Chapter 4
First Morning's Light
If one walked into the empty home of a strange sheep, it could be immediately told whether it was occupied by a ram in his adolescence. Those troublesome years were the bane of all wooden furniture, doorframes and countertop edges, upon which a visitor would see an abundance of notches, chips and scrapes into polish. Marks such as these are distinct in their height from the scratches in floorboards and baseboards from the unbridled energy of even younger lambs, who scarcely reduce their speed when charging indoors, or gouge their sharp and fresh hooves into them when careening wildly off the backs of chairs.
Instead, it's the aching horns, sprouting above the eyes of the sheep of two or so years, that they knock and press into anything hard enough to relieve their growing pressure, yet not grind them down to fragility. It's an unconscious habit developed by all but sons of the strictest families, and an ailment told of to many expecting mothers, whom shrug the problem off and swear empathy until their generational oak wardrobes are scarred without mercy. Young rams are encouraged toward other young rams so that, in sport or otherwise, they test their proud armaments between themselves with concussive bouts. The subtle pangs of growth are overcome instead with wailing throbs, and their necks become stout and strong as they should. Pom's brother, however, had whittled down one of his round and varnished bedposts into something akin to a pinecone.
Pulled from the bottom of a well-like dream, Pom awoke to this familiar sound of bone against wood. Woogums stared into the corner, his eyes lowered but fixed so his horns met the post. Pom layed her head on the pillow again to cast herself back into that well of sleep, but flipped herself about with a frantic energy when she remembered the Wicklighter's volatile gift she had tucked in the corner. It had gone out, or so she thought for a moment, but it shimmied in the morning light a little, and she realized it only seemed dimmer having survived to be compared to the sun.
"Are you sure it's enough?" Woogums asked.
"I'll show you later," she said, pulling her sheets into herself and above her chin. Her eyelids fell, but not so far as to let the light of the wick out of sight, "Don't touch it. Or put anything near it."
He leaned his head down further, so the leverage from the tips of his horns against wood strained against his skull even further, "He can spare it? When does the Wicklighter want it back?"
"I don't think it works like that, Woogums. Please go feed the puppies." Pom rolled about in her flanel sheet, wrapping herself even tighter, trying to squeeze the awakedness from herself. For a moment she caught the trail of last night's dream; the candle was gone, her golden bell rang silent, the fingers of the woodlands towered over the hills. The bedpost was now being tapped in a rhythm.
"Does the flame always jiggle around like that, Pom? Why is it jiggling?"
She decided to refuse all questions, even if declared legally deceased, in exchange for anything resembling sleep.
Spring was thought to be eternal in the meadow, but instead the land was simply seldom found. Uninitiated vacationers were always told to seek the pink pedals buttoning its green coat, and steered clear when it dulled brown and unspeckled in the Autumn, thinking they instead approached the highlands. The Winter froze the river by which many travelers came, and in the Summer there were just too many bugs for the thin-coated. In the cold breeze that cooled the sun struck skin, the misty bows of long passed clouds were blown across the sky. Pom had just finished breakfast shortly behind her brother, and emerged at the same time as another fluffy titan began its trek above their valley. She marveled at it's belly shaded by itself, how a thing of such size could move so fast, and so far away. It was one of those rewards given for the overwhelming act of faith needed to rise in the morning after a sleepless night.
The drowning light of day was of great benefit to them, concealing the glow of the flame. Their parent's cottage was quite nearly isolated. Only a few other homes bordered theirs and at a good distance, unlike the dense pocket of official buildings and shops that ran along the river's bank. To any prying eyes at such a distance the flame would be barely visible, Pom would simply be walking delicately, step by step across the hillside, carrying perhaps a full mug of hot tea or some such to enjoy an outdoor morning. This time, Woogums wore Pom's bell tightly around his neck, and their four pups yoked to a sled on which their dense paper construct lay chasing after him, who bounded and jingled all the way to the wind-worn alarm turret in the western field.
Still standing from a long-gone day where the borders of their town were not to be crossed, the alarm turrets were now little but some odd stone stacks everyone saw in the distance, but inspired neither talk nor visitor. It spurred curiosity only from lambs, if a large flock of them could stick together long enough to reach it without distraction. Youngsters were often taken by its unyielding stone column, at least ten sheep in height, and how they could clatter their hooves up its sides without the worry of scratching something delicate. The brass-nailed steps that ascended it from within, terminating on rain-beaten wooden platform on top, still standing after so long, both creaking satisfyingly and bellowing a small warrior's beat as they ran across it. On its crumbled crest the final icon of its original purpose remained: the wooden winch and pulley, still tipped with a rusty hook from which the iron head once swung.
Woogums had long planned to hang the paper balloon from this hook. While Pom rested her jaw and teeth from her vice grip on the candle holder, the construction in its whole was hoisted before her. A deep wicker basket she recognized, as it once held dirty tablecloths and bedsheets, was tied on all four corners by thick hemp rope her brother had bought at the store. These ropes were threaded upward through the handles of shallow and wide silver pan, which hung suspended between the basket and the final destination of the ropes, which was the teardrop of the balloon itself.
"An awful lot of this came from home, didn't it? Are you sure building an aircraft is the best time to be thrifty?" Pom asked.
"If it wasn't a basket from home, it was a basket from the store. This thing only flies on cold days, even if I could order the parts from the Tundra, it'd be Summer by the time they even got the letter. We have few cold mornings left as it is."
As he hoisted the craft higher and tied the rope along the railing of the stairs, and the basket now swung free above the ground, she imagine herself as well, swinging freely in the same wind that pushed the clouds to pieces. Believing the trip brief, and perhaps the obstructing hill not quite as high as she thought, kept her at ease. A pile of dry twigs in the pan, brought to flame by the endless generosity of her candle, and the bulbous top begin to crackle as it stretched and expanded. Pom didn't truly know how, nor Woogums more than her, but he stared up wondrously at the thing, tinged slightly with fear of the inferno which brought about the wonder.
That wonder melted into dread slowly as the layered bands of paper inflated to their fill. Woogums had another rope by his side affixed to the basket so he could stop its escape, should it float into the sky. He hadn't needed it. He went to the top of the tower while Pom held the rope, and slipped the hook from the balloon's top. The whole of the contraption shuddered and shook, but fell to the ground almost weightless until the basket gently rested on the grass below. The dogs growled curiously at it, but it remained motionless until the kindling began to fade away.
When the twigs in the pan were all ash, they folded and packed the thing away into the body of the tower, along with their candle, far away from anything burnable. The day was too warm, and the night too dark for them to fly, so only the morning remained. Windows of their distant neighbors framed their watching faces, and their heads as they shook before they walked away.
Through the steam of their breath, the cold, rusty colors of the next morning passed. Leaving the dogs home, just the two of them went for the tower. The balloon was hung again, and once the previous day's ashes were scraped from it, its fire lit again. Persistent crickets still sung to the night that lingered in the tower's shadow, but quieted when the pop of inflating paper interrupted them now and again.
Siblings, though often oblivious, lead their lives identically. As they grow, the circumstances of their birth take their toll on young adults in ways children can ignore, just as fully grown rams and ewes must acknowledge the tolls of food and hard labor that could be slept away only ten years ago. The two sibling's hadn't crested that time, and so could watch the balloon inflate in comfortable silence, knowing they knew nothing that the other didn't know, nor needed to, just as they had when throwing the flowers into the creek, only calling "bet" or not.
"Pom, will you be mad at me if I tell you something?" Woogums began.
"Maybe. What is it?"
"Because when you get mad, you lock the door to our room and don't let me in, and I need it for more sketches. This is only a prototype, you know."
"I don't think I'll get mad. What is it?"
"I really doubt meadow can run out of flowers. I don't really think it's possible. Even if the flower's aren't past the hill, and they did float all the way to the Woodlands, we could just get more from another city in the Meadow and plant them here."
The subtle change in one's eyes that makes them stare through someone, instead of at someone, winked across Pom's face. "Oh," she said.
"But I really wanted an excuse to build this thing."
"It's fine, Woogums. I hadn't even thought about the flowers in a while."
Her distant look was returned by her brother, and they looked very much alike.
"But... But you went to get the flame. And you walked it all the way here! Why do all that, then?"
