Hello and welcome to Restful Journeys.
I'm glad you're here.
Tonight.
We'll be continuing our story,
The Last Cozy Lantern of Briar Hollow,
With Chapter 8,
The Round at Dusk.
But before we begin.
Take a moment.
To make yourself comfortable.
Whether you're settling in for the night or simply taking a little time for yourself.
Allow the busyness of the day to gently fade away.
There's nothing you need to do right now,
Nowhere else you need to be.
Just relax,
Listen,
And let the story carry you somewhere peaceful.
And now,
Let's return to Briar Hollow.
Chapter 8 The Round at Dusk Vos turned the iron key in the tower lock,
Lifting the door as she turned,
And Allara put her shoulder to it and swung it wide and put the pole into Vos's hands before Vos had cleared the threshold.
Below the ferrule.
Alara said.
Not the pharaoh itself.
It's got a temper.
The pole was ash,
Taller than Vos by a head,
With a brass collar and a small hooked cup at the top.
Vos took it below the collar,
Found the balance by feel,
And slid her grip down a hand's width until the wood stopped wanting to tip.
Alara let the door swing shut behind them.
Twice,
And Ellara tried the ring.
Matches?
She had her satchel open on her forearm.
She took out a flat ten,
Thumbed the lid,
And held it out.
Keep it in a pocket that shuts.
Drop it on the cobbles and the heads come off.
And then you've a tin of little red pebbles and no way to light anything.
Voss put the tin in her coat pocket and pressed the flap down over it.
Does it rattle?
Alara asked.
Voss shook her pocket gently.
Good.
You'll want your hands free and your ears for the wind.
She turned to the first post three paces off.
Iron,
Chest high,
A lantern on top with a glass door on its rear side.
Allara reached up without looking and lifted the little brass catch,
And the glass swung out on its hinge.
She struck a match on the post's rough collar,
And the flare lit the underside of her chin.
She touched it to the wick.
The flame took,
Steadied,
And stood up in the glass.
There.
That's one.
She shook the match out and dropped it into a tin box on her belt that Vos had taken for a purse.
Forty of those is a long evening for one pair of legs.
Alara said.
The square comes first because it's flat and everybody's watching.
The lanes are where the legs go.
She pressed the catch home with her thumb and rammed the thumb along the frame,
Checking the fit.
I filled every reservoir this afternoon,
A night's oil to each,
Measured out of the can.
They burn themselves dry about first light,
So nobody has to go around putting them out.
A lamp still burning at breakfast is oil wasted.
Uncle's rule,
And he could tell you to the gill.
Voss set the pole's butt on the cobbles and looked up at the clock face over the tower door.
The hands stood at twelve minutes past six.
She had checked her own watch against it at noon and found the clock several minutes slow and by two it was slower still.
Second post is yours,
" Allara said,
Stepping aside.
I'll watch.
You'll do it wrong and I'll tell you how.
The second post stood a few paces on,
Its collar beaded with damp.
Vos swung the glass out,
Drew a match across the strip inside the tin lid,
And winced at the sulfur flare.
She held the match at arm's length.
As one might hold a dead mouse and put it to the wick.
The wake took.
Then it thought better of it.
The flame crawled up one side and left the other dark,
Leaning.
Threatening to go out altogether.
Oh,
That's lovely,
" Allara said and laughed,
A quick bright sound that carried across the empty square.
She had both hands pressed to her mouth and it did nothing to hide the grin.
You've drowned her.
Half awake and the other half sulking.
It's burning.
It's burning like a man with one leg.
Uncle would've hummed at you.
He hummed when he was disappointed.
It sounded like a kettle.
She reached past Vos,
Not taking the match but turning Vos' wrist with two fingers,
And tipped the flame upright in the little glass house.
The wick caught on both sides and settled as if it had always been there.
Vos shook out the spent match and dropped it in the tin.
In my trade,
Nothing blows out.
She said.
A clock is wound,
Or it isn't.
I have never once had to apologize to an escapement for a drought.
A lantern isn't an escapement.
Clearly,
An escapement would have behaved.
Allara laughed so hard she had to put a hand on the post.
When she could,
She walked Vos on to the third and planted the furrow on the cobbles.
Watch my hand,
Not the flame.
The flame lies.
She cupped a match in her palm so the light pooled in the hollow of her fingers,
Turned her wrist in a small smooth arc and laid the flame in under the glass without ever flattening it.
The wick took clean.
The hand is the wall.
She said.
Risk to the work.
You're not lighting it,
You're delivering it.
Like a letter.
Like a very small,
Very hot letter.
That's the whole trade.
Everything else is walking.
Vos took the tin,
Lit a match,
And cupped it as she'd been shown.
The flame sat in her hand and did not waver.
She turned her wrist,
Set it in under the glass of the fourth post,
And held it there one breath longer than she thought she needed to.
The wick caught on both sides.
The flame stood up straight and gold,
And the glass threw a warm square down onto the wet cobbles.
Well.
.
.
Alara said.
And there was a grin in her voice that Vos could hear even with her back turned.
I'll make a lamplighter of you yet.
I'll accept applause,
But don't tell the clock.
The fifth post stood by the cottage wall with the chip out of its base and its glass door had other ideas.
Voss got two fingers under the frame and pulled.
The hinge gave a quarter inch and stopped as if it had been asked politely to stay put.
She wedged the pole into the crook of her elbow and took the door in both hands.
The little brass catch refused to travel its groove.
