Of the Land, Sky and Waters

Korlach Longnail finished the last of his worms and wiped dirt from his chin. 

“How do ya goblins eat that filthy mess?” said the stagecoach driver. 

Korlach struggled to answer. In his twenty-two years, no one ever asked him that. 

“It’s how we eat in Grengorock,” Korlach said. And what of it? These humans were so peculiar. All that work to eat: kill, and skin and cut and boil. If a goblin found food, he ate it, just like every other creature of the land, sky and waters. 

The driver twisted around in his seat. He wore a white shirt lined with silver buttons and stained yellow at the collar. Bulges of flesh pressed tight against his clothes, as though it would all burst out at any moment. 

“A word o’ advice,” he said. “Your in Breckinwood now. No more eating like a goblin. And get yourself to a tailor. You can’t be walking round bare chested like that, it ain’t decent.”

From a man that looks like a hairy onion bulb. Korlach stifled a laugh. He had a point, though. Korlach had to learn how to fit in among the humans, at least for a while. 

One year at the tannery and I’ll earn enough to go south. I’ll swim in the diamond sea, and climb the spirit peaks, and find all the treasures this world has to offer.

Korlach gave a nod to the driver and set his inward gaze on the spirit peak summits.

The driver tipped his hat, turned in his seat, and gave his horse a lash.

***

Besides the smell, the work at Tarry’s Tannery wasn’t so bad. The other tanners came to love having Korlach around. They gave the goblin the most gruesome jobs: scraping gore from hides, scrubbing the putrefaction shed, mixing bate water with pigeon poop. Korlach did it all with vigor and a smile. His favorite job was dung hoarding. On quiet afternoons, he’d grab handfuls of feed and dash through tall grasses out to the old horse barn where the pigeons roosted. Under the shade of oaks, he’d watch the birds have their fill. If he was hungry, he’d snatch one and have his fill too.

Jagger, the hunter, was the only real pain. He was always full of humor, at Korlach’s expense. On their first meeting, Jagger chucked a festering, maggot laden wolf’s hide at Korlach’s head.

“Hey ya dirty gobbler. This remind ya of home?” the hunter said.

Korlach shrugged. “We’d never leave so much on the hide for them to eat.” He picked up a maggot and popped it into his mouth. He didn’t like it. Far too sour.

“Diirrrtyyy Gobbler,” Jagger said. And he laughed. So loud that his two brown bloodhounds howled along with him. Some of the other tanners laughed too. Korlach didn’t know what was so funny about it. But it mattered little. At the end of every week, he tucked his hard earned money into his sack and got forty pecks closer to his dreams. Two thousand pecks. That’s all I need. Only one year and I’ll be free.

***

In Korlach’s fifth month at the tannery, his father fell ill. 

He wheezes all night, and his coughing fits are dreadful. Korlach’s mother wrote. He hasn’t hunted in a month. Please come home. 

Korlach bought a quill and ink in Breckinwood-town for two pecks, and wrote back to his mother.

I’m sending a human healer. Make sure to cover yourself from neck to ankle when he comes. And do not eat live things in his presence. Do what he says and he can help.

Korlach packed eighty pecks in with the note. The rest of his savings he gave to Milty, the Breckinwood-town healer.

Milty tapped the corners of the peck notes on a gold band around his middle finger. “This will cover my wage, but I’ll need to take an armed man with me,” he said. “Pardon me, you're a decent fellow, Korlach, but we all know what your kin are capable of.”

What are we capable of? Does he think my family will eat him? It’s been a hundred years now since that happened. “How much do you need?” Korlach said.

“Two thousand should cover it. Go talk to Marla. I’m sure the tannery can work something out.”

***

“Of course we can work something out,” said Marla, the pay clerk. The youngest daughter of Tarry, was a plump, red-faced, genial lady. Her office was in town, far away from the stench of the tannery. It smelled like vinegar and lemons. Marla set a paper on her desk and pushed a quill forward.

“What does it say?” Korlach put his hands on the desk and drew his face close to the form. He could read a few words of the human tongue, but studying it was hard after the sun-up to sun-down shifts.

“We’ll pay Milty now and deduct it from your wages. We want you and your family to be well. Just an X, right here is all we need.” Marla handed Korlach the quill.  

