Chapter 10: Treat Gerda with Care!

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“Gerda is born in Rocut to a high family. They bring a peasant woman up to the heights to nurse her, for the woman, the mother, is sickly. Like all the peasant girls, she has a doll that she does not put by, even while she nurses Gerda.”

I do not tell her that I know of the Harvest Dolls and the cruelty of the overseers.

“She nurses the babe for months, until Gerda can take cereal and then they whisk the peasant away, back to drudgery. Odd thing - the peasant gives her doll to Gerda, who keeps it until she is out of the crib. Who would think a peasant could attach to her milk-charge?”

“That is a kindness,” I say. I wonder, even then, whether it was more than a simple kindness.

I look from the bones up to Sabra.

“Gerda climbed the cliffs where she finds mushrooms, slugs, and often shells. Yes, she finds shells for her family. When she reaches fourth circle, her family casts about for a husband, for they have room in their house for a man, but it is a poor year for men in Rocut. When her father and uncle both die from a pestilence, the family is desperately poor and they search, again in earnest, for a husband.”

“Will this not muddy your divination?” I ask, looking down at my hands, at Gerda's knuckles.

“Oh, Bessil,” she says. “Gerda climbs the rocks, every day, and brings back enough slugs and mushrooms to eat, while her brother catches trout to sell to keep the family. But most earnestly, Gerda hopes for shells. She knows spots - nooks and crannies - where to find the shells, the good ones, the ones that you can trade.

“But she is no longer third circle. And one day, she slips and falls and dies. And her family is still desperate for money. They sell her knuckles.”

“That can’t be,” I say. “The sky burial -”

She shakes her head. “Look - are these not small bones? Do you doubt they are women’s knuckles? If I didn’t know the truth of them, how could I divine with them?”

I see then that they are a pure set. I can almost imagine them fitting into two hands, like my hands, which held them.

“Everything that we touch touches us. You will not muddy my divination, for these bones exist in the world. Gently put them back on the cloth. Treat Gerda with care! We must go. Now.”

A horn sounds as she speaks and I hear Lake Town wake to eager energy.

As I lean forward to put the bones of Gerda away, I catch a whiff of Sabra’ scent - perfumed oils. How she came by such rich perfumes, I can’t guess. Sometimes I smell some exotic flower and it transports me back to Lake Town on that day, for that moment.

The horn spills out, again, over the town and clouds fill the sky. It is getting dark.

We aren’t the only ones who are about now that the light is getting low. It seems everyone in town is drawn in the same direction - toward the lake. We - Sabra and I - fall into line walking toward the shore. That word!

I wonder as we walk, for the lake is too deep to wade across. What are we to do?

But I look down and find my feet walking on a path of rope and sticks out into the water. At the shore that I still find puzzling, the shore - two men stand with torches burning, eyes peering into the dark, looking for goblin eyes.

“Off on your own, boy,” Sabra says to me. “Maybe we’ll talk again later.” She heads off to sit with friends.

And I don’t know where to sit, but we are on platforms of bones and sticks with two old ships floating above, tethered to the rafts below. I find a corner and sit, out of the way, I hope. No one takes notice of me. I keep one hand on my hood and one on my sandals and feel my stomach grumble.

And the light goes out, except for lanterns and candles that flicker here and there. Light, true, but not enough to drive off goblins.

“Excuse me, sir,” I ask a man sitting near me. “Aren’t there any goblins?”

“Who are you?” he asks. I can barely see him in the dark, not enough to mark his face. “Are you the peddler’s boy?”

“Yes, sir, Bessil.”

“There’s no goblins, here, boy. They can’t swim. Can’t live in the water. Look, look, over there!”

I look where he’s pointing, across the water.

“Can you see them? See their eyes flicker with hate?”

I see little flashes, far away, across the water.

“Then we’re safe,” I say. I pull my legs up under my chin and hold myself close against the cold. A man and a woman sit on either side of me, wrapping a blanket around the three of us. By and by, music starts - someone playing a guitar behind us, then another instrument.

A wind blows in, and the ships above us shake and shiver, almost drowning out the music.

But another instrument wakes up, a violin, I think, but I can’t see. The guitar and the violin flirt with each other, jostle against each other, each feeling the other out, stepping in and stepping back, sometimes like wrestlers, sometimes like dancers.

When the rain starts, there’s a cheer. I’ve no understanding why, but later I would learn that the lake grows low when there is a long time without dark. If it grows too low, the goblins can walk across the mudflats to the rafts. This rain would protect the people in the next darkness.

Submitted: April 21, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones