Chapter 9: True Knuckles

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“I’m Bessil, apprenticed to-” I say the peddler’s name. You know it’s a lie, but at the moment, I think I might be apprenticed to him.

The woman points at the ground across from her. “Sit for a moment, Bessil, apprenticed to-” she says.

Lake Town is a gathering of people who don’t fit into the puzzles of the cuts. Second sons, injured sailors, the ones who value song over industry.

After I surrender the peddler’s basket for safe keeping, as I walk back to The Three Goats, different people beckon to me from their tents and hovels. Now that I have no peddler’s pack, they try to engage me. One young woman simply motioned to me with her hand and I stop to talk to her.

“Sit for a moment,” she repeats, gracefully sweeping her open palm to indicate the scrap of cloth across from her.

I settle down, looking at her attractive face. It’s smooth and oily. Many wealthy and vain rub grease on their faces and peasants work some unknown oil into their faces and backs of hands against the light and air, but this oil has a finer scent and I wonder how she can afford it.

The rest of her is covered in a loose coarse robe that tantalizing reveals. It is decorated with embroidery - carp in red thread and yellow flutterbys.

I have to pull the hood out of my belt to sit comfortably.

“You won’t need that here,” she says. “Although, keep it close. You know what happens?”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

She gives a little shrug and shifts in place, then catches my eye.

“Some folk - peddlers, porters, beggars, and low folk - they come here, for a while. There’s no fear of goblins here.” She waves a hand at - what? The air? All of Lake Town? “Then they walk off, off to other places, and the goblins fall on them. What’s your name, again, apprentice of -”

“Bessil,” I say. “From Bocut.”

She nods.

“Well, Bessil, when you go, keep your hood and keep your wits and remember how to use them. Else, the goblins will get you.”

“I will,” I say. “But ma’am, how can there be no goblins?” If there were such a place in the world - in any of the worlds - everyone would live there. Why would anyone live anywhere else?

She looks at the sky. “Ma’am,” she says, smiling warmly. I don’t know the ways of these people - the porters, the overseers, the lake towners - so I’m always polite these days. “You should call me Sabra. Do you see my bones?”

I see them, of course. A box-basket serves as a table between us, and a set of knuckles lay on a scrap of cloth to the side. It’s no grid and the surface isn’t even, so I wonder at her divinations.

“I see. Are they true knuckles?” I ask.

“They are. Do you know of divination, Bessil of Bocut, apprenticed to -?”

“My father was a bone carver,” I say, “But not knuckles.” I mean to go on, but I stop to let her speak, for she has yet to answer about the goblins.

She picks one of the knuckles up and places it in her palm. “Her name is Gerda and she passes, oh, Comsore is headman of Beshof when she dies. No, when they give her bones to the sky.”

“Sky have mercy,” I say. She repeats it. Then I ask, “They are women’s knuckles? That is not-”

“Don’t tell me what it isn’t, Bessil,” she says.

“I’m sorry, Sabra,” I say.

“Well, don’t offer your ‘sorry’s so eagerly. What have you done wrong?” she asks. When she sees me forming a response, she interrupts. “Well, don’t answer that. Gerda was not yet a woman.” She gives me a little smile. “You have no money, do you, bo- Bessil?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“I’ll not divine your future, then,” she says.

“Am I to leave?”

She shakes her head. “It’s getting a little dark. It’s been light for so long.” She sees me clench my hood in my fist. “You won’t need that. Did I forget to tell you? Oh, you’ll see why, soon.”

“I know my future,” I say.

She looks interested, cocking her head and raising a brow. She puts the knuckle back down on the cloth. “Tell me,” she says. “If it isn’t a secret.”

“I’m to go with the peddler around the world. Back at Bocut, I’ll rejoin my mother or I’ll be apprenticed to the peddler formally. Or is that two futures?” I ask.

She does not answer, but points to the knuckles again.

“Are you afraid of these? Because they are of a girl?”

I mean to say no, as young men - or boys, as I am - must not be afraid of anything. “No,” I finally say.

“Would you like to hold one? What am I saying - you can’t hold one.”

“It must be all,” I say. “I shouldn't. It can taint your divination.”

She looks at me for a long time. I fidget and make to get up, but Sabra tells me to stop.

“Put your hands out,” she says, holding her own hands together in a bowl. “We have a few minutes before the dark. Put them out.”

My strong hand goes to the hood when she speaks of dark, but I reposition my butt on the ground and form my hands into a bowl.

She puts one knuckle after another into my hands. As she does so, she tells me of Gerda.

Submitted: April 21, 2023

Fantasy sprite goblins bones