Chapter 21: Give Me the Music

Reads: 119

“Tell us the rest of the woman,” says the sleepy porter, leaning against the wall. His eyes were closed, and I think maybe he wants to sleep.

“What’s to tell?” he says. “She takes a filet knife and slices the throats of the apprentice, his wife, the layabout’s wife, then goes into the leathermaker’s chamber and kills the man and his wife. She did it while the sprite’s light bathed the cut. Who knows how long she sat there, licking the stone, smelling the blood, hearing the skerry sing to her in the dark and terrible words.”

“How do you know what she heard?” I ask. “This is just a story you made up.”

“No,” he says. “The magistrate comes from Beshof right away. Well, later, I mean. When the bad light passes, the old woman can’t hear the all-clear, you see. She just sits there, licking and licking the rock. She can’t hear the layabout come home, wondering why the house is still closed up, couldn’t hear his scream of horror at the three dead bodies in the outer chamber, couldn’t hear as he rushed into the small chamber to see his mother and father dead, likewise, in blood-crusted quilts. She - the old woman - she notices him from the corner of her eye and lunges at him, slashing his face, but not managing to kill him.

“The magistrate comes as soon as he can and interrogates her. She’s wild-eyed and crazy at first, fighting like a demon, but she settles down after a while without the rock to lick and seems to understand nothing.

“The magistrate determines that the rock is to blame. He escorts her back to the chamber and the moment she steps in, she shouts, ‘The music, give me the music,’ and flings herself toward the spot in the wall.”

“Were the bodies still there?” I ask.

“Well, they didn’t walk off,” Grammy tells me. “They took them for the sky burial. You have that in Bocut, of course.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, you call me ‘Grammy’,” she corrects.

“The magistrate ordered the chamber locked up, but they closed up the whole house. It can call to you, you see, boy, it can call through rocks and wood. So, they bricked up the doors and the abandoned house goes to goblins.”

“Is that how she lost her eyes?” I ask. “To the goblins?”

“Alete Shettle,” Peng says. “That’s her name.”

“That’s the woman’s name,” Grammy tells me. “She was the last of the Shettles, I think.”

“Did they kill her?” I ask.

Peng laughs and so does Sabill.

“She’s outside, now,” he says. I don’t know what I’m thinking about. “They send her to exile from the cut. First, they cut her eyes out, so the goblins won’t attack her. Letting the goblins hound her would be cruel. They send her out in beggar’s robes with a beggar’s bowl in bare feet. You walk the path, boy? Sharp shells. Draws blood to walk on.”

“But she’s no beggar’s bowl,” I say.

“No good comes of the dark powers, little pip,” Grammy tells me.

“She comes back three times,” the sleepy man says. “Finds her way, blind and deaf, up the cut, right to the door, that bricked-over door.” He points to the door of the cottage, as if it were the door of the cursed goblin house.

“Three times they lead her down, kicking and screaming about the sound, wanting the sound. She loses the beggar’s bowl, time and again. And that’s how she’s in your care, young man. I imagine there’s a place you’re taking her.”

“Between First Town and Talcutt,” Sabill says. “The peddler told my father. There’s a place for her there.”

She notices me looking at her and I look away.

The two porters sing for a bit and I fall asleep snuggled up to Grammy.

When I first go out to find the old woman in the morning, she is still tied by the lead to a ring on the cottage. It’s to me to feed her peasant bread, which means tearing it up and soaking it good. She chokes a couple of times on the crust, so I just feed her the innards of the bread.

As I look at the holes where her eyes had been, I wonder that she could kill - how many? The leather-worker, his wife, the apprentice son and his wife, and the wife of the wastrel. Where was he, that dark? Five people, slashed with a filet knife.

She seems small and frail.

“Couldn’t hear,” she says, while I’m feeding her. “Had to look right at Jirry to get what he says.” She opens her mouth for me to shove more bread in. I hurry to get a piece damp enough for her to eat.

“Here you go, aunty,” I say. What was her name? Peng knew it, last night. Or was it Grammy? One of them told me her name.

“Stopped listening to that -” here, she says a foul word, one I didn’t know. “Stupid pesca!” she says. For a moment, I think she’s talking to me, since the peddler calls me that all the time. “Or did he stop talking and just punch me when he wanted something? Or did I stop hearing him?”

This comes out as I push more bits of soggy peasant bread into her mouth.

Submitted: June 22, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones