Chapter 28: Rope has Mind

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“I’m not happy with this,” Trinket the overseer says as Jimbe and I carry Lianth’s bones into the cottage. The bones are wrapped in the sacred cloth and packed in baskets, each a little too heavy for one of us to manage alone. Lianth helps us lift them out of the cart, but Jimbe and me carry them inside and stack them in the bedchamber of the overseer.

But the bones of Lianth are not the source of his displeasure. He speaks to the People of the Square, the very same that we passed a while back, who lifted up on their cords and waited for us to pull the cart by them.

“We have shells,” she tells him. The woman in the scarf speaks to Trinket (whose name might be something else, but everyone calls him by his pet name) while the woman in the hat looks on. The man of the Square just hangs there, at the end of the tethers.

“I know,” he says. “And we’ll take your shells, but can’t you just-”

“It’s to be a long dark,” Lianth says, leaning on the edge of the cart, now empty.

“This isn’t your affair, bone merchant,” Trinket says.

“That’s too true,” he says. “I will not touch them.” He looks at the women and says the first unkind words I hear him say. “They are outside. You’ll not touch or speak to them, Sabill! Don’t cross me on this. Now, come on, Jimbe. You and Bessil must pull the cart off the path and stand it on its ass.”

“It will be a long and cold dark,” the head woman says - for such is the woman who wears the scarf. “You can’t despise us like the bone merchant?”

I remember Trinket shaking his head, but I couldn’t have been looking at him. Jimbe and I are busy dragging the cart off and setting it up, as Lianth says, with its tongue in the air.

“What about the carters, Lianth?” the overseer calls out.

“That’s between you and them.”

“Come on,” Jimbe says. “We’ll get a couple of shells for this. Just don’t feed them or you’ll clean it up.”

“Shells for me to keep, sir?” I ask Jimbe but mean for Lianth.

“Of course to keep,” Jimbe says as we go back to the cabin door. “What about it, friend Trinket? I say two shells each.”

“You can manage that,” Trinket says to the woman. “And two for my trouble,” he adds.

Instead of agreeing, the head woman puts her hand over her heart - an odd gesture, since the cord attached to her hand moves her hand.

Then she puts her hand back to her mouth, for the People of the Square speak strangely. She holds her chin in her hand and opens and closes her mouth to speak.

“Your names?” she asks.

“Jimbe,” Jimbe says.

“Bessil, of Bocut, ma’am,” I say.

“We must hurry,” she says. “Do you hear them? The goblins hunger for our eyes.”

She points to me and beckons for me to come closer and closer still. Before I can ask what is required of me, she loops her arms around my shoulders, at first with my face in her breast.

Then her weight falls on me and I struggle to keep her up.

Her cords have gone loose.

“Don’t just stand there,” the other woman - her sister, who wears the scarf - says. “Take her inside - and mind her cords! Don’t tangle them!”

I drag the woman inside, as best I can, with her man tending to the cords, straightening them as far as the door.

I prop her on a bench where Trinket points, and try to set her head in a way that looks comfortable. “Are you well?” I ask. Her eyes move, but she does not answer. “Ma’am?”

“They can’t speak,” Jimbe says, wrangling the man in and seating him next to her. “Cords are all cut. Come on, it’s getting dark.”

The other woman beckons to me. She’s taller than the first woman. She has a narrow face and says, “Mind my hat,” as I embrace her. “Open and close my mouth if you want to speak to me, but you must stop if I tell you to,” she explains as her weight falls on me.

I set her on the bench next to the head woman, with Jimbe’s help. I gather up the ends of her cords as the light bleeds out of the world. The lamp burns, just as it does at Vesh’s cottage, and I see the goblin eyes reflecting in the light - hunger and no more feeling than stone.

Are these her cords? Do they belong to whatever holds them? As careful as I can, I loose-wrap them and tuck the skein under the bench where the three sit. As any sailor will tell you, rope has mind and wants to be knots and tangles.

“Are you comfortable?” I ask them.

The woman’s hat has fallen off into the lap of her sister.

I reach up tentatively, toward her chin. She doesn’t move, obviously, but makes no indication with her eyes - although I don’t know what such an indication would be - and I push her mouth closed.

“Uh,” she begins. Then I try again, pushing her mouth closed and letting it fall without letting go of her chin. “Ix - my - at.” I look confused and try again. “My - hat,” she says.

“Yes,” I say, picking the hat up and fumbling with it - for when have I ever put on someone else’s hat? As I turn it around, she looks at me and I reach for her chin again.

“The - seam - is - at - the - back.”

She is clearer, now, in speech since I have a better rhythm to her chin.

I find the seam in the band of the hat - mother doesn’t make hats that I recall, but I know what a seam is - and put the hat on the woman. I notice, in the moment, that she has lovely straw-brown hair.

“Yes, thank you.”

And then she is silent.

Submitted: August 15, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones