Chapter 12: Sailor’s Dreams

Reads: 135

“Sailor’s Dreams?” I ask, but the keeper of The Three Goats is gone.

I look down on the world and know that the world is not our skerry. It has five cuts, not seven, and I float over the summit, over the Plateau of Silence. The birds - upset at something for a moment, flap off, then circle, then glide back down to the plateau.

There are four graves laid out. Each deceased is held true by a mesh of metal, with the finest mesh reserved for the hands. The birds peck and gouge at the remnant flesh, but they must not take off the bones, not the knuckles, if it can be avoided.

For a full set of knuckles opens the world of divination.

But this is not a dream of divination, for I am not in a ship or strapped to wings. As I settle, like a leaf stirred by the wind, I see the strong hand of a man.

Perhaps this is a dream of divination. Perhaps that will be my hand.

The gull pecks through a weak place in the mesh and pulls out a whole thumb. It screeches its victory as it hops back, picking up its price - momentarily lost in its ecstasy.

I was too young to climb to the plateau when Father passed, so I have never seen our Plateau of Silence, but this dream is a true vision, for I have seen them since.

I have no hands to clap myself out of the Sailor’s Dream, but I wake, by and by.

It isn’t the worst Sailor’s Dream I struggle with. Those later ones - well, I learn their ways. Now I can only struggle, hear my distant breathing, feel a cinnamon scent bore its way into my body.

The innkeeper, who never tells me her name, tells me I can stay longer - long enough to sleep, again, but that I should go to the baths while I have the chance.

There is a special dock in the lake where you can get a bucket of water and wash your clothes, then wash yourself. After you wash up good, you can swim in the lake until your clothes dry.

I leave my sandals and my little bag back at the goats, but I take my hood, leave it with my hanging clothes.

I can’t imagine living a place with no fear for goblins. Even in the cuts, the runes protect the top and bottom, but you could easily walk beyond them.

And the goblins can crawl out of the rock in dark places, corners of houses, edges of storerooms.

After my swim - how many people have ever swam? After, I go back to the Three Goats, where the old woman tells me I’ve another couple of sleeps before I must go. “I’ve an ear on the chimes,” she says.

Perhaps they can hear the clock from Beshof, across the lake and up the cut, but I never heard that while in Lake Town.

After some hard bread - though not peasant bread - and a ladle of ale, I lay down to nap again.

My feet hurt less for not tramping on the hard path in hard sandals. I remember running my fingers over my soles, recently scrubbed. Then I doze off, for inside the shark is quiet and warm.

I am on the skirt of the world, the Wall of the World is behind me, for I feel the rocks against my calves. I look out at four skerries, all white with snow and hoar frost.

The air is still and the silence pecks into my ears as a goblin needs to peck into my eyes. I watch for a Leviathan - a true one, not a ship.

I shiver against the cold, dressed warmly, though I am. I must find one, before the heat bleeds out of me.

I’m looking at my shadow against the rock as the thing that casts it speaks to me. This is no conversation and the words are - strange - but the sprite does not need my participation as it picks through my heart.

Does it feed? Is it a goblin of our hearts? Does it want our memories?

But, no, there is no eagerness here, as I already know of goblins. The sprite only wishes to pollute - if it wishes at all. Perhaps it looks at my mother or my father or the Great Coat or Aunty or Jirry’s ossuary.

“Hello, Bessil,” Gerda says. She’s taller than me and her hair is knotted up, for she is no longer a person of wealth and she means to climb the rock paths today. I wonder that she is only fourth circle, for I am to be measured for the fifth.

And her eyes are deep and brown with tiny flecks and easy to fall into. As I do, I don’t realize that we are holding hands, my strong to her weak and her strong to my weak.

And I see a Leviathan, fifteen leagues, a fortune for men who can take down such a creature. The meat feeds a town for a year. The oil, carefully rendered, fuels lamps to keep goblins at bay. And the husk - salted and preserved - would carry twenty men to sail and bring in fish and wildfowl to feed a world.

But this is a woman leviathan, and must not be hunted. I guess at the distance between me and her and loose the cord on my wings.

It doesn’t occur to me to clap my hands, as the innkeeper told me, until I’m back with Gerda, but she holds my hands tight, strong to weak, weak to strong.

Her eyes beg me to stay in the Sailor’s Dream.

Submitted: May 13, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones