Chapter 11: A Wicked Light

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“We’ll find you a husband,” my mother says to Gerda. It is my mother in the dream, but I feel Gerda's disappointment at not being able to save my family.

Cold and hungry, how can I sleep? But I do sleep, in the warmth of the blanket with the sound of music. As I flicker into the dream world, I watch the people dance to the music feeling the joy of the rain and the darkness with no goblins.

I look down on the cut, see buildings I’ve never seen, more than I remember from Bocut. This is Rocut and I’ve climbed beyond the upper runes. I must be careful of any dark place, any dark crevasse where goblins might lurk.

But the dark cracks shelter slugs from the light and mushrooms grow in outcroppings, eager to provide sustenance for my family if only she - I - can find them.

One hand holds an outcropping of rock, the other feels around for slugs, just beyond what I can see.

I ease my weight farther up the little path, just a little farther. Dread fills me. Gerda is confident that she can work a little farther up the narrow path, as she had done many times before, but Bessil knows better.

I slip my hand into a crevasse and feel slick, cold rock and -

I see a shadow on the rock face and know that it belongs to Bessil, not to Gerda - and it is not cast by true light, nor by lamp or firelight. It is the sickly purple, the purple that seeps into your eyes and drips down to your heart. Even falling on rock, the purple is wicked and I mean to close my eyes, crush them shut, more tightly than I would against any horde of goblins.

But I know it is a dream and I cannot close my eyes and all I can do is not turn around. Even if I must look on the light, I dare not turn to see what casts my shadow.

And I am with Gerda again, looking at her hands with her eyes. I feel the sadness that I can’t look on her, even though I have seen her knuckles.

And I don’t want to be there when she dies.

She reaches into the crevasse. She found two shells, here, once, not long before. Her mother had been so happy, so proud of her.

What’s that? A snail? Or is it a pebble?

The goblin teeth nip into Gerda's finger, nasty, sharp pointed teeth get solid purchase on my finger. I hesitate a moment, afraid the goblin’s purchase will shred my finger.

I push my hand back in, feeling the goblin slap up against the rock, I open its mouth open by main force and twist its head to the side.

Free, I pull my hand back - but hesitate.

I felt that shell - a decent snail and maybe a shell for commerce.

And the goblin has Gerda's finger again. This time I pull back, hard, surprised.

“Come along, boy,” says the man who is shaking my shoulder. “Time to go back and dry off and warm up. Up with you. The light is back.”

“Happy in the light,” I say.

“That’s right,” he says. “Happy in the light.”

I find my way back to the Three Goats and meet the woman I saw there, before, who told me to take my basket away. She sits outside, cooking porridge in a clay pot over a sad little fire.

“Where’s your bowl?” she asks me with her scrunched and twisted face.

“I’ve no bowl,” I say.

She grunts and finds an earthen mug, the sort you drink ale out of.

“One ladle,” she says. “Second portions cost money.”

“I have no money,” I say.

She shrugs and her face twists in odd ways, as before. “That’s nothing to do with me,” she says.

I tip up the cup but don’t get any out until I tip it too far and it runs onto my face. I hurry to get as much of it into my mouth as I can. Then I scoop it out with my finger into my mouth.

My stomach grumbles, for I’ve not eaten since I left an overseer house before I came to Lake Town.”

“Finish your breakfast and I’ll show you the bed.”

After I get the last bit of slop out of the cup, she leads me into the shark. I follow, a scent of cinnamon in the air - not of her cooking, but of the old beast we stand in.

“Why doesn’t it float away?” I ask. I know that sharks and leviathans and other fish float of their own accord, unlike birds and dragons.

“It’s old,” she says, crouched low, making her way down the middle of the carcass. “Clap your hands,” she says, turning toward me. I see her, in the faint light from the ports in the shark’s side, clapping her hands.

I clap my hands, three times, like she does.

“This one’s yours,” she says, pointing to a nook built into the skeleton of the shark, once probably for some kind of cargo. I climb up and settle in, finding what thick spots there are in the mattress.

“Thank you,” I say. The shelf isn’t long enough for me to stretch out, but I prop myself against the rib of the shark and settle to try to sleep.

“Boy,” she says. “If you have any Sailor’s Dreams, try to clap your hands like I showed you. Might wake you up.”

Submitted: May 13, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones