Chapter 41: Let the Dark Pass

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“You lot mind your business,” the old woman said.

“I don’t hear goblins here,” I say. “What is the meaning?”

“It’s the root cellar,” Rasmus tells me. “Warded with good runes so we can walk in without fear.”

“Why don’t they have runes everywhere?” Jimbe asks.

“The goblins eat into them, somehow,” Rasums says. “When there are too many people about, they wear out. Besides, a man can only keep a few runes fresh. Most of that’s needed up in the cuts.”

I hear a different sound, now, from the other end of the granary. Metal. The same every time. No hurry or frenzy to it.

I can’t see anything with the women between us and the lantern. They don’t want to obstruct the light on the door. I can’t place the sound and I keep my eyes mostly to the back of the building, since this is a women’s thing.

But I turn, for a moment, when I hear the sound, I see a lock of hair fall to the floor and look back away.

The sound is scissors.

I dream of the dark, holding the line with the other boys, coming back to the port between Senthra-sha-lews-tlanvee’s eighth and ninth ribs. The horn has blown for us to come in from our oiling and we’ve only done the forward part from the top of her skull to her hidden shoulders.

The six of us stow our oil pots - for spilling oil is one of the few transgressions that the crew will beat you over. Then we curl up in the attic mesh.

There’s no goblins up here. There’s no stone to birth them. I can’t nap, though I should. I look up through the port and see the dark that is not dark -

Fish glow and glitter in the sky. If we happen to fly under a skerry, there are lichens that likewise give light. The sky comes alive in the dark and on the ground we can only hide from it.

We can’t return to our bunks until the oiling is complete. We all stink of fish from the oil on our hands. It almost overpowers the cinnamon odor of Senthra-sha-lews-tlanvee. That odor has no right to exist in the leviathan, but I know it intimately since I first smell it in Lake Town.

And I recognize a Sailor’s dream.

Jimbe shakes my arm. The women folk have thrown open the door and the light of the world flows in. The rest of us gather up our things and walk through Sabill’s hair out into the world.

The women folk gather up, Sabill and the oldest of them, arm in arm, with one behind and one in front. They walk down the path toward the cottage. I can’t see, from behind, how much of Sabill’s hair is cut off. She wears a white cap close around her head.

I remember, here, seeing Sabill’s eyes and seeing the loss in them. She doesn’t dance along the Path of the World today - or perhaps, ever again. I don’t know what life is like for the second bride of a well-off man in Eldemere, but Rasmus has already told me that the overseers cannot harvest peasant babes for a time.

I’m wrong about seeing the loss in Sabill’s eyes as we walk down the slope toward her betrothal. She does not look back at us. We are several paces behind, but I remember seeing her face close up, close enough to smell her.

But I don’t stand that close to her ever again. After the betrothal ceremony, they start up the cut, back to Eldmere. I’m never closer than five paces from her.

But I see her face - the expression in her eyes. Trapped. I see it even now.

I remember Vesh’s cottage - it is strange to recognize a place. I never leave Bocut until Mother signs me on with the peddler, Elias. Before that, nothing was new. After that, everything is new, until I return here.

“Ah, there you are,” Lianth says. The overseer - Vesh has moved up to the lower reach of Rocut since we pass through. This overseer has me standing around the peasants while they work. I don’t recognize the pretty peasant girl. For a moment, I think that she must have changed so much that I don’t know her, but none of the women with my mother’s dolls are her, I’m sure.

“Lianth,” I say. “Happy in the Light.”

“Happy in the Light,” he responds and takes my offered hand. He’s been away for a time, long enough that he pays for the overseer to keep until he returns.

“I found a fellow to cart for me,” he says. “Not the fellow I meant, but his cousin and a good fellow. Here is your marker.”

I take the slip of bone. “What am I to do with it?” I ask.

“Let’s walk down,” Lianth says. “There’s a bone pile in Bocut. You must have walked by it a hundred times. Put it there. It will be added to the bone mortar that makes us safe. And here.”

Lianth hands me a shell.

“But I can’t take this,” I say.

“But you must,” Lianth says. “You’ve done your part and pulled your weight.”

I thank him and ask him about Sabill.

He shrugs. “I know you were sweet on her, Bessil. And you’re a good fellow, but she needs a good place in this world. I promised her mother to settle her some place where she would never be hungry and could raise her children in plenty.”

He pauses for a moment.

“Wish I could settle,” he says. “Be near her and her children.”

“Your work is important, sir,” I say. Not sure I believe that, then or now.

“We live a precarious life,” he tells me. “Earth be kind.”

“Earth be kind,” I say. “Am I free to go?” I ask.

“Of course, of course, but you can walk to Bocut with us. We’ll rest. Let the dark pass.”

Submitted: November 20, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones