Baubles From Bones: Issue 6
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The Alabaster Crown

Deborah L. Davitt
5500 words

Heavy is the head that bears the crown, or so the saying went. In Jasper Abreo’s case, he’d found that heavy was the head that hid one, too.

The Alabaster Crown bumped along at the bottom of a bag of horsefeed, slung from his saddle, as he guarded the refugees straggling for the border of Trond and Wesseau. He’d fallen in with them on the grounds that people looked less at refugees than at other people, and on the further grounds that they needed a guard to keep them safe from the depredations of the People’s Glorious Revolutionary Army—which amounted to rabid bands of blood-thirsty soldiers and peasants who now had a reason to stick it to their neighbors. Anyone with ties to the old King, loyalties to the old regime, or who looked at the soldiers the wrong way was likely to be put to the question, or just killed outright.

Jasper spent a lot of time trying not to think about the fact that he was endangering the refugees just by being among them with his heavy burden.

There was old Coragia, bent nearly double, carrying her youngest granddaughter, Becca, on her shoulders. Periodically, Jasper offered to take the child up on his horse (“as a treat for the young one,” he always said, to give the old woman a face-saving way to agree).

Beside her, laboring under a similar burden, was young Resenzia—looking every inch of nine months pregnant, but still managing to walk on swollen feet. He’d have offered her his horse, if he trusted the beast not to buck off an unfamiliar rider. Jasper couldn’t be responsible for that.

There was Alec, the oldest of a family of five siblings, both parents lost in a raid by the People’s Glorious Army. Alec carried the youngest over his shoulders, just as Coragia did, and the others doggedly followed in his footsteps, their feet swathed in rags, for they’d already worn out their shoes on this long march.

At night, as they camped out and shared what meager food they had among them, and the stories of their dreams of what they might find in Wesseau—distant relatives, new lives. Jasper couldn’t join in. He had no kin of his own to find—just the kin of a murdered king to whom to turn over his burden.

Coragia took up the story-telling, speaking now in a hushed tone, “They say that the Alabaster Crown always finds the right head. It’s not like a crown made of gold or silver, where the crown can be molded and shaped to the right size. The Alabaster Crown is made of stone—of living stone, they say—and will only fit the right head at the right time.”

“Must not have worked very well,” Alec put in sharply, as Jasper shifted uneasily at the drift of conversation. “The late king wasn’t the right man for the job, or there wouldn’t have been the Glorious Revolution.”

Mutters of assent rose all around them.

Jasper stayed silent. He’d met the King. He’d been a junior groom, in charge of seeing to the King’s horses during hunts and progresses. The King had been an amiable man, kind to his servants, and more honorable than the lords who’d roused the common folk against him.

“What do you think, soldier-man?” Resenzia asked him suddenly, leaning forward. In the firelight, her face looked younger than in daylight, all the careworn lines melted away by shadow and flame. She couldn’t be more than twenty, he knew—old to be having her first child. He didn’t know her story. It was safer that he didn’t. He’d never given the folk of the caravan his name. The better to slide away from them, untouched by commonalities, if need arose.

The silence had stretched too long. “I think … there are things outside of any king’s control,” Jasper replied slowly, trying to feel his way along without giving offense. Without standing out. “The weather. The crops. People were starving before the Revolution, aye, but the lords had grain in their storehouses that they could have released to the populace.”

“Aye, and look how well we’re doing now,” Alec spat into the fire. “Every village we pass, people are still starving.”

“That’s the way of it,” Coragia said in her cracked voice. “It’s the way the world is.”

That night, as the footsore refugees slept, Jasper tried to stand watch, at least for a while. It was difficult; he’d spent twelve hours in the saddle, himself, and horseback riding was still an intimately physical activity—gripping the horse with his legs, posting in the saddle to match the beast’s trot . He was well-accustomed to riding hard, but the king’s hunts had never lasted so long. Six hours at a maximum, followed by feasting for all the household. Jasper tried not to think of mince pies or gammons of bacon—his stomach was empty enough as it was.

His haze of exhaustion didn’t affect his hearing, fortunately. As he sat on a log just outside the camp, far from the dying glow of the coals of the campfire, he heard the tell-tale snap of a branch underfoot and jolted all the way awake once more. Could one of the children be answering nature’s call? he thought, then caught the sound of a low curse in a man’s rough voice. Bandits. part of his mind assessed, suddenly cool and calm as he stood, though his hands shook as he drew not his sword, but a long hunting knife. Probably here for my horse if they saw us along the way.

He crept through the underbrush, cautiously circling around behind the men as they advanced on the camp. There were four of the bandits, each armed with a crossbow.

But hunting was an old, familiar friend to Jasper. He knew how to creep so close to a wild boar that he could almost touch its bristled hide without being noticed—no mean feat, that. He could crawl close enough to fallow deer that he could count the spots on their fawn’s backs.

He could certainly get close enough to a man to knife him in the dark.

He paused behind the last man, his fingers sweating on the horn of his knife’s hilt. He’d never killed a man before. Certainly never in cold blood.

Then the screams came from the camp as Resenzia was dragged out of her tent, and the man before him started forward to join his companions. On an exhalation, Jasper prayed for forgiveness from the gods, and leaped forward, clapping one hand over the man’s mouth from behind, and with the other, he slit the bandit’s throat.

Blood. So much blood, hot and sticky and wet. He caught the crossbow from the man’s hands before it hit the ground, leveled it, and fired it into the next man’s back. The bolt drilled home between the shoulder blades, and the man slumped to the ground with a scream of pain that became a choking gurgle as the arrow plunged deep into a lung, filling it with blood.

That left two of them, now spinning around to see from where the danger came. The apparent leader seized Resenzia by the hair and drove his knife against her throat. “Come out, lay down your weapons, and I swear by the gods that this one won’t die,” he said, the lie so evident in his voice that Jasper wondered how the gods didn’t show their contempt with a lightning bolt instantly.

Of course, the gods never did such things outside of old tales.

“I’ll give you to the count of three,” the bandit leader said, and pulled more tightly on Resenzia’s hair. “One.”

Jasper weighed his knife in his hand. It wasn’t balanced for throwing. But he had nothing else besides the emptied crossbow now at his feet.

“Two!” the bandit leader said, as tears of fear and pain coursed down Resenzia’s face. Still, the young woman made no sound. Didn’t beg, didn’t plead. Just wept, silently, her eyes fixed on the gloom from whence the crossbow bolt had come. Resenzia was either made of steel, or frightened past the ability to speak. Which, he couldn’t tell, but admiration coursed through him nonetheless.

“Three!” the bandit leader shouted, and just as he did so, Jasper’s thrown knife sprouted from his throat. The man staggered, a dumbfounded expression on his face, then sat down heavily, pulling at the blade with clumsy fingers.

That left just one man remaining, so Jasper drew his sword—a short, heavy blade designed more for sticking pigs than for fighting men—and strode into the clearing. At the sight of him, covered in gore, the last remaining bandit turned and ran into the underbrush.

Alec, who at fourteen was the only other person among the refugees close to fighting age, dove for one of the loaded crossbows on the ground and sent a quarrel wildly after the bandit. The boy was panting, his eyes wide and wild.

“Don’t waste your shots,” Jasper said shortly, feeling dim and remote from himself. As if Jasper-the-hunter was a puppet on a stage, whom Jasper-the-man merely watched perform. “If he comes back, it will be with others, so we’ll need all the weapons we can take from their bodies.”

“We have nothing,” Alec said, his voice shaking. He still clutched the crossbow tightly as his younger brothers and sisters clustered tightly around him. “Why would they try to steal from us?”

Jasper was quiet, but his eyes flicked to his horse. A horse was valuable. Not only did it turn a merely average fighter into a living siege engine, capable of smashing through crowds of unarmored folk, it was a weapon in and of itself. Moreover, it meant freedom. Someone on a horse could rapidly outpace most pursuit.

And, of course, there was the Crown.

“You could have let them take the horse,” old Coragia muttered, squatting beside Resenzia and trying to comfort her. The pregnant woman turned her head and settled her face into the older woman’s shoulder, her eyes glassy. “The children have all seen enough death, haven’t they?”

“I didn’t for a moment think they’d stop with the horse,” Jasper retorted, and then squatted down himself, suddenly dizzy. He put a hand to his head, then pulled it away in disgust as he realized that it was covered in blood. “Let’s … let’s strip the bodies of their belongings and bury them off the side of the road.”

“Burying’s too good for them,” Resenzia bit out, her first words in all of this.

She had a point, but Jasper-the-hunter puppet had a reply for her, while Jasper-the-man continued to drift along behind his own eyeballs. “I don’t doubt that, but the bodies will attract scavengers,which will eventually attract attention, possibly from the patrols of the People’s Army.” Jasper was amazed at how calm and useful his words were. “We should take whatever they had that was useful. Coin. Supplies. Clothes for rags and for warmth. And then drop them in a ditch.”

It was almost as if he knew what he was doing.

And, as if the words held magic, all dissent slipped away. They were united in their fear of the People’s Glorious Revolutionary Army.

And with good cause.

***

Jasper managed to scrub off most of the blood from his hands, though he thought he could still see it rimming his nails, and helped pile the bodies into a shallow grave. Their boots were too large for the children, though one set at least fit Alec, so he insisted the boy take them. “The rest we can sell or trade for food,” Coragia pointed out, with admirable pragmatism.

Then on they walked. East, toward the rising sun.

He could feel the crown pressing into his back, though the feed surrounded it completely. It had to be his imagination.

As they continued east, Resenzia fell in step beside him, where he and his horse ambled at the rear. He found that if he really needed to, he could almost--almost—doze in the saddle, but it required his horse to be tired, too. Not fresh, as the beast was this morning.

“Soldier-man,” Resenzia said after several moments of silence. “You saved my life tonight. Thank you.”

Jasper looked down at her from atop his horse’s back, and after a moment, slipped down to walk beside her, stifling a groan as his feet hit the ground. “You’re welcome,” he said, then added, “Though it’s possible that they targeted you solely because of my horse.”

She nodded silently, acknowledging the truth of his words.

He liked the way her curly hair flew loose of its braid. Liked the calm, wise stare of her dark eyes. He liked, in fact, far too many things about the woman. But she was a recent widow … and he had a Crown to protect. So there could be nothing between them but words.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t long to take her hand in hers and reassure her that they’d make it to the border and cross it.

Instead, he took a breath, and confessed quietly, “You call me soldier-man. But I’ve never actually had to kill a man before tonight.”

She blinked, looking shocked. “The knife you threw to his throat?”

“Was aimed at his heart,” Jasper admitted.

“I’m glad it hit him.”

“I’m glad it didn’t hit you.”

She glanced at him sidelong, and sudden, rueful laughter bubbled out of both of them. A relief of tension, if nothing else. “I’ll have to keep calling you soldier-man, though, unless you give me a name to call you,” Resenzia said after their laughter died.

He hesitated. Closeness was dangerous, he knew. Even giving them his name could be a risk if he left the caravan behind, and the People’s Army came looking for him as an escapee from the King’s household. “Jasper,” he finally said.

“It doesn’t suit you,” Resenzia told him, her tone lighter for some reason. “I’ll just have to keep calling you soldier-man.”

He’d take it. For now. He oddly liked the way soldier-man rolled off her tongue, like a little, personal joke between them. He was the last thing from a soldier, of course. But it sounded somehow right.

***

The terrain shifted around them, the hills of central Trond, once lush with vineyards, now all burned by the People’s Army, giving way to the flatlands of eastern Trond. Here, too,fields of wheat had hosted great battles between the King’s army and the People’s, and the People’s Army had burned what few crops remained, starving the King’s Army and its cavalry while any life-giving supplies from other countries were ruined at the ports.

Jasper stared at the wreckage of these battlefields as they passed. The mass graves were huge barrows on which nothing grew amidst the newly-replanted grain. “Will there be food in Wessau?” Coragia’s granddaughter, Becca, asked. The child sat astride the horse’s neck ahead of him. He kept one leather-clad arm around the youngling to keep her from sliding off.

“There should be,” Jasper replied. He didn’t want to lie to the girl. Chances were, they’d be at the bottom of whatever charitable list there was in Wesseau. But at least there, while their harvests had been as poor as those of Trond the past few years, they hadn’t had their crops put to flame by one army or another.

“Will there be mince pies?” Becca asked, her young voice plaintive. “I love mince pies.”

“So do I,” Jasper confided.

The Alabaster Crown prodded his back as he rode. Any time he found himself thinking of how nice it would be to stay with these good folk, to find a way to help them make their lives in Wesseau, the Crown found a way to intrude on his thoughts.

The feed for his horse was dwindling. Soon, he’d need to find a different hiding place for the Crown. He’d need to sell the horse, too, and continue on foot. But the money would be welcome. It would go far towards feeding the refugees. And it might be needed for bribes to cross the border, after all--

The jangle of stirrups was their only warning. Jasper’s head jerked to the left as riders broke from the underbrush onto what had once been called the King’s Highway. These weren’t common bandits—he recognized the blue jerkins and silver epaulettes of the People’s Glorious Revolutionary Army all too well. “Well, what do we have here?” the leader sneered and yanked his reins, his horse flinched a under him. “A group of Kingsmen?”

“No, sir,” Coragia answered, her voice quavering. “We’ve lost our homes in the fighting, and are making our way to Wesseau.”

“People loyal to their country would stay to help rebuild it,” the leader returned, his words a taunt.

Jasper could see the shape of it. There was no answer any of them could give that would be satisfactory. Every word spoken by the leader was some form of trap. He sent Coragia a look, hoping that she’d read in it his appeal for silence.

Somehow, he caught the leader’s eye. “And you!” the man said, lifting a scabbarded blade to draw Jasper’s chin up. “You look to be in good health. A man of fighting age, fleeing with this rabble.” A contemptuous snort. “A Kingsman, or a coward?”

Again, there was no right answer. But silence was no defense. “I seek to defend these people from bandits until they reach the Wesseau border. Then, I’ll likely turn back to look for my kin. They were displaced in the fighting.” A lie, but one cloaked in the habit of truth.

After a brooding moment, the leader rapped out, “Search them! We don’t want any contraband getting through into Wesseau.”

An excuse. They were still days from the border, and this band of brigands had no authority over what passed through it.

They searched them all, even Resenzia, roughly, demanding that she pull up her dress to expose her swollen belly. “That’s not necessary!” Jasper snapped at the soldiers.

“She could be smuggling anything under that dress,” the leader replied.

Resenzia wept at the indignity, and Jasper’s fists clenched inside his gloves.

He started to sweat, however, as they pulled open his bag of grain. Jasper let Becca slide to the ground, planning his next moves carefully. There were five men, all armed with flintlock pistols, not crossbows. He’d sell his life dearly, at least. He could so clearly picture daylight striking the arc of the crown, the gleaming white stone of it--

With a cry, Resenzia doubled over, clutching her stomach. The soldiers pulled back in consternation, and Coragia hobbled to her hastily. “Her water’s broken,” the old woman informed the soldiers. “The child comes. Be off with you. This is no place for menfolk now.”

Jasper inhaled in relief as the soldiers dropped his sack of horsefeed with a dull thud. And then they retreated, making various gestures to ward off bad luck.

“Ninnies,” Coragia muttered once they were out of earshot. “Well played, young Resenzia.”

“It’s not coming now?” Jasper asked, stunned.

“Not for a week, I’d guess,” Coragia replied. “Always assuming we don’t get another shock like that one.”

Resenzia sighed. “That’s only going to work so often,” she put in as Jasper recovered his bag of horsefeed. “But my child will be born in Wesseau, out of range of the fighting.”

“I’m sorry,” Jasper whispered, shamed. “I couldn’t fight all of them—“

“I’d have helped,” Alec offered.

Coragia snorted. “And you’d both have died. No, Resenzia did the right thing.”

“Do we want to try to put some distance between us and them overnight?” he asked. He knew they were exhausted. But they all had burdens that they could only put down on the other side of the border.

The refugees all looked at one another, and as one, they nodded. “Onwards, soldier-man,” Resenzia said, shouldering her pack wearily. “We’ve miles to go before we sleep.”

He didn’t know how to thank her. If he should thank her. Thanks might make it apparent that he had something to hide.

So for the moment, he simply took her pack from her shoulders, and carried it himself. He’d find a way to shape the words she deserved later.

***

That night, around the campfire, there were more stories to pass around than food to eat. Coragia spoke haltingly about her husband, lost when the People’s Army burned their house. “My oldest daughter lives. Her husband was forced into the People’s Army at gunpoint. Just … taken from his fields while he was plowing them. Their children, last I heard, were all right. But my son … he refused conscription, and was killed.”

Becca began to sob quietly against her grandmother’s side, and the old woman didn’t hush her. Just let her cry. “I went to live with his wife and their children, but disease took most of them, except Becca here. Once they were cleanly buried, I started us on the road for Wesseau.” Longing in her voice. “It will be better there.”

“It has to be,” Alec replied softly, his voice breaking. “It has to be better there than here.”

Jasper prodded at the embers of the campfire, not saying anything. Just listening, as Alec went on, “Do you think many of the soldiers are forced conscripts, Coragia?”

“I think a fair number of them are,” the old woman responded.

“Then why are they so cruel?” Alec demanded hotly. “Why did they shoot my father? Why did they lock us in the cellar while my mother sobbed and screamed upstairs? Why did they burn the house down above us, thinking there was no way for us to escape?”

“Because they were afraid,” Jasper heard himself say, and prodded at the fire more vigorously with the stick.

“Of us? We had nothing! And now we have less!” Alec’s voice cracked again.

“No,” Resenzia put in, moving across the clearing to put an arm around Alec, though the boy flinched from her. “They weren’t afraid of you. Just what you represented. One more family resisting the will of … the People. Whoever they are.”

“That’s not all of it,” Jasper replied, still staring into the fire. “They’re afraid of each other. Of being any less cruel than those around them. Of being perceived as weak. Because if they are, if they flinch, they’ll be the next target.”

Heads turned around the clearing. “How do you know that?” Resenzia asked, sounding shaken.

Jasper's lip half-curled. “Because me? I’m scared all the time.”

He stood and left the circle of the campfire before any of them could reply.

***

A day from the border, Jasper sold his horse to a farmer for a handful of gold, three dressed and plucked chickens, and enough bread to fill their empty bellies. “I think he might have gotten the better end of the deal,” Resenzia told him as the chickens roasted on a spit over their fire that night.

“He might have, but it doesn’t matter now,” Jasper replied, feeling sleepy and supremely content at all once. The journey was almost over. They were almost done. The Crown now rode at the very bottom of his backpack, wrapped up in his only spare shirt. As hiding places went, it wasn’t a good one, but it would have to do.

Resenzia drew him into her tent that night. They didn’t make love. They simply lay in each other’s arms, and fell asleep that way.

The next morning, as they crested a final hill, Coragia cried out in disappointment and grief. A huge refugee camp sprawled out in the valley below them, filled with all those who had fled Trond for Wesseau in the past year. Jasper stared down at the tents of the camp, his stomach turning to lead within him.

The plan, the mission, had seemed so simple back in the capital. Pick the Crown up from the ground of the garden where the king had been assassinated, and where Jasper had lain hidden in the underbrush, waiting for the assassins to leave. Take a horse from the stables and flee for Wesseau, the closest friendly neighboring kingdom, where dozens of Loyalist nobles had already taken refuge. Turn the Crown over to the next in line for the throne, whoever that might be, and let the Crown decide who the next leader should be. He knew the damned thing was magic. It could sort out the whole war by choosing the right general to become the next king or queen.

But a fat lot of good its magic was doing at the bottom of his pack.

And now, he had the refugees to deal with, too. He couldn’t leave them behind. Not after their journey. “Stick together,” Jasper told them, holding out a hand to Resenzia, and they descended into the milling crowds that made up the camp.

***

It took a few days to get the feel of the camp. Who they needed to befriend in order to get better places to set up their tents. Where to empty their privy buckets. Where to line up for their grain ration, sent by the bridge over the river Amra, which was guarded by half a legion of Wesseau troops, all stationed there to prevent refugees from crossing unilaterally.

Resenzia wept silently at night, her eyes fixed on the bridge, one hand on her belly. At a few gentle questions from Jasper, she finally began to talk about her husband—a blacksmith who’d refused to work for the People’s Army, and had been hanged for his defiance. “I promised him as they dragged him to the gallows that I wouldn’t let our child be born here,” Resenzia whispered. “That our child would be born free in Wesseau.”

He didn’t know what to say to comfort her. So he drew her into his arms and simply let her weep there, his own eyes on the border. The Amra was wide and deep in both directions, with rapids upstream and a plunging set of falls downstream as added deterrents to crossing.

They could try crossing much further upriver—migrants departed daily heading north along the Amra—but Jasper had heard from others that they usually returned to the camp, thinner and exhausted. “Better to stay here, where there’s a chance you’ll be picked in the lottery to cross the bridge than take the chance of being shot further upstream along the border,” was the general wisdom.

But the camp presented other difficulties, other dangers. There were rough, dangerous, bored, desperate men in the camp—enough so that the women and children didn’t feel safe leaving their tents, and wanted Jasper to remain close at hand. He insisted that they all go with him daily to the main plaza to see if any of their names would be called in the lottery to cross the bridge—and as the days passed, that hope seemed fainter and fainter.

There were guards—mostly from the People’s Great Liberation Army, self-important men who rode through the camps and intervened in squabbles, usually taking the items being fought over for their own use. Jasper loathed them and their well-fed faces.

There were fleas and lice—none of the refugees had suffered from either on the road, but now, the children began to scratch and claw at their heads, and the adults soon began to suffer, too.

Resenzia gave birth shortly after their arrival, and her thin face grew thinner and more careworn as she tended to her newborn, a daughter. Jasper didn’t know what else to do for her, so he gave her half his own rations to keep her fed and the milk flowing, and held the babe during the day so that she could rest. His only reward was a smile, but when Resenzia did so, it was like the sun coming up. “If you aren’t a soldier, soldier-man, then what were you before?” she asked one night.

She’d always respected his reticence until now, and Jasper sensed a change, a shift in their strange relationship at her words. “Does it matter?” he finally asked, testing the waters.

She sighed and rolled over. “I suppose that it doesn’t,” Resenzia replied, sounding weary. “I just hoped that enough trust had grown between us …”

“It’s not a question of trust,” Jasper answered, but after a moment, he let his hands rest on her shoulders, as they lay there in the dark of their tiny tent. “I was a groom,” he managed haltingly.

“To a nobleman,” she said, the stiffness, the resistance in her back melting. “You don’t need to say anymore. We all know what the mob’s done to nobles. The murders. The torture. The great equality they seek is one of the grave.” Loathing in her voice now.

He found that he wanted to, however. He ached to tell her everything he’d seen. The wonders of the King’s court, the courtiers dressed for elaborate masques put on for the delight of the king. Of the masquerade balls, and hunt dances. Of riding through the green at the King’s side, always ready to put himself between the royal personage and real harm, when it came time for the kill.

But his throat closed on the words at the memory of the King’s body, lying hacked and bloody on the mossy carpet of the once-peaceful garden, one of his ringed hands trailing in the pond where the man had loved to swim with his guests. And the damnable, damnable Alabaster Crown, lying on the ground beside him. In the distance, the sound of the Palace Guards blowing horns and the clatter of weapon striking weapon.

“Thank you,” he whispered, and held her tightly, all the words he couldn’t say rising as the crest of a wave that threatened to burst forth from him.

With each passing day, he felt himself more and more loyal to this band of refugees. Felt more and more that leaving them behind would be an intolerable betrayal. And yet the crown, tucked securely in the pack he rarely took off, pressed against his spine, reminding him daily that he had other promises to keep.

And finally, in their fourth week in the camp, there came disease. Typhus. Alec’s youngest sister and old Coragia both died of the fever, the purple lesions. Becca wept and wailed, begging her grandmother to wake up as Jasper grimly wrapped the body in a spare sheet of cloth and carried the old woman to the group pyre at the center of camp. Behind him, Resenzia took the toddler into her lap, even as Alec and his siblings gathered around, their grief made fresher by the loss of one they’d come to look on as a grandmother, and wept with Becca.

Jasper shaved his head to deter the lice, and Resenzia asked him to do the same for her in desperation to be free of the biting insects. He regretted it even as his razor passed through the curling dark tresses, but those who were bald were somehow spared the ravages of the disease wracking the camp.

Resenzia huddled beside him one night, finally whispering to him, “I don’t know how much longer I can go on, soldier-man.”

“I know,” he whispered in reply, and wrapped her in his arms. “We’ll get through this. You’ll see.”

The next day, he stood numbly in the center of the main square, hearing his name called in the lottery. Here it was: deliverance.

But how could he leave Resenzia and the babe behind? How could he leave any of them behind?

It took him only a few moments to make his decision—then an hour longer to determine that it was the right one.

Jasper gave his pack of gear to Resenzia. “Don’t open this till you’re over the border,” he made her promise. “You’ll know what to do with what’s inside.” He gave her and the babe a kiss, and pressed his lottery slip into her hand.

“There’s no guarantee that your name will ever be called again,” she said, trying to give the slip back to him. Her bald head gave her face the austerity of a nun. Yet it also concentrated her beauty, making her thin, lined face somehow more rarefied, unearthly. He wouldn’t forget it.

“And there’s no guarantee that the Glorious Revolution will last forever, either,” he countered, too softly for anyone around them to hear. “When they open the border to all travelers, I will come. I will find you. I promise that.”

He watched with something like contentment in his heart as all his burdens disappeared across the bridge, Resenzia growing smaller and smaller in the distance, until she vanished entirely. Jasper still stood a moment longer, staring at where she’d been.

Then he sighed and turned back into the lines of tents. There were still other refugees to take care of. Children to ensure were fed. Old people who needed help navigating the maze of the camp.

And he had nothing better to do now, than to do just that.

Baubles From Bones: Issue 6
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Deborah L. Davitt

Deborah L. Davitt was raised in Nevada, but currently lives in Houston, Texas with her husband and son. Her award-winning poetry and prose has appeared in over seventy journals, including F&SF, Asimov’s, Analog, and Lightspeed. For more about her work, including her Elgin-placing poetry collections, Bounded by Eternity and From Voyages Unreturning, see www.deborahldavitt.com. She also had a poetry chapbook out in 2024 (Xenoforming), as well as a TTRPG and novel: Mists & Memory and In Memory’s Shadow.

Read more from Deborah L. Davitt:

• "The Suns in Her Eyes" from Baubles From Bones: Issue 3

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