Lamplighter

by Law, Lincoln

  She was cut off, as she disappeared from the dream. She puffed from existence like smoke, and then the dancers followed, and then the ballroom, leaving Nataniel alone.

  “Does this mean she woke up?” he thought aloud, her voice echoing in the darkness.

  And then he shot up in bed, drenched in sweat, head booming with an angry, animal pain.

  The hearthfly floated nearby. What had she called it…A spiritfly?

  He looked to it. It clearly felt some kind of a connection to him, and he to it, but she had said it was bad. She had been terrified of it, unlike he, who saw hearthflies as a sign of goodluck. Anything in Castore that displayed even the slightest bit of bio-luminescence was practically sacred. To kill a firefly was sin; to consume glowing mushroom was to see as God sees. How could a hearthfly, or spiritfly, which burned most brightly be bad.

  But he trusted Elenor. He loved her.

  “Go on,” he said, rising up suddenly from his bed, flinging his back hand at the small, insect-like creature. “Shoo!”

  And it did, without a moment’s hesitation. It flew itself through the bars of his cell, and down the hallway, shimmering back into invisibility as it went.

  *

  Elenor woke, sweat-drenched and puffing, as if she had run a marathon. She threw the blankets off her, sighing with relief at the feeling of air running over her skin, her body suddenly crawling with goosebumps. It was a nice feeling, though, for it cooled her down quickly. Far more quickly than she had anticipated. It was only moments later she pulled the covers back over herself.

  “Nataniel,” she whispered, hoping that the dream had indeed been a dream. But how could it? The boy existed. He lived just over the wall, but he was imprisoned. He exists though, she thought. He was as real as she or her mother or…

  “Faulkner!” she gasped, rising up suddenly from her bed. A little too quickly, though, for she had a headspin. She tried to ignore it, though, and dizzily made her way down the dark hall into the room where Faulkner was sleeping. She threw open the door, dashing quickly to Faulkner’s bedside, and shook him awake.

  “Faulkner! Wake up! Faulkner!”

  He groaned as he stirred.

  “Faulkner, we have to hurry. We have to get Nataniel. He’s in a prison in Castoro’s tower, and his spiritfly has revealed itself.”

  This seemed to shake Faulkner from his sleep. “What!”

  “We have to get to him and break him out. If we can tell him not to shun the fly, then he might be able to stay human. And if all else fails, I want to meet him, so I can say goodbye in person at least.”

  “But he’s on the other side of the wall,” Faulkner said. “The current flows east. That means if we wanted to get back, we would have to swim against the tide. Not only that, we only have one hearthfly…spiritfly, sorry.” He pointed to the cauldron-burdened insect in the corner of the room.

  “And we can’t enter the city like tourists,” she said. “That will take too long.” Faulkner could remember many long, quiet days spent at the checkpoint gate—the only gate into Castore. “But we have to get there. I have to see him.” She paused, as if her train of thought had been interrupted. But it wasn’t that. She had begun to cry. “I’ve only ever seen him in dreams,” she sobbed. “But…I—I—I think I love him.”

  *

  It was like, for a moment, it was not Elenor and Faulkner, but Harriet and Faulkner. There was passion in her voice, and caring, and love. True love, for the young boy imprisoned from her. And just as Faulkner had had to comfort Harriet, he now had to comfort Elenor. He put on hand on her shoulder and patted softly.

  “We have to save him,” she said, “even if only for a day. I have to meet him before he becomes a monster.”

  Faulkner nodded, thankful for the darkness. As she looked away quickly, glancing at the time, he wiped away the tear that had appeared in his eye.

  “Then we have to go,” he said, throwing off his blankets. “Go and get dressed. I’ll meet you back in here in a minute and we’ll decide how to go about this from there.”

  “Thank you,” she said, shooting up. She rushed to the door way, but stopped herself before she was fully gone.

  “Faulkner…what do you think we’ll have to do if it’s too late.”

  His heart sank for her, as he realised what the worst-case scenario could be. This was true love. It was nascent, but true nevertheless. He prayed quietly for her sake to an unknown God.

  “We’ll worry about that if we come to it. For now, we’re going to rescue Nataniel and warn him.”

  She nodded and closed the door, allowing him to dress.

  “Any suggestions?” he asked to the hearthfly fluttering in the corner of the room.

  As if it understood, it flew smoothly to the door, indicating to it.

  I hope it can guide us, he thought, as he pulled on his shirt and coat.

  He glanced momentarily to the table nearby, on which sat his rifle. I won’t need it, he mused, thinking of Ophelia. If I do, I’ll send Elenor back.

  Spirit Guides

  There will undoubtedly be blood on my hands. Lots of blood. My citizens’ blood; my Vindicators’ blood; my own blood. But sacrifice must be made.

  It’s all for the greater good.

  The storyteller was alone at the table, a few rows down from Nataniel. She was eating the sausages and mash they had all been supplied for lunch, much more slowly than anyone else in the room. Perhaps she wasn’t hungry, or maybe it was that she didn’t feel up to telling a story today, but either way, no one bothered her. He pulled the collar of his shirt down again, revealing his markings. They were even darker than they had been in his dream, and certainly darker than they had been the day previous. Perhaps, with her knowledge, she would know what was happening to him, and maybe of a way to stop it or hide it. The last thing he wanted was to end up a burnt puddle on the floor of the prison.

  He took a moment to look up through the skylight in the ceiling, the sky above heavily overcast, as if it were just about at breaking point. He could see a small part of the one of the towers too, and the flame at its peak, meaning it was the Architect’s. And for a moment, he thought he felt his heart sink in his chest at the sight of the flame.

  No,he thought, rising quickly from his seat to wander over to the storyteller Hana. He took the seat opposite her, but the woman didn’t look up.

  “I liked your story yesterday,” he said. “Very interesting.”

  “Thanks,” Hana said, almost in a shy manner. She did not look up from her food.

  “I’m Nataniel,” he said, holding out his hand to have it shaken. Hana remained focussed on her meal though.

  “Hana,” she said through a mouthful of mash.

  There was an awkward silence between the two, during which she continued to ignore him and ate, picking around the lumpy bits in her mash. Above, he could hear the wind blowing heavily over the skylight, whistling as it passed over the ventilation holes. Around, there was the chatter of people, the scraping of forks and knives across ceramic plates. But all of that was quickly made silent by Hana, who seemed to absorb the sound around her as she sat before him.

  “I have to ask,” Nataniel said, in a desperate attempt to keep conversation flowing, “yesterday you spoke of the Blessing, and you looked directly at me when you said that.”

  Hana laughed quietly. “Yeah, I often do that. Gives the audience a good scare.”

  Nataniel frowned. “Well…it’s just that I am a Blessed.” He unzipped his jump suit slightly, stretching the fabric to show the markings.

  Hana looked up from her meal, her expression chaning from boredom to interest in a matter of moments.

  “You mean you’re not Cursed?” she gasped, rising from the chair and rushing about the table to take a place next to Natanial. She snatched the collar from his hand, staring at the dark markings, which twisted and swirled across his skin, like vines caught aflame.

  She pushed down on them. “Does that hurt?”

  �
��No, why?”

  “Just wondering. They always look like they hurt.”

  “Well they don’t.”

  She continued to inspect the markings, running her cold fingers over them slowly, rubbing them in places, as if to see whether they were made from ink. But of course, they did not budge.

  “How long have you been like this?” she asked.

  “I think I was about one when I had it done,” he said. “Apparently my parents needed money, so they sold me to the Architect so I could be given a Blessing that no one else wanted done to their child—because apparently it had to be a child.”

  “And yet the curse hasn’t affected you.”

  “So far, no.” He had been Blessed long after the taining. The man had been killed in the waters nearly two-hundred years before—or at least, that’s what the stories said. For all Nataniel knew, that could’ve been a lie, too.

  “How far do they go down?”

  “Just around the shoulders, and a little bit onto my back. Besides my neck, though, those are really the only other places where the markings lay.”

  She nodded, but continued her inspection, running her fingers across them lightly. It tickled.

  “Do you have any recollection of the Blessing.”

  “No,” he said. “Well…not a clear one. I sometimes see flashes, like snapshots of it. Perhaps touching the Tyndibar’s waters give me a more vivid state-of-mind for a time, because these images are very clear. I can see the Vindicators, all five of them lined up in the square, looking away from the well as the Architect holds me in his arms. And there was also a woman there. No! A young lady. A teenager probably, no older than me.” He closed his eyes, letting his memories immerse him. A shiver jolted up his spine as the memories became more vivid…more real. “I can feel the waters. They were cold. And I remember crying. There was a lot of crying, especially after being dipped in the water.”

  “Can you remember what the Architect looked like?”

  He paused, trying to remember. The other images came to him easily, for he had been haunted by them ever since his childhood. That one image of his face remained blank, though. It was just out of reach. He could gather glimpse of a pair of light eyes, a bald head, thin lips, but not a full image. It was shrouded whenever he tried to pull it all together.

  “No,” he said simply. “Flashes, but no complete image.”

  “Shame,” she sighed. “It would be nice to know what he looks like.”

  “How much do you know about the Blessings?” he asked.

  “Enough to weave a tale, not enough to be an expert.” At Nataniel’s questioning glance, she said, “Smoke and mirrors, Nataniel. That’s all storytelling is.”

  “Very well,” he said. “What does it mean if the markings…go dark?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Well it’s just they’ve been getting darker over the last few days.”

  “In what way?”

  He hesitated to answer straight away, attempting to gather the right words to describe it. “Well before it looked like a bruise. It was deep in the skin. It looks, almost, as if its rising to the surface. The blackness had a green-ish tinge to it, and now it’s a deep, deep black.”

  “Well that can’t be good,” she said, rather matter-of-factly. She moved away, allowing him to zip up his jumpsuit once more.

  “The thing is,” he said, “if this is the Blessing mutating, I want to say goodbye to my family. My foster mother raised me, and my foster father. They did the best job they could, and if the least I can do is say thank you before I fall into monstrosity, then so be it.”

  “No one’s ever escaped,” she said. “And look at you! You don’t look any older than twelve.”

  “Fourteen,” he corrected.

  “Very well, fourteen, but there is no way we’re getting out. The fires at the two ends of the hallway aren’t just to keep the fiends out.”

  He glanced to the ceiling. “What about the glass skylight,” he said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to break through.”

  “But how do we climb up? There’ll be guards everywhere, and if it’s night, fiends. You’re just going to have to accept that you’re going to end up a puddle on the floor of a cell. I’m sorry.” It wasn’t a comforting tone, but a truthful, brutal one. There was no use throwing a tantrum over it.

  I can’t,he thought, as he sunk into his own musings, deciding what course of action was best to take.

  Escape or die.

  The thought of Elenor. Of her light hair and brilliant eyes. Of the way she seemed to glow. He thought of the brief, innocent kiss she had given him, and felt his stomach flutter at the thought of something lasting. Something special.

  The answer was suddenly obvious.

  *

  Amelia sat alone at the table, as she had fourteen years previous, crying quietly to herself. It had been exactly like this fourteen years ago, only the one thing left in her life—Ophelia—had been asleep on the lounge. At least in that instance she had not been truly alone. But now her daughter was out in the rain, marching to the Architect’s tower to rescue a friend of hers. The clock in the corner ticked, again and again and again, a constant reminder of how long her daughter had been in danger for. Through her sadness, she counted each tick, waiting for the moment when she would hear her daughter’s voice once more.

  Tick, tock. Tick, tock. Each beat a knife to her heart, each moment, another second her daughter was facing execution.

  Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick…tock…tick…

  …

  …

  …

  Tock.

  Time seemed to slow around her, as if she was now in her own private universe, alone. The clock chimed seven o’clock at night. Many people would be going to bed now, but not her. She had to wait for her daughter. She had to make sure she was alive. There was a knock at the door.

  “Ophelia!” she gasped hopefully. She rolled her way across the room, to the door, flinging it open.

  It was a young man in a blue cloak. A LampLighter.

  His face was covered by the hood, but in the shadows, she could see her son’s face. Perhaps she was imagining things; her mind filling blanks with hopes, rather than truths. But for a moment, this boy was her son.

  “Your lamp above your door isn’t lit,” he said. “Did you want me to?”

  She smiled, feeling tears fall down her face.

  “That would be lovely, son.”

  The young man nodded and reached up. With the hook, he opened the hatch, and with the gas stick, he lit the wick within, a small puff of smoke rising through the rain, like a soul caught on the wind. The flame flickered for a moment, and then rose into full life, a warm tongue of fire bound to the oil-soaked fibres.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The young man nodded, the flame on the end of his stick illuminating his face. He looked to be Ophelia’s age, with a kind face and a sharp jaw. Once again, she saw her son.

  He turned from the doorstep and walked down the street, disappearing into the rain.

  A few minutes later, Amelia closed the door, retreating into herself once more.

  Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick…

  *

  Rain fell heavily onto Ophelia’s face, intermingling with her tears. It dribbled down, into her mouth, and she drank deeply, feeling it cleanse her face, her heart, her soul.

  If Nataniel becomes a monster before I can get to him,she thought, well…I don’t know what I’d do.

  She pulled her hood back up, covering her features, and left the darkness of the alleyway she had stood in, kept safe by the cluster of hearthflies that had joined her along the way.

  “Guide me, spirits,” she said. “I need to find Nataniel, and you always seem to know where to go.”

  As usual, they understood perfectly, their flight becoming more focussed, more certain. As she had expected, they led her westward, towards the Architect’s tower. Through the city she walked, through inch-deep water…or maybe it was deeper. The co
bbles were slippery as usual, but she kept her balance.

  If this rain doesn’t stop soon, the whole city will flood,she thought, as she turned the last corner, coming face-to-face with the high wall that surrounded the Architect’s tower. From below, the moss-laden rock wall looked like an impossibly tall mountain, a sense of vertiginous spinning washing over Ophelia. She pulled her gaze down. In truth, it was probably only ten or fifteen metres tall, but heights did not do Ophelia any good, especially since the climb up the Architect’s tower. She could still remember looking down, at the fiends gathering about the foot of the tower, climbing between windows to avoid the candles glowing behind the glass. She remembered the flaming tower she had seen over past the east wall. That had been in the second city her mother had talked about. That was the true paradise. Castore had been perfect long ago. Now it was a dystopia, fallen too deep into chaos and secrecy to be redeemed or repaired.

  “Well how do I get over that,” she thought aloud. The city ceilings and wall would be far too slippery after all this rain, so she couldn’t jump like last time. And even if she could, she wouldn’t. At least last time she had had Faulkner to grab her should she stumble. This time, she was lone, except of course for the hearthflies.

  She felt heat on her hands suddenly. It was warm, like water in a bath, washing over her hand in slowly moving rivulets. She looked down and gasped. Her hand was immersed in the flames from a hearthfly’s cauldron, and yet it didn’t burn her hand.

  “You want me to hold on?” she asked. In reply, it lifted the cauldron up so that her hand was immersed in the flames once more. “Well if you think you can carry me,” she sighed, gripping the edge of the bowl with her hand. Another of the larger hearthflies went to the other side, allowing her to hold onto it. The two then began to rise up, lifting Ophelia with them.

  This feels so weird,she thought, as her feet were slowly lifted from the cobblestone road, the toes of her boots dripping. Within the minute, she was hovering over the wall, and another minute later, she was safe on the ground once more, surrounded by the hearthflies. She let go of the cauldrons and lifted her hands to inspect them to ensure that there were no burns. There were none, but her hands were splotched with red in places, like paint…or blood.