While Korlach signed the form, Marla sprayed her desk with vinegar and water, and gave it a hearty wipe.

***

“I did all I could,” Milty said. The healer stood at the doorway of Korlach’s shack. He handed Korlach a note from his mother.

Please come home… the note started. Korlach set it down. He stuffed sixty pecks into an envelope and asked Milty to give it to the porter. Milty left, and Korlach cried the whole night.

***

By the end of his first year, Korlach had saved one hundred and fifteen pecks. Half his wage went to Milty, and half of what was leftover went to his mother. Of his ten pecks a week, much of it went frivolously. He found a keeper in Breckinwood who sold honeycomb and kept some larvae in it, free of charge. Soon after, a daily yearning for the bitter royal jelly drenched in sweet honey supplanted his visions of the diamond sea and spirit peaks. He didn’t have to wait a year for that.

Korlach got a visit from Tarry in the fall. The old owner didn’t come around too often, but when he did, he’d bring a bag of gophers hunted off his land and hand it to Korlach with a bright smile. 

“That should keep ya through winter,” he’d say, no matter the season.

Korlach usually waited for Tarry to leave and go dump the dead gophers in the woods for the buzzards. Only buzzards love dead things more than humans. But on this day, Korlach didn’t have the time to dump it. Old Tarry asked him to take a walk.

“You know, I had my doubts' bout hiring you, seeing how your kind is,” Tarry said. “Hand it to me Marly, she insisted. What a blessin. Since you came to work, the moaning from the boys is down and the coin is up. And I want to give you a little reward for helping me.” 

“Thank you sir, in truth I could use—”

Tarry smacked Korlach’s shoulder. “We’re tearing down the ol barn and taking all them pigeons and setting up coops.”

“Coops?”

“Yup.” Tarry said. He stopped and put both hands on his hips. “Goin up right aside the skinning shed. Gonna save you heaps of time.”

“How will they fly?” 

Tarry slapped a knee and laughed. “Don’t you worry, I know, I know, you like to pluck a few.” He dipped his head and gave Korlach a wink. “Won’t have to chase after em anymore. Them birds will be mine now, and you’ll get a quota.”

Korlach stayed silent and stared up at Tarry. What is he talking about? How could a man own a bird? They live in the sky.

Tarry scratched his gray grizzled chin. “One a day. How’s that sound? If you want more, I’m sure we can work something out.”

Korlach looked to the barn and saw a pigeon flapping his wings atop a busted plank.

“Hey, whaddya say then?” 

“Very generous, thank you,” Korlach said with a bow. He learned that important humans loved being bowed to. 

Within a month, the stables were down, and the coops were up. At night Korlach would take the dead pigeons from the bottom of the cages - there were always a few - and put them in the woods for the buzzards. 

***

In the first days of spring, in his third year at Tarry’s Tannery, Korlach fell ill.

“Oh, how awful you look,” Marla said, coming into his shack. She swatted away a fly and set a flask on his dresser. “It’s potato broth soup with shallot and ginger. It’s what I give my babes when they're sick, and well, you’re family too.” 

“It’s very kind, thank you,” Korlach said. His throat was hoarse and raw and he shivered under his light blanket. It was soaked with sweat, and even the light wind from the open door felt a winter gale.

Milty came in behind Marla, clutching a case. He had two new rings: a dainty ruby on his pinky, and a thick gold band with an emerald on his pointer. 

“It’s awful, Milt,” Marla said. “He hasn’t worked for four days.” 

Milty withdrew a brass rod from his case and peeled off Korlach’s sheet. He poked a yellow, leaking sore on Korlach’s chest. “It’s pigeon pox.”

“Can you close the door?” Korlach said with chattering teeth.

Marla went for the door, but Milty stopped her. “Keep it open. The humors in here are foul.”

Marla pulled a kerchief to her nose. “Can I catch it?”

“No,” Milty said. “Only pigeons and goblins get it. Both so because of the awful things they eat.” He took off his spectacles and rubbed the dark circles under his eyes. “I can do some bloodletting now, but I’ll need to order white saffron from Pottstown to cure it. And it’s not cheap.”

