the birds came to John Tinker. It was as if they knew him, and all the winter they were in and out of his windows; during the storms they huddled together on the sills.
The birds came to him because he knew them. When thy flew he saw through their eyes and felt the air rush by their feathers. When the birds were ill or broken, he could find the hurt place in them and make it well again. He could do this with people, too...
When he came to the village, they brought their sick to him, their lame, and he made them well again. But to do it, he had to dwell
inside them for a time, and become them, and when he left, he took the memories with him, until the memories of a thousand pains and fears dwelt in him. Always the memory of pain and fear, never the memory of healing. So that more and more he was afraid to heal others, and more and more he wanted to stay with the birds. All they remembered was flight and food, mates and nestlings.
And the more he withdrew from the people of the village, the more they feared and were afraid of him because of his power, until at last they didn't think of him as a man at all, even though he had been born among them, and he did not think of himself as one of them either, though he remembered almost all their agonies.
Then came a horrible winter, and the snow was so deep in one terrible storm that it cracked the roof beams of some houses, and killed and cripple people in their sleep, and froze others so the sickness crept up their dead legs and arms. The people cried out to John Tinker, Heal us, make us whole. He tried, but there were too many of them all at once. He couldn't work fast enough, and even though he saved some, more died.
"Why didn't you save my son!" shouted one. "Why didn't you save my daughter, my wife, my husband,
father, mother, sister, brother" - and they began to punish him. They punished him by killing birds and heaping them up at the door of the inn.
When he saw the broken birds he got angry. He had taken all the years of their pain, and now they killed the birds because he could not do enough of a miracle to please them. He was so angry that he said, "You can all die, I'm through with you." He bundled himself in his warmest clothes and left.
The fourth day after John Tinker left was the bottom of despair. Not a soul left alive that had not lost kin to the storm, saving only Martin Keeper, who had but the one son, Amos, who was alive.
Amos wanted to tell the people, "Fools, if you had only been grateful for what Uncle John could do he wold not have left, and he would be here to heal the ones with frozen legs and the ones with broken backs." But his father caught the thought before Amos could speak, and bade him be silent. "Our house stands, and my son lives, and our eyes are as blue as John Tinker's eyes. Do we want their rage to fall on us?"
So they held their peace, and on the fourth night John Tinker came back, frozen from wandering in the storm, weary and silent. He came in and said
nothing to them. And they said nothing to him. They just beat him until he fell, and then kicked him until he died, because they had no use for a god who couldn't save them from everything. The end.
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The Worthing Saga