Behind her,
Allara's boots crossed the cobbles at a pace that was meant business.
Here,
Allara's hand came over Boss's wrist and lifted it off the frame,
The way you'd take a pot off a hot ring.
Lift it as you turn.
It's stiff,
Not shut.
The damp swells the frame.
It feels shut.
Stiff isn't shut.
If a glass is truly shut,
There's wax on it.
She lifted the door with a small turn of the wrist and put a light to the wick,
And the fifth took its flame with a small blue cough.
That's the rule of the round,
And I'll give it to you whole,
Because you'll be asked it someday by somebody who matters.
A glass is closed with wax only when a lantern's been taken out of service for repair.
A cracked pane.
A bent burner.
A catch that won't hold.
You close it so nobody lights it by mistake and nobody cuts a hand.
And then you go home and mend it.
Nobody seals a working post.
That's like bolting the door and asking the cat in.
And the mending.
Goes in the Mending Book.
The same night.
Date,
Post,
What was wrong,
What was done.
Elora pulled a stub of dull brown pitch wax from her apron pocket.
Showed it on her palm and put it away.
Whoever's on the round carries that for the road and writes it down when they get home.
Uncle would have written up a loose screw on a Sunday.
He'd have your ears for a repair that wasn't in the book.
Tidy Man!
A terror.
She said it fondly.
Six is yours.
Mind the wick.
It soaks.
Vos lit the sixth and the seventh.
The wick won in coaxing,
And she gave it the wrist turn,
Cupping the match the way you'd shield a candle on a stair.
At the eighth,
Behind the pump,
She held the glass while Allara trimmed the char off with the little scissors on her belt.
And somewhere above the roofs,
The tower clock began to chime the quarter.
It struck four notes,
Each a little late and a little flat,
The way a tired clock strikes,
And went quiet.
Alara had been humming.
Balse had not noticed it begin.
It was four notes,
Low,
Under her breath,
And when the chimes stopped,
Hers stopped too,
As if a hand had been laid over her mouth.
That's his.
She said.
I didn't know what I was doing.
The Chime?
The first four.
He never got past them.
He said he only had the four notes that mattered.
Voss said nothing.
She held the glass,
And Allura trimmed the wick,
And the flame leaned and righted itself.
By the thirteenth post the church steps had gone dim enough that she washed her footing.
Behind them,
The square was pricked out in small gold lights,
Each lit one throwing a circle onto the wet stones,
And the circles didn't quite meet.
Allara stopped beside the fourteenth,
Hard by the church wall,
Where the paving gave way to the lane and counted back along the row underneath her breath,
Moving her lips one to fourteen.
The way she must have counted them every dusk of her life.
That's the square.
She said.
Fourteen's the easy half.
The lanes are the other 26.
Bals turned her hands over.
The tin had warmed in her pocket.
Then I'll walk them with you.
You said yourself it's a long evening.
" It came out quickly and Allara heard it and softened it.
I mean it's kind,
But the round's mine now.
Uncle lit it and I'd sooner it were mine alone,
Every night,
Than shared out of kindness.
She took the pole back from Vos with both hands,
And Vos let it go.
You've o'clock to see in the morning.
I do.
May I ask you one thing,
And you may throw the pole at me.
You'll ask anyway.
What did you two last talk about?
You and your uncle.
The match's tin stopped in Alar's fingers.
She frowned at the pole as if the pole had asked it.
Wicks,
" she said.
Probably.
It was always Wix.
She tucked the pole onto her shoulder.
Don't wait up!
And take the 10.
You've earned it.
I have another.
She went.
Her boots rang on the stones on the square and then changed note as the paving gave way to the lane.
And the sound went on changing until it was only a tap.
And then,
Not that.
A match flared at the top of Mill Lane,
Small and yellow,
And held.
A second answered it further down,
Then a third.
Vos stood at the corner post with the tin in her hand and counted what she could see.
The lane ran straight after its one bend and the fog lay patchy on it so that the lamps came on one by one,
Like a sentence being written out slowly.
Two,
Three.
She waited for the fourth.
The fourth did not come.
The flare went from the third post past a long stretch of dark,
And the fifth took a light,
And the sixth down at the mill,
And Ellara's shape went back up the lane with nothing in her hands but the pole.
Where the fourth post stood,
A little above the middle of the lane,
There was no light at all.
More.
And she could not have said why,
Her eye kept going back to it.
Only when a lantern's been taken out of service.
She turned the roll over once.
A lamp put to bed with the lid on.
She had seen it herself on her first afternoon,
Outside their surgery.
And had said as much to an empty lane.
It was in the rule then,
And it would be in the Mending Book,
And there was nothing more to it than that.
Vos pocketed the tin.
Behind her,
Fourteen small lights stood in their ring.
Ahead,
Down the lane,
Five more,
And a dark place between the third and the fifth where a lamp had been told to wait.
She had not asked Holloway yet who keeps the pennies.
She would ask her in the morning,
Before the shop had its first customer,
And while the woman was still in a mood to count aloud.
And the lamp,
She decided,
Could keep until she had a reason to put a question about it.
She did not like the decision,
But she could not think of a better one.
She walked back across the square toward the inn,
Counting the lamps as she passed them without meaning to.
She got to fourteen at the tower door and stopped there with her hand on the iron.
That concludes Chapter 8,
The Round at Dusk.
Thank you so much for listening to this story.
I hope that you continue to enjoy it,
Have become relaxed and possibly fallen asleep.
