Chapter 3
The Wicklighter
As the blinding easels of morning light from the windows dripped their way down the walls of the cottage and onto the floorboards, Pom had come to learn she had been, in so many ways, mistaken. In the past, the crass, inarticulate blobs of charcoal and clay paint her brother lay down in an attempt at art were quaint at best, and deeply concerning at worst. His tracing of the flying vehicle, with lines wobbly and inexact, described it as something light and billowing, like an intrepid bubble departing from a bath, but larger and wont to catch the wind. It slipped between the folds of darkness that separated Pom's dreams, and in them, she conspired a crank and propeller on its side to turn, so it could be pushed along at a whim. She told her brother about this thing, and he gave her back the look their parents did seeing his scribblings so long ago.
"I think we better look at the schematic again," he said, "I mean, we could put one on, I think. It just won't do anything."
One mistake of Pom's was in its size and scale. It wasn't made from the rainbow sheen of a bubble, but instead a rough and coarse cloth, tight and deliberately knit as cloth always was from the land of Reindeer, so even air couldn't escape, and held to bear a load by thick braids of rope swinging beneath it. Suspended beneath in the rope's cradle was a pot of sorts. Clearly to carry a passenger, she believed, though in his drawing some curling swirl occupied that place in the mechanism's heart. Within that map of exact measure and number, it was haphazardly soulful and peculiar ornament, and it remained undiscussed while the parchment was rolled and tucked into Woogum's loinbelt, and ignoring became Pom's second mistake. Her third, believing it to be only her second, was a happy one to have, and that was her doubt in her brother.
The deep blue and cold of the northern Tundra waters warm during their arrival down the rivers of the meadows. On the sibling's way to the carpenter's storehouse they watched for the crates barrels floated down the main river's channel accompanied by Reindeer salesmen, by chance they might sell that grisled cloth they needed. On slow days for commerce, the frogs on their lillypads floated down quite like them instead, or as if someone upstream had tossed them down it to see if they'd return.
Later she learned that Woogums had abandoned the thought of the cool waters delivering to them anything but a cool breeze to walk with on their way to the smothering sawdust workshop. Wondering how long he'd conspired to construct the thing and fly, she saw him from outside the workshop window sweeping up lengths of rope and bundles of wicker with deliberation. Obeying his wishes, she didn't attempt to help when he collapsed fold after fold of paper from the densest pulp she'd yet to see, and drug it all to the clerk. Even from such a distance she saw him stutter and jolt his way through their transaction. The length he bought was not enough, he knew, and wanted her to go and buy the rest separately, so not to attract suspicion. Essences of all the cut trees at the shop clung to her nose like a sap, but she gathered the twelve or thirteen folds as he did, and received no shortage of skeptical scowling from the carpenter who sold it. Woogums had such a confidence in his plan that he seemed to forget that not a sheep around was unaware that whatever the two bought would end up in the same household.
In their backyard the corners were cut from the massive sheets, and lay like a great beige moon on the green lawn of their backyard, far from the wetness of the levee. Circumambulating it in opposite directions, Woogums placed the marks and deeply made cuts with a kitchen knife, while Pom, with her bell around her neck, galloped short bounds to coax it to chime, so their dogs would leave few paw prints on the paper's surface, scampering after her necklace instead. With her dogs tangling around her hooves, she'd pull from her distractions to see some great change in the folding and cutting of massive paper strips, and she'd stop to compare it to the old parchment sketch.
Lashing and curling like a tongue in the page's center lay the curiosity she'd forgotten. Even amongst the similitude of black ink it was scratched like something dazzlingly blacker and furious. The rhythm of her questions and cadence of her flatteries might have occupied her all day had she asked about it before. All that time be well spent, yet more troubling than her brother cared to curse her with, on her conversation with the Wicklighter, and his flame she'd be the one to steal.
Though wool could stave away the cold of Autumn Meadow nights, inward falls the dark. At the sill of one of every cottage, a row of candles dripped when lit and froze again into long teeth far down from the flame. The older cottages scarcely had glass windows, but instead wooden shutters emplaced before nightfall and removed for the warmth of daylight. Despite that antiquity, all homes, old and new, had glass doubly so on the candle window: One pane in behind the flames and another in front, both with a silver hinged frame. From far away the flickering rows behind the glass dotting the hills in place of the flowers, which took their rest from gleeful eyes till morning, every sheep stayed far clear of the flames, even within the homes they lit.
It had been more than a decade since the last recorded burning, and even then it was a complex ordeal of loose thatch blown from an old roof, catching alight on another home's candle and tumbling into the wool of an unsuspecting sheep having supper by an unlit window. The lucky ram, favoring a bath after meals, had already drawn and heated the water, and could thus douse himself in the tub before the spark ate its way though his wool. Behind windows and in the streetlamp cages, flames were locked like sacred animals licking at the glass.
Pom sat at the waxen window, staring out past the glass into the darkening lavender sky where the stars emerged like silvery minnows to feed. She saw the tall streetlamps had all been lit by now to line the paths of patrol for the guard dogs. Many of their glass cases were imperfect, the wax shapes within warping as if stretching their bones awake for a new night, and many panes were old, tinting the yellow light even rustier still. Even at a distance, she could pick out the oldest of the lamps by the richest of color, and while she waited for the one who lit them to come by her family's hillside home, scanned them all again to find one she believed even older.
The Wicklighter's stick, whose approaching she searched for, was much like a fishing pole, affixed at the end was a key instead of a bauble. It was a key partly in function, for its knobby, hooked end unlocked the glass cases where all the candles lay, and in place of one of its teeth was an open flame, kept skillfully high and away from all things flammable. Some far away lamp she saw swung in a breeze that crept up the valley toward her. As it jerked and swayed, it suddenly fell from its hook, and she felt a jolt down her spine knowing a fire was free, and how quickly it could consume the distance in a dry early spring. The flame hovered on the ground, then flew proud and high up toward the stars again. No lamp had crashed, and the distant flame was instead a close one, on the end of the Wicklighter's stick, bowing to the neighbor's window.
The ram was old, yet, as Pom found strange, was still described as young by the elders. He was tall enough to reach the tallest of wicks, and above all he was shaven down to his ashy gray body and black head. With Pom's face pressed against the candle glass, her eyes met his; brown, gray, or perhaps simply black, she couldn't tell in the dark. Wanting to shrink away and scuttle back to her beckoning bed, she stepped back, but waited in the window still. Her brother could never with his stilted stuttering obtain a flame, but doubtfully her either, or so she felt.
"Are we here for the same reason?" his muffled voice came from beyond the double glass. His face was coal black, so much so that Pom only realized she was seeing him in the light, and not in silhouette, when he spoke and his white teeth showed. While he hooked open the outer window, Pom searched for something to say. All that time staring into the stars she suddenly damned herself for wasting. "To see the candles lit?" He asked.
"Uh, yes... Yes! I'm usually in bed this late, and you've taken back the flames by the time I'm awake."
"Mmm, not taken back, per se," He told her. The tip of his lighting stick slid down with a swift motion and, to Pom's horror, the flaming tip of it hovered just before his face. Up close she now realized not just a flame sat at the tip, but a little metal cup, flared on its rim, was affixed opposite the lighter.
"For lighting," he displayed it so the flame burned into the air.
"And for snuffing," he spun it about, so the cup was held upward.
With that he dipped the flame low, which seemed to dance and leap with excitement, and held it to a wick. When they touched, the stick quietly burned, and Pom felt herself wondering when the thing would light. But as he pulled his stick away, a duplicate flame hung on the candle, as if his lighter forgot to bring itself with it. Moving onto the next, and the next, she watched each candle light closely, trying to discern the exact moment in which the flame was made. She didn't know she expected. A burst, a chime, crying and wailing of a newborn? In the light of her newly burning window, she saw the Wicklighter's face was pocked with gray, and the skin was dry and smooth to a sheen.
"I don't understand. Where are they coming from?" She asked him.
"The thing itself."
The words meant little to her, even less so, transfixed as she was. His lighter recreated the act on every wick in the row, and she perused the flames as they came to be. How many she would need? Would she take the tallest, or the brightest, or the whitest of color? She looked up from them to find him watching her just as close.
"I wanted to know how they light, and so I came to watch you work. I know it's something only the Wicklighters can do, but perhaps, to be a Wicklighter too."
Young Pom didn't know what guilt was. Never would a soul describe her as relentless or heartless, only ever the inverse of such, but something in her youth had confused guilt with wrong. If ever she was rude or disobedient, she felt guilty, not wrong. Even when she felt wrongness in her, like in disease or ailment, she didn't feel wrongness grow, but guilt. To avoid this guilt like she avoided disease, she had created a tact in not-really-lying.
"Not just anyone can be a Wicklighter, you know," He said, "You'll have to wait for your horns to grow, first."
"But... I can't grow horns, I'm a girl!"
"True that, lass. True that, but you've got gall to sit at that window. Some older folk won't even look at them straight on. You'll see a little phantom in your eye when you look away, but it's no phantom, just a trick of the wick."
"Did it scare you at first?"
He pursed his lips and shook his head, "Can't say it did, but it's been a long time since then."
"That must be why they picked you, then. Even my Pa won't look at them,"
"I know your Pa. He's a strong ram, always had been, but he couldn't be Wicklighter. An old bill picks us, and it's been around since before he and I were born. 'His horns curl widdershins 'round five times or six, stands tallest by a hand, and coal fleece intermixed', it starts. A love of the flame has naught to do with it."
Though his body was bare, his wool may be have been so when it still remained, and in the dim light Pom lost count of the deep spiral's turns on his head, they must have been twice so many as her father's.
"You didn't get to choose? Me and my brother though that you did. It was so strange to know there was a sheep staying out late because he wanted to. I never see you in the day, is that part of being Wicklighter?"
Using the flame of the lighting stick, the tall ram was melting wax from the crown of a few candles, who burned brighter now, having more wick exposed to feed upon the air. At his behest the flame licked at the edges, but it was almost idle in how he did it, perfecting with artistry the sculpture that would melt again. Looking into the dark globes of his eyes, she wondered how sometimes they glistened, but at others refused to reflect the shine of the light.
"In a way, yes. One who deals with fire needs to be well rested and alert, and the sun is more often set than not, with the walls of our valley so high. The only thing they ask of me is that I'm shorn. The dryness of my skin, the specters permanent in my eyes, and few friends? No, they don't ask any of that from me. I grew up in the sun, just like you and your brother. Back then, not just merchants from the Reindeer tundra came down that river, but sometimes their soldiers on their way down south. Mercy, how they did complain of the heat, even in autumn, but they were strong still. They had antlers with five or six points in each and nearly my own height, and the way they were paraded about in the middle of the day, making others jealous, I wanted very much to contend against them,"
"You mean fight? With a soldier from the North? Did they allow that back then?"
A puff of air from the Wicklighter's nostrils, a laugh, or so Pom assumed, tossed a few of the flames into a restrained frenzy, and though she believed them silent, she almost heard a hiss or growl from some.
"They didn't. They don't, still. We need contenders, just like the Reindeer, but we need them as Wicklighters and lumberjacks. That's the calling of sheep."
The merchants and traders, in their colorful caped river boats dripping silver icicles from high-bowing arches of royal wood, described their homes as a land of artisans and aristocrats in the few times Pom heard them speak. Some described the hills about the Meadow valley to be as tall as the walls of Reine, and many a trader had rested there before for that comfort alone. In these comforts, Pom forgot the need of soldiers, just as her town had. The Unicorns, without doubt, had soldiers. Each one of them a soldier with flaying spears atop their heads, she believed. How her people would fare would they need to retrieve the discarded seed-flowers from them at risk of a barren meadow clawed at her once again.
"The Prime Minister did that, didn't he? I've seen it too, me and Woogums. We only wanted to see the flowers around the bend. Even with an escort he wouldn't allow it. We only wanted it for the good of the town. The things we've been through just for a peek. Don't you think he's too harsh? Why not let us see the edges of the town? Let someone hates the sun and loves the candles light them!"
Her breath seemed to leave her. How she wanted to ramble on, but even short and stilted statements exhausted her lungs to their bottom and left her gasping in the dark.
For a moment she though that he'd left, but his chalky wool-less body still moved. Now further from the window and its dim light, and she heard him call in his gravelly way, "watch yerself!". Pom jumped at the sight of the key's tip so close before her face, even past the barrier, like a brass claw come to pluck her away. She did as he told, and the second pane that separated them swung away.
So shortly the light reached, she realized, and sitting a few paces from the window now, felt as drawn to it as she was repelled. Her home was dark behind her, the furniture sat like the sleeping mounds of beasts, and the entrance of the hallway to her safe bed and the western moonlight, under which she first saw Woogum's sketch, looked no more vivid than in her imagination. No shadow she could put to a name, but they all cowered from the flame the same way she was raised to.
"There's a contender in ye', I see. Come, you want to be a Wicklighter?"
She didn't. Her interest in lighting wicks extended no further than her brother's behest, even more so now after hearing the old ram's story, but if she hadn't, and given her ear for the Wicklighter's exiled work, the candles would be locked to her again. As she stepped her hooves up to the windowsill, she felt a heat, like that of the sun against her face and in her eyes. For the first time, she saw why Woogums needed one for the vessel.
"Are they moving? Up into the air?" Pom asked.
"Aye, they do lift themselves. It's more weightless than weightless, so much so that it falls up, and not down. Way above them, feel that," He lifted a hoof far above the candle line, "the air rises quickly, trying to escape, but it can't. Anything near it, it will catch, not how spiders catch flies, but how a spyglass catches a beam of the sun. You've seen that in school, yes? All the colors in the sunlight that you and I don't see? There's fire everything that we don't see. Everything forgets about its fire, then you hold it to a flame."
"Even rocks? Even water?"
"With enough flame, them too. What you must know is that there is no shortage of it. It's not the heat, or the smoke, or the way it feels to burn that scared yer' folks, but the abundance. It can give itself without losing itself, and that's a powerful thing. You know what'd happen if one got loose, aye?"
"Aye," Pom repeated.
"And that the hot air rises, and it find something of itself in another, it'll make more of itself, and of itself it never runs out?"
"Aye,"
"Take one then, lass. I don't know what you and your brother are doing, but go on, I know it's what you want. You see those shiny rings under all that old wax? That's the holding piece. Can you keep the lit one safe and contained, and far away from everyone? Show it to me in a week, still lit. You'll be a Wicklighter to me. I would like that, yes. I'd like that very much."
It took an eternity, or an eternity as long as a lamb knows, for her to ferry the precious gold flame on its wax throne all the way to her room. Every other step she stopped, and when it flickered under the breeze of a draft, she'd wait for it to calm again, as if its silent reeling would wake her parents. When she entered her room and her brother slept soundly still, and his limp body was painted on the wall in a mocking shadow, the treachery of the light dawned on her in a way it hadn't when her and the Wicklighter were awake and watching them close. As far as she could from them both, she finally released it from her aching jaw in the door-side corner. By the time she finally slept, she could have sworn she heard again the opening of the window, and the hushed whisper of the doused flames trickle down the hallway.