"Well..." Her search for lost words began with a whisper. Admittedly, her worries about the Woodlands and how its Unicorns might fare against the sheep had obsessed her more than the flowers. However, it lingered like a battle in a dream, all that remains when you wake is the ghostly wrenching, bitter on the neck and legs with the how and why long gone. In the Wicklighter's face, and even the Prime Ministers, she saw the same thing; something far away that captured them, but terrified them, and the dot of their small town placed immovably far away from it.
"The Wicklighter had told me-" she started, "No, it was before that. When the Prime Minister said-" she stopped again, "No, not even then. It was back at the water mill, and you told us we'd all have to march down to the Unicorns together and take the flowers back. That really scared me!"
"I'm sorry."
"But it wasn't that, either. I never wanted to see the Unicorns as long as I lived, I would never go that far. But that's not up to me, it's up to the vote. Everything is. What if they vote wrong?"
"They... They can't vote wrong. They just can't, that's the point of the voting. And what does that have to do with the balloon? You're not trying to leave, are you?"
"No! I mean, I don't think I am. I could never leave Ma, or Pa, or the pups. But still, even just looking past the hill a bit, it feels like I'm escaping. I feel like this little thing is so wrong, and honestly Woogums? I think the town does too. I don't want to ask, we asked the Prime Minister, and you remember what happened. I never want to feel that feeling again, so let's just go. And if it really is wrong, we'll come back down, and never talk about it again, okay?"
Had Woogums not maintained his look of warm and accepting confusion, Pom may have stopped mid sentence, and cut her embarrassing losses. Not until she finished did his face melt into genuine concern. He tugged the rope a little closer to himself "Actually Pom, I was hoping to ship this thing up to the city when we were done with it. I heard some colleges have been known to admit students for less."
A snake writhed beneath Woogum's hoof, and when he pulled sharply away from its intelligent writhing, he realized it was the rope fastened to the balloon. It had slipped from its hook, and took on a fullness and heft they had yet to see it form, lording above them like another moon over Foenum. He took the rope in his mouth and stood, even that small distance allowed it to bob further up into the slowly brightening sky, tugging at his teeth with its gentle strength.
One of the trembles that became so frequent throughout the week ran through Pom's chest when she saw their dingy, yet kingly will o' the wisp and its fiery necklace. It beckoned them to the skies with its trailing rope her brother bit, but how his neck and jaw strained to do so, it made no promises to wait. To think the balloon was already seeing what lied past the hill, something she'd so long waited to see, made her want it even more. Yet, the craft was so massive on the ground, and so small high in the air. As Woogums pinned the rope under his hoof and began to walk along its length, each step pushing down another half-meter that led up to the balloon to pull it down slowly, Pom realized every length he pressed down was another length up into the sky she'd be let, at mercy of her brother's creation and the wind of meadow valley.
Time and Woogum's task went faster while she deliberated if, and how, she'd escape her great desire for the height, and let him go up instead. After all, she only need know the flowers to be near her. It was on the ground by now, its basket so short and shallow it looked like a chocolate cup her lanky brother stood before. She followed the trail of now slacked rope up to him, and felt herself uncontrollably duck low as she felt the heat of the homemade brazier sputter from above.
"Alright, once you're up I'll walk you as close to the hill as I can get," Woogums said.
"But, what if you let go? Will I ever come back down?"
"Of course you will, somewhere!"
Pom took a few steps back.
"But I won't! Look," he said, and proceeded to tie the loose end of the rope around his waist in a knot near his middle, which he displayed to Pom provenly. She didn't move.
"After all that, Pom? It's as safe as can be, I followed the diagram to the last screw, or at least I would have, if we'd been able to get screws. Look," he hunkered down and stepped into the bowl of the passenger basket, "it's secure as can be! This loyal basket's carried our laundry for years, it's not like it'll give out now."
Woogums drooped his head low away from the hot pan above him, though at his full height even his horns would doubtfully glance it. For a moment, Pom's confidence did trickle back. The sun was promising its full presence in the day, now painting bright over hills, without a cloud in the sky or a lick of a breeze even on the wetness of one's nose. On a whim, she almost reclaimed the steps she'd taken, but as her brother's face softened to see her comfortable again, it darkened immediately when he looked down at his hooves in the basket, still insistently groundborne, awaiting the call of some order he did not know.