The Tinker
"The Tinker" is a short story by Orson Scott Card. It appears in his short story collection The Worthing Saga. Card first published it in the Vol. 1, No. 2 (1980) issue of Eternity SF magazine.
Plot summary
John Tinker spent every winter at his cousin’s inn in the town of Worthing. While in town John healed the town’s people with a special gift he inherited from Jason Worthing. On a particularly bad winter when the snow was very deep John did his best to help the sick people of Worthing but some of them died anyway. The town’s people blamed John for the deaths and killed some of the birds that he has also been taking care of. When John found he was unable to help his nephew, people thought he was refusing to help because of the dead birds and ran him out of town. After he left a very bad snowstorm hit Worthing and more than half the people in town died. When the storm finally ended John returned to Worthing and was beaten to death by the remaining town’s people.
Connection to the Worthing Saga
This story takes place many years after the events in the story "Worthing Inn". The story of John Tinker also appears in a much shorter form as a part of chapter 7 in Card's novel The Worthing Chronicle.
See also
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