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# 2023-04-24 - Wise Child by Monica Furlong | |
I picked up this young adult fiction from a little free library. | |
I was pleasantly surprised by how much i enjoyed reading it. | |
The main characters are an orphan named "Wise Child" and her | |
adoptive guardian Juniper. Juniper acts as a mentor and role model | |
and she is very good at teaching. I enjoyed reading about their | |
nurturing and positive relationship. | |
# Chapter 1 | |
I was not called by my proper name, but by a teasing word that you | |
would translate into English as "Wise Child." This was not a | |
compliment--it was a word for children who used long words, as I | |
often did, or who had big eyes, or who seemed somehow old beyond | |
their years. | |
# Chapter 3 | |
"ARE you spoiled, Wise Child?" | |
"My cousins always said so..." | |
"It's not how I see you. At all." | |
* * * | |
"I don't like cleaning or dusting or cooking or doing dishes, or any | |
of those things," I explained to her. "And I don't usually do it. I | |
find it boring, you see." | |
"Everyone has to do those things," she said. | |
"Rich people don't," I pointed out. | |
Juniper laughed, as she often did at things I said in those early | |
days, but at once became quite serious. | |
"They miss a lot of fun," she said. "But quite apart from | |
that--keeping yourself clean, preparing the food you are going to | |
eat, cleaning it away afterward--that's what life's ABOUT, Wise | |
Child. When people forget that, or lose touch with it, then they | |
lose touch with other important things as well." | |
"Men don't do those thing." | |
"Exactly. Also, as you clean the house up, it gives you time to tidy | |
yourself up inside--you'll see." | |
* * * | |
"Don't they want to feel well?" I asked in surprise. | |
"Not always. Sometimes life is too difficult to be lived. So it's | |
better to be sick for a bit." | |
"So what happens then?" | |
"You have to tease out the pain--in their minds, that is--like | |
teasing burrs our of wool." | |
* * * | |
"Well, why don't you beat me, then?" [Like her mother did when she | |
caused trouble.] I was genuinely puzzled. | |
"I can't be bothered," she said. | |
"That's no way to bring up a child," I said primly, copying the | |
voices of the village women I knew, and because Juniper began to | |
laugh again, I laughed myself. | |
"You'll just have to behave yourself, Wise Child," Juniper said. "Or | |
not, as the case may be. I shall never beat you, whatever you do." | |
# Chapter 4 | |
[Juniper took Wise Child to mass every Sunday as she promised before | |
she became Wise Child's guardian. After the first mass, Juniper | |
asked Wise Child what Fillan had preached about.] | |
"He talked about Pelagius," I lied. Pelagius was an English scholar | |
who had a quarrel with the great St. Augustine, and Fillan was always | |
defending him... | |
"Pelagius? He who thinks we are good entirely by our own endeavors?" | |
Juniper asked. "The man's a fool." | |
Although Juniper was not a Christian, from then on Sundays became our | |
holy days, and apart from caring for the animals we did no work. | |
* * * | |
It was fun to eat the pat of butter or the tiny cheese I had shaped | |
for myself. | |
"It tastes so much better when you do it yourself," Juniper said. | |
* * * | |
"I thought if you were educated you didn't have to do boring things," | |
I had said to Juniper the day before. | |
"There are people who think like that," Juniper said. "Such a pity. | |
Boredom is so valuable." I could not imagine what she meant. | |
# Chapter 5 | |
It was not until lunchtime that I mentioned the leper. "That | |
horrible Cormac was shambling around here. I soon scared him off." | |
Juniper stared at me with such astonishment that I stared back. "You | |
did WHAT?" | |
"I threw a stone at him," I said virtuously. "I knew you wouldn't | |
want him stealing eggs or staring through the window." ... | |
A look of pain passed across Juniper's cheerful sunburned face. "I | |
must go and see him" she said suddenly. | |
"What?" | |
"I must go and see him. I have been caring for Cormac--for his face, | |
and giving him food--for... oh, several years..." | |
"But he's horrible. All the children throw stones at him and he's | |
been punished by getting leprosy." | |
"Did you know he was Fillan's brother?" | |
"No. Honestly? But he gives me the shivers. He's disgusting." | |
"He's sick. And very lonely." | |
[Later, after Wise Child comes to remorse what she did...] | |
"I didn't know he was like that," I said at last. "Fillan said he | |
had committed a terrible sin and that was how God had punished him." | |
"Fillan may hate Cormac, but I don't think God does," said Juniper. | |
"Your God loves people, doesn't he? Jesus healed the lepers, and he | |
forgave people who did wrong, even the ones who crucified him. Isn't | |
that right? So why would he give Cormac--dear good Cormac--such a | |
dreadful punishment? What could he possibly have done that was bad | |
enough?" | |
# Chapter 6 | |
Juniper was a wonderful teacher, partly because lessons got mixed in | |
with everything else. She would draw a picture of the seas and | |
countries around Britain so that I would understand a story of a | |
voyage or a love story or a battle, and she would alternate a piece | |
of history with a fairy story so that my attention remained sharp. I | |
puzzled over what was "real." | |
... | |
"There are many kinds of reality," Juniper explained, "Only silly | |
people thin there is only one kind. I don't live in the fairy | |
reality and neither do you. I live in two or three different kinds | |
of reality, though. So, I expect, will you." | |
She did not explain this, even when I begged her to. She could be | |
quite obstinate about the things she would, and would not, talk | |
about. "I might spoil something for you, you see," she said. | |
* * * | |
"You always feel someone must be to blame when you are cold or | |
miserable or frightened, Wise Child. It may not be so at all--it is | |
just the weather of life--but even if they are to blame... does it | |
matter?" | |
* * * | |
At once I knew that the movement of the blood within me was part of | |
the same pattern that moved the sap in the oak tree to my right. The | |
decay of the food in my stomach was the same as the autumn decay of | |
the plants and trees. When Juniper and I shoveled earth upon our | |
human droppings, I knew that the flies and little earth creatures | |
fed upon them; this was their food as the fish and animals and roots | |
and berries and seeds were ours. I began to weep at the beauty of | |
this, to say a psalm that Fillan had once taught me praising the good | |
God. | |
# Chapter 7 | |
I could feel an idea bubbling away energetically at the back of my | |
mind, and at first I could not imagine what it was. Something about | |
life with Juniper had encouraged me to notice ideas floating around | |
in the back of my mind, like, as she said, fishes swimming past you | |
if you were in a house under the sea. | |
* * * | |
No one could have lived with Juniper as long as I had without getting | |
into the habit of pondering the why of things. | |
* * * | |
If I was a part of everything, then I was also a part of the bridge | |
and stream, of the sharp rocks beneath the water and the tumbling, | |
rushing waters. EVEN if I feel into the waters, and EVEN if I was | |
swallowed up by them, I would still be a part of it all. In such a | |
world, such a universe, nothing terrible could happen to me. | |
Suppose, I asked myself, just suppose that I walked across that | |
bridge as if I was part of it and part of the water, that I decided | |
that whatever happened as I did so, it would be alright, what then? | |
Suddenly it was as if a weight had been dropped off me. I stood up, | |
walked to the bridge, and crossed it with only the slightest | |
hesitation as I got to the middle. ... One part of me felt very | |
relieved and rather proud. Another part missed the thrill of being | |
terrified; it had been exciting in a way. How muddling everything | |
always was. | |
# Chapter 19 | |
"Why does he [Fillan] hate you so much?" | |
"I think he misunderstands. He thinks that I am working against the | |
new religion, but it is not so. I love and revere Jesus as he | |
does--how could one not? But in the new religion they think that | |
nature, especially in the human body, must be fought and | |
conquered--they seem to fear and distrust matter itself, although in | |
the Mass it is bread and wine that is used to show how spirit and | |
matter are one. They think that those like the dorans, who love and | |
cherish nature, must be fought and conquered too. Jesus did not tell | |
them this--it is their own invention because they fear nature, their | |
own and that of others." | |
* * * | |
"Whatever happens, Wise Child, we trust one another to do the best we | |
can. And we love one another. This is a weapon they cannot take | |
from us. In the end it makes us stronger than they are." | |
# Chapter 20 | |
[Juniper and Wise Child are arrested by The Inquisition, jailed, and | |
put on trial for witchcraft.] | |
By concentrating on each moment as it happened--something I suddenly | |
realized I had learned from Juniper--I could keep myself from gnawing | |
anxiety. | |
* * * | |
"Not everyone is familiar with the vocabulary of witchcraft. Perhaps | |
you will tell us now what a doran is." | |
"It is someone who loves all the creatures of the word," I said, "the | |
animals, birds, plants, trees, and people, and who cannot bear to do | |
any of them any harm. It is someone who believes that they are all | |
linked together and that therefore everything can be used to heal the | |
pain and suffering of the world. It is someone who does not hate | |
anybody and who is not frightened of anyone or anything." | |
author: Furlong, Monica | |
detail: gopher://gopherpedia.com/0/Monica_Furlong | |
LOC: PZ7.F96638 | |
tags: book,fantasy,fiction | |
title: Wise Child | |
# Tags | |
book | |
fantasy | |
fiction |