Chapter 17: In No Ossuary

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"What about Gerda?" I ask Sabra.

She looks the same as before, her face round, healthy, and fed. Whatever exotic oil she rubs into her face glistens on her skin. Her eyes are full of worry and I look away.

She shakes her head, not to deny but to clear it. She pats the step next to her with her weak hand and I take the seat next to her.

"Gerda reached out to you," she says, looking ahead, not at me. "When you held her - well, no one besides me touches her except to ask our questions. And Gerda knows that I use her for this."

"I didn't do anything," I say. "And you put her in my hands."

"I won't say that I shouldn't have. It gave her some happiness. She reached out to you and you came back and yelled at me."

Now I look away, still righteous, but a little afraid of what I've done.

"I didn't yell," I insist.

"Bessil, she has nothing." She looks at me, now, down just a little, for I am almost her circle. "She hadn’t been measured at fifth circle. Her family begged for her to be laid to rest, but the aldermen stand firm on these things. Her skull and pelvis lay in no ossuary. Her knuckles are with me. Whatever else the birds didn't scatter is carved into whatever knick knacks you can make of child's bones or ground into bone mortar."

"That's not my fault," I say, thinking to run back inside the boat. A terror creeps into me that I might lose something, maybe just the feeling of being wounded.

She holds the pouch up in her strong hand.

"Hold her and tell her you're not mad at her, not mad at me. Please. She's hurt and -"

I open my hands, making a bowl, again, as I had before. I don't know what possesses me, that day, to be kind, for I was not always the kindest boy. Perhaps, it's simply that Sabra asks it of me.

She loosens the drawstring and turns the pouch over, moving slowly - not like dumping a set of game bones onto a table.

I hold Gerda in my hands, pull my open palms close to me and look down. She's ivory colored, brown and yellow from age. The bones my father once carved were always white, just aged enough.

I think about throwing Gerda away, scattering her to the courtyard, laughing while Sabra scurried to pick her up.

But that seems mean.

"I'm sorry," I tell Gerda. "I didn't mean to be mad at you or Sabra. I'm sorry you-"

"Don't say that she died," Sabra says. "You've never done that and you don't know what it is."

"Yes," I say. "But I am sorry that you're not here. I don't want you to be mad at me. I don't want you to feel sad."

I let my hands close around her, not tight so as to grind the bones against each other, but I fold her in my hands and bring her close to my breast.

“I can’t stay with you,” I say. “If you come back to me in dream, I must walk away.”

“She knows,” Sabra says.

I don't know how long I am to sit with her, but by and by, Sabra opens the pouch, again, and offers it to me and I let Gerda slip between my two hands into the bag.

"Good bye," I say.

"Thank you," Sabra says.

After Sabra leaves, I gather my sandals and my hood and get ready to leave. I go to the sheriff's cottage to collect my pack - the peddler's pack and he asks why I'm leaving.

"There's still some time on your extra," he says. "Time for some more rest."

"I want to go," I say. "The peddler will be expecting me."

He nods.

"I'm sorry about how those men treated you," he says. "Wasn't right. I'd be obliged if you didn't talk about it, so much. The stories folk tell about you matter and good people live here."

"I know," I say. "I'll - am I to tell no one?"

"Tell who you like, but tell the whole story, if you do."

I haven't told anyone since, until now. That is the whole story and I am not blameless in it.

But putting in my head that someone might simply throw you off the world to fall into what's below - that was a cruel thing to put into the mind of a little boy. And I'll always carry that with me.

When I leave Lake Town, there is another arch, another bunch of floating stones. I still can’t fathom them. They are still ordinary stones held up by no magic, just by other ordinary stones.

I walk under the stones without fear and leave Lake Town behind.

Submitted: May 28, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones