title: Boy of Bone: Twelve Stories Inspired by the Mutter Museum
author:  Kathleen R. Sands 
description: "K. R. Sands's Boy of Bone, with illustrations by Jon Lezinsky, is a cabinet of curiosities, its fictional stories inspired by the people whose various body parts have been donated to the Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. . . .What could be a cheap, creepy trick transcends into moving (if also creepy) stories." --Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Kathleen Sands has breathed life into the dry bones and the medical curiosities of the Mutter Museum and brought an extraordinary new dimension to the Museum and The College. - Frederick S. Kaplan, M.D., Director, Center for Research in Fibrosdysplasia Ossificans Progressiva &amp; Related Disorders, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania [the world's foremost expert on the "Boy of Bone" disease, fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva].
zlib_text: # The Museum and the Music Box
  
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  [Cover](text/cover.xhtml)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![cover image](../media/epub-to-image.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
  _A neglected museum gradually succumbs to the elements. A music box rusts
  beneath a bell of glass. Fragmented texts are pieced together which tell the
  history of a lost love, the destruction of a civilization, and the origin of
  the museum._
  
  
  _This short story was acquired and edited for Tor.com by consulting editor[Ann
  VanderMeer](https://www.tor.com/tags/Edited-by-Ann-VanderMeer)._
  
  
  
  
  
  I wander the hallways of the museum. I must know the truth. Past the snarling
  gargoyles and mummified vampires, past the lizards adrift in jars of
  formaldehyde, the fossils of ancient nautili, silver insects entombed in
  amber. To the attics, where seas of parchment seem to whirl in my madness,
  cracked dusty words, trunks smelling of cedar and oak. Words in languages only
  the dead understand, pages only to be read by the ligh