45
“Many a sailor has escaped their country,” the serpent told them in the time between, “only to find its soil in the bottom of their satchel.”
Ireland / Australia
1885-1901A.D.
Like nearly all me Irish kin, I am a storyteller. If it wasn’t for that cursed Tom O’Malley, I’d be telling tales for a bit of ale in one of the town pubs. But no, my friend, life has taken a cruel turn. Damn Tom. I am telling this tale from the godforsaken place they call Sydney in New South Wales. It is a country where most everything slithering on land or swimming in the sea be likely to kill you. But I palaver. Back to the start of this damnable tale.
“Boy, what they call you?” a man asks me. Not an old man but a youth not much older than myself. I had gone to the bar to fetch my da ‘fore he drank up the
