The Bone Magician by F E Higgins

Buncombe.’
    ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Pin politely and touched his hat.
    ‘What exquisite manners,’ said Mr Buncombe with a quick smile, looking him up and down. ‘Surely not learned this side
     of the river?’
    ‘’Twas my mother,’ said Pin. ‘She was from over the river too. She taught me that manners cost little but are
     worth a lot.’
    ‘A sensible woman,’ replied Aluph, rather pleased that Pin should take him for a northerner. He had spent many hours
     perfecting his vowels.
    ‘She was,’ said Pin quietly.
    ‘Pin has lost his lodgings,’ said Beag. ‘I wondered if Mrs Hoadswood might be able to help out.’
    ‘Well,’said Aluph confidently. ‘If there was ever a woman who would try her best to fix you up,
     it’s Mrs Hoadswood. Certainly at the very least she’ll give you a dinner.’
    Pin’s eyes lit up at the prospect.
    ‘I can’t promise anything else,’ warned Beag.
    Aluph was blowing on his gloved hands, impatient to go, so the three of them set off.
    ‘Tell me, young man,’ asked Aluph conversationally, ‘how did the two of you come upon each other?’
    ‘I tripped over Mr Hickory’s potato.’
    Aluph laughed. ‘You’re lucky it didn’t hit you in the head.’
    Pin looked confused and Aluph glanced at Beag. ‘Have you not told him?’
    ‘Told me what?’ asked Pin.
    Aluph didn’t give Beag time to speak. ‘Why, of his great talents. Beag here may be small in stature, but he is an
     intellectual giant.’
    Beag smiled and took a bow. ‘Mr Buncombe, sir, you are too kind.’
    ‘What are your talents?’ asked Pin, still wondering where the potato came into it.
    Beagpuffed up with pride and spoke as if to a rather larger audience than he actually had.
    ‘I, Beag Hickory, am a son of faraway lands, a poet and bard, a scholar—’
    ‘Oh, we know all that,’ interrupted Aluph. ‘Tell him what you really do.’
    Beag looked a little crestfallen, cut off as he was in full flow, but he obliged. ‘I am a poet, that is true, but Urbs Umidians do
     not appreciate talents such as that, so I have taken a different course in life. Though it is hardly the future I was promised when I sat on the Cathaoir Feasa .’
    ‘The cathaoir what?’ asked Pin.
    ‘Forget that,’ said Aluph impatiently. ‘Tell him what it is you do.’
    ‘I,’ said Beag, ‘am a potato thrower.’
    For the second time that evening Pin held back his laughter. Beag looked up and down the road and pointed in the distance.
    ‘See that post down there?’
    Pin looked. There was indeed a lamp post further down the street.
    Beag drew a line in the snow and took three paces back. He took the potato from his pocket and brushed away theloose earth. He grasped it by the convenient handle, ran to the line and threw it with a loud expulsion of breath. Pin watched as it flew through the air in a long low arc and hit the post with quite a crack.
    ‘Not bad for a poet,’ said Beag with more than a little pride, and dusted off his hands.
    ‘I suppose, really, you’re a poetato thrower,’ ventured Pin with a grin.
    Beag shook his head and laughed quietly.
    ‘He only uses the best, you know,’ said Aluph helpfully, with the merest hint of a smile. ‘Hickory Reds.’

 
Chapter Fifteen

Beag Hickory
    Whether or not Hickory Reds were the preferred choice of a potato thrower, it was certainly true that when it came to
     projecting medium-sized weighty objects through the air, there was no one to match Beag. It wasn’t just the distance, you understand; it was also the accuracy with which he threw them.
    Beag was a man with many talents and he had left his home village at a young age to see the world, to learn and to seek his fortune. He
     was not going to let his lack of stature be an obstacle and by the ripe old age of twenty-four he had achieved two out of three of his fine objectives. He had certainly travelled extensively, and had written songs and poems to prove it. Aluph was not
     wrongin saying he was