Chapter 13: Does the Sky Call to You?

Reads: 142

Sabra is divining when I approach. Her client is veiled and dressed in rich cloth and I don’t think she is of Lake Town. I sit quietly to the side while Sabra rattles her knuckle’s - Gerda's knuckles - and tries to pierce the veil of time.

The customer takes some notice of me, but turns her face as if to hide it from me.

I understand little of what she wants to know from the witch at the time, and I don’t understand it still. She has a cousin and an uncle who fight over the house and an inheritance. She wants to know, in part, which of them would die first and who would control the bones of the other.

And her bones.

And there were other things - a woman involved. I don’t know - can’t figure out at the time and certainly can’t remember now - who this other woman is or what hold she has on them.

Finally, the customer stands and leaves.

Sabra tucks her shells away, leaving Gerda in her divining bowl on her little basket-box.

“You still have no money,” she tells me, smiling an infuriating adult smile of knowing. “I won’t shake the bones for you.”

“I dreamt of Gerda,” I say. “When she was climbing.” I don’t move closer to her, don’t sit across from her, don’t even look at her. “Did you do that on purpose?”

“Make you dream? No,” she says, idylly playing with the knuckles. “But I did want you to touch them. These aren’t just bones. No bones are. Gerda is a person. She lived a life, as long as the one you live.”

I do look at her, then shake my head angrily. “I am already bigger than her. Fourth circle and near full grown. Are you cursing me?”

“No,” she says. “No, because we all live the same amount of time. One lifetime. Your pelvis and skull and the bones of your spine are all that belong to you, after this life.”

“What does that have to do with Gerda's knuckles?”

“Only Gerda knows that,” she says.

“Why you-”

“Sit down and be calm, boy,” Sabra says. I mean her no harm, but I am angry and must sound it. “Think like a man,” Sabra says, each word a thought in itself.

“I’m not going to do anything,” I say.

“You are angry,” she says. “I am not tricking you. Gerda gets lonely. She’s eager to connect, but my clients only want to take from her.”

“Do you want me to touch her again?” I ask. “Is that what you want?”

She pulls the bowl away.

“I won’t have you touching her again in this aspect. Where does this anger swell from, Bestle?”

“Bessil,” I say.

“Bessil,” she repeats. “I want you to leave before you upset her. Go.”

I get up and storm away, a cloud of anger trailing behind.

I walk toward the sheriff’s cottage, thinking to get the peddler’s bag and go on, wait for him at the appointed overseer’s cottage. By the time I get to the sheriff’s, though, I think better of it. After all, I have no money - no shells, no marks on a bone, no notes in a ledger. I would have to sleep outside, unless dark, and beg for bread.

Instead, I resolve to go back to The Three Goats and wait for the appointed time, but I don’t want to walk past Sabra, so I look for another way around.

I walk a bit farther and I’m staring at the Wall of the World.

As every time I’ve seen it, even in my dreams, it’s about knee high to a man, made of rocks, carefully stacked, not held together with bone or plain mortar. I wonder if there could be enough mortar for a wall around the world. Well, plain, perhaps, not bone.

I walk right up to the wall. It comes above my knees. The near side is grass, close cropped, for they have goats in the lake town. The grass on the other side grows higher. I wonder whether the goat keepers don’t want their charges on the far side, in case they stray over the edge of the world.

“Does the sky call to you lad?”

“Call to me?” I ask, turning around.

“Do you yearn to be a sailor?”

“I saw you, in the dark,” I say. I don’t ask him his name, since our people teach that such is rude. “I am Bessil,” I say.

“I remember. You fell asleep with some others, even in the rain, huddled together. You must have been tired.” He doesn’t tell me his name. “And the sky, Bessil.” We both look out over the wall.

“The sky, sir?” I ask.

“To be a sailor, I mean. Look, you see - there’s a long boat, probably from that skerry over there. No nets, right now, but they might take down some snapper or - well - some such.”

“Do they eat well?” I ask. “The sailors?”

I see him shake his head. “They need to sell everything they catch, and right away, before it goes off. If they can afford any salt, they can sell it for more. Dried, salted fish keeps for, well, as long as you’ve been alive, I wager.”

“I’m not allowed to bet,” I say. Mother is always firm with me on this. I am not to bet.

He chuckles.

Submitted: May 13, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones