Chapter 15: We Have Our Ways

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I lay down in my niche, my feet still hurting. My hands shake, now, after the excitement of it. I draw a few harsh breaths, as if to cry, but stop myself. I feel the weight of the townspeople’s cruelty on my chest. My face is hot with shame and anger. The good bread is sour in my stomach.

I doze until the sound of the trumpet. That is the signal of the Lake Town for coming dark, so I get up, resolved to go to the lake.

Consigning any to the goblins is a high crime.

The light is leaching out of the sky as the people gather to go to the lake. I make my way, with the others, determined, despite some angry glances, until the first man - the one who talked to me of sailors and would throw me off the World - grabs me by the arm.

I pull away, angry.

“You can consign no one to the goblins!” I shout, furious that he should try to block me.

He pauses. Those around us stop and look, looking at me in anger and pity.

“Let the boy come,” someone says.

“No,” says another. “Send him to the sheriff. There’s time.”

“Go to the sheriff’s hut,” the man says. He shoves me and I trip on my feet and fall backwards. “You are not welcome.”

I think to force my way in with them, but I see the angry faces all around me and turn back the other way and make my way to the sheriff’s.

Dark is dark, but not the same.

Sometimes the skerry dances into the clouds and the darkness escapes from the dark places to wrestle with the light. Sometimes the light ebbs and flows over the land, light passing and returning.

This time, the light wears away, like water out of a leaky pot. I run, down the paths around town, twisting around tents and hovels, until they give way to the grass. It’s darker than I expect, faster than I want.

I see the goblins, in the low places of the land, wherever the grass affords them a little more protection from the light, goblin eyes peer out, narrow yellow slits.

As I hurry along, my foot goes down wrong under me and I grunt in pain.

It’s the first time, since I wake up from my dozing, that I remember that my hood is with the Three Goats. I’d left it there, meaning to go to the lake.

I hurry and get back to my feet, keeping my eyes on the silhouette of the sheriff’s building. I pump my arms, not thinking to keep them to my face, in case the goblins leap at me.

Everything is the cabin door, so much that I run into it, stopping too late. I fall down, lost to the world and only lay there as the rectangle of light spills out of the building’s door.

“Lay easy,” the sheriff says. “You hurt yourself getting here.”

“It hurts,” I say.

“Where’s your hood?” he asks. “You had one, last time you were here.”

I cover my face with my hands and cry. The sheriff gives me a kerchief to dry my eyes and blow my nose.

By and by, I say, “I’m not a crying boy.”

“Sit up and have some bread,” he says.

“What happened in town?”

That’s another voice. I sit up and see two other men sitting at the sheriff’s table.

“I’m not a crying boy,” I repeat.

“Steady, steady,” says the sheriff. “If you’re able to sit,” he says.

I sit up, leaning on my elbow. The sheriff pours a bowl of ale for me and puts a loaf of peasant bread before me. It’s smaller than the other loaves I’ve seen, and it’s a darker bread. I fumble with it, not able to crack its hard crust until one of the other men smacks it on the table and pries the halves apart.

“What’s your name, again?” the sheriff asks. It feels rude, but he’s the sheriff and needs to know, so I tell him.

“Bessil, sir,” I say.

He nods and I slowly soak my bread and start to eat, grateful for the rude bread that I don’t have to pick off the ground.

“They wouldn’t let me go to the lake,” I say, after the third mouthful of bread, jaw tired from chewing. “Said I had to come here,”

“Is that how things are here?” one of the men asks the sheriff.

The other looks on, disapproving.

“We have our ways, here,” the sheriff says. “I’m sorry, boy. They shouldn’t have sent you here with so little light. Finish your dinner, then you can sleep by the fire.”

I remember falling asleep on a quilt on the floor, belly full of bread and ale, while the men roll bones. Of course, I thought of Gerda, but they play with gaming bones, carved of a goat or some other creature.

Submitted: May 28, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones