《The Hob Carpet》作者： - Ian R. MacLeod【EPUB】

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THE HOB CARPET by Ian R. MacLeod * * * * Ian R. MacLeod has published four novels and three short story collections, and has a new novel, Song of Time, due out from PS Publishing this year. His work has been widely translated and received many awards. He lives in the riverside town of Bewdley, in England. “The Hob Carpet” came from an idea for an alternate earth that he’d been entertaining for many years, and finally took shape when, in the way in which stories have, it sucked in another couple of ideas that he’d been saving for something else. Ian has a personal website at www.ianrmacleod.com. A word of warning: there are scenes in this story that may be disturbing to some readers. * * * * I’m a monster, an aberration. I’ve never really known what it means to be human. You could try to trace what I am back to the life that supposedly formed me. Try, and most probably fail. In that, at least, reader, and even though you may try to deny it, I’m much like you. I was raised in a family of moderate influence and reasonable wealth. My father’s line were successful merchants—men who had once plied the Great North Water, but calculated long before I was born that there was more money to be earned trading along its banks. My mother’s side were paler-skinned than is common, and perhaps more savage and unpredictable in their moods as a result. That was her, certainly; a waxing, waning Moon to orbit my father’s calmer earth. Her lineage was of the temple guards, and her father was proud of the spear-wound which