The Satchel That Would Not Become a Kingdom

Crabskel found a satchel in the drainage cut and declared it territory.

It was waterlogged territory, with a broken strap and an interior that could not yet be inspected. These defects did not diminish its sovereignty. They merely explained why nobody had claimed it sooner.

Sooker Vale asked to see the damage.

Crabskel agreed to a temporary visit by a foreign power.

The satchel was dried. Its seams emerged from the damp, along with a stain shaped, to Crabskel, like a coastline. A kingdom with a coastline required a harbour. The open buckle was nominated.

Then the strap gave way.

Morrowstitch received the satchel under conditions that grew longer each time Crabskel repeated them. No annexation. No alteration of borders. No removal of the coastline.

Morrowstitch repaired the strap.

The stitch went straight across the proposed harbour.

There followed, according to the tale, a constitutional crisis lasting most of an afternoon. Crabskel demanded that the harbour remain open. Sooker Vale observed that an opening was how the water had entered. Morrowstitch loosened the buckle to demonstrate its intended use.

Crabskel took this as a threat.

Then the satchel fell open.

Inside was a smaller pocket. In the pocket lay the impression of something once carried there for a very long time. The fabric was pale around it and dark at the centre.

The tellers disagree about the shape. A key. A photograph. A folded letter. Something whose value could not be recovered by drying it.

For once, nobody reached in.

Crabskel said the missing object might have been a crown.

No one answered.

The satchel had survived retrieval, drying and repair. It could be carried again. Whoever had carried it before was still absent.

In the loud ending, Crabskel abdicates with several conditions and reserves the right to return. This pleases audiences who have been waiting for a defeat.

In the quieter ending, the satchel is set down with its repaired strap facing outwards.

Crabskel keeps watch beside it.

Asked what is being guarded, the little sovereign says, “Property.”

For the first time in the tale, the word leaves room for somebody else.