“Whatever it takes to get him well. It pains us all to see him like this.” 

Marla left, and Milty set to work. He put his knife to a sore on Korlach’s belly. “You’re getting a little round at the waist,” the healer said, peering over his glasses. 

Two days later, Milty came with a white saffron elixir, and Marla came with a form. “Just an X, right here is all we need,” she said.

***

By the end of Korlach’s fifth year at Tarry’s Tannery, he'd saved five hundred and seventy-four pecks. On Milty’s advice, he stopped eating pigeons, and worms, and maggots and any other living thing. “If you want to live, that is.” He bought new furs and boots and linens for every change of season, from the tannery, at the family rate. He moved from his shack and paid for lodging in town, away from the bad humors. Walking to work made his legs ache, and after too many complaints of him sitting on the job, Marla said he needed to take better care of himself. She found him a stagecoach, for eight pecks a week. 

Spring came with floods. One bad day, his driver searched for a different route around the muck and sludge. He found one, but not before toppling down a ravine first. The horse died and the driver broke an arm. Korlach was scratched and bruised, but otherwise unharmed. Though a curious thing happened then. Korlach came close to death, yet felt more alive than he’d had in years.

“Why should I have to pay?” shouted Korlach in Marla’s office.

“I'm trying to help you,” said Marla.

“I’m not paying for that horse.” Korlach shook a form in his hands. He could read it well enough by now.

Marla's cheeks grew pink and she scrunched her brow. "I don't understand this anger, Korly, look," she said. She set a thick finger on the form. "It says here that damage incurred on undesignated routes, without expressed approval, will be the acceptee’s liability. That means–”"

“I know what it means!" Korlach batted Marla's hand from the page.

Marla let out a squeak and clutched her palm with exaggerated anguish. "Are you ill again? Let me call for Milty."

Korlach laughed. "I am ill, yes I am." An urge came to him. One he hadn't felt since the pigeons were caged.

"I'll make more soup." Marla said. She held up her hands and the fat under her arms jiggled like wings. "And you know, it's high time we talk about a raise."

This is why my grandfathers ate you. Korlach kept laughing. He snatched a letter knife off Marla's desk. She shrieked. He drove the knife into a stack of forms and tore straight down the middle, before digging in his nails and shredding the whole lot.

Marla fled to a corner and trembled. Korlach stared at her. His heart raced and he felt strong. Like he did at the bottom of the ravine. Like he did when snatching pigeons. Her silver hoop earrings shook as she mouthed voiceless pleas. She was not like a pigeon. She was a pitiful creature dying in a coop that smelled like vinegar and lemons. He dropped the knife and fled.

He hurried to his lodging and stuffed two hundred pecks in an envelope addressed to his landlord. The rest he took to the porter to have sent to his mother. From there, he trudged through the sludge and the muck of the spring floods. His legs and feet ached, and he wheezed with every step, but he kept on.

It was dark by the time he made it to Tarry’s Tannery. The only sounds were the pigeons grunting and crying. He found a claw hammer in the skinning shed and lifted bolts and wrenched on wire and set the birds free.

“What did you do?” said Jagger. The hunter had been sleeping in a hammock not far away. His two bloodhounds woke him as they yammered and rushed for the fleeing birds.

Korlach hurled the hammer at Jagger's head and sprinted away. He heard a clunk and Jagger howl.

It felt good to run. Curse these humans and their tight clothes, and dead meat, and soulless contracts. He could hear Jagger shouting and the dogs barking. 

He ran to the woods and rushed up a hill. His chest was tight and his breath was shallow, but he kept running. Sweat poured off him. Korlach stopped and tore off his tucked-in shirt and mud-caked trousers and hurled them down the hill.

Behind him, the dogs sniffed his clothes and yelped for their master. 

“I'm gonna make me a nice pair boots from yer hide, ya dirty gobbler,” Jagger hollered. 

At the top of the hill, Korlach looked at the rushing river twenty feet down. White foam over black rocks sparkled under the moon like diamonds. Pigeons cooed overhead. He was naked and atop the world and he saw all the beauty of the land, sky, and waters. Korlach leapt off the summit into the river, and for that moment, he was free.