A no-good man.
The no-good man’s dice cup been broken long as we remember. Lucky, the no-good man says, to toss dice from a broken cup.
He’s no lucky. He cheats. He cheats at dice. He cheats the tavern keeper, takin’ whisky and refilling the bottle with molasses and water. He cheats his wife, bless her soul and spit on her ghost if you see it, for luck.
We want to kill him. We don’t want to kill him because he cheats, right? We have big, tough-knotted and weighted fishing nets full of other reasons. But most by what he does to the child. For that we want to kill him.
He does cheat. We all cheat. Gods and saviors and jellyfish, we all cheat. It’s no more than takin’ a piss against a brick wall in the alley out back, to cheat when it comes to takin’ the child from him, you see? We lie awake at night and we wonder if maybe we should kill him. But the sea-god don’t take killing to be a right thing. Even killing a no-good man. Terrible storms. Black skies. Ships lost. Until payment is made good. And not a one of us is goin’ta risk the long, slow drowning in the sea that is the pay for murder. We got families. Families dependin’ on us, we do. But cheating? So we can take the child? Weighs no more on the conscience than unravelling one woolen sock to mend two others.
Best of three.
He tosses a 6. We toss a 2.
A broken cup.
Carved from sea wood, pretty as anything we could wish for, it is. Oiled and polished by his greasy hands. Split down one side when the no-good man passed out, drunk, and dropped it, and it rolled across the tavern floor and set up next to the fire. Too close, left too long. Cracked good and clean, it did. Not lucky, though. That just a story he tells himself.
He ain’t been lucky since he tossed his wife down the stairs, then tossed her into the sea, weighted down with rope and stone. Tripped she did, the no-good man tells us, shrugging. We know better. The sea-god knows better. But the no-good man swears it, and no witnesses to say otherwise. We wait for the sea-god to claim him, instead of staking him in the tides ourselves.
We put dice in our own cups. Cups carved of sea wood, blessed with salt water and sea foam. Dice of bone or wood, or squares of moldering carrot marked with beet juice if that’s all we got and we toss them. The whole village does. Takin’ turns, any given night in the tavern. To do what is right by the child, you hear? Without the no-good man knowin’ it. Without him knowin’ we’re working together. We’ve been at it a long time, takin’ his coin. Worryin’ it down. Bit by bit. Til he got nothing left.
We save it for the child. Poor child got nothin’, got no’one, right? Mother but bones tied to a rock down under the waves. Father, the no-good man, drunk before sunrise and keeping it up all day. Child smacked around the head. Smacked for talking. Smacked for spilling ale. Smacked for eating one too many of the fried fish in the pan. Smacked and smacked and smacked.
If we scold the no-good man, he only hits harder. None of our trouble, his child, he says to us. His! We tried jus’ takin’ the child when the no-good man was passed out. Came looking for the child later, he did. Found the child under the docks, where the sea-god’s waves were no more than a gentle sway. Says he’ll kill the child if any of us try again. His is his, right? Does what he pleases with what is his.
Best of three.
He tosses a 3. We toss a 4.
A stolen child.
We try to steal the child from him. How could we not? Thought about selling the child to the travelling show that came through town last year, he tells us. Nasty business that. Who knows what happens to children, travelling with crooks and criminals and murderers and lost souls? Too young, they says. The no-good man shrugs. Maybe next year.
It ain’t rightly stealing if we win the child fair and sound in a game, you hear us? The no-good man agrees to the wager. The no-good man sets the wager, were we honest, yes? It weren’t our fault if he couldn’t pay it. He pays his debts, he says. The no-good man says he is a good man who pays his debts. Pays with his child if he hasn’t got the coin. The child is strong and sturdy and tough. He says this.
We’ve all been tossing dice with him so that he will do this thing. That he has no choice but to wager the child. Nothing left of him to wager but the child and his greasy not-lucky cup. We ply him with ale and whisky, so he is drunk, and his broken cup shakes in his hand and he forgets whose turn it is to toss. So drunk that he turns to look out the tavern window, enraptured by the sea, and its god, dark and unsettled, and perhaps by the ghost of his wife rising out of the sea-spray. He whispers to us, claiming to hear the sea-god calling to him from the cold, dark, winter waves. But he is not so drunk that he doesn’t remember he promised us his child, if he could not pay with coin. The sea-god is calling to him. We all hear it. Not for us to claim him. Only for us to save the child.
Best of three.
He tosses a 5. We toss a 6.
| Sheila Massie is a speculative fiction writer of fantasy and horror, both dark and hopeful, (though not always in the same story). She holds a 3rd degree black belt in TaeKwon-Do and, when away from her writing desk, trains empowerment self defense instructors internationally. She enjoys a good sipping tequila, can’t live a day without cheese or tea, and doesn’t like mornings. She lives with her husband and her brat of a Miniature Rottweiler in Victoria, BC, Canada. Her fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction, Augur Magazine and elsewhere. Find out more at sheilamassie.com. |  |