Chapter 34: A Second Respite of Light

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Sabill teaches me a bone game - played with goat’s bones, for the rules with true bones are complicated. She places herself back to the fire, wrapped in a rug. We are all wrapped good, but the cold is bleeding through the stone walls.

“How long will this cold go on?” I ask

“That's not a good question, my boy,” says Jimbe. It’s the three of us and the People of the Square in the common room. The others have the brazier in the parlor.

“I’m so-” I stop. “I mean, why not?” I ask, catching Sabill’s eye. There is a strange pageant here. Her eyes are locked, resolute, on our game, but she has some commerce with the two women behind me. If I turn to try to capture it, it will run through my hands like water, so I look up from the sticks to Sabill’s - her beautiful, happy face in the mild light of the fire and the one commonplace candle Mr. Trinket burns.

“Why not?” I repeat.

“It’s a bad question,” she says, looking up, no longer avoiding my eyes. “No one knows how long the dark lasts, how cold it can be, or when the sprites dance in.”

The exact words she chose are from the Compendium of Wisdom, rendered into ordinary speech.

“That’s why it’s a question,” I say.

And then her eyes do catch something over my shoulder and I look away - feeling that I scored a point.

“Why do you hate them?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

“I’m sick of this game,” she says, picking up her sticks. “You have questions? Why not ask them?”

“They’re not our folk,” Jimbe says. “We can trade shells with them and help them poop on the chamber pot, but they’re no good to us otherwise.”

“But you don’t hate them,” I say as Sabill picks up her sticks - now wrapped carefully - and gets up to go to the parlor.

She gives me one more look, in the near dark, and turns and leaves.

“What about you lot?” Jimbe asks the People of the Square. “Do you hate us?”

I turn around and realize how close I sit to them. I reach out to take the chin of the sister, for I see a sparkle in her eye that means she has something to say.

“No,” she begins, “but you - smell bad.”

Jimbe laughs and I smile.

Many believe that the skerries live and age and die, as do other creatures. Like the mighty Leviathans, with age, they no longer float and slowly sink into some cold, horrid region.

Or their hearts of stone give way and they fall, all at once, down to - what? What could be under the sky?

But I hear others whisper - and it is a dangerous idea - that a world dips into the cold, cold dark for so long that every person, every goat, every skerry-bound creature finally freezes and dies under the ice.

Once free of man, the skerry floats in warm places and seeds grow. Grass and bushes and even trees cover the land until people come along to tame it.

Do they find the tombs? If they do, what do they do with the ossuaries they find there?

The darkness relents again. Mr. Trinket has to push hard on the door, for there is snow accumulated even under the overhang. The snow remembers the padding of goblins around the sides and back of the cottage. In front, of course, they must contend with the lamp.

“We’ll be out of oil, soon,” Mr. Trinket says. “If the dark continues, there’ll be no one to refill it.”

I shiver more at his words. Speaking of the future this way - unless a prophecy - has an unclean feel to it and Mr. Trinket is not a vulgar man. For him to say such a thing -

We have a cold, clear sky. I can see no other skerries nor leviathan or any craft of men. The air does not feel warm - to presage a thaw. I close my eyes down to little slits against the brightness. My face feels the lack of the Sailor’s Lenses - but how could I know that I would wear them one day? Every day?

Mr. Trinket bids me to leave my sandals behind. They will grow wet immediately, he tells me, under all the snow, and they will not dry out in the cold cabin until after they rot. So I trudge up the hill with him, feet cold and wet.

“Can we take more loaves this time, sir?” I ask. “We ran out when we ran out of candles.”

“I remember,” he says. “There are only four left. Damn peasants!”

I leave unsaid that they must eat, too.

“Come to the inner chamber,” he says. At the back of the granary is a door. There's just enough light for Mr. Trinket to inspect the knot. He does not tell me to look away, as the peddler always did, as he unties it.

We walk down into the cellar. He knows where things are, for we have no light. He guides me, one hand on my shoulder or my chest, down into the place.

I don’t ask why there are no goblins, but follow his lead.

“Long enough,” he says as we reach the bottom of the little rock stairway. Then he says a foul word and I think he’s stubbed his toe or something. “This barrel of water wards off the freezing.” I hear him pounding something with his fist. “It’s part froze already. Open your sack.”

I carry a load up the stairs. Mr. Trinket stops to fix the door with his knot and we head back to the cottage.

Submitted: August 15, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones