Chapter 40: For the Second Time

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“Come, fellas,” Rasmus says, clapping me and Jimbe on the shoulder. “Let’s get the granary up right.”

We tote a lamp up the slope to the granary. It’s not as big as the ones that burn outside all the overseer’s cottages. From the sky, in the dark, you can see the dots of light around the skirts of the skerry. It’s easy to pick them out from the glowing fish that dance through the darkness.

“Rasmus,” I say, panting a bit as we hurry up the hill. “The granary isn’t held together with bone mortar.”

“That’s right, friend,” he says. “It’s true mortar and the goblins will worry at it. If there are folk inside, I mean. Eyeballs for them to eat. But it’s just one dark and they’ll not get through.”

While the light holds, we three and two women folk for Eldmere inspect every corner of the building and all the bins, even poking the meager piles of grain lest a goblin hide there. Like other granaries I’d seen, it’s built into the slope with a door in the front for us to enter and a door at the back that goes down into the earth.

Our preparations made, my hand falls to my hood. I wore it once against the sprites and practiced putting it on, but I’d never used it to protect me from goblin claws.

Down the slope, we see folk coming up with covered candles.

Sabill leads them up the slope. I guess the groom is at his comfort in the cottage.

“Hello, Sabill,” I say. “We need to light the lantern,” I say, taking the chimney off and handing it to Jimbe. I set the wick right as she approaches, but one of the women from Eldmere pushes her aside and brings her candle to the wick.

“Here you are, boy,” she says. “Happy in the light.”

“Happy in the light.”

A messenger from the cottage knocks on the door just as we settle in. It’s one of the groom’s men and he goes to speak to the women folk.

We set the lamp on the packed earth floor. There isn’t much open space since the building is lined with bins for produce. The women folk go to the back, by the door to the root cellar and gather around candles.

I listen to the scritch scritch scritch of goblin claws on stone. I wish they had voice. I’d rather hear them cursing me than just the snarl they make when they attack. Now, all they do is draw claw over stone.

I hear some conversation among the women, but they speak fast and I can’t follow the stream of it.

“Boy,” one of the women calls out. “We need the lantern.”

“It should be by the door,” Jimbe objects. The door is but bones and twigs. Only light shining through chinks and gaps keep the goblins from attacking it with purpose.

“I’m against this,” one of the women says.

The one who lit the lantern for me, the one who called for the lantern, shushes her. “We’ll come over there, then. You men, you go to the back and take candles.”

“What is this about, ma’am?” I ask. Not sure why I’m bold that time, but I did ask.

“Eathert wants to return to the cut soon, right after the light returns. The betrothal must happen immediately, so we must prepare her.”

“Only womenfolk should be here for this,” the older woman objects.

I see the two of them, both in their beautiful fine cloths, stitched by their almost-magic looms with fish and dragons. I think that they must fight like little boys.

Me and Jime and Rasmus and a couple of others I forget, and the groom’s messenger, too, get up and get out of the way. We file past the three women, then by Sabill.

I see her hair for the only second time. She has her cap off and she’s wearing a plain white robe. Her hair hangs down her back. She looks to the side as I pass and shakes her head slightly that I am not to speak to her.

The last word we traded are when she refused me that lesson on the Path a while back.

The first time I see her hair is in the cottage in the dark, two or three candles in. I remember seeing her for a moment as she gathers up her hair into a bundle or a bun or what’s it and pulls

Submitted: November 20, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones