Chapter 6: Harvest Dolls

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“Who are you, then?” he asks me.

I pop up, bleary eyed. There’s five men standing about.

“What - I - Don’t tell Vesh I fell asleep,” I say.

Couple of them laugh, then their leader says, “No harm, boy. You must be the peddler’s boy, right?”

“Bessil, sir,” I say, on my feet now. “I was to wait for you. You’re the men from Rocut. Happy in the light.”

“Happy in the light. We’re porters, here for the harvest. The men can rest here a bit. It’s a bit of a walk, even down. You and I will head down. Let the fellows have a rest.”

These are hard men - not like sailors, but not the townsfolk I grew up with. Men with calloused hands and solid muscles. Men who carry things. I’m not sure, right that moment, how to treat them.

The man is named Rackel and he talks to me amiably as we walk down the path, him a little faster than me, with his longer legs, but in no hurry.

The weather is fine and clear - all the clouds and the dark from before are gone and there’s no sign of sprites. As we approach, I see the men peasants milling about, away from the path, and the women peasants, in their loose blouses, sitting in the open space near the granary.

I remembered the smiles of the peasant women. The first one had snaggly teeth, missing one, all ugly and stained. When she noticed me looking, her face lit up, almost like a person.

Rackel and Vesh exchange greetings and I see Vesh nod to him. Rackel turns back and waves his arms over his head.

“Let’s see what they’ve gotten done,” Vesh says. “Stand up, you lot,” he calls out at the peasant women and children. He waves scourge around. It’s still coiled tight in his right hand, but the head flops around. Vesh keeps his hand clear of the sharp wooden points.

The overseer bends over their work, the piles of grain they’d been tossing around and the flour sacks they were filling.

Rackel walks over to the men peasant-folk. He seems jaunty and I think that he has no scourge and the peasant men are bent and gnarled, but they are many.

“Come on, you lot,” he calls to them. “I want to look over here. All of you come along.”

“Come here, boy,” Vesh says. “Hold the bag open.”

He shows me what he wants. This overseer is a very patient man, and very thoughtful. He’s wasted on these beasts.

He pours the flour from another bag into the one I’m holding. Not quite all of the flour fits.

“Wrap the string like that and tie it. Do you know a proper knot?” He shows me himself. “Over and under, but not the other way.”

He pulls it tight.

“Take it over there,” he says. “Don’t hold it by the string. It’ll break. It’s only to close it up. Go on.”

I carry the flour over to where he points. There is nothing there but ground. I look back around, but he is walking into the scrum of peasants.

I turn to see the ship hovering up the slope. It’s a small one, three fathoms head to fluke. They look different from below. You can see all the ribs.

“Over here, Bessil,” the overseer calls. He’s uncoiled his scourge but not to punish. It’s stretched on the ground. “Hold his feet,” he tells me. I take hold of the babe’s feet. It’s a girl babe, but I don’t correct him. “This one’s good,” he says.

Everything happens so fast, I don’t see the peddler come back from the direction of Vesh’s cottage. He carries the harvest dolls.

The peasant women are crying and jabbering in their weird way. They seem upset.

And the men from up on the ridge have just reached us.

“These six,” Vesh says.

“This one’s too big,” Rackel objects.

“I measured him. He’s fine.”

“Oh, there’s four girl-childs,” he says. “Come on, man.”

“Hey,” the overseer says, shoving the man on the shoulder. “This is what we have. Take them.”

For a moment, I think Rackel will punch Vesh, and he looks to, but then he shrugs and turns away.

They’re putting the babes in baskets and the girl-child we measured barely fits, but she does fit. Vesh measures true.

The babes had been screaming, laid out on the ground, apart from the women, but as they are put into baskets, they go quiet, as if comforted. The one we measured still kicks and fusses.

Now the women wail. The older ones form a circle around the younger beasts, hemming them in. I hear a word I think I understand from one of the peasants, “Quiet.”

Then the older women start to sing a little song, soft and soothing.

The peddler is there, at the edge of the circle, handing the rag dolls to the women. The old women take them and pass them to the bereft little beasts.

He’s still holding one doll when I hear a horrendous shriek, the kind no human could make. It comes from one of the beasts, a young girl-peasant, one who had smiled at me before. She wriggles through the ring of women and runs after the men as they carry the baskets up the hill.

But Vesh is there. He clocks her good across the face with the scourge. It’s coiled up, again, but the spiky part slices open her left cheek. She goes down, still wailing.

He waves to the peddler, who walks over to the girl beast.

And gives her the last doll. She wraps herself around it, kneeling on the ground, holds it fiercely, lest the overseers take it, too.

Submitted: April 06, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones