Chapter 27: Garden of Silence

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“Do you want to see, lad?” Lianth asks me.

Sabill has climbed up the slope, high enough for a view of the skirt to the other side of us and Jimbe lays in the grass, hands behind his head in leisure.

I look past Lianth, watching the gulls and black birds circling and swooping down.

“Are the dead there?” I ask, tempted but secretly afraid. Still, I harbor a little hope that Lianth might choose me for an apprentice, so I must learn what I can.

So I nod and we head off the Path of the World, downhill from Talcutt.

After a man stops growing and reaches his final circle, size no longer speaks to age. The headmen of the cuts inspect teeth - for wear - and eyes - for corruption - to guess at age, but I can only see the wrinkles of the Bone Merchant’s face. When he fathers Sabill, he is not still young. His skin is creased with wrinkles - what father called a laugher, and Lianth has a ready and joyous laugh. Gray hair peeks out from under his cap.

“What do you know of the Plateau of Silence?” Lianth asks me. Lianth favors his weak leg and relies on his walking stick when we are off the Path - for the land is not even here.

“It’s where - I mean - it’s the place where -”

I lose my words, but Lianth begins to explain.

“The Plateau of Silence is where the remnants of the people of the Cuts go to be freed,” he explains. “The flesh of a lifetime is sullied and terrible.”

I look at my hands as he speaks and make a confused sound.

“Oh, that’s right,” Lianth says. He smiles an adult smile - a mixture of knowing and regret. “The bad light gets into us and the darkness from the stones soaks out and oozes into us. Happens slow, if you’re careful and righteous, or fast, if you’re lackadaisical - but it happens. Only our bones are proof against it.”

I stay just a step behind the bone merchant as we top a hillock and I see the riot of birds over the garden.

“The contagion of flesh must not contaminate the soil of the skerry,” Lianth says. “There are skerries with skirts that are nothing but blasted heaths.” He starts to walk down the hillock, toward the wall. “Nothing grows there, nothing fit to eat. Twisted and tangled plants, misshapen grain, tubers that bend and shutter - and try to speak.”

“But why is there a Garden of Silence?” I ask. “Is not the Plateau of Silence for this?”

“No, no, most of the folk who live on the skirt, they can’t afford to be hauled up. Even in the cuts, some families can’t afford the Plateau. There’s no point in holding your breath, Bessil. Try not to wretch out of respect for the dead.”

I needn’t describe the smell to any who has been to a Plateau of Silence or a Garden of Silence, like this one. The flesh of men is eaten quickly by the birds and cleaned by crawling things, but a smell gets into the ground under the garden.

“Won’t that smell poison the world?” I ask.

“Yes, but slowly,” he says. “The skirt, from here to the edge, is not cultivated, nor used for grazing.”

The wall around the garden is to Lianth’s waist, and it is a true wall - held fast with mortar and the top painted to keep water from sinking into the wall to weaken it.

“Are you to take the bones?” I ask?

“No,” he says. “I am to take bones only from the crypt in the days before the good folk are laid to rest.” He shakes his head. “We are given a great burden, we bone merchants. We must treat the dead with all due respect. Can you see over the wall?”

The birds have noticed our approach and some screech and howl at the intrusion, but they keep at it - keep at their grim business of pecking away the sullied flesh.

I can see the farthest remnant, across the garden. Five birds pick at the bones of - a man? I cannot say - mostly cleaned of flesh though a cage of metal bars.

“There’s no mesh over the hands,” I say. “Father said -”

“Your father spoke of the Plateau of Silence, where a fine mesh protects the knuckles from being dragged off a broken against the rocks. We don’t have that here.”

“Why are the birds not sullied at such a meal?” I ask. I have to pause to keep myself from wretching again. “If they eat all this?” I finish.

“They are insensible creatures,” Lianth says, as he starts to walk around the wall to get a better look at one of the bodies near us. “But, who’s to say?” he calls back. “You see no fish here. They do not settle to eat on this! Well, what is that?”

I hurry to catch up, looking over the wall, back to where we had been standing. I jump up and down to get a better look, but don’t think to climb on the wall.

“Is that a mesh, sir?” I ask.

“It is,” Lianth says. “But it does not cover his hands. It’s over his feet.”

“I don’t understand-” the stench of the place getting deeper in my breast from my jumping up and down. I gag and feel my stomach rise up, but hold myself back.

“Come back over here,” he says, and we walk away and around the garden, where the air is fresher. We approach a circle of stones that three men might stand in.

“Is this a tiny Garden of Silence?”

“This is that,” Lianth says, jabbing at the air between us and the Garden of Silence with his prop. “Look here - these are the three remnants in the Garden now. And, look, this one is spoken for. Yes, yes, the one with the feet under the mesh. Interesting. Can you read the name there?”

“Is that ‘water’?” I ask.

“No, his name is Bunty Bigger. Look at these symbols.” He explains each to me.

I ask him, then, if I am to be apprenticed to him, for why else would he take this interest in me? I don’t recall what, exactly he says, or how much shame I feel, even though he doesn’t laugh at me.

But he does give a smile, a sad smile, as if he would never consider such a thing.

For all that I say that I’m not a crying boy, I went off by myself for a while and Lianth doesn’t rush me, but lets me have a moment.

Perhaps that’s the last time I did cry. Yes, it might be.

“You still must learn to read and count,” Lianth says, a little later, after I return to the tiny Garden of Silence.

“That's your mark,” I say, “And other symbols,” I add.

“It’s my offer on these bones, when they are ready,” he says. We look at the two kneecaps he has put down. “It’s not a rich offer, but the bones of those who live on the skirt are poor. Good, healthy, hard working people live in the cuts to begin with. Best we get back, lad,” Lianth says. “I feel a cold in the air and the keepers must evaluate my offer.”

“The keepers?” I ask, coming up behind him. I don’t know why I ask, since I am not to be his apprentice.

“They live in the cottage on the other side of that hillock,” he tells me as he limps on his prop. “They look over the sullied flesh of the remnants. When it’s time, they take the bones to the crypt to lay for the required time. It’s a dirty business.”

We walk on in silence.

I never learn why someone put a mesh over the feet of the one departed. I don’t know what necromancy requires those bones, the feet, in a complete set.

The cart feels heavier when I pick up the tongue with Jimbe. I feel that I should see him differently, since before I thought to be the bone merchant’s apprentice and Jimbe is merely a carter.

But I still mean to be something better than a carter - as unkind as that sounds to Jimbe, who is a good man, except for lying with peasants and gambling.

Mother forbid me from any gambling. If Jimbe gambled less, he could lay with peasant girls more. Not sure that’s better.

Submitted: July 23, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones