Chapter 33: A Precarious Life

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After dinner of the last candle, Sabill touches my shoulder and bends down, near my ear.

“My father would like to hear your song,” she says. “Come into the parlor.”

My loaf is only part eaten, but I leave it there. Jimbe and I are better friends, these times, since we have spent every moment together since the dark set it.

I slurp down the last of my bowl of ale and turn to Jimbe, who says, “You don’t need my pounding to go with your song, Bessil.” he waves me off. “Let me finish my bread.”

I get up and follow Sabill the few steps between the table and the door to the parlor, where she waits. I bow and open my hand, indicating that she should go first, but she shakes her head and stands to the side, so I go through.

The parlor has two small couches, both red and embroidered with images of birds and leviathan and whimsical sharks. I’ve seen parlors before - and they are fine places for fine people.

I hear the door shut behind me and turn to see that Sabill is not in the room. I look to the bone merchant, in the light of the tallow lamp on the end table.

“Hello, sir,” I say, taking in a breath to begin my song.

“Oh, we’ll hear you later, Bessil. You’ve a fine voice, but take up a chair.”

Lianth waves at a three legged chair, not offering me to sit on the other couch. I realize that Trinket’s wife is not here. Since the dark set in, either she or Trinket sat with the bone merchant and Sabill, but we are alone now.

“Thank you, sir,” I say, taking the chair. “Did you not want to hear my song?”

He smiles, a little ashamed, I think. “Of course I do, of course,” he says. “You’ve a fine voice. Tell me, though. I mean, I’ll hear it by and by, but tell me, how much have you been speaking to the People of the Square?”

I feel myself blush, in the dim room, and am sure Lianth must see my blush, but I stammer out a reply.

“I must take care of them,” I say. “They are paying me and you said I might. I mean, to make a few shells.”

Lianth pats the air with his hand, meaning me to calm down. The gesture makes me feel hotter and more blushy.

“You’re an honorable boy, Bessil,” he says. “No, I speak only the truth. You keep your word, just as you told me about the Oxflat boy. And you’ve been helpful to me. I need to tell you, though, honorable or not, it is not a good business to talk too much to these people.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. I’m afraid to ask why.

“Ah, you think I’m a mean old man,” he says. The light from the lamp plays on his face and the shadows make him grotesques. “I know they need shelter, when the dark is cold. I would never turn away any person as the darkness rolls in. Sky have mercy.”

“Sky have mercy,” I say.

“They aren’t good people, Bessil. Oh, I know they’re polite. The girls are pretty.”

My blushing had only just begun to subside until he says this and my face burns again.

“What am I to do?” I ask.

He smiles. “Oh, be true to your bargain. They need food and water and the chamber pot. Just - well-”

Lianth stops speaking, then looks side to side, then his shoulders slump. I make no sense of this, but he seems to make a decision.

“I don’t just buy and sell bones to put food in my belly,” he says, speaking more quietly. “We live a precarious life, here, on this world. We have only each other and our bones are part of a covenant of the people. From the sharpest knife to bone mortar, it is our pact. They - The People of the Square - they are not part of it. They do not partake of the - the Plateau of Silence. The Sky Burial is not for them. They do not lay in an ossuary. Do you understand?”

I nod, but I say, “No,” for how can you not do those things?

“I’m sorry,” Lianth says. “I cannot explain better. They are not of us. Promise me you’ll say less to them. It is for the best.”

“Yes, sir,” I say. It is a promise, I suppose, but Lianth does not ask for it to be memorialized in bone.

Lianth does not listen to my song.

“What - happened?” the woman in the scarf asks me, after we wake.

I ask her if she wants water and means to use the chamber pot, but I know what she asks me in return. After I leave Lianth, I speak to them only to ask whether they want water before bedtime, and that, one after the other, taking their chins only enough to gather a yes or a no.

“It’s nothing,” I say. “You’ll want a ladle of water.”

I don’t handle her chin to get a reply. Instead, I get a ladle of water from the jug, dripping a little on her - “Sorry,” I say. I tip her head back and hold her chin in my hand and tip up the ladle to stream the water into her mouth.

She looks at me with angry eyes. Or, perhaps, her eyes are as they always were, deep and brown, with flecks of gold. Perhaps it’s how I see her that is different.

“Will you have some more?” I ask, after I drink her her first ladle.

When I close and open her mouth, she is silent and I look away, unaccountably ashamed.

“Please,” I whisper, “You must be thirsty.”

“Do-” she begins.

I mean to stop, just leave her to attend to her sister, but her eyes pin me and I continue to move her mouth.

“You want to see my-”

“Please stop,” I ask.

She is silent the next time I close and open her mouth, but then she says, “Yes - another - ladle.”

I give her water and then attend to her sister, who seems to look right through me. There is already a sadness in her eyes that I think should only come from age. I don’t know, exactly, how I contribute to it, but I am some small cause.

Submitted: August 15